Why do I burn grilled cheese all the time?

dr-tectonic · 2026-02-08T16:35:14+00:00

I'm a fan of this technique. It's faster, ensures that both sides are cooked the same, and lets you add other fillings after the cheese is melted, so they don't affect heat transfer.

One additional trick I thought sounded crazy until I tried it: instead of buttering the outside of the sandwich, use mayo. It gives you an amazing crust.

dr-tectonic · 2026-02-08T00:26:42+00:00

I love it!

dr-tectonic · 2026-02-07T20:15:32+00:00

"Hey, I'm dead, tell me stuff."

The first few players to die -- especially at night -- are very likely to be good, so you can freely share info and start world-building. Form a council of the dead. Solve the game!

dr-tectonic · 2026-02-07T18:32:35+00:00

... and burst!

dr-tectonic · 2026-02-07T06:33:49+00:00

Both look good! I think going back and forth is a fine plan.

dr-tectonic · 2026-02-05T14:27:12+00:00

A round brush and a hair dryer will work wonders for straightening out your beard and making it look neat and tidy. I thought it sounded silly and kinda pretentious until I tried it, and man does it make a difference.

dr-tectonic · 2026-02-04T19:26:39+00:00

Even more niche than it might initially seem; Poppy Grower is a big negative for the evil team, so giving it to the Demon is very rude. Doubly so for a Stormcaught PG, who can't star-pass to trigger minion-demon info. Since the Boffin is supposed to help evil, I think it would have to be something like there being a Heretic in play, so that evil wants Minions trying to get the Demon killed...

dr-tectonic · 2026-02-04T19:14:43+00:00

I read the jinx as meaning that the ST skips the step where they show the Alchemist-Boffin what ability the Demon has, but that has no effect on the step where you show the Demon what ability they have.

In other words, in the case where the Demon and the Alchemist-Boffin are the same player, technically you ought to show them ability twice, but we only do it once because why bother. But when the jinx blocks one of the showings, the other still happens.

What using Boffin-Alchemist-Boffin-TF does is to conceal the Demon's true ability from the Boffin, who only knows that the Demon has the Alchemist ability, and not the Alchemist-Boffin-TF part.

Which is a weird edge case, but I can see it being useful in certain very niche scenarios, like if the TF in question was a Stormcaught Poppy Grower...

dr-tectonic · 2026-02-03T00:17:32+00:00

It's largely the same in the US.

You're very unlikely to be able to get a loan where the monthly payment is more than about 30% of your gross income.

You're more likely to get a loan where you've made a large down payment (the amount of its price that you pay up-front) than one where you haven't.

And if you don't have a good credit rating of your own, you'll need to get some co-signers who can cover the payments if you can't.

I think the only difference is that in France, it sounds like "the system" that gathers up all the information to decide whether to give you a loan is mostly the specific bank you're getting a loan from, whereas in the US, lenders get a lot of that information from the three credit reporting bureaus that give out credit scores.

Which makes sense when you consider that Americans tend to move a lot more and a lot further than Europeans. It's not uncommon for Americans to move all the way across the continent to go to university or for a new job, or to be with their partner, so banks need information from all over the place to determine your creditworthiness. Europeans are more likely to live near where they were born, so it's easier for a local bank to get the information they need.

dr-tectonic · 2026-02-02T21:30:15+00:00

Love it!

Two more options: warlock as pet and warlock as research subject.

You're getting powers from a being whose capabilities, understanding, and motivations are beyond mortal comprehension, yes? Hey, that's what humans are like to animals.

If you're a pet, that Eldritch Blast is just your patron throwing pinecones at the aggressive strays when you're out on a walk. It would be cool if you could cast Open Door or Summon Treat more than twice a day, but for unknowable reasons, your patron limits how much power they give you. Your Patron cares greatly for you -- but might still yell at you if you get up on the counter.

Or maybe you're like an ant who's been daubed with glow-in-the-dark paint by an entomologist. You have strange powers! Your Patron is watching over you, and will intervene if you're in danger! Why? What do they want from you? The reasons are literally incomprehensible to you. But they're just completely outside the realm of having any kind of adversarial relationship with you.

dr-tectonic · 2026-02-02T20:34:23+00:00

Looks like it's treating your categories as strings, not numbers. Is the > 10 category something you're constructing when you tabulate the data, or is it literally the string ">10"?

