#proficiencies

As opposed to Navel Combat, or the art of fighting with your belly button.

~

Why am I making a new proficiency instead of something more crunchy and design-intensive, like a new monster/item/spell/subclass/anything else?

Because I want to!

Sorry, that’s the lame bratty answer.

Compared to previous editions, the 5e skill list feels kinda milquetoast and oversimplified. And I’m saying this as a player/DM who loves - and started with - D&D 5e. What do I mean? Every possible physical thing is lumped under Athletics. Or every piece of magical knowledge is lumped under Arcana. Or all art forms fall under Performance. I feel like it’s way too easy to be super good at all the skills you’ll actually use in a campaign. From what I’ve gathered - from real, online, and imaginary people - I’m not alone here. The most stalwart fighter should have that one task that’s a bit of an Achilles heel. Maybe a literal Achilles heel! Your 20 INT Wizard might know everything about the Lower Planes, but their artifact lore ain’t shit compared to the 20 INT Artificer - and vice versa. And I know it’s kind of the bard’s thing to be good at everything, but they shouldn’t be good at LITERALLY EVERYTHING.

I think with the current generalized skill list, there’s something of a dissonance between the way characters are built and the ways we want to play them. We want our characters to have hobbies, weird quirks. I think these options should be supported through mechanics, not just Fun Little Things you do for table banter while the DM’s reviewing their notes for the next scene. As the skill list works now, you can’t have that Barbarian that enjoys Bob Ross-style painting. Or the Sorcerer who’s weirdly good at arm-wrestling. Or a Fighter whose gardening could help procure magic herbs and veggies for potions or whatever. Or maybe you don’t want those things, or you think they aren’t necessary! That’s fine! You’re allowed to have that problem opinion. Point is, we can’t have those types of characters without wasting a skill slot or ASI. If you want to make any of those characters in the current Skills framework, you need to sacrifice something from The Optimal Build, or else your character will suck at the thing that makes them unique and that’s just sad.

TL;DR: I think more skill options - even just using the current skills as categories, and branching those out - would help bridge the gap between aesthetics and mechanics. More skill options + more proficiency slots. Please.

/endrant, here’s the actual thing.

(If you read all this, thank you for indulging my rantings and ravings. I hope I made at least a little sense.)

~

Naval Combat

INT/WIS, depending on background; DM’s discretion

(This is just based on my personal definitions of each Ability. To me, Intelligence skills come from book-learnin’ - while many Wisdom skills CAN be learned in an academic setting, they can really only be honed through practice and life experience.)

Knowledge of the tactics and rules of engagement of naval warfare.

Possible Uses:

Guessing the pirates’ next move

Analyzing the best way to take down a sea monster

Knowing the proper definition and pronunciation of “parlay”

Recommended Races/Classes/Backgrounds

Whether you want to swap these out for other proficiencies, or tack this on as an extra ribbon proficiency – that’s up to you! I don’t know, I’m not your dad!

Races

Sea Elf

Water Genasi

Merfolk

Minotaur

Siren

Tortle

Triton

Warforged (might seem like a weird choice, but warforged are canonically built for just about any function)

Classes

Battle Smith Artificer

Storm Herald Barbarian

Swords Bard

Valor Bard

Tempest Cleric

War Cleric

Battle Master Fighter

Samurai Fighter

Conquest Paladin

Swashbuckler Rogue

Sea Sorcerer

Storm Sorcerer

Fathomless Warlock

War Wizard

Backgrounds

Marine

Mercenary Veteran

Noble

Sailor/Pirate

Shipwright

Smuggler

Soldier

I know there are a bunch of maritime-focused Backgrounds I didn’t include in this list, but I don’t feel like some of them would have been exposed to enough naval combat to know all the ins and outs. Mostly talking about fishers, harborfolk, merchants, etc.

That being said, maybe you see a couple of my other choices as a stretch.

.

.

.

.

I have taken the liberty that while I am investigating and gathering information on my dream to share with you some important aspects surrounding gold course architecture and design and maybe it might either inspire you to build your own or even follow it as career. I did find it an eye-opener and if I was early in my career it would have been one of my top career choice, but since I am nearing retirement I will build only one spectacular course which will be my own.

First must a golf course architect have a deep understanding of golf and obviously engineering too. They need to be able to read contour maps and be at the head of engineering transit in filling, cutting and checking all plan levels. The will be required to have a deep understanding of chemistry, which include weed killers, fungicides and fertilizers as well. Then also a knowledge of Agrostology and Agronomy to know turf culture, drain ability and soil fertility.

