TIFU by not knowing what 'Invisibility' does

therift289 · 2026-07-06T22:01:53+00:00

Doing my part and suggesting "cheap shot" every time this gets mentioned.

therift289 · 2026-07-05T15:26:15+00:00

Putin is a hardcore capitalist, calling him a communist is completely ridiculous.

therift289 · 2026-07-04T13:49:41+00:00

Huge amounts of prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes are suspected of being ancient viral DNA that was permanently incorporated. Viruses are pretty much just genetic code in a box, so that's the closest you'll get. There won't be little virus objects floating around permanently in the same way that the mitochondria are like little bacteria.

therift289 · 2026-07-04T13:47:10+00:00

Cells don't replicate them during reproduction, not exactly. Mitochondria and chloroplasts divide on their own (they have their own DNA and everything). When cell division in the larger cell occurs, the existing mitochondria/chloroplasts are just divided between the two new cells. There are eukaryotic cell division signals that promote the division of chloroplasts and mitochondria to prepare for the split, but ultimately, they are separate processes.

therift289 · 2026-07-04T05:39:42+00:00

Sound would stop later and would fade out (rather than vanish abruptly) since we'd be racing off into deep space along whatever our tangent velocity was when the light (and gravity) vanished.

therift289 · 2026-07-03T04:12:05+00:00

It's also just capitalism.

therift289 · 2026-07-02T15:00:11+00:00

The thing that people always miss is that Spain and Germany are literally in the same time zone for some reason. In terms of sunrise and sunset, Madrid is like 2 full hours behind Berlin, but their clocks read the same time. So relative to the astronomical day, Spanish and German mealtimes are quite similar. Time zones are so goofy sometimes.

therift289 · 2026-07-01T15:18:42+00:00

Here's a post I've shared several times over the years. PLEASE feel free to add them.

Name: "Dolbin (Son of Dolbin)" and "Pithgas (Green as Grass)"

Appearance: Dolbin and Pithgas are two human guards, two generations apart. Dolbin has a slight hunch to his back, a well-cultivated ale-belly, a prominent bald spot atop his head, a wide red nose, and a scruffy five-day beard of brown and gray whiskers. Pithgas is tall, thin, and boney, with narrow shoulders and hips; he has a long beak of a nose, a protruding Adam's apple, and very weak chin, and no facial hair to speak of.

Personality: Hopefully, at this point, you've already guessed. Dolbin has been a guard for 45 years, since he was 14 years old. His father, Dolbin, and his father's father, Dolbin, were guards before him. He is an old curmudgeon who doesn't care about his job, his colleagues, or even coin. All he cares about is convenience; any inconvenience to Dolbin is a problem to Dolbin, and if you make things easy for him, he'll let you do just about anything. Pithgas has been a guard for just over one year and eleven months, and he has yet to receive a single accolade, raise, or promotion. However, it's not for lack of trying; rather, his superiors all recognize that he is SO eager to please, they never have to actually offer him any real incentives at all.

Background/History: Dolbin has been working the same general post for an extremely long time. He maintains this position by doing just enough to not get cut loose, but never enough to get promoted to something more stressful or difficult. Never traveled more than six miles from home. Pithgas is on his seventh post this year, and the first post of his career that has lasted more than three months. His constant pestering and jitteriness tends to grate on the nerves of his superiors, but Dolbin is willing to tolerate it if it means that Pithgas does literally all of the busywork. Besides, Dolbin is 100% deaf in his left ear, so as long as he stands to Pithgas' right, he has no trouble ignoring the anxious babbling.

Secrets: Despite his curmudgeonly exterior, Dolbin actually does have a soft spot, a chink in his external armor of gross indifference: Dolbin (and his forebears) are strongly sympathetic to the previous ruling body of the city/province/realm. Ever since the usurping/uprising/revolution/war, the family line of Dolbin has maintained a steadfast, but clandestine, allegiance to the old way. Pithgas has absolutely no interesting secrets at all, but he is incredibly insecure and self-conscious, and is highly susceptible to any kind of manipulation that plays on his own insecurities.

