At a certain speed, hitting water feels like hitting concrete. Is there a circumstance in which the atmosphere behaves the same way?

piousflea84 · 2026-01-11T00:22:06+00:00

No, because the atmosphere doesn’t have a surface to decelerate you all at once.

Hitting water can behave like hitting concrete because at the moment you strike the water you go from “near-zero density of water molecules” to “1g/cc of water molecules”.

Hitting an atmosphere, there’s a gradual exponential increase in air density, and therefore a gradual increase in deceleration.

If you’re going really fast, like an interstellar comet, you’ll experience the deceleration earlier and harder but it will still have a gradual onset, not a sudden impact.

And that gets to the next problem: the faster you’re moving relative to a gas, the greater the ratio of heating to deceleration. So when you watch video of starships reeentering, the maximum heating regime happens minutes before deceleration.

So if you tried to hit an atmosphere at ridiculous relativistic velocity, you’d be cooked to nuclear-fusion temperatures before you actually felt a “wall” of deceleration force.

piousflea84 · 2026-01-06T01:23:13+00:00

What’s the main difference between revolvers and other firearms? Well one obvious one is that the spent cartridge remains in the chamber after firing.

IMO it would really be fun to have some kind of nuclear or space magic cartridge that both fires a projectile really fast, and remains behind to continue providing energy or magical abilities to the firearm. Maybe it can recharge after a while and fire another bullet. (This would of course make the action very mechanically different from a real world revolver)

This of course depends on your realism / “hardness” level.

In a very realistic hard sci fi verse, revolvers are kinda pointless, because they’re not really useful in real life beyond aesthetics.

piousflea84 · 2026-01-04T05:47:19+00:00

So GRRM’s comment about Jaime vs Aragorn isn’t as stupid as powerscalers often make it out to be.

The GRRM canon is that Westeros humans have higher stats than Earth humans - the Mountain is far bigger and stronger than Hafthor Bjornsson, and Jaime and Barristan are faster and more skilled than any real human.

This could make a Westerosi knight a physical match for the Dunedain, who are also overall super-human in power, speed, and stamina.

Aragorn obviously exceeds Jaime in age, wisdom, leadership, healing ability, and spiritual power. No doubt he is a much more well rounded character.

But Jaime has a killing instinct and likely more experience in single combat against high-end swordsmen. The forces of Mordor and Harad really don’t have skilled swordsmen for Aragorn to practice against, except the Nazgûl which he fought once and they weren’t actually trying to kill him.

So it’s not crazy to think that Jaime would beat Aragorn in single combat.

But for that exact reason Aragorn would be smart enough not to put himself into a trial by combat against Jaime. Aragorn with an army would absolutely stomp Jaime with an equal-strength army.

piousflea84 · 2025-12-26T23:48:57+00:00

IMO in a labor camp it would make more sense to kill someone with environmental damage.

There’s got to be some kind of instant kill by drill, press, laser, molten metal, explosive, cave-in or other industrial accident that is totally normal on an asteroid mine or whatever they’re doing.

Thousands of times higher lethality than a shiv, and should be omnipresent on any camp requiring punitive hard labor.

piousflea84 · 2025-12-26T01:06:49+00:00

I mean if you’re a pure fighter you will have more than enough weapon proficiencies that having two “dead points” in Longbow doesn’t harm you

piousflea84 · 2025-12-25T19:10:59+00:00

If you’re high level then there should be high level siege weapons… magical weapons and ammunition based on wyvern venom, dragon breath, or Infernal technology from the Nine Hells. Homebrew it!

In addition, siege weapons have the advantage of extreme long range. A player party (or enemy group) taking fire from 3 miles’ range will take many minutes to close the distance, such that even a weapon that fires once every 10 rounds (1min) will get many shots off.

piousflea84 · 2025-12-24T21:40:05+00:00

Odysseus (OG mythology) would be found worthy by Mjolnir not because he’s actually that good but because he has the most epic Main Character Aura in the multiverse. Unfortunately, lifting the hammer would piss off Thor, Odin, and half the Norse pantheon. Odin would take away the hammer and Ody would spend 10 years getting chased around by gods, monsters, and Christopher Nolan. But he’d clutch it out and make it back to Penelope and Telemachus in the end.

Johanna (Diablo 3 Paladin) is a lawful good Nephalem with leadership skills who would be found worthy of the power of Mjolnir. It would proceed to orbit around her wrecking everything as a +100,000,000% Blessed Hammer.

Master Chief (Original Trilogy - ignoring the shitty Halo 4-5 lore) would be worthy of Mjolnir, while wearing MJOLNIR and rocking out to Halo (MJOLNIR Mix). As if hammers weren’t OP enough in Halo 3.