JBH is the idea that Wilderness Proficiencies [Women’s Style]

Link Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/pages/Joga-Bonito-Hoquei/161948300544426 Link Canal – https://www.youtube.com/user/JogaBonitoHoquei

Alguma sugestão para videos? Têm videos vossos que queiram enviar? Enviem para [email protected]

©JogaBonitoHoquei

———————————————————————

[Ignorem as etiquetas]

Sergio Kun Aguero…

We know a lot about learning. Quite ironically, we know little about teaching.

Perhaps its wrong to think of teaching as some separate process––as something other than: facilitating learning.

The trouble is: what we know about learning is all theory. And as everyone knows: theory is not practice.

Theory is a set of abstractions. Physics has "gravity," and sociology has "social solidarity," and literature has "textuality." You can't point to gravity itself anywhere: you can only see it in action––and then only when you know what to look for.

And learning has "motivation" and "working memory" and "cognition" and "executive functions" and "agency" and "self-efficacy." If you know what all these aspects of learning, you 'just teach based on them.'

This is a lot like saying: learn all about color and pigments and perspective and then 'just paint a painting.' Or: 'just learn the laws of physics and then go split an atom.'

In this sense, teaching would just be: turning all the underlying elements of learning into something you can see––because you know what you are looking for (and at).

And yet: no one knows clearly and simply what that is. What is the "application" of all the ideas of learning?

Indeed, we the best procedure is probably to reverse the whole thing and to say that the whole issue of teaching can be reduced to the very gap between abstract theories and concrete actions: making ideas and abstractions concrete and perceptible and actionable through definite steps.

Yet what are these "definite steps"? We should have something on the side of teaching that corresponds to the Big Ideas of learning (motivation, working memory, executive functions, etc.)––and yet which is not abstract but rather a concrete procedure.

One such notion would be modes of instruction.

That is: there must be certain ways of teaching which are so basic and so elementary that they can be separated out like elements in chemistry. These would be the smallest possible ways of teaching, and I think it's possible to identify eight. (I'll leave out the word 'instruction' to characterize each, to avoid repetition.)

Direct or nominal: This is the most common, and it can be represented by the verb "to tell." The instructor thinks "I'll just tell them." The knowledge being aimed it is simply named. "The square of the hypoteneuse is equal to the sum of the other two sides of a right triangle."

Demonstrative: This is also very basic, although often ignored in favor of direct instruction. It's simply showing. With the triangle example, the instructor walks through the equation––even measures an actual physical triangle.

Indirect or analogical: This is the use of metaphor or allusion to get the point across. An allegorical tale could be invented personifying the sides of the triangles and giving their feelings, for instance.

Exploratory or experiential This is giving the learner something to do, without necessarily explaining either the result or the goal. Here the students would be given triangles and asked to measure and explore their properties. This kind of purely exploratory method had a fashion for a while but now is looked down upon.

Procedural or algorithmic: Here the learner gets a specific sequence of steps to follow. No mention need be made of the goal, and indeed, lots of bad instruction falls under this heading.

Goal-oriented: Here the learner is asked to achieve something specific. "Determine the relation between the two sides of a triangle joined in a right angle and the third side." No more guidance might be provided: just a goal.

Social or observational: Here the learner is asked to observer others doing something relevant. You could say: this is implied in all demonstrative instruction, in which case neither of the two is really elementary. But observing other learners or other aspects of the physical and social world seems so central to naturalistic learning, that it would be absurd to exclude it as a method.

Reflective: Here we ask the learners to recall and reflect on experiences. You could object that this requires an experiential or exploratory moment, but the experiences reflected on need not be a part of the instruction, so the process of reflecting does have some independent value.

These eight basic modes of instruction could be reduced to verbs or even sentences, depending on how the instruction was implemented––which is to say: who did what in relation to the verb. E.g.,:

tell,

show

imply,

explore,

walk through,

achieve,

watch,

reflect.

Or, for the teacher as the grammatical subject and the learners as the object:

I tell them.

I show them.

I imply.

They explore.

They go through the steps.

I set a goal which they achieve.

They watch others.

They reflect.