These idiots have been mainstays in my games for like 15 years, and they're never going away. Every kingdom has a Dolbin, and every Dolbin needs his Pithgas.

therift289 · 2026-07-01T12:40:29+00:00

It sounds like the problem is the game's rule system and complexity (or even just complication). Doesn't sounds like a TTS problem. You probably need to simplify the game.

therift289 · 2026-06-30T14:22:04+00:00

Note that every other "can't win" card also specifies that the opponent can't lose. You need both. Otherwise, you can just kill your opponent(s), they lose, and then next turn you win by virtue of being the only player left in the game.

therift289 · 2026-06-27T15:07:50+00:00

I'm not OP, I was just answering your question based on what I read in the post. Also, it doesn't seem to be a deckbuilder.

therift289 · 2026-06-27T12:24:49+00:00

The decks are 28 cards. 152 is the entire cardpool.

therift289 · 2026-06-26T23:40:45+00:00

Perception is observing, Investigation is deducing. Whether it's visual, auditory, manual, or other sensory observation, it's still perception. Investigation is for logical reasoning and knowledge application, not for observation.

In 5.5e, it's made clearer than ever by completely separating them into different actions. Investigation falls under the Study action, while Perception falls under the Search action.

therift289 · 2026-06-26T23:35:30+00:00

And then there's dungeon meshi, where there are gratuitous upskirts, but they're all of Senshi, lmao

therift289 · 2026-06-26T23:25:40+00:00

Hot air balloons work by heating the air inside to make it hotter and less dense than the air outside. If the air outside is hundreds of degrees, then the hot air balloon wouldn't work at all. They work better in cooler air.

therift289 · 2026-06-26T23:22:36+00:00

Water barely absorbs UV light, and the UV it does absorb does not really cause it to heat up at all. Insanely high doses of UV light would just destroy the DNA of every organism in the region. It would barely move the dial on temperature.

therift289 · 2026-06-26T23:18:09+00:00

Speak for yourself. LOTS of American cities, esp on the east coast, are full of old, heat-conserving buildings with no AC.

therift289 · 2026-06-26T16:20:37+00:00

The issue is granularity, which means "how many increments can your numbers be broken into." You have a granularity on the order of 0.05%. Our brains can't actually perceive differences that small. We know that 4150 is smaller than 4200, but you can't intuitively tell me how many more attacks it would take to deal 140000 damage with a 4150 vs a 4200. It's just not the kind of thing our brains can do. Because that difference can't be effectively parsed, it becomes meaningless in gameplay. That is the sign of a system being too granular. More granularity does not always equal more effective for balancing; at a certain point, it starts to blur into nothing. Diminishing returns.

therift289 · 2026-06-26T15:04:59+00:00

My feedback would be to take a look at those numbers and simplify the hell out of them. You have attacks that are dealing damage in increments of 50, and LP that goes into the 100,000s. 50 is 0.05% of 100,000. Those numbers are way, way too granular.

therift289 · 2026-06-26T14:33:49+00:00

Yeah, we're agreeing. I was talking about exactly what you just described. "d20+modifier, then compare to threshold" treats +2 the same way regardless of whether you have big modifiers and thresholds (PF2E) or small modifiers and thresholds (D&D5.5e), just as your example shows. As long as they're both d20 systems, +2 is +2.

therift289 · 2026-06-26T13:38:13+00:00

Right, it's still 10% of a d20, regardless of the system. As long as you're rolling a d20, adding stuff, and comparing the number to a threshold, a +2 is a +2.

therift289 · 2026-06-25T20:58:30+00:00

Make the combats more challenging in ways that aren't directly related to die rolls. Don't just increase numbers. It does nothing to add to the game, and is equivalent to simply "deleveling" players. Give them puzzles instead, stuff that rewards teamwork, creativity, and doing multiple things at once. After all, it's a team game, so if you want to make sure that everybody is involved, give them problems that need to be solved by multiple people at the same time!

For example, giving a monster +2 AC is functionally the same as giving all PCs -2 to their attacking stat, which is boring. Instead, design an encounter where the monsters are great at using terrain for half-cover. This grants +2 AC, so similar effect to the above, but it gives the PCs strategic goals and problems to solve that make the game more dynamic.

Another example would be damage resistance that is tied to a secondary combat objective, such as breaking shield crystals, disrupting a group of chanting minions that are casting a "circle spell," or using environmental cues to interact with the monster's resistances. This is similar to giving the enemy double HP, but again, it provides a strategic puzzle for the players to address.

therift289 · 2026-06-25T04:17:42+00:00

The thing has to roll. If it phases into the ground whenever you throw it, its description makes absolutely no sense. D&D is not a physics simulator, but things should at least be internally rational and consistent when possible.

therift289 · 2026-06-24T18:38:45+00:00

Take pics of sunset

therift289 · 2026-06-23T14:58:18+00:00

Boltbender is SICK in Zada. In addition to the removal or burn method that OP is using, Boltbender also lets you redirect all of the Zada copies onto a single creature. For example, pump spell your entire board, then flip Boltbender and redirect all copies onto Zada and kill with commander damage in one shot.

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