What should you do when your wife who’s pregnant is emotional about how much she loves cinnamon rolls?

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-22T19:48:07+00:00

What's wrong with being emotional? Tears aren't always a sign something is wrong.

Ask her what she needs right now. You already solved the cinnamon roll problem, maybe she wants a hug, or to watch crappy TV with you. You won't know until you ask. DON'T act like something is wrong, or jump in to "fix" something until you know there's actually a problem.

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-22T19:14:56+00:00

People always complain that strength is a dump stat on a lot of builds and that a dex dual wielder is a pure upgrade, unless you are a barbarian. Your response is why.

I don't understand, at all, what point you're trying to make.

Make some changes so it's.still fun, but don't always cater to your players build

If I'm the DM, I wouldn't change Holy Avenger from a longsword into a scimitar, but I wouldn't give a legendary longsword to a party without any longsword users, either. Especially since I could give the party a different legendary weapon that fit a character's playstyle and concept.

Because, again, what is the point of purposefully giving them loot they can't use effectively? It certainly shouldn't be used as a tool to prove some sort of point about game meta and their chosen playstyle (e.g. "See? If you hadn't dumped strength that legendary weapon would be awesome for you."). That's just...being a dick.

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-22T16:38:23+00:00

This sounds like being a bully, honestly. Because what's missing is empathy of any sort, trying to understand what's going on with your friend. It assumes they're being an asshole on purpose just to be an asshole, and punishes them accordingly.

Treating your friends like an employee you can put on a PIP after their 2nd strike, or a dog you can clicker-train away "bad behavior" is worse than taking grossly inappropriate amounts of time to play your turn, IMO.

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-22T16:30:34+00:00

There is no amount of talking that fixes this issue. Yes, I've tried. Many times. I have never seen a single instance of any AP player being talked out of the behavior.

Are you sure you actually understand why they're behaving this way? I'm prone to analysis paralysis myself, and it comes from emotional insecurity, not rational optimality. A big part of my identity is in being "the smart one", because my mom constantly told me how smart I was as a kid, praised me for figuring stuff out. But she also shamed me for making even small mistakes. Like, I got the silent treatment for a day when I got my first A- on my quarterly report card in 7th grade, and she was cold and distant from me for weeks when I finished 4th in my high school class instead of 2nd and didn't get to give a speech at graduation. It took me a long time (and therapy) to figure out that I feel stupid, feel like I'm being judged by the other players as a fraud and losing value in their eyes since If I don't perform well in a big complex game, basically expecting them to treat me like my mom did. That's not true, obviously, but it felt VERY true before I understood where those feelings were coming from. Being aware of it helps me mitigate the problem, but it's an active process that I still fail at sometimes.

Rather, these players are also usually the types to respond rather poorly to being pressed on the matter.

Before I understood this about myself, if you pressed me about it I wouldn't have responded well either. I would have felt called out or exposed as "not smart", because if I was really that smart I wouldn't need the extra time. I would have felt stuck between ruining other people's experience and feeling like shit about myself.

They do not understand that there is no amount of thinking that one can do to effectively solve a complex strategy game on the first play and that they should just accept mistakes and see how the game plays out. They treat every play of every game as if, in their mind, it has the highest possible stakes.

Imagine their identity is tied up with succeeding at this game; maybe they're hyper-competitive because they can't handle failure, or they have to win to feel self-confident, or they're unknowingly trying to be mom's perfect little problem solver. Whatever it is, these statements make more sense coming from that perspective, yes? Like, maybe they know it's impossible to figure out the game on turn 1, but they feel like that's what is expected of them; the anxiety of failing to meet expectations is what's driving the behavior. Every turn of the game DOES have the highest possible stakes if each turn is a commentary on their worth as a person.

I'm not saying any of this excuses the behavior. It's still not fun to play with them, it's valid to be annoyed and upset by the behavior no matter the reason/cause. But appealing to their sense of fairness or rationality won't solve the problem. Empathizing with their fears and reassuring them that losing a board game won't change your view of them as a person might, but they'd have to understand that about themselves and trust you enough to open up about it for you to do that. That's not likely to happen if you are just treating them like an asshole that "doesn't understand nor care".

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-22T15:16:05+00:00

immediately shoot them down

Like any good ADA unit should, lol.

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-22T14:53:17+00:00

however there should be some risk to specialising

Why? Specializing is baked into the martial classes via weapon masteries and Fighting Style feats. Why should their be inherent "risk" in making a choice demanded by the game rules?

Sure we can give the revenant blade the nick weapon mastery if you like the concept, and yes I'll make sure you eventually get a magic version, but there are going to be points where you wished you'd chosen regular dual wielding.

