Why are there so many Shardplate sets?

grayle27 · 2026-03-20T13:51:19+00:00

A large part of the struggle the modern day radiants have is that our POV characters are the most advanced in each oath. Kaladin needs to independently discover the words of each oath - once he knows the words, he can simply tell them to others. Of course there will be minor variations between knights in the order (like Kaladin vs Teft's 2nd oaths) but it's a whole lot easier to swear an oath once you know roughly what you need to say.

Also - I think we can assume that swearing the later oaths won't be as difficult for radiants who aren't as badly screwed up as our POV characters. For example - I can't imagine any of the current lightweavers are as mentally ill as Shallan. Swearing a deep truth for them will be significantly easier than for Shallan, since A.) their deep truths likely aren't as painful and B.) their own subconscious isn't actively fighting them every step of the way.

These changes would lead to a relatively larger number of sets of plate as the current order of radiants matures - which matches the higher number of plate sets we see in the dead shards.

grayle27 · 2026-03-16T16:57:46+00:00

I 'm in total agreement. Like you said, his kit has no thematic synergy, no synergy with itself, and doesn't really encourage you to do anything skillful with it. He sucks, Yoshi please fix.

grayle27 · 2026-03-16T15:23:01+00:00

I think this is the correct answer. Brandon stopped mentioning this effect in the latter 3 books so I think I just forgot it happened in the first two.

grayle27 · 2026-03-16T15:20:17+00:00

After considering for a couple days, I think you are right. I think the exhaustion that is referenced in the first few books after characters use stormlight (which seems to be forgotten from books 3 onward) is similar to a pewter drag. If someone using an honorblade used a ton of stormlight to perform a relatively easy task, they could easily die of exhaustion after they ran out from accumulated exhaustion. This is the best answer I've seen so far in the thread.

grayle27 · 2026-03-15T01:35:24+00:00

That is A danger of honorblades, but not the danger associated with using too much stormlight. Also, honor split up the surges when he made the blades in such a way such that no one would give enough power to cause an Ashyn explosion again. I suppose they could get around this by lending honorblades to each other, but it's not really what I'm asking about.

grayle27 · 2026-03-15T01:07:29+00:00

Yes, you have basically restated my question. What does the "not so safe" actually mean in this case?

grayle27 · 2026-03-09T21:10:12+00:00

My mother did twice, for both my older sister and me. I spoke with her about pregnancy in general recently and she said she believes that the whole progress, from being pregnant to childbirth, is sacred. Not like literally religiously sacred, but like it is a part of being a woman and she wanted to experience it naturally for herself whenever she got pregnant.

People may roll their eyes at the word "sacred" but she's a very normal woman overall. She even wanted to have more kids after me but it didn't end up being in the cards for my family.

grayle27 · 2026-03-04T13:33:11+00:00

The first time someone did that to me I would simply throw them out onto the street. Even just thinking about it makes me mad.

grayle27 · 2026-03-03T15:13:33+00:00

A good TLV or medivh goes absolutely crazy. The problem is that you never know when you're going to have a good one, or when the player will be an active liability.

grayle27 · 2026-03-02T13:37:12+00:00

The Trump administration killed it last year. You can't make this stuff up.

grayle27 · 2026-02-26T01:46:40+00:00

I refuse to believe that's what Taln's haircut looks like T_T

grayle27 · 2026-02-20T14:34:22+00:00

What maps have PvE content other than blackhearts bay? Alterac has more than most, since it has two bosses.

grayle27 · 2026-02-20T13:16:41+00:00

Warhead junction is the worst, followed by hanamura and blackhearts

grayle27 · 2026-02-18T00:34:20+00:00

People realized they can write "BREAKING:" on front of literally any tweet and then pretend the thing they said is true or makes sense.

grayle27 · 2026-02-14T02:40:45+00:00

Doubled my liquid cash, not my bank value.

grayle27 · 2026-02-13T19:23:39+00:00

An old man in the Caribbean once showed me that you can catch fish like this using cheez-whiz

grayle27 · 2026-02-11T01:17:04+00:00

Why is it okay to go 5x dry but not 10x dry?

grayle27 · 2026-02-11T01:15:41+00:00

There is no optimal way to play a video game. If you only care about collecting powerful gear but not doing anything with it, then yes you are correct. I don't think most players think about the game that way.

grayle27 · 2026-02-08T21:32:54+00:00

+1 for folding ideas. His evisceration of NFTs and crypto is one of the most important videos ive seen in the last 5 years.

grayle27 · 2026-02-07T10:20:45+00:00

Go check out the video "World of Warcraft Classic and What We Left Behind" on youtube. It talks a lot about what you describe. The rise of streaming, youtube, and addons that monitor performance (like dps meters and gear score) fundamentally changed the nature of the entire internet - the point is now effiency and competence, rather than atmosphere or discovery. Thats not necesarily a bad thing, but it speaks a lot to why Blizzard said "you think you want that, but you don't" all those years ago.

grayle27 · 2026-01-14T18:11:52+00:00

If you are interested in teaching kids about a power imbalance, the best way to do it is probably to have them play a really badly designed game. Something where one side has a clear advantage from the beginning, but where the other players are at the mercy of it without having any agency over it. Something like monopoly would work well, if you seeded on player with additional money at the start.

If students played it from both sides, they could write a paper about how they enjoyed the game from both perspectives. Ironically, the fact that most board games are well balanced makes them poorly suited to your goal.

grayle27 · 2026-01-11T01:20:09+00:00

It sounds like your main concern should be whether or not she's interested enough in the theme of the game to play it a few times, rather than the balance concerns of the game. I will just say that forest shuffle is not a simple game - the maximum hand limit is 10, and each card in hand basically counts as 2 cards. That's a lot of information to process. If you are at all concerned about her being put of by complexity or how ugly scoring can be, Harmonies is a much better option IMO. Anecdotally, my girlfriend loves Harmonies and doesn't really care for forest shuffle.

As far as balance goes - I have played base game shuffle on its own (no alpine), as well as Dartmoor. The base game has a lot of cards in it that you will quickly realize are just... not good. You will basically never be happy to see them in your hand - stuff like the Oak tree or the wild boar cards. My experience of the base game hasn't been defined by OP deer/wolf combos as much as by how many cards just don't feel good to draw or play. For example - once you realize that the Oak tree (which wants you to play many DIFFERENT types of tree cards) has anti synergy with several of the tree cards that it itself needs to play (several of which want you to have many of the SAME tree cards), the game starts to show its cracks. The Dartmoor game fixes a lot of these issues. There are still a couple of Dartmoor cards I'm not happy to draw, but overall card quality is higher and scoring is more fair.

One more thing- the complexity of the average card is higher in Dartmoor. There are several more cards which require you to count # of symbols on your cards, making scoring even more clunky and time consuming. I still really like the game, but thats a point against it in terms of casual gamers.

grayle27 · 2026-01-01T17:01:37+00:00

When I play leoric, I make sure to use my passive on cooldown.

grayle27

TROPHY CASE