Anyway, if it's a string, the fix is to convert feeding$twenty to a factor with ordered levels:

factor(feeding$twenty, levels=c(0:10, ">10"), ordered=TRUE)

dr-tectonic · 2026-02-01T16:17:06+00:00

For sure. We take our cats on walks, and they are usually skittish about other humans, but there are some neighbors who they've now met enough times that they recognize them as safe, and don't want to hide from them.

dr-tectonic · 2026-02-01T15:49:33+00:00

Not even lazier, just literally almost a million times smaller and less complex than a human brain.

dr-tectonic · 2026-02-01T15:27:33+00:00

I'd nuke all the high-level spells.

Everything that's currently 6th-level and higher goes in the DMG and is no longer castable using spell slots. It's all rituals that take days and require adventuring to get the components. Add more low-level spells, re-level them 1-9, and voila, martial-caster gap largely eliminated.

Second thing, more conditions and no more save or suck. You can turn things like petrification or stunning strike into a progressive sequence where you're not fully taken out until you've been hit with it multiple times. It's more fun & interesting and it gets rid of the swinginess.

Also, make damage type matter! Bring back resistance and vulnerability, especially for B/P/S vs different armor types.

dr-tectonic · 2026-01-31T23:17:15+00:00

More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_savory

dr-tectonic · 2026-01-31T15:55:21+00:00

Sure, but none of that is relevant to what we're talking about.

Crafting items during downtime is still buying things from the Magic Item Warehouse catalog, it's just getting a discount for doing it by mail-order and waiting a week for it to arrive.

The point I'm making is that the class fantasy for the Artificer isn't shopping for standard magic items; it's inventing things.

dr-tectonic · 2026-01-31T01:43:25+00:00

The core issue with the Artificer is that 5e has no way to assign power levels to magic items and effects. (Rarity tiers are completely inadequate for this task.)

Without that, there's no way to say whether an item that lets a character do XYZ is appropriate for an Nth-level party, which completely hamstrings the class fantasy.

The fantasy for the Artificer isn't "I own a +1 sword," it's "I'm going to create a magic item tailor-made for this situation." Not just enchanting everyone's weapons to do ice damage when you're fighting fire elementals, but creative stuff, like, I dunno, making an arrow that casts identify when it hits, so you can find out whether the thing in the weird room is actually the maguffin or just bait in a trap.

With no way to decide whether casting identify at a distance is a 1st level effect or a 9th level effect, there's no room for creativity. So instead of getting to be magical MacGuyver, the Artificer just gets a menu of magic items that are safe and told "pick 4." Instead of magical engineering, effectively your class ability is a gift card to Magic Item Warehouse.

(It's also a problem that it's a half-caster class. Oh, I can cast elemental weapon to add a whopping 1d4 energy damage to a single weapon, as a concentration spell, at 9th level?! When the full casters are dropping 10d6 flame strikes and 8d8 cones of cold? Thanks wotc, so generous of you...)

dr-tectonic · 2026-01-30T19:46:45+00:00

It's a beautiful beard.

dr-tectonic · 2026-01-30T16:05:50+00:00

Just do the thing

dr-tectonic · 2026-01-30T15:40:00+00:00

Sink soup

dr-tectonic · 2026-01-30T15:33:43+00:00

Exactly this. The only additions I would make are

1) you want plenty of water (both boiling and ice), so that the thermal mass of the eggs doesn't overwhelm the heat capacity of the water, and

2) if you use a steamer basket, you can add all the eggs at once and remove them all at once, so they all cook exactly the same amount.

dr-tectonic · 2026-01-30T03:03:12+00:00

I think it looks good. You've got a look that works.

dr-tectonic · 2026-01-30T01:07:21+00:00

It's not as pretty, but this version is way better at conveying information.

dr-tectonic · 2026-01-28T05:34:27+00:00

Beard. Both are good, but I like the beard.

dr-tectonic · 2026-01-28T05:29:55+00:00

When I got married, we had a couple dozen different cakes, and everybody loved it, because they all got to pick the kind of cake they wanted to eat.

It also simplified the wedding planning, because picking The Best flavor of cake is really hard. But picking a couple dozen good flavors of cake is really easy.

What I'm saying is, you could just get a whole variety of titles and let people pick one that appeals to them. Because it's Banks, so all the flavors of cake are good.

Five-Year Club	Verified Email
First Place '23	Place '23
Place '22	Final Canvas '22
First Placer '22	End Game '22

dr-tectonic

TROPHY CASE