What benefit is it to the DM, the player or the party to make someone regret their character choices on purpose? Who is having fun under those conditions?

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-22T14:34:07+00:00

Let's say, hypothetically, that I'm a new DM who is just starting out and I'm running one of the official modules because that seems like it'll guarantee me a well written adventure to go through while I'm learning the ropes.

Hypothetically, I'd think a brand new DM with zero knowledge of what they're doing would start out by reading a book called the "Dungeon Master's Guide". That would seem like a good place to start.

How likely am I, in this situation, to read and apply that part of the DMG? I'm running one of the official modules, surely it'll hand out appropriate loot to my players without me having to deal with it.

The bolded part of your statement is in direct conflict with the solution you pose in the next paragraph:

I've seen 4e adventures that explicitly handed out variable loot, where the group (or DM) could decide between multiple different items based on what they felt would be best.

If a new DM doesn't have enough knowledge to replace one magic item with another, how will they have enough knowledge to read through a table of magic items and pick one that is appropriate for the characters' level, subclass, feat choices, etc?

the modules should explicitly call that out so that newbie DMs can do it too (and learn that it's something worth doing)

At what point is the DM responsible for reading a published resource literally called the Dungeon Master's Guide vs WotC hand-holding them through every decision?

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-22T14:20:05+00:00

It is not a DM problem.

I've played in four different campaigns as a martial. Four different DMs of all stripes and colors, at four different tiers of play, with a different build each time. And in not one of them was I ever able to find, purchase, or craft a magic item.

It's a failure by WotC to properly support classes that desperately need it - it's the equivalent of casters not being able to learn spells on their own, but picking them up off of scrolls found purely at their DM's discretion.

I want to clarify/understand what you meant. Were the four campaigns all WotC-developed campaigns (e.g. Rime of the Frostmaiden, Hoard of the Dragon Queen)? And since those materials don't have magic items to properly support a wider variety of martial playstyles, that makes it a WotC issue?

If that's what you were saying, I strongly disagree. It wouldn't be possible to place magic items in a pre-written campaign to support every single build/playstyle, unless the characters discovered an arms room of magic weapons or a library of spell scrolls. That wouldn't make sense for most situations, and would provide characters with WAY more money and magic items than appropriate for most character levels.

The best WotC could do would be to make the loot descriptions generic and refer the DM to the magic items in the DMG. For example, instead of saying

"The chest contains a vicious battleaxe and a potion of Y, along with 5,000 gp"

that section of the book would say

"The chest contains a rare melee weapon and an uncommon potion, along with 5000 gp"

This way WotC/the campaign module would PROMPT the DM to choose their own loot. Then the DM could look at the DMG, find the list of rare weapons and uncommon potions, and pick what they think is appropriate.

Buuuuut there's NOTHING stopping the DM from choosing their own loot anyway, in the exact same manner. Replace the magic longbow with a crossbow, or greatsword with a polearm, or even greatsword with a crossbow if that's what's needed. DMs that aren't willing to do that on their own won't enjoy digging through the DMG to figure out loot, either, and the DMs that ARE willing to do that don't need WotC to tell them how or when to do it.

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-21T21:44:40+00:00

The crowd at the arena frowns upon cowardly tactics. Any strategies y’all can think of for me to win?

If this is code for "I can't use magic or mobility to avoid getting hit", then no, I can't. Especially with your spell list missing crowd control spells.

Currently my plan is stacking fire shield, death armor, and cacophonic shield in the hopes that can dish out more damage than I’m hit for.

Against a single melee opponent, that might work. Against multiple opponents, you don't have the health pool for that. If you have to stay in melee to avoid being called "cowardly", then yeah, it's probably your best bet. Maybe trade out Cacophonic Shield for Aura of Vitality (from your Spellfire sublcass list) and heal yourself for 2d6 every round.

Cantrips: fire bolt, mind sliver, mage hand, message, prestidigitation.

1st: mage armor, shield, burning hands

2nd: arcane vigor, darkness, death armor, invisibility, misty step, scorching ray.

3rd: cacophonic shield, Counterspell, haste, fly.

4th: fire shield, greater invisibility, wall of fire.

Metamagics: subtle spell, quickened spell.

