iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

(I guess I should tag this thread #ttrpg too.)

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In other words, I sympathize with the designers of the various editions of #DnD. Making wizards not be quadratic is hard. /end

I think I've done a pretty good job here balancing all of this out. I think these rules will, in practice, narrow the martial/caster gap versus vanilla #5r. But it was a struggle, and to some extent, I let the drive for simplicity win over the drive for balance.

But the very name "hit dice" implies that, when spent on nonmagical healing, they are an essentially linear resource. Meanwhile, if I don't want to add complex math and tables of spell points per slot level, the design constraints push spell slot recovery to be more quadratic.

I also wanted to add as little extra complexity as possible; and in particular, not to add any new resources to track. That meant using the existing "recovery" resource, hit dice.

In designing this homebrew, I wanted it to "slow down the pace, but keep the basic feel". In particular, I didn't want the amount of time it takes a spellcaster to recover their resources to grow quadratically with level; the person playing a wizard should never be saying "let's go rest for a month"

homebrewery.naturalcrit.com

This is where my homebrew comes in. If you don't recover all your spell slots overnight, but merely some of them, the burden on the DM to provide a story with multiple challenging battles every day is reduced.

Campaign Pace (

These rules slow down recovery and make it less “all or nothing”. That means that, for instance, resources spent in a single-encounter travel day can still matter the next day when you arrive. They al...

In order to keep balance, then, a DM must design punishing "adventuring days" with lots of battles to drain spell slots — so that the martial characters' ability to "just keep bonking" shines through. But in the 2024 revision of the rules, the "adventuring day" guidance was dropped.

And front-loading this power into "nova rounds" early in a battle makes them act like "more goblins", getting the advantage of the inherent quadratic-ness of group battles.

So if you converted spell-slots to an undifferentiated pool of "spell points" (there are optional rules for this), and graphed the total spell points versus level, it would still be roughly linear. But! As a spellcaster levels up, they're more and more able to front-load this power.

And the growth in overall power from spell slots is designed to be semi-linear. When leveling up, lower-level characters gain multiple lower-level slots; mid-level ones gain one mid-level slot; and higher-level ones gain just one slot every other level.

The inherent tradeoff in #5e's design is supposed to be "spell slots"; that is to say, spellcasters have a limited reserve of power, while non-caster martials can keep bonking all day.

In practice, this means that the most powerful spells can usually do more damage in one turn than even the most powerful martial characters. (This may not always hold if you optimize the martials obsessively; let's assume we're working with "vanilla" not-heavily-optimized characters.)

But let's ignore that quadratic-ness, and call the fighter "linear". In DnD, you want magic to feel magical; to have it be possible magically to (at the cost of spending finite magic power) accomplish things mere physical training can't.

In DnD, as a fighter levels up, they have more hit points and do more damage — and each of these growth curves tends to be roughly linear. But if you measure in "number of weak enemies they can face and win", even this "linear" growth is already a bit quadratic, for the reasons above.

Obviously, there are some underlying assumptions. For this to be true, both sides would have to (be able to) "concentrate their fire" to efficiently kill enemies and remove them from the fight, rather than spreading it out to merely wound enemies.

This means that, if a pack of 50 goblins fights a pack of 40, the larger pack will tend to win with about 30 survivors (like a 3-4-5 triangle), not 10 survivors (with casualties a linear 1-for-1 on either side). (This is not a fact just about DnD, but a general principle of combined forces.)

In a certain sense, even this simple monster is already quadratic. Say you have 10 goblins fighting a powerful but slow monster that can kill one of them each round. The first round, they'll attack the enemy 10 times; then 9; then 8; etc. The total number of attacks is (n²+n)/2; already quadratic.

Before I delve into the problem, there's a brief detour: actually, everything is quadratic. Imagine the most boring DnD statblock you can; say, a goblin. It has a certain number of hit points, and it can bonk others to reduce their hit points.

homebrewery.naturalcrit.com

Here's a thread on #DnD, game design, and balance. It comes from my experience working on a homebrew for #5r (that is, 2024 #5e) to make recovery slower. Since the dawn of DnD, there's been an issue with "martial/caster balance" or (in older parlance) "linear fighters, quadratic wizards".

Campaign Pace (

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Gerry Canavan @gerrycanavan.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

every college, corporate, and nonprofit president right now

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles.blue · 21/03/2025

Listen: maybe I'm wrong and this is just the worst software deployment of my career, not actually a conspiracy against democracy. Maybe these guys just don't see they are frittering away all product and service design knowledge in the agency. And don't even know that they lack this knowledge.

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(The idea is that local moderate Dems would join in her rallies and say something like the above.)

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"I don't agree with @aoc.bsky.social about everything. But we do agree about 3 important things. 1. Trump and Musk's Republicans are trying to make your life worse. 2. We Democrats are trying to make it better. 3. It's time to stand together and fight."

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Jameson Quinn @voter.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

I'm a little sick, and I just watched a show (Adolescence) that made me cry, and there are all those handbaskets. But there's beauty too and I love (some of) you guys and all of those little guys.

