I Think We're Finally Finding The Issue Here, Which Is That Dnd Has Pulled From So Many Different Forms

I think we're finally finding the issue here, which is that dnd has pulled from so many different forms of media and archetypes, and often from different ones that are entirely different in set up and power scaling and magic and such. To simplify, we pulled wizards from things like myths and fancy magic users and the fighter is basically "well its medieval, gotta have a plate wearing sword guy" . And unless you set up a world to accomdate that, to either figure out the neccesarily limitations on magic to have a fighter make sense as being somewhat practical, or expand the magic (non-real elements) to include martial prowess and toughness, the fighter and the wizard basically come from different realities.

Anyway this is why wotc should publish more individual setting books with actual different rules that don't actually work together across settings. Because if you want different themes to your game world, the way players understand that is through the mechanics, and therefore how you define the theme. And if they want to have some big way it all works, they need to stop holding onto these fragments of tradition that say random things about how the rules should be, from earlier editions, that no longer actually work in the setting and world they're trying to build, but are just holdovers.

I doubt that will ever happen. But it would be nice, if they said "these rules are how greyhawk works, this is how eberron works, this is how the forgotten realms works." But at that point the ideal would be to have a different rpg for each one. Which won't happen.

I suppose a compromize could be to establish a firm setting, admit that the rules are unique to that setting and probably shouldnt be one to one ported elsewhere, and then make conversion kits galore for any kind of theme and setting, rather than trying to shoehorn them all into the original setting.

oh but as an aside: in terms of giving classes stuff to do outside their central domain of expertise, you don't really need to look for esoteric stuff for fighters, they've got, like, "being scary", "being beefy", "being good at smashing or moving things", "being athletic", and that's fine? Like if those aren't coming out as useful in a dungeon crawl, or if spellcasters are matching them just on the basis of some handwavey "magic can do anything!" explanation, maybe that's the problem and not that fighters need broader domains of built-in competence. those seem like things that should be useful and character-defining outside of fights, don't they?

This brings me hope

getting defensive on behalf of a widely acclaimed and beloved media object is some of the most pathetic behaviour i can imagine for real. like i dont engage because i believe in nice times on the computer and i dont want to wade into mires of purposefully inflammatory bad faith discourse but the base emotional impulse behind those tiktoks about how anyone who doesn't like marvel just wants to watch ten-hour black and white serbian pigeon movies (and that's a bad thing?) inspires a reaction of profound disdain

Hell yeah.

Hell yeah.

Let's go visit it. Who's with me?

JWST Looks Towards the Most Distant Star Ever Seen

JWST was designed to look towards the early universe, and there we see countless galaxies, but individual stars are usually far too faint to really be able to separate from all the other stars around them. Even galaxies fairly close to us can be a huge technical challenge to zoom in to the point of being able to see individual stars, and when you consider the closest star (not counting our sun) isn't even visible in the night sky to the naked eye at 4.24 light years, when we're talking millions even billions of light years, just seeing the galaxies is a miracle within itself.

That was until Hubble picked out Earendel, an actual individual star gravitationally lensed across 12.9 billion light years.

What was exciting about this was that this star was in existence within the first billion years of the universe, so maybe it was a population III star, one of the original stars theorised to have populated that early universe. The problem for Hubble was, being an optical telescope, it couldn't see all of the wavelength data coming from the star, only that which had become visible after being red shifted.

Now, JWST has also done the same, and it has the data to see what kind of star this is, and interestingly it's a blue B type star, much more massive than our Sun, but similar to the kind of stars most visible in open clusters, and born today in our own galaxy.

What's more, JWST also detected red light, potentially pointing at a companion star, which wouldn't be too surprising given most B type stars are binary in nature.

While this star doesn't appear to be a Population III star, it is evidence that we can pick out light from some of the earliest stars in our universe, and expectations are that it's only a matter of time before such a star is detected.

Source:

Space.com

Earendel revealed: James Webb Space Telescope lifts veil on the most distant star known in the universe

Earendel is about twice as hot as the sun, and it probably has a stellar companion.

Reblog for a wider audience please!