Yeah, this is what I do. It’s actually what I’ve done for decades, even before going vegan; I’ve always been allergic to seafood and nuts, so omegas are kinda hard for me to get.

Ground flax is great in a lot of things, morning oatmeal and soups are probably the big ones (though, does make is ‘gooey’, but for soups, does make ot similar to adding flour to thicken).

Whole flax seeds are better in stuff you don’t want ‘thickened’.

538 no longer has Nate Silver or his model; Disney bought it and fired him like a year ago or so.

Still, I agree; I don’t like his politics, but his analysis of polls and numbers is probably the best out there.

Decaf does actually still have caffeine, just normally like 97% less.

Which, I guess is like the boneless wings having 97% less bones, now in convinient needle shaped shards

Short answer: read Jack Vance’s ‘tales of a dying earth’. It’s the reason dnd magic is called ‘vancian’.

Longer answer: in that series, magic works by just remembering words, and then saying them. But these magic words are powerful things, weighty in the mind, hard to carry. And, when said, they tear themselves out of your mind, causing you to forget them.

So, not ‘spell slots’ per se, but the idea is you’re prepping spells almost as a ‘potion’, something you carry in your mind, and consume to cast out a spell.

Mmm, psionics, Shadow Weave Magic, Initiate of Mystra.

A min-maxed character is one with dumpstates and weaknesses. A powergamed character is one with fewer weaknesses than a ‘normal’ character. Anything that can challange an OP build will wipe the floor with a party of ‘standard’ characters.

If they’re actually powergaming, the likely answer is: “No, I’m immune.” Or: “okay, with my buffs, I get to add +200 to this.”

It really depends.

I’m thinking about 3.5 in particular, where an optimized wizard will be able to do the job of the rest of the party (assuming they’re built to be fine, but not power-gaming), better than them.

There’s no real in-world way to balance that. Either the DM Fiats the power-gamer weaker, the DM tells the power gamer “no”, or the rest of the party power games to. Its just too unbalanced.

If we’re talking 5e, that’s all out the window then. If 3.5’s power runs from 0-10, the strongest 5e build is like a 6, and the weakest is like a 3. Its still extra work for the DM to balance, but can be done all in-world without needing to rely on metagame fiat.

And, of course, there’s lots of other systems out there, where the above can be more true or less true depending on what kind of game it is, though 3.5’s power ceiling is probably higher than 95% of the systems out there.

Eh, disagree. Unless everyone is power gaming to the same degree (which can be fun!), an OP character being adequately challenged will probably result in all the other players feeling irrelevant.

I think it should just crib notes from PF2e; make it a bonus action, and also a 1st level spell. Though, they should also rewrite the confusing ‘no slotted bonus action spell with non-bonus action slotted spell’ bandaid too.

I dunno, I really don’t get either of them. They just seem like dreadfully boring games. Played like, 6 hours of each, and I just, don’t get the appeal, at all.

Movies and TV are boring. In the past two decades, there’s been a small handful of stuff that’s watchable, but most of the media is like, painfully boring.

None? I’ve never really understood the appeal of ‘rewatching stuff’. My favorite movie(s) are the LotR ones, and I’ve probably watched it through… three times over my life?

I’d say the key difference between a ‘spotlight hog/main character syndrome’ and ‘a player who RPs a lot in a group full of quiet people’, is does the player also start talking/engaging whenever the spotlight is on the quiet player.

Because I think that’s the real rub; that difference between a player ‘dragging’ the less engaged players behind them (good and fine), and a player who can’t allow themselves to step back and let someone else be the main character for a single scene.

For sure. Like a lot of ‘social stuff’, context matters a lot.

Groups are different too; a table full of engaged RP-heavy characters can work, but put one of those players in a more quiet group, and suddenly, they can talk over everyone and be a ‘problem player’ (or vice versa; quiet player an a very social group).

Eh, I’ve seen it cut both ways (as someone who GMs 90% of the time).

Had a player I was friends with, and roommates for a while, who was a huge ‘spotlight hog’. Since some players are quieter and less assertive, I try to make sure each player gets at least one ‘spotlight moment’ each arc. And this player was real bad for always kinda muscling into other player’s ‘moments’.

After having multiple talks, eventually just had to kick him (cause he didn’t stop), which has pretty awkward considering ‘roommate’.

So I’d take players that need to be coaxed into RP over players that have main character syndrome any day (though, of course, ideally all the players just RP readily but politely).

They were just alphabetical, A was the first one they found, B the second, etc.

Except, K was named “Koagulation” from the fact it helps blood coagulate

And also, the “B vitamins” were originally one extract, a serum used to treat a disease caused by B vitamin deficiency. Later, we learned that serum actually had several different molecules in it, now seperated as B2, B6, etc.