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There are 23 NRICH Mathematical resources connected to Mathematical induction, you may find related items under Patterns, sequences and structure.
Broad Topics > Patterns, sequences and structure > Mathematical inductionWhen is $7^n + 3^n$ a multiple of 10? Can you prove the result by two different methods?
In the limit you get the sum of an infinite geometric series. What about an infinite product (1+x)(1+x^2)(1+x^4)... ?
By proving these particular identities, prove the existence of general cases.
An introduction to the binomial coefficient, and exploration of some of the formulae it satisfies.
Investigate Farey sequences of ratios of Fibonacci numbers.
Farey sequences are lists of fractions in ascending order of magnitude. Can you prove that in every Farey sequence there is a special relationship between Farey neighbours?
The tangles created by the twists and turns of the Conway rope trick are surprisingly symmetrical. Here's why!
This article gives an introduction to mathematical induction, a powerful method of mathematical proof.
What have Fibonacci numbers to do with solutions of the quadratic equation x^2 - x - 1 = 0 ?
Find the link between a sequence of continued fractions and the ratio of succesive Fibonacci numbers.
Explore the hyperbolic functions sinh and cosh using what you know about the exponential function.
With n people anywhere in a field each shoots a water pistol at the nearest person. In general who gets wet? What difference does it make if n is odd or even?
Find the values of n for which 1^n + 8^n - 3^n - 6^n is divisible by 6.
Find and explain a short and neat proof that 5^(2n+1) + 11^(2n+1) + 17^(2n+1) is divisible by 33 for every non negative integer n.
How many ways can the terms in an ordered list be combined by repeating a single binary operation. Show that for 4 terms there are 5 cases and find the number of cases for 5 terms and 6 terms.
A walk is made up of diagonal steps from left to right, starting at the origin and ending on the x-axis. How many paths are there for 4 steps, for 6 steps, for 8 steps?
Libby Jared helped to set up NRICH and this is one of her favourite problems. It's a problem suitable for a wide age range and best tackled practically.
You add 1 to the golden ratio to get its square. How do you find higher powers?
If a number N is expressed in binary by using only 'ones,' what can you say about its square (in binary)?
Which is larger: (a) 1.000001^{1000000} or 2? (b) 100^{300} or 300! (i.e.factorial 300)
Bricks are 20cm long and 10cm high. How high could an arch be built without mortar on a flat horizontal surface, to overhang by 1 metre? How big an overhang is it possible to make like this?
Make a conjecture about the sum of the squares of the odd positive integers. Can you prove it?


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Fall Prevention for Little Kids
Fall Prevention for Little Kids
Does it seem like your little one is always on the go? That's just the way it should be. While we can't help you grow an extra set of hands, we can help you make sure the area around your child is safer. We don't sweat the bumps and bruises, but we can work together to help avoid serious injuries.
Top Safety Tips
- For your crawlers and climbers, move chairs, cribs and other furniture away from windows to help prevent window falls.
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- Use approved safety gates at the tops and bottoms of stairs and attach them to the wall, if possible. Remember to read the manufacturer's instructions and warning labels to make sure you have the right gate for your needs. Not all gates are safe for use at the top of stairs.
- Keep windows locked and closed when they are not being used.
- Take your kids to playgrounds with shock-absorbing surfaces such as rubber, synthetic turf, sand, pea gravel, wood chips or mulch. If your child falls, the landing will be more cushioned than on asphalt, concrete, grass or dirt.
- If you are placing your child in a shopping cart seat, use a harness or safety belt. If the belt is missing or broken, select another cart.

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Have you thought about making some sweet little presents for co-workers, your kids' classmates or neighbors? These will surely make them smile. Since they are quick and
easy to assemble, they will make you smile too. Fill clear plastic tubes found here with gum balls, add the cute tag and your done.
The tags for these projects are yours for free if you
1. Follow me by email, Feedburner or GFC
2. Leave a comment with your email address.
You can also follow me on Pinterest and "Like" my FB page.
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In 2011, Haunch of Venison, London, showcased a collection of work by the highly acclaimed director and photographer, Wim Wenders. Featured in Aesthetica Issue 40, the exhibition highlighted the artist's distinctive style and sensitive imagery. Now, in celebration of Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast's upcoming show Wenders, Landscapes, Photographs in Düsseldorf, which appears in the current edition, we reflect on Places, strange and quiet from the Aesthetica archive.
While scouting for locations for his film, Paris, Texas (1984), Wim Wenders embarked on a long, circuitous road trip around the American West, taking pictures of deserted one-horse towns, neglected billboards and half-demolished buildings. Seduced by the decrepitude of the scenes he found, he became interested in photographing things "already half eaten away by the elements and in the process of disappearing."
