Tag: Nature

Nature and Balance

SPOCK: War created an imbalance and nature counterbalanced it.

Star Trek, “The Omega Glory” (s2ep23), Stardate unknown

In some form or another, Climate Change has been with us since the beginning of Time. If you look at geologic time, gradual changes to climate happen, moving toward a hotter Earth or a colder one, and in the past once these changes lead to a tipping point, this leads to mass-extinction events. These changes in climate are often driven by natural forces: plate tectonics, accumulation of CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere, shifts in the ocean currents and so on. Eventually, the pendulum swings back and the climate shifts toward the other direction. Meanwhile, life gradually recovers, diversifies again and so on.

But it’s important to understand that these changes happen very gradually over tens of thousands of years, or even hundreds of thousands of years.

Climate Change in the modern context refers to human-driven changes. The buildup of CO2 gas in the atmosphere is nothing new, but the output of that gas in the last 100 years is far higher than natural forces can account for. We know that this extra buildup is due to fossil fuels. Burning fossil fuels is literally like throwing gasoline on a fire.

Fossil fuels are not a sustainable energy source anyway, and they are condensing a process that should take a hundred thousand years into only tens of years. It’s small wonder we see such dramatic weather now: mass wildfires, mass rainfalls, mass drought and so on.

As Spock says, if we create an imbalance, nature will balance it out. But may not happen the way we want it to. The greater the imbalance, the greater the correction.

But just as 8-billion humans have, across generations, contributed to the problem, those same humans can contribute to fixing the imbalance (before Nature does it for us):

  • Reduce energy consumption at home. Even switching off lights at home helps.
  • Plant local, native plants in your neighborhood
  • Eat more vegetables (which I am trying to do anyway)
  • Cut back on fossil fuels: the less you use, the less accumulates in the atmosphere
  • and so on…

Find something you can reasonably do, and don’t hesitate to do some small good in the world.

Adventurers League for 2024 Ruleset

Adventurer’s League is the community play program for Dungeons and Dragons, and has been around for years, but with the recent publishing of the 2024 updated ruleset, this forces some updates for AL players. In recent months, I have been able to get back into AL after a really long lull,1 and I wanted to share some experiences with the 2024 results.

Per AL regulations, players are expected to field characters using the latest ruleset available, and to rebuild any characters accordingly when required. In the case of 2024 ruleset, that means that all characters built before 2024 ruleset need to be rebuilt to some extent before playing the next session.

In some cases, I’ve found this to be pretty easy, in some cases somewhat challenging. Here’s a couple examples in my case.

note: I wrote this before I learned about the new Legends of Greyhawk community play. While the FAQ states that this is not related to Adventurer’s League, and that “Adventurers League will continue as a community-content program”, this leads me to believe that AL will nonetheless continue to wither and die on the vine for the forseeable future. Given WoTC’s history, I do not fully trust them to support AL going forward as they prioritize the new, shiny program. Still, I am posting this anyway to illustrate how rebuilding my long-term 2014 characters for 2024 rules was sometimes very easy, and sometimes a pain in the neck.

Abjurer Elf Wizard

My original AL character, Qisandoral Arriestanus (DDB link), is a 13th level high-elf wizard (abjuration school) as of writing, was the easiest to rebuild in some ways, and painfully difficult in others. I have written about him here and here. He’s been rebuilt, retired, and revived a number of times.

The 2024 ruleset in the Player’s Handbook fully supports both High Elves and the Wizard class. The eight wizard schools have been changed into four subclasses at 3rd level2 and collapsed into , and for the Abjuration subclass it is covered in the PHB. So, just using the new PHB, I can fully rebuild the wizard without any extra rules or books. Easy.

The challenge of rebuilding a high-level wizard is picking spells for the spellbook. Using standard rules, I can calculate how many spells I should have in my spellbook at level 13, but I also had copied some spells into my spellbook from purchased spell scrolls. Plus, 2024 background choices give you additional spells through feats on top of that. And then there’s spells you get as a high elf innately.

In the end, I had to abandon any spells I had copied from spell scrolls as they are not considered part of the rebuild. As consumables not tied to any adventure rewards, they are treated as a sunk cost when rebuilding.

For everything else, I had to carefully calculate my starting 6 spells at level one, 24 spells for every level after one (2 per level, 12 levels total), plus 3 from elf lineage, and finally spells from my Magic Initiate background feat. This took hours to sort out, and I had to double-check with fellow AL players on Discord, but in the end I was able to rebuild my spellbook. I also leveraged DnD Beyond to validate that the configuration made sense.

Drow Nature Cleric

My other favorite character from earlier AL seaons was a Drow nature domain cleric named Shava Do’Mindrun (DDB link), who worshipped Eilistraee as an alternate to the dread Spider Queen Lloth. Nature clerics are not a particularly popular choice for character builds, but I had surprising fun with it, and it fit Eilistraee’s domains so it was an easy choice at the time.

However, Nature Domain is not a part of the 2024 ruleset, but Eilistree’s other cleric domains, Light and Life, are. So, if I wanted to make a vanilla 2024 character, I would have to rebuild Shava as a Light Domain cleric.