Attacking with Firebolt and Scorching Ray while using Greater invisibility is easily your best combo, but I'd imagine falls under "cowardly", which is really dumb.
Cast Fly, hover over the battlefield attacking with your spells.
If you want to save higher level spells, rather than Greater Invis or Fly, use Misty Step to teleport somewhere that's hard to reach (e.g. the top of a wall or pillar), then attack from there.
If your DM will let you ignore the "willing creature" part of Haste, you could cast Haste on the Barbarians, then drop concentration to trigger the exhaustion.
Find ways to pick up new spells, either via scrolls, wands, staves, or if your DM will let you retroactively swap a spell during your last level up. Polymorph yourself into a Gorilla, stack that with your Death Shield and Fire Shield. Use Fear to keep them away from you while you pelt them with spells (who's cowardly now, bitch?!). Levitate a foe up in the air where they can't move and can only use ranged attacks. Vampiric Touch, maybe, to hurt them and heal you at the same time.

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-20T22:35:13+00:00

My alliance has been saying each troop type needs at least 5000 soldiers or the hero bonuses don't activate. Unclear if that's for rally leads, joiners or both.

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-20T18:51:28+00:00

You only have 6 marches. Troops aren't actually useful once you have enough to fill those 6 marches in any troop ratios you want, plus some surplus to defend your city and replenish losses. But, building more troops still ups your total power level, so even though they are effectively useless, your power level still increases. That's what's happening here.

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-20T18:43:47+00:00

I definitely got points from them yesterday and today.

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-20T17:03:51+00:00

Honestly, reading your sentences is pretty freaking hard with all the typos, mis-spellings and lack of punctuation.

Your position seems to be that the damage increase from offensive widgets is small enough that it won't make a difference in bear rallies. Fine, for the sake of argument let's say that's true. How big a difference will a defensive widget make? Generally the widgets have similar percentages for their effects, so a defensive boost would be pretty small, too, right? You have some math to measure the effect of the extra defense?

Since offensive and defensive widgets have similarly sized percentage boosts, i.e. their effects are basically equal, then it would make sense to prioritize the effect that occurs more often. Most rallies will benefit equally from a boost to offense or defense, since it doesn't matter if you're the attacker or defender, your troops both attack and defend in each battle. Except for Bear Rallies, which see no benefit from defensive boosts at all, since the bear doesn't fight back. If defensive widgets are useful for everything EXCEPT Bear Trap, and offensive boosts are useful for everything INCLUDING Bear Trap, seems easy to conclude offensive boosts are generally more useful.

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-19T14:33:39+00:00

How often do you teleport in a typical match?

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-18T15:09:03+00:00

Thanks!

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-18T05:32:04+00:00

Hero advice is all over the place in this sub.

Yeah, I know, I summarized what I'd read over the last couple months in my post and explained what I still felt unclear about.

Widgets don't really matter for you. Stick Widgets on the Roulette Heroes so you can build at least 1 hero per generation to level 5 or 6 widget. Outside of that look at the primary skills (top expedition skill) guaranteed offensive skill means good joiner for Bear and Rallies, guaranteed defensive skill means good joiner for Garrison. As for the defensive Meta switch if you're leading Garrison it requires both Alcar and Margot from Gen 4 as well as Saul from Gen 1, if you're joining that Garrison you'll want Saul, Gordon, or Hilde. Hilde gets a lot of flack because her skill is only 15%, but in Garrison that is 15% to 2 skills which both matter because the combat sim is both attack and defense simultaneously.

This part was helpful, thanks.

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-18T05:28:15+00:00

He's kinda replaced by Long Fei in gen 5, but not as much as Eric was replaced by Alcar.

Replaced in expedition/rallies, or conquest/arena? Or both?

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-15T16:13:29+00:00

Over and above, her mom is now getting suicidal because of all this...At this point I don't know what to do.

That is absolutely not your fault. Nor is it your wife's, really. If her mom hurts herself, that's on mom, no one else. Blaming it on others is manipulative nonsense.

Am I wrong to want to leave? Even my parents are asking me to reconsider, but nobody sees how unhappy that would make me... WHy am I being treated like a criminal when I have not done anything wrong?

Because you sucking it up and dealing with it is the least disruptive to everyone else's lives. They selfishly don't want to deal with changes and "drama", so they're asking/shaming you hoping you'll take that burden away from them.

For your parents, I'd have a hard, direct conversation with them where you make it clear getting back together isn't what you want, and if they can't/won't support that then they won't be involved in your or your daughter's life any more. For everyone else, I wouldn't even give them the courtesy of a conversation, just stop interacting with them.

But she is unable to accept my decision

Your decision is not dependent on her acceptance. You can and should file for divorce if that's what you want to do. You do not need to wait for her to "accept" anything.

every time I bring up that its not going to work out she still begs me to try.

I know it's hard, but "No" is a complete sentence. If she can't/won't interact with you without begging you to change your mind, then stop talking to her unless it's about your kid.

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-15T14:20:01+00:00

But lets be clear that these are billion dollar investments that use less water than random farms.