Wenders began to travel to towns far too remote to set up shooting a film, but that were easily accessible with his collapsible Plaubil Makina camera. Somewhere between Odessa, Texas and the sleepy Las Vegas, New Mexico, he began seriously taking photographs in their own right, separate from his feature-film preparation. As a new exhibition of his photographs at Haunch of Venison, London, makes clear, the intervening period has seen Wenders develop a distinctive photographic style, characterised by large-scale images of unglamorous corners, neglected buildings and overlooked viewpoints.
Entitled Places, strange and quiet, the exhibition dove-tails Wenders' parallel career as a filmmaker, mirroring his travels to film locations and film festivals around the world. As curator, Claudia Stockhausen points out, visitors to the show who choose to look for "hints to his filmography will be pleasantly surprised to find Wenders searching for something different" in his photographs. While many of the photographs are taken on location for films such as Palermo Shooting (2008), Don't Come Knocking (2005), Tokyo-Ga (1985) and Paris, Texas (1984), it's as if the photographs are the negative or flipside of Wenders' artistic sensibility, captured moments without the need for filmic conventions such as narrative or character development. "Photography", Wenders has commented, "gives me comfort for all the films I didn't make. This is because there is no need for history. There is just the moment!"
At the beginning of Wenders' film Alice in the Cities (1974), writer Philip Winter, played by Rüdiger Vogler, traverses the United States by road, taking hundreds of photographs with a collapsible SX-70, the prototype Polaroid camera. His stacks of snaps are endless visual notes towards an overdue journalistic commission that he can't get started on because he's overwhelmed by a drifting existential angst and underwhelmed by the procession of motel rooms, the radio-stations and the T.V. commercials. Back in New York, and on the verge of abandoning the job to return to Germany, he visits a friend who suggests his obsession with taking pictures comes from a desire "for further proof that it was really you who saw something." It's a quintessential Wenders film, his first foray into the road movie genre, and his first film to explicitly theorise about the medium of photography. In the character of Philip, Wenders combines a restless, drifting spirit, an obsessive need to take photographs and existential angst, all three of which so define his aesthetic, especially in his photographs.
In Street Corner, Butte Montana (2003) a bright red fire hydrant sits on the pavement like a punctuation point to the road's yellow lines. Outside a corner thrift store, a damaged lamppost leans across the road as if it could snap at any moment, while a grid of telephone and electricity cables criss-cross beneath a saturated blue sky. Across the street, the buildings are almost indiscernible in gloomy shadows. This deceptively complex visual composition is pregnant with loneliness, emptiness and anticipation. As the actor and artist, Dennis Hopper, once said of Wenders' photographs: "You notice each detail and imagine or feel what might have taken place there … They evoke a sense of loneliness very much like an Edward Hopper painting." And just as Edward Hopper's paintings seem to sit poised on the threshold of narrative, as if suppressed desire or violence were about to rise to the surface, so do Wenders' photographs convey a tension between what we think might occur or have occurred in these neglected street corners, and a serenity from embracing the undramatic and the quiet.
The pictures span a period of 25 years and are taken in a wide range of locations including Salvador, Palermo, Onomichi, Brisbane, Armenia and the United States. Like the wandering drifters around which so many of his films are based, the diversity of these locations reveals Wenders' own fidgety nomadic tendencies. Wenders' photography embodies the postmodern nomad as theorised by Deleuze and Guattari. They convey a sense of the inability to see things from one point of view or standpoint, and an almost inexhaustible quest to avoid settling for the status quo. He has said in interviews that he sees himself as "first of all a traveller, before being a director, or a writer, or a photographer." Since photography's invention, it has gone hand-in-hand with travel, with exploration and discovery. As Susan Sontag wrote in her classic series of essays On Photography (1977): "The camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood." For Wenders, the camera in question is usually analogue. He has spoken in interviews of his reluctance to use digital cameras because of the tendency for the photographer to speculate in advance, while taking the picture, about how the image will be manipulated afterwards. In Wenders' view this prevents the digital photographer from observing the scene properly, because the mind has already moved elsewhere, further forward, to the editing stage. "I think back then [before the digital age] you had to admit yourself to the landscape, if you photographed landscapes."
It follows from this aesthetic choice that many of Wenders' images are characterised by marks and puddles that other photographers might be tempted to retouch or erase, such as the imperfect blotches on an otherwise sparkling Palermo promenade in Sun Bather, Palermo (2007). The pavement blemishes are a counterpoint and an antidote to the garish polka dots on the pristine sun-loungers, and add to the sense of loneliness and emptiness that the picture conveys. This picture is unusual in the exhibition, in that it's one of only a handful in which a human being features in the shot. Hunched over with one elbow on his knee and his back to the lens, the sunbather could be quietly contemplative, or discussing business on his mobile phone, it's hard to tell. With his bronzed back and canary yellow swim shorts, the photograph seems to frame the sunbather as a part of the furniture, a part of the scene, rather than as the focus of the shot, which could be either the foregrounded polka dot beds, or at the back of the shot, an imposing and rocky Sicilian hill.