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And, what's on the other side?

rowan kaiser @rowan.monster · 21/03/2025

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if, ten years ago, your entire understanding of politics was that the right wing wanted to destroy everything because they were evil, you had a more accurate and more predictive analysis than functionally the entire American media and political apparatus

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Peter Allen @peterallen.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

Jon Stone (Indy) said something a few years ago at the Other Place that has stuck with me: “the UK’s political sphere essentially has no antibodies. absolutely any old shit idea, as long as it’s introduced through the right channels, is soon absolutely everywhere in the body politic.”

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Jameson Quinn @voter.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

Technically, yes — by not having any "later".

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Joe Walsh @walshfreedom.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

“Proportional representation.” The single most important reform necessary to preserve our democracy. A conversation with @leedrutman.bsky.social. Just fascinating. Today’s podcast, have a listen.👇 podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

podcasts.apple.com

How To End The ‘Two Party Doom Loop.’ A Conversation

Podcast Episode · The Social Contract with Joe Walsh · 03/20/2025 · 54m

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Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · 20/03/2025

I’ve long used FiveThirtyEight’s interactive “Hack Your Way To Scientific Glory” to illustrate the idea of p-hacking when I teach statistics. But ABC/Disney killed the site earlier this month :( So I made my own with #rstats and Observable and #QuartoPub ! stats.andrewheiss.com/hack-your-way/

Screenshot of the linked Quarto website, with input checkboxes to change different conditions for a regression model that predicts economic performance based on US political party, with a reported p-value

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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

It hasn't been lost on me that anti-war activists are still protesting the Gaza War just as actively since Trump's election but the mainstream media has stopped giving their protests attention now that it hurts Trump instead of Biden.

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HELL Kennedy @helenkennedy.com · 20/03/2025

Unconfirmed report from "ruskiytroll"

r/fednews
2 hr. ago
Join
ruskiytroll
DOGE IS SCARED at The Institute of Museum and Library Services, 955
L'Enfant Plaza. They are about to start taking phones from employees.
At this point they'll trace me because I stupidly didn't use a burner account, but DOGE is at IMLS right now trying to figure out why their silent takeover and dismantling didn't work out so silently. At some point they're going to take employee's phones. The new acting director, Keith Sonderling was sworn in this morning in the lobby (even though he's already DepSec of Labor). DOGE is in the offices right now. Employees aren't sure of what's going to happen and why there's security with the DOGE team.
PRESS NEEDS TO GET THERE NOW.
PROTESTERS NEED TO SHOW UP NOW.
DO NOT LET THEM TAKE YOUR LIBRARIES AND MUSEUMS AWAY.

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daniel a. smith @electionsmith.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

And also pleased to see this decision by a Federal District Court Judge in Ohio concerning the rights of citizens to amend the state constitution via the initiative process. Several direct democracy scholars and I submitted an amicus brief on behalf of the plaintiffs. electionlawblog.org?p=149008

electionlawblog.org

Federal court finds Ohio's "fair and truthful" review of ballot initiatives runs afoul of Anderson-Burdick #ELB

Decision in Brown v. Yost, stayed pending appeal to the Sixth Circuit: Citizens of Ohio have the power to amend the state constitution. Proponents of an amendment must follow a process that culminates...

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Jameson Quinn @voter.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

Senator, we need to know the opposition party can oppose. Can fight. With Schumer, we've lost that confidence. He's waiting for us, to lead from behind. It's time for him to go.

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Jameson Quinn @voter.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

I think the nation's future hinges on DC statehood. But I _know_ that justice demands it.

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Bear Wilner-Nugent @saltlick.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

DC statehood must be at the core of the Reconstruction Democrat program.

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Donald Trump is ineligible to be POTUS under the 14th amendment. Saying "therefore, he isn't" would be delusional. But meekly accepting his pardons as valid once he's gone would be defeatist.

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This filing is, in my humble opinion, Rule 11 sanctionable.

MOTION TO STAY THE MARCH 18 MINUTE ORDER
What began as a dispute between litigants over the President’s authority to protect the
national security and manage the foreign relations of the United States pursuant to both a
longstanding Congressional authorization and the President’s core constitutional authorities has
devolved into a picayune dispute over the micromanagement of immaterial factfinding. In a series
of orders this Court has requested the Government to provide it details about the movements of
aircraft outside of the United States and interactions with foreign nations which have no bearing
on any legal issue at stake in the case. The underlying premise of these orders, including the most
recent one requiring the production of these facts ex parte today at noon, is that the Judicial Branch
is superior to the Executive Branch, particularly on non-legal matters involving foreign affairs and
national security. The Government disagrees. The two branches are coequal, and the Court’s
continued intrusions into the prerogatives of the Executive Branch, especially on a non-legal and
factually irrelevant matter, should end.

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Those may be the right two tactical calls, if it were true that there were not 40 no votes no matter what he did. But if that's the case, then what good is he anyway? It's basically just saying "if you can't lead, the right call is to get out of the way."

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... which attitude is also part of what led to the murders. Ziz's "if I precommit to never backing down, people will learn to Fear Me" is (partly) based on thinking ruthless->smart, just as Roko's Basilisk is (partly) based on thinking smart->ruthless.

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