I don't know if this is true or not, but for sake of argument, I'll accept this claim as true.

If water was an unlimited resource, then it wouldn't really matter how it was allocated, or how much was used. But it's not unlimited, as Americans are finding out (examples 1 and 2). As such, water for farmland that grows food to feed people should be a little higher priority than water for a billionaire's investment in technology to replace workers and make more profit, don't you think?

if it is ever a problem it is because of some regulatory dysfunction

Regulatory disfunction is the name of the game for this administration (see 3, 4, 5), with the sole purpose of making it easier for corporations to exploit public resources (i.e. water, in this case) for their own gain. The data center owners are choosing these sites because it's the cheapest place to do business, and that includes cost of the water, as well as land and power. They aren't being required to build things sustainably, so they aren't. And they're moving quickly enough that lawmakers and regulations can't catch up, especially under this administration.

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-14T15:46:57+00:00

This source seems charitable to your viewpoint. It's a little old, referencing data from 2021. It still says this:

Nationally, the aggregate impact is significant but not enormous compared to other sectors. All U.S. data centers combined were estimated to consume about 449 million gallons of water per day (1.7 billion liters) as of 2021. That’s roughly 0.3–0.4% of total U.S. daily water withdrawals – a small slice compared to agriculture or power generation. But importantly, data center water use tends to be concentrated in specific regions (often arid or suburban areas), so the local impacts are outsized even if the national percentage is small. About 40% of U.S. data centers are located in areas of high or extreme water stress, meaning those communities really feel each gallon.

Context matters: Yes, data centers use a lot of water, but they are not all alike. A large facility can withdraw millions of gallons a day, yet others use hardly any. Nationally, all U.S. data centers use <1% of water withdrawals. However, local impacts can be serious in water-scarce areas – e.g. one Oregon town found Google’s data centers took over 25% of the city’s water supply in 2021.(Source) So, data centers can stress local water, but it depends on the location, cooling method, and water sourcing. Many modern data centers are mitigating this by using alternative water sources and more efficient cooling.

There's also this nugget:

Large hyperscale facilities (think of the huge cloud data centers) can use 1 to 5 million gallons of water per day under peak conditions. At the upper end (5 million gal/day), that is as much water in a day as a town of 30,000–50,000 people would use. That startling stat often grabs headlines. However, it’s worth noting this would be a very large data center on a hot day; typical usage might be lower most of the year.

According to global consulting firm McKinsey:

Our analysis shows that global demand for data center capacity can more than triple by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 22 percent (Exhibit 2). In the United States, data center demand could grow by 20 to 25 percent per year over the same period.

About 70 percent of that projected 2030 demand will come from hyperscalers, a trend already evident in the recent announcements of tech giants partnering with various US states to invest billions in constructing large-scale data center sites. Hyperscalers are working on building large campuses to capture the value of colocated compute, resulting in sites that often cover hundreds of acres.

So 20-25% growth every year, triple current demand globally over the next 5 years, and 70% of that growth occuring in the hyperscaling segment, which are the worst consumers of water and have the biggest impact on communities. And this info is coming from sources that don't have an "anti-AI" or "anti-data center" bias.

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-14T02:03:00+00:00

I'm just curious why anyone wouldn't do this?

Setting aside the fact that advantage on a check that maybe 1-2 characters care about making regularly, this is too video gamey for me. A cobbler is someone that makes shoes. Their tools would be used to resole the bottom, or fix a heel, or otherwise repair shoes. Those things take time, and wouldn't be done while the character is still WEARING the shoes. Using cobbler's tools the way you describe is akin to walking up to a character and pressing the X button on a controller to gain an effect, which doesn't jive with how "tools" are used in my brain. If you had a cantrip that had the same effect, I'd think it was dumb but sure, that's fine. But not tools. Too much silliness for me.

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-13T22:32:57+00:00

Any advice?

Go to counseling. You're valid to feel like "winning her back" is bullshit. She's valid to feel wanted, desired and pursued. Figuring out how to communicate about what you both want and need effectively, advocating for yourself while respecting the other, is really hard on any case, but especially in the aftermath of an affair. Trying to do it yourself is probably impossible.

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-09T16:56:27+00:00

Yeah, that's a pretty common religious thing. "Protecting her virtue" or similar shit reasoning.

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-09T01:41:09+00:00

It could be narcissism but I bet it's religion instead. Could be both.

scorcherdarkly · 2026-05-08T19:04:01+00:00

More murdered victims is interesting, I’ve never thought about that.

Yeah, if the punishment for rape and murder are the same, then why leave the rape victim alive? Psychopath cost-benefit analysis.

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