Wenders' photographs bear comparison to the influential photographers of the Düsseldorf School who emerged during the 1980s under the tuition of Hilla and Bernd Becher. In his use of large-format printing, Wenders' work recalls the oversized industrial and commercial scenes of Andreas Gursky and the oppressively large-scale, sky-scraper-lined streets in the photographs of Thomas Struth. Gursky and Struth's subject matter mirrors the size of their prints, tending towards the busy and the monumental, but it seems important that Wenders' lens veers towards neglected and decrepit spaces. It seems important in this regard that Wenders, the slightly older artist, born in 1945 in a Düsseldorf torn apart by war, focuses on quiet, abandoned and often damaged places, whereas the younger artists reflect the dynamic and stifling onslaught of post-war capitalism. In The Old Jewish Quarter, Berlin (1992), Wenders photographs boarded up windows and decrepit stonework on a nondescript street, daubed with numerous splurges of red spray-paint. Ambiguously horrific and peaceful, the marks look alternately like open-wounds and poppy-heads.
The Red Bench, Onomichi (2005) shows an empty red bench overlooking the frame of a metallic turquoise railing, and behind it the dull grey painted wall of a battleship. Onomichi is a city in the Hiroshima prefecture and is one of the locations that Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu used to shoot his famous film, Tokyo Story (1953), on which Wim Wenders reflected enthusiastically in his essayistic documentary film Tokyo-Ga (1985).
For Tokyo-Ga, Wenders travelled to Japan to see if the world that Ozu's films capture was still there, or whether the heady pace of post-war modernisation had obliterated it. It's also a meditation on Ozu's films and a study of his technique. Ozu was famed for his "tatami-shot", where the camera was positioned low, as if from the viewpoint of someone seated on a tatami mat. The empty red bench in Wenders' picture is a kind of homage to Ozu and his grounded observations. The unoccupied seat is a recurrent image in Wenders' work. The first Polaroid we see Philip take in Alice in the Cities is of a deserted lifeguard's seat on a beach. Empty seats are also a recurrent theme in many of Wenders' photographs in Places, strange and quiet. It's as though the empty seats invite the viewer to inhabit the landscapes in his photographs. They're also an indication of the photographer's restlessness, always a stranger, always on the move, the photographer positioned behind the seats, rather than settled atop one.
Open Air Screen, Palermo (2007) features an audience of uninhabited plastic orange chairs in front of a blank stage. Set out in neat rows, frayed at the edges with the odd skewed chair, and under a canopy of a single obstructive palm tree, the empty seats convey a lonely awkwardness in anticipation of the outdoor screening. The ground is grey and dusty, irregularly pocked by miniature sprouting archipelagoes of green weeds. The sky looks vague, overcast and heavy, as though a curtain of rain were about to drop. It's a classic example of the strange and easy-to-neglect scene that so enchants Wenders: "I seem to have sharpened my sense of place for things that are out of place. Everybody turns right, because that's where it's interesting, I turn left where there is nothing! And sure enough, I soon stand in front of my sort of place. I don't know, it must be some sort of inbuilt radar that often directs me to places that are strangely quiet, or quietly strange.''
People are notably absent from most of Wenders' photographs, but there's usually a trace that there have recently been people present, a man-made object of some kind, or in a number of pictures, scrawled graffiti. In Eastern Germany, Gorlitz (2006), on a pale stone building with curved arched windows, upper-case black spray-paint letters depict the slogan, in English, "CRUSH CAPITALISM!" The dot of the exclamation mark is a crudely drawn star. Sitting proudly above the graffiti, and in the straw colour of sandstone, the arches almost look like faded McDonald's Golden Arches.
Wenders' frontal shot doesn't seem to interfere or pass comment on the scene, merely presenting it baldly for what it is. It's a captured moment before the town council gets the slogan wiped off. The graffiti is a momentary trace of human presence in an otherwise deserted picture, conveying at once a presence and an absence. As so often in Wenders' pictures, the most strongly felt presence is Wenders himself. Though never present in front of the lens in these pictures, these strange and quiet photographs amount to a cumulative portrait of a subtle, exploratory and restless artistic consciousness. As Wenders puts it: "The camera works both ways."
Places, strange and quiet opened at Haunch of Venison, London on the 15 April and ran until 17 May 2011.
Colin Herd
Wenders, Landscapes, Photographs, 18 April – 16 August 2015, Museum Kunstpalast, Kulturzentrum Ehrenhof, Ehrenhof 4-5, 40479 Düsseldorf.
Find out more at www.smkp.de.
Places, strange and quiet featured in Aesthetica Issue 40. Read about Wenders, Landscapes, Photographs in the current edition. Pick up a copy of the magazine at www.aestheticamagazine.com.
Follow us on Twitter @AestheticaMag for the latest news in contemporary art and culture.
1. Wim Wenders, (detail of) Sun Bather, Palermo, 2007. Courtesy Haunch of Venison.


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Two Democratic congressmen have formally asked the Labor Department's Inspector General to investigate "allegations of misconduct by doctors and lawyers working on behalf of the coal industry" and their roles in the denials of benefits for coal miners stricken with black lung disease.