Alternatively, I can still use the Nature Domain, since both 2024 ruleset and AL rules allow it (the 2014 Player’s Handbook is still the newest rules for a Nature Domain cleric). The 2024 Player’s Handbook in particular clarifies that older domains not listed in the handbook are still legal choices, so long as their abilities are granted at 3rd level, not earlier. This is to keep things internally consistent with other new Cleric subclasses.

As of writing, I ultimately decided to reset entirely, and Shava as a light domain cleric at 1st level. Eilistraee’s imagery of the moon dovetails nicely with the Light cleric domain, and it seems that the Nature cleric domain feels a bit more anemic in the 2024 ruleset, while the Light domain is fully supported by comparison. This may change though, as AL allows character rebuilds. Time will tell. As for resetting to first level as an essentially a new character, I did this mainly for personal reasons as I had made some choices with the original character I regretted, and frankly I just wanted to play her over again from the beginning, rather than let her languish in higher tiers were game options are fewer.

High Elf Forge Cleric

Similar to the Nature Cleric above, my High Elf forge domain cleric named Fenmaer Wasanthi (DDB link) was faced with a cleric domain that isn’t fully supported in the 2024 ruleset, but still allowed.

To make a long story short, in this character’s case, I decided to keep the Forge domain and rebuilt him accordingly. The deity in question, Darahl Firecloak, does have the domains of Forge and Light, so I could play another Light domain cleric, but as of writing I felt that the Forge domain was still compelling enough that it was worth keep this build even under 2024 rules.

Simply put, I rebuilt as-is with little or no change.

Wood Elf Samurai

My last character that I regularly play is a Wood Elf samurai fighter named Heian Amakiiro (DDB link), whom I’ve written about here.

1 Pandemic + parenting meant that I played once a year, maybe twice if lucky. I required quite a few characters at the time. Nowadays I play somewhat more often, but still not at pre-pandemic levels. I hope to change that in the coming year once my oldest leaves the nest.

2 To be more consistent with other character classes, presumably. Much of the 2024 updates to 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons seems intended to make character creation process more consistent regardless of choice, and to homogenize some aspects.

P.S. Double-post today. Cleaning out the “draft” folder. 😉

Enjoying This Moment

This was a neat dialogue between two of the characters in Fire Emblem: Three Houses that I wanted to post here.1 It’s very Buddhist in my opinion.

Or as Leonard Nimoy said before his passing…

I am one of those people who likes to take lots of photos of scenery on my phone, but I admit whenever I do this, the photos just aren’t the same as the original experience. I never could fully explain this to myself until I saw the dialogue above.

It reminds me of a famous quote from the Analects of Confucius:

[9:17]  子在川上曰。逝者如斯夫 不舍晝夜。
The Master [Confucius], standing by a river, said,
“It goes on like this, never ceasing day or night!”

Translation by A. Charles Muller

Anyhow, that’s all I wanted to post. Enjoy! 🙏🏼

1 I haven’t talked about it as much lately, but I’ve been playing FE3H pretty much non-stop since last August, and am on my fifth play-through. I can confidently say this is one of my favorite all-time games.

D&D: Nature Clerics Are Fun

gray bridge and trees
Photo by Martin Damboldt on Pexels.com

Since I play Dungeons and Dragons (5th edition) with my two kids, I also make up some additional characters to help bolster their team.  My current favorite is an Wood-Elf Cleric with Nature Domain.

Maybe this is a reflection of real life, but I have often enjoyed playing clerics in Dungeons and Dragons, and if I combine this with my fascination with Tolkein’s elves it was a no-brainer for me, except for one thing: what cleric domain to play?

Elf Deities are numerous, and each one reflects certain domains you can play.  Corellon is a good default choice and covers many good domains to play, and Sehanine covers some other interesting domains that are otherwise overlooked such as Knowledge.  But this time around, I really felt like playing Nature domain instead, so I made my character a priest of Rillifane instead.  Being a wood-elf, this made even more sense.

Nature-domain clerics sometimes get confused with Druids and are often criticized as such.  There was no clear answer online about what the actual difference would be between a nature-domain cleric vs. a druid, but it seems to come down to a couple points:

  1. Clerics derive their power from the divine.  Druids directly from nature.
  2. Clerics serve a higher-power (i.e. emissary of said deity), while Druids are more like sages who explore the mysteries of nature.

The choices partly come down to role-playing “flavor”, but there are some mechanical differences too.

Nature-domain cleric have all the fun of a typical D&D cleric (life gain spells, blessings and still solid melee) combined with the fun flavor of Nature domain.  Unlike a Druid, they also take advantage of Channel Divinity and other things you’d expect from a cleric.  The spells included with Nature Domain are more like utility spells; your nature cleric may not be a one-man wrecking crew, but it does mean you can do wacky, unconventional things like befriending a giant spider rather than outright killing it.1

In any case, part of the fun of D&D is exploring different character ideas and not getting bogged down in purely combat-oriented ideas or which class is better.  After all, there is a great variety of people in real life from a variety of backgrounds, so there’s no reason that D&D can’t reflect the same. 🍃🍄🌸🌻

1 True story, in one adventure, where the party was attacked by giant frogs, I was able to use the Animal Friendship spell to convince the frogs not to eat us, and therefore leave. It was a nice moment of role-playing and reinforces the idea that not all battles in D&D need be fought to the death.