The methods change dramatically if the instructor is no longer the center. Indeed, inverting every method produces something dramatically different: the students tell or show the instructor; the instructor explores or watches or reflects. These would seem to be good instructions for how to make the teacher a learner, which is what a good teacher ought to be. And so the fact that changing the agent changes the impact does not say much about the validity of separating out the modes.

One very clear implication seems to be: each mode of instruction has a fatal weakness.

If you don't understand the terms of a direct explanation, you're out of luck.

Similarly, if the analogy makes no sense to you, the effectiveness is near zero.

You can show me something, and I can attend to the way you stand, rather than what you're doing.

Etc.

What this says to me is: effective teaching likely combines several of the basic modes of instruction. Indeed, telling usually gets followed by showing, then students going through steps, etc. But many practical teaching procedures skip entire modes of instruction (such as reflection), and yet we do not actually know which modes should be accompanied by which, nor in what order.

We could find out, though. A very nice research project would be a meta-analysis of studies of instructional methods. Researchers would code the methods studied to determine which modes of instruction were being used. And then the effectiveness of each method could be analyzed statistically in terms of the various modes being combined, as well as the combinations.

The fact is: we simply do not know (a) whether these modes of instruction really are primary, nor (b) which work best in which combination (let alone with which subject matter, which one might want to hold constant).

If these methods sound terribly concrete, that's exactly the point. Does one engage motivation better? Or another addresses issues in working memory? Are agency and self-efficacy supported better by this or that method? That is not the point.

Or rather: we could find all that out.

The point is: to make instruction something do-able and systematic and to know which techniques to use when and in what combination.

And then we would know more about teaching––which is something, as the poet said, "devoutly to be wished."

Week 5 begins. We're not learning Ruby this week. It's all about JavaScript, jQuery, HTML, and CSS. We're learning how not to write crappy JavaScript as well as how to make the front ends of our web applications not suck.

It's gonna be a really cool week. Before I got my Dev Bootcamp study materials, I tried studying JavaScript. I had a lot of fun working on Project Euler in JavaScript, even though I didn't make it very far.

So far, JavaScript is awesome. Steven gave us an awesome lecture this afternoon about object-oriented JavaScript, and I'm surprised at how easy it is to pick up on some of the concepts. We have a solid foundation in programming principles from studying Ruby. While Ruby and JavaScript are by no means the same language, there's a lot of overlap. It's making it a lot easier to pick up on all of the basics.

We've covered quite a few topics so far in Dev Bootcamp. Some people are starting to become the resident experts on certain topics. So-and-so is great at testing. If you need to learn about object-oriented programming, talk to person. Male boot 4 is really good at knowing technical intricacies of the languages and topics we study. Female boot 2 has ActiveRecord ON LOCK.

I've got mixed feelings about it. I'm happy that they're successful. I'm excited that they're doing well and are exploring what inspires them and are learning more about it than the rest of us.

And i'm also scared about it. I'm scared that I don't have that one thing that I'm good at. I want to be good at it all. And I'm letting myself be pulled in five directions at once, trying to get better and better at each thing.

I'll start to work on something, and then a little attack from the ol' superego will happen: So-and-so is better than you at that other thing. Why are you even here if you're just behind everyone at everything? And then I feel stressed about not working on the other thing and lose focus on the first thing!

What the heck?

It's that silly superego. Sefora (the DBC counselor) and I were chatting about it today. The superego typically has some crappy logic. It's little kid logic. Bloop is better than you at A. And derp is better than you at B. Ergo you're bad at ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ, will never amount to anything, and are deserving of much public ridicule.

It's stupid that we let the superego have power over us. Sefora had me pretend to be my superego and talk to myself.

And it's such a silly exercise! When I have to put to words these disparaging remarks that my superego throws out at me, I just hear how lame they are. It's an abusive relationship--this thing that pretends to be my buddy but constantly seeks to make me feel bad.

Were my superego a person, I would not associate with him. So why let him stick around in my mind? Why not challenge him? Why not put a friend in my mind, too? Someone who will interrupt the superego and tell him that he's being mean. The friend who can shoo him away so that I can talk with someone who's not a jerk.

I do think that I've come a long way since high school and college, though. The attacks were more frequent and more debilitating then, and I've made a lot of progress since getting to Dev Bootcamp.

But something about everyone gaining all of these proficiencies has started a resurgence of the attacks.

And I'm just at a "Fuck this" moment with the superego. My fellow boots developing these varied proficiencies is a huge opportunity for me. I can learn from them.