In their letter, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, and committee member Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) cite recent reports from the Center for Public Integrity and ABC News, which singled out the work of West Virginia law firm Jackson Kelly and physicians at Johns Hopkins Medical in Baltimore.
Miller and Courtney told Inspector General Scott Dahl that the year-long investigation by the two news organizations concluded that "doctors and lawyers have allegedly used medically and ethically questionable tactics to defeat the benefits claims of miners sick and dying of black lung."
The call for a federal investigation is just the latest response to the reports. Last week, Johns Hopkins suspended its program that, on behalf of coal mining companies, reviews X-rays of miners seeking compensation benefits for black lung disease. Dr. Paul Wheeler has routinely analyzed those X-rays for Johns Hopkins and rarely found positive indications of black lung, according to the Center for Public Integrity.
Wheeler "found not a single case of severe black lung in the more than 1,500 cases decided since 2000 in which he offered an opinion," according to CPI's review of his work.
In defending his work, Wheeler responded that he has "always staked out the high ground."
Meanwhile, two Senate democrats — Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Robert Casey of Pennsylvania — are working on legislation to better protect miners. ABC News reports that the Labor Department is "helping the senators craft the bill."
CPI reports that less than 10 percent of the coal miners seeking benefits under the federal black lung compensation system have been successful. The program is funded with federal and industry money.
Last year, CPI and NPR reported a resurgence of black lung in portions of Appalachia, along with a growing occurrence among younger miners and more rapid progression to the worst stages of the disease.
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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7 Trainer-Approved Puppy Housebreaking Tips
Published on January 03, 2012
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Q. We're bringing home a new puppy. Do you have any suggestions for house training?
A. Patience is key when it comes to housebreaking because every pup will pick up the process at his own pace. And unless a dog is taught where to eliminate, he'll look for any spot that's convenient and safe, which often ends up being the carpeting! Unfortunately, dogs aren't born with the moral reasoning to understand that going to the bathroom inside the house is wrong.Since dogs innately want to keep their personal area clean, they will venture away from their own territory to use the bathroom. But many owners make the mistake of giving a puppy too much space too fast. In this case, the dog has little incentive to wait to go outside, since his personal roaming space only makes up a small portion of the home.
Tip #1: Get a Crate
It's best to use confinement to teach your dog that he has to wait to go to the bathroom outside the house. You can do this by purchasing a crate, so the puppy has just enough space to turn around and lie down. Another alternative, if possible, is to keep the puppy by your side at all times while clipped to a four- to six-foot leash.Tip #2: Honor the 15-Minute Rule
Puppies are most likely to use the bathroom within 15 minutes of eating, drinking, playing, exercising or waking up from a nap. After any of these activities, your puppy should be given an opportunity to go to the bathroom.A general rule of thumb for how long puppies can hold their bladders: one hour for every month of age, plus one. So if a puppy is two months old, he can wait up to three hours. However, this varies from dog to dog, and a puppy should be taken out more often than his maximum hold time. I train owners to take puppies out to the bathroom every one to two hours or after any activity that stimulates elimination.
It's important to consult your veterinarian if your puppy seems to have difficulty holding his elimination for reasonable amounts of time for his age, because this could signal a medical problem.
Tip #3: Reward a Job Well Done
When it's time for a bathroom break, take your puppy outside to the same proper elimination area each time. If he goes to the bathroom within five minutes, praise him and offer treats as soon as he does his business.Don't take your puppy immediately back to his confinement area, which can actually read as punishment to him. Instead, opt for a 10-minute block of supervised play in a bigger area before putting him back in the confined space. However, if your puppy does not eliminate outside, calmly place him back in his confinement area, wait 15 minutes and then try again outdoors.
Tip #4: Accidents Happen
Never punish your puppy if he has an accident in the house. This only teaches the dog to fear the idea of going to the bathroom when people are around, and he will likely still go in the house — just not when his owner is looking. Instead, if you catch your puppy in the act, you can interrupt him with an "oops," and immediately take him to his proper elimination area outside.Consider using enzymatic cleaners on any potty spots to keep your dog from smelling previous accidents and going there again.
Tip #5: Introduce Space Gradually
As your puppy stays accident-free in the confined area, you can gradually expand his space privileges by introducing him to a new room. After one week of success without accidents, open up yet another area of your home.However, if accidents start happening, confine him back to the previous level of success. And keep to his regular schedule of bathroom breaks, rewarding for proper elimination, throughout the entire training process.


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By Ann DeMeulenaere Weedon
The Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) had the opportunity to participate in the National Organization for Women's (NOW) national conference in Baltimore, Maryland in June. The annual conference is the largest gathering of women's groups and advocates in the country and attracted several accomplished leaders in women's policy and advocacy, including Representative Carolyn Maloney, Dr. Bernice "Bunny" Sandler (responsible for the enactment of Title IX), political strategist and MSNBC commentator Krystal Ball, and playwright and women's advocate Eve Ensler.