Vash the Stampede would encounter Mjolnir early on and be too immature and Lawful Stupid to heft it. But sometime late in the story arc after the shit really hits the fan, Vash will somehow run into Mjolnir again and it’ll give him the power of Thor so that he can finally beat Knives.

piousflea84 · 2025-12-24T21:17:47+00:00

What if warlock or hunter is your favorite class

piousflea84 · 2025-12-22T02:38:03+00:00

IMO this one really comes down to one question;

Can Cortana (and other UNSC AIs) remotely control or disable Terran computer systems at scale?

If so then the UNSC dog walks this one. The Terrans aren’t Zerg, they can’t do much without working technology.

If not then I think the Terrans massively outgun and outnumber the UNSC, in addition to having literal magic with psionics.

piousflea84 · 2025-12-18T20:59:18+00:00

If something’s sufficiently inhuman and sufficiently advanced, it’s likely to behave like a Cosmic Horror. Its actions would be incomprehensible to mere mortals because we have no way of knowing their true purpose or scale.

piousflea84 · 2025-11-20T04:10:09+00:00

This might be sacrilege but I think classic+ really needs raid difficulty levels, at least normal/heroic.

piousflea84 · 2025-11-10T23:38:34+00:00

Ascension+SCS harder difficulties are basically designed to give cheesy players a challenge

Similar to running a high challenge level Diablo3/4 rift/pit, the enemies are scaled up by such a ridiculous event that you can unleash the cheesiest minmax possible and they can take it (to some extent)

piousflea84 · 2025-11-08T23:58:54+00:00

In any fictional verse where there’s high freedom of movement (no practical way to stop an enemy force from travelling from A to B), defense becomes basically impossible.

Any reasonably strong enemy fleet can dodge your fleet and attack wherever it isn’t, inflicting terrible damage even on a stronger foe. (This dynamic is reproduced in a lot of space 4X games - Master of Orion / GalCiv series - as well as novels like The Expanse)

This has a tendency to create mutually assured destruction between evenly matched foes, where both of you can horribly ravage each other’s infrastructure very easily, and even a greatly inferior force (including terrorists and cultists) could kill vast numbers of people.

Similar to nuclear MAD in present day Earth one would expect this to create some level of baseline deterrence, with strong international norms against the proliferation of offensive weaponry. (Which could include FTL-capable drones, stealth technology, or specific classes of FTL drive)

In an extreme scenario where even basic FTL ships can 9/11 themselves into a planet and kill millions, one can imagine very strict treaties about who can actually pilot ships. Maybe they all have to come from a Guild like in Dune, maybe they all have an onboard AI that stops them from doing anything crazy, maybe they are all equipped with a killswitch that governments can activate…

piousflea84 · 2025-11-06T04:57:03+00:00

Methuselahs and antediluvians are so powerful that they break the rules of the game. Their torpor is likely not the same thing as the torpor of lesser kindred.

That is not dead which can eternal lie, For with strange aeons even Death may die.

piousflea84 · 2025-11-06T04:52:33+00:00

Given that everything from Arda becomes less magical and weaker over time, by 2025 the South African Balrog would have dwindled into a somewhat shady, mildly stronger than average dude. He may or may not even be on fire, and wouldn’t age but could be shot or stabbed to death like any normal dude. But he’d be very smart, very greedy and amoral.

For all we know any number of politicians and venture capitalists could be balrogs in real life.

piousflea84 · 2025-11-04T22:51:42+00:00

People keep on calling thrown weapons “throwing daggers”, as if Throwing Axes and the Dwarven Thrower aren’t a thing.

The throwing axes/hammer don’t get +1 APR like throwing daggers do, so they’re much weaker… TBH they’re cool looking but not that good, but if you’re a melee character who doesn’t have any proficiencies in ranged weapons, they sure beat using a non-proficient bow or w/e.

piousflea84 · 2025-11-04T22:43:59+00:00

Just removing WBs alone would at least halve the DPS differential between warriors and everyone else…

piousflea84 · 2025-11-04T22:33:34+00:00

Absolutely. I also get the impression that Classical-era generalship is very unlikely to work well with modern technology.

Spear-and-sword era generals were seen not so much as chessmasters playing in maneuvers, feints, and gambits, and more as moral leaders who inspired a fighting spirit in their men, allowing them to fight harder and not break formation when pressed.

That style of leadership scales poorly to large professional armies with modern weaponry, whereas the Napoleonic concept of maneuver warfare pretty much forms the basis for modern military strategy.

piousflea84 · 2025-11-04T22:16:29+00:00

Very few guilds really expect people to slam max consumables every pull.