By participating in or moderating a number of conference panels and presentations, IWPR researchers and other policy experts facilitated a "Mothers and Caregivers Summit" that took place over two days of the three-day convention. With the country on the steps of a possible care crisis as Baby Boomers begin to age, raising awareness on issues related to mothers and caregivers is particularly timely. This also being an election year, it is a crucial time to shine the spotlight on the importance of economic and family supports for women, who are more likely than men to act as caregivers for children and older relatives.
The conference summit consisted of four panel discussions on topics including the importance of family leave and paid sick days for the well-being of women and their children, trends in women's employment such as occupational segregation and the gender wage gap, family economic and retirement security, and means to improve access to quality jobs for women and people of color. IWPR staff presentations from the summit can be found on IWPR's website.
In one of the first panel discussions of the conference, IWPR Research Analyst Claudia Williams and Helen Luryi, Work and Family Policy Associate at the National Partnership for Women and Families, discussed the progress of state-level of paid sick days campaigns across the nation. Williams highlighted the importance of this legislation in reducing contagion, ultimately benefiting employee productivity and reducing health care costs, as found in IWPR's cost-benefit analyses of paid sick days policies. IWPR has analyzed the impact of a nationwide paid sick days policy on health care costs and employment, as well as the cost-benefits of paid sick days legislation in states and cities considering such laws (including New York State, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Denver, Colorado). Nationwide, access to paid sick days could save approximately $1 billion in health care costs according to a November 2011 report from IWPR.
In discussing other topics such as the gender wage gap, Social Security modernization, unemployment insurance, asset-building, and jobs in the "green" industry, IWPR researchers were joined by other experts such as Dr. Martha Burk, who spoke about her role in the push for paycheck fairness in New Mexico, and Web Phillips of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, who discussed proposed reforms to Social Security and ways in which they would help or harm women and their families.
In May, the NCPSSM, the NOW Foundation, and IWPR released a report that looked at the challenges facing older women and called for affordable changes to modernize Social Security to better support women's economic security. Recommendations included improving survivor benefits, providing Social Security credits for caregivers, providing a more adequate benefit to those who have spent most of their working lives in low-wage employment, and restoring student benefits to children of disabled or deceased workers until age 22 when the child is attending college/vocational school full time.
This year's NOW conference, titled with the theme "Energize! Organize! Stop the War on Women!" called upon the next generation of young advocacy leaders to speak up on issues important to women. But the conference was also an opportunity to look back on significant accomplishments and achievements. Several women's leaders were honored for their work, including IWPR's Dr. Heidi Hartmann, who received the NOW Woman of Vision Award for significant contributions towards improving the lives of women and girls in the United States. The award's honorees have a strong commitment to women's issues and have, over time, developed, communicated, and realized their vision by engaging with other leaders in women's policy and advocacy. "I am deeply honored to be recognized by the National Organization for Women and to have the importance of economic issues for women be given visibility by this award," said Dr. Hartmann.
IWPR thanks NOW for organizing a successful and engaging conference! We look forward to continuing to energize and inform conversations and dialogues on women's issues as the year unfolds. Watch for upcoming IWPR research on women and caregiving, as well as on work/family supports, access to paid sick days, and access to quality employment for women and minorities. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook to stay informed!
Ann DeMeulenaere Weedon is the Communications Intern with the Institute for Women's Policy Research.
To view more of IWPR's research, visit IWPR.org


text:
Smell-O-Scope | |
Inventor | Professor Farnsworth |
Owner(s) | Professor Farnsworth |
Usage | Smell distant objects |
First appearance | "A Big Piece of Garbage" (1ACV08) |
Current status | Still at the HQ |
The Smell-O-Scope allows the user to smell odours over astronomically long distances ("If a dog craps anywhere in the universe, you can bet I won't be out of the loop"). It was created by Professor Farnsworth in 2999 and won the Academy of Inventors Academy Prize in 3000 after the prize had been taken away from Dr. Ogden Wernstrom as it became apparent that he was a jackass.
The degree of odour can be measured on a meter called the "Funkometer". It is unknown how the device functions, but it apparently has a lens and a stench coil.
As Cubert points out, it is impossible for odour molecules to travel through the vacuum of space and reach the user's nose. However, it is possible that the Smell-O-Scope actually analyzes various spectrums, determines the chemical makeup, and reproduces the smell within its nostril-tubes, much like a television reproduces sounds and images.
It is possible for the Smell-O-Scope to be mounted to the ship in order to track a smell to its origin. [2ACV10] It also caused the death of Nudar's time-paradox duplicate by crushing him after Farnsworth leant on it. [BBS]
Additional info
- "A Big Piece of Garbage" (1ACV08)
- "A Clone of My Own" (2ACV10)
- "Time Keeps on Slippin'" (3ACV14)
- "Godfellas" (3ACV20)
- Bender's Big Score
- The Beast with a Billion Backs


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text:
Project Members
- Antonia Soriente
Bilingual Child Language Acquisition
In this project the acquisition of bilingualism by various children in different linguistic environment was studied. One subproject investigated an Italian/Indonesian situation, and another an Indonesian/Javanese bilingual setting.
In the first subproject, the acquisition of bilingualism of two children, Guglielmo and Beatrice, was studied. While their mother is a native speaker of Italian, their father is Indonesian. Although they lived in a largely Indonesian-speaking environment, they were exclusively addressed by their mother in Italian. It represented a case study of unbalanced bilingualism and focuses on the development of a number of morphosyntactic patterns. It tried to identify cross-linguistic structures in quantitative and qualitative perspectives and hypothesizes theoretical explanations for cross-linguistic influence and the gradual emergence of correct usage of Italian and Indonesian grammatical structures.
The children were video-recorded on a weekly basis. Sessions alternated between predominantly Indonesian with the father, predominantly Italian with the mother, and mixed. For each child, the recordings began at the age of 8 months and stopped when the children were 4 and 6 years respectively. In addition, a diary study was conducted, focussing on utterances exhibiting a mixture of Indonesian and Italian forms. Topics analysed included the acquisition of negation and the study of mixed forms produced by the bilingual child, the acquisition of Wh-forms and of temporal markers.
Further, the acquisition of bilingualism by Ramzi was studied. Although both parents of Ramzi are natives of East Java, his mother spoke to him in Indonesian while his father spoke to him in Javanese. The child was video-recorded on a weekly basis.
Soriente, Antonia. 2007. "Cross-linguistic and cognitive aspects in the acquisition of WH-questions in an Italian-Indonesian bilingual child" in Kesckes I. & L. Albertazzi (eds.) Cognitive aspects of bilingualism. Dordrecht; Springer: 325-362.
Soriente, Antonia 2006. "Dominance and language choice in an Indonesian-Italian bilingual child" in Vliegen, M. (ed.) .Variation in Sprachtheorie und Spracherwerb Akten des 39. Linguistischen Kolloquiums in Amsterdam 2004.
Soriente, Antonia, 2004. "Pemerolehan negasi dari seorang anak dwibahasa Italia-Indonesia". in Katharina E.Sukamto (ed.) KOLITA 2 Konferensi Linguistik Tahunan Atma Jaya. Jakarta.


text: Healthy forests are vital to trout and salmon, and, by extension, to the anglers who pursue them. Trees stabilize riverbanks and limit erosion which can smother eggs or otherwise muck up cold, clean waters essential for spawning and rearing. Forests provide shade and shelter from sun, wind, heat and other natural events that can impact habitat. And when they naturally wither and die, or get blown down in storms, logs and big branches of fallen trees wind up in fish-bearing streams, creating structure and cover important to trout and salmon. Many spawning adult fish need calm eddies and pools in which to lay their eggs, and young fish need the same environment to hatch and grow. Healthy forested watersheds provide the right recipe. Striking the right balance between human activities and forest conservation is a delicate dance. But in many places where Trout Unlimited works, we successfully partner with agencies, individuals, businesses, non-profits, tribes and others with a vested interest in fish to protect and restore forests that are essential to fish. In Alaska's Tongass National Forest, for example, TU completed an award-winning restoration project on the Sitkoh River, once a key producer of pink and Coho salmon, steelhead and Dolly Varden. The river had lost much of its fish habitat when old-school logging allowed timber harvest down to the banks – a no-go for fish and a practice that, thankfully, is no longer permitted. Thanks to a successful partnership involving TU, the Forest Service, and others, the Sitkoh is now producing fish again at rate that is expected to return the river to its formerly healthy, pre-logging condition. Restoring forests for fish can involve taking out blocked culverts, putting logs back into rivers, re-engineering pools and thinning young-growth in formerly logged stands. TU does this kind of work while at the same time advocating for the protection of fully functioning ecosystems that remain open to development activities that can harm fish. Obviously it's much smarter to prevent damage in the first place. But where fish habitat has been lost, TU actively seeks out and works with partners to see that forest restoration occurs. It's proactive conservation that most people rally behind, even groups who are sometimes traditionally at odds.


text:
The SWISS EPHEMERIS is the high precision ephemeris developed by Astrodienst, largely based upon the DExxx ephemerides from NASA's JPL . The original release in 1997 was based on the DE405/406 ephemeris. Since release 2.00 in February 2014, it is based on the DE431 ephemeris released by JPL in September 2013.
Developers can license the Ephemeris library. Ephemeris users find more than 8000 years of read-made printable files of ephemerides, containing tens of thousands print pages in PDF quality.