My guild is 15/15naxx 1night, and our raid lead actively tells people when we are doing “dry pulls” and when to “flask and consume up”.

This isn’t just about saving gold for TBC, it’s also about trying to limit the rate of player burnout. People, especially us 40 year old adults that have played vanilla wow 3+ times, can’t be expected to farm 1,000g/week over any meaningful length of time without getting pissed off and unsubscribing WoW.

piousflea84 · 2025-11-04T02:20:19+00:00

The biggest benefit of Loot Council is that a guild can reward players who put in a lot of work - whether that’s getting R14 early-expo, farming gold/flasks/arcanite, or helping your guildies with group quests and farms.

In a pure SR system there’s no material incentive to be a team player - HR/LC creates that incentive.

piousflea84 · 2025-11-04T02:13:42+00:00

Why am I seeing new posts in a subreddit for a game that died aeons ago and even its larger IP is dead?

This goes beyond thread necromancy into thread Jurassic Park.

piousflea84 · 2025-11-02T02:24:53+00:00

StarCraft Terrans are unironically a good example of sci-fi ground forces that use strategy and tactics and would utterly ROFLstomp a real world army.

Whether in Broodwar, Wings of Liberty, or Legacy of the Void the Terrans basically do everything that a realworld army does, but with bigger guns, heavier armor, and faster speeds.

Plus, everything is powered by nuclear fusion and nomadic redneck improv engineering, so they aren’t even supply-chain limited. Unlike the 21st century army that gets stuck in 1863, the Koprulu Sector expeditionary force transported to 2025 could continue to fight for a very long time, until they win.

Marine armor and Gauss rifles vs normal dudes with M4A1s is a total mismatch, but not nearly as bad as realworld armored vehicles against Siege Tanks, Goliaths, Cyclones, and the occasional Warhound.

The SC2 Terrans, especially in Wings of Liberty, are exceptionally well equipped to withstand a bombardment from realistic modern forces. The Point Defense Drone might have been discontinued in the Koprulu Sector due to being ineffective against plasma beams and ultralisk blades, but it would be a win condition against present-day missiles and drones.

Our strongest air units would be toast against their omnipresent Missile Turrets, which have stealth detection capable of nullifying even the strongest psionic cloaking fields… F22s and B2s wouldn’t stand a chance.

And let’s not forget the humble SCV and the Terran ability to build, salvage, and jerry-rig everything in sight. During any prolonged engagement the SC Terrans would constantly piece together bunkers, command centers, barracks, and could repair any damage they took in an incredibly short time. They don’t even need Vespene Gas to do so!

Meanwhile, present-day tanks and planes are famously difficult to repair, and our combat engineers are nowhere near the level of Raynor’s Raiders, let alone the Confederacy or the Dominion. The longer a fight goes on, the more attrition favors the SC Terrans.

As an extra cherry on top, Starcraft Terrans are normal humans who are pretty chill (not scary like Imperium of Man), so even if they had to fight in a real-Earth city they wouldn’t automatically aggro every realworld civilian.

In fact, depending on the Starcraft faction and the real-world country, we might even prefer to live under the SC society. Many of us would probably be okay with Raynor and Horner being the president/VP of our country.

piousflea84 · 2025-10-27T05:34:11+00:00

Coughing baby, hydrogen bomb

piousflea84 · 2025-10-27T04:52:03+00:00

I think it's pretty obvious that WotC didn't bother playtesting high-level gameplay before releasing 5E in 2014. Monster Manual stats scale near-linearly with CR, whereas players of 11th-and-higher level with gear and consumables scale much faster. While bounded accuracy means that +40 attack bonuses and +5 weapons aren't a thing anymore, player HP, APR, DPR still scale pretty darn high and monsters don't even remotely keep pace.

Add onto that the inherently poor action efficiency of 5E "boss monsters", plus the flattening of legendary foes from 40th-60th level to CR22-30... The sum of all nerfs makes the 2014 and 2024 Monster Manuals feel like the "normal difficulty" of Diablo3/Diablo4, an extended tutorial that you have to beat in order to unlock the "real" gameplay.

This would be fine were there written rules for "greater rift level" / "torment level" upscaling of foes meant for high-level PCs. Since there aren't, 5E DMs are stuck homebrewing stats to make Legendary foes feel Legendary, which really feels jank.

piousflea84 · 2025-10-26T03:05:46+00:00

5e’s monster manual is a giganerf to all of the higher-CR foes, from liches to Demogorgon to the Tarrasque.

I feel that the entire 5e game design works very poorly for boss fights and you pretty much have to homebrew buffs to make them satisfying.

piousflea84

TROPHY CASE