The Swiss Ephemeris offers these advantages:
The Swiss Ephemeris is based upon the planetary and lunar ephemeris DE431 developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It covers the time range 13201 BC to AD 17191. These data have been further compressed with sophisticated compression techniques developed by Astrodienst. This compressed ephemeris reproduces the JPL data with 0.001 arcseconds precision. The Swiss Ephemeris files for the planets without the Moon take up 27 Mb disk space, the files for the Moon take up 70 Mb, totally 97 Mb disk space. The original JPL file takes up 2788 Mb disk space.
All transformation steps from the inertial timeframe of the JPL DE430/431 integration to the reference frame for astrological coordinates (true equinox of date), all corrections like relativistic aberration, deflection of light in the gravity field of the Sun etc. have been performed with utmost care and precision so that the target precision of 0.001 arcsec is maintained through all transformation steps. Never before has such a high precision ephemeris been available to astrologers.
Swiss Ephemeris contains three ephemerides. The user can choose whether he/she wants to use the original JPL DE431 data (if available at their site), the compressed Swiss Ephemeris data (the default) or a built in semianalytic theory by Steve Moshier. The Swiss Ephemeris package switches automatically to the available best precision ephemeris dependent on which installed ephemeris files it finds. Even without any stored ephemeris files, using the Moshier model, planetary positions with better than 0.1 seconds of arc precision are available (3 arcsec for the Moon). The Moshier ephemeris is based on DE404 and covers the time range 3000 BC – 3000 AD.
In addition to the astronomical planets as contained in the JPL integration, we have included all other bodies and hypothetical factors which are of interest to the astrologer. We have used our own numerical integration program to provide ephemerides for all known asteroids, once they are officially numbered. There are, at the time of this writing in February 2014, over 385'000 of them and nobody will be able to use them all. We distribute these extended asteroid files via the download area.
Speed: The Swiss Ephemeris is precise and fast. On our Linux test machine, we compute 10'000 complete sets of planetary positions, i.e. 10'000 x 11 planets, in less than 3 seconds. This is 0.3 milliseconds for the complete set of exact planetary positions (consecutive 1 day steps).
How to license the Swiss Ephemeris:
The Swiss Ephemeris is not a product for end users. It is a toolset for programmers to build into their astrological software.
Swiss Ephemeris is made available by its authors under a dual licensing system. The software developer, who uses any part of Swiss Ephemeris in his or her software, must choose between one of the two license models, which are
a) GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL)
b) Swiss Ephemeris Professional License
The choice must be made before the software developer distributes software containing parts of Swiss Ephemeris to others, and before any public service using the developed software is activated.
If the
developer choses the AGPL software license, he or she must
fulfill the conditions of that license, which includes the
obligation to place his or her whole software project under the AGPL or a compatible license.
If the developer choses the Swiss Ephemeris Professional license, he must follow the instructions below and purchase the Swiss Ephemeris Professional Edition from Astrodienst and sign the corresponding license contract.
The License grants you the right to use, copy, modify and redistribute Swiss Ephemeris, but only under certain conditions described in the License. Among other things, the License requires that the copyright notices and this notice be preserved on all copies.
Authors of the Swiss Ephemeris: Dieter Koch and Alois Treindl
The authors of Swiss Ephemeris have no control or influence over any of the derived works, i.e. over software or services created by other programmers which use Swiss Ephemeris functions.
The names of the authors or of the copyright holder (Astrodienst) must not be used for promoting any software, product or service which uses or contains the Swiss Ephemeris. This copyright notice is the ONLY place where the names of the authors can legally appear, except in cases where they have given special permission in writing.
Both types of licenses include the right to use the label 'Swiss Ephemeris Inside' on products.
If you want the Swiss Ephemeris Professional License for your software project, please proceed as follows:
print the licensing contract in two copies
fill the printed copies out and sign them
mail them to Astrodienst AG, Dammstr. 23, 8702 Zollikon, Switzerland, or send a signed and scanned complete PDF to email@example.com .
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Monday, October 24, 2011
XP Requirements as (Dis)Incentive
Jeff suggests that Crabaugh, rather than proposing a poor system, is in fact using it to critique the standard XP requirements. It's an interesting thesis and I think he's probably on to something. However, I still have a problem with Crabaugh's system and indeed most other build-your-own-character-class systems I've seen. The problem is that the system seems to assume that XP requirements are intended solely (or at least primarily) as a means of balancing the relative power of each class at first level. On this understanding, a thief takes so few XP to reach second level compared to, say, a fighter, because a thief is such a pathetic class at 1st level. Similarly, all the demihuman classes require more XP than their human-only counterparts as a way of compensating for their racial abilities.
I'm not convinced that's the truth of it. If that's the case, then why does the supremely wimpy magic-user require more XP to reach 2nd level than the hardy fighter in standard D&D? Likewise, why does the cleric, which is in many ways a "fighter plus," require less XP to reach 2nd level than either the MU or the fighting man? Crabaugh's system would suggest that the XP requirements in standard D&D are way off base and ought to be corrected by lowering those of the magic-user and increasing those of the cleric. That's a perfectly reasonable approach if you believe the sole/primary purpose of the XP requirements is to introduce some kind of rough balance between the classes.
For my part, I prefer to see the XP requirements play a different role: providing (dis)incentives for playing certain classes. For example, I'm told that, in many campaigns, it's hard to find players willing to take on the role of the cleric. I personally find this baffling, as the cleric is a pretty mighty class, but there it is. Might not the more favorable XP requirements make the class more attractive to some players? Similarly, could not the comparatively high XP requirements of the magic-user be a "warning" of sorts, intended to dissuade those looking for an easy-to-play class?
I should note here that all of the above is pure, undiluted ex post facto rationalization for a bunch of XP benchmarks that were, in all probability, made up without any rhyme or reason, or at least not as much as we might wish. My general feeling is that, in practice, the differences in XP benchmarks don't mean a lot till you're in the mid to high levels anyway. Likewise, I'm pretty dismissive of trying to balance one class against another based on some "objective" calculus, since, especially in an old school game, so much of any character's effectiveness depends heavily on his player and the referee. That's not to say I don't find articles like Crabaugh's interesting and occasionally useful, only that, as I get older, I find I care less and less about the fact that the buff cleric needs 500 XP less than the fighter, while the weakling MU needs 500 more.
40 comments:
It's hard to convince my players, who are thoroughly drenched in video games, that a cleric is not a heal-bot. In AD&D, clerics have to rely on Cure Light Wounds until they are fairly well advanced.
Clerics simply are not intended to be walking heal machines, and it's hard to make a player who is used to playing a game like WoW understand that.
An even larger issue is getting the players to understand that "party balance" is an almost non-existent issue.
"What (class) does the party need?" is my second most hated player question. Right behind, "Do I level?"@Jeff
I've only had a problem once or twice with spellcasters spamming the same thing over and over. "Fireball, Fireball, Fireball". If you've seen it so bad that you had to add a rule to eliminate that behavior, I cry for you. The few times I had an issue with it I just said something and it mitigated the overuse.- AnonymousOctober 24, 2011 at 4:06 PM
Every party I've ever played in, they organize attacks based on class. Many's the time I've played a cleric, where the battle's over before I've gotten to strike a blow or indeed do anything.
I suppose that I should have retaliated by wandering off after visions in the middle of a battle, or going nuts and turning on the party, or at least by going to the kitchen for pop and never coming out. But the person who's usually shamed into playing a cleric, in a party which doesn't appreciate them, is usually "the dependable one".
I've played something like seven clerics, all wildly different, but never got to do anything other than heal. Whenever I started to use weird cleric spells offensively (like create food and water, that sort of thing), the GM usually either bans it or stops doing that campaign because "it's not working out."
The best thing turned out to be refusing to play a cleric, and happening to roll up a barbarian with insane stats. Unfortunately, while I was enjoying the heck out of myself and actually got to roll dice, our GM ended that campaign after all of two sessions. Because "it's not working out."
(Though to be fair, all that GM's campaigns always ended after a couple few sessions. Perfectionist kind of creator.) - AnonymousOctober 24, 2011 at 4:09 PM
It occurs to me that I could have claimed that my god wouldn't let me heal unless I had fought in the frontlines and tasted battle to the dregs, and done at least two other kinds of clerical activity that day. But that's the kind of thing that never occurs to me until years afterward.
Also, I generally never got a chance to speak in character anyway, so there you go. I'm getting the impression that the above arguments are more about the Vancian magic-system and less to do with XP advancement.
The simplest solution is to make all XP level caps for all classes equal. Everyone levels up at nearly the same rate. Therefore all classes are equally accessible for players in terms of advancement.
Did Third Edition do this? I know it's a staple of Fourth, but can't remember if it was present in Third.As Joe said above, MMO's have pretty much cemented "Cleric = Heal-bot" in people's minds, and the class has been discriminated against ever since.
However, even in the early days, I think the cleric class suffered a bit from confusion as to what, exactly, an old-school cleric is suppose to be? Are they supposed to be like the religious knights of Medieval times? If so, why not just play a fighter or paladin, who get better weapons and HP anyway? Are they some sort of spellcaster? Why not just play a magic-user who get the "cooler" spells?
I think the cleric class confounds many younger players and GM's too. Combat-heavy campaigns (as many newbies will run) will invariably 'force' clerics to become 'heal-bots' almost by default.
On the other end, like Suburbanbanshee said, many cleric spells simply derail inexperienced or poor GMs. The early spell "Silence-15' Radius" can, theoretically, completely disrupt a uber-experienced wizard that the GM might have turned loose on the party. The ability to create light and food via spell certainly takes away some of the dread of being trapped in a dark, underground cave. So, I've seen many GMs take the same route that Banshee has seen and simply say "it's not working out" and disallow clerics their spells for contrived reasons which makes the class way less fun to play.
I love playing clerics...they can indeed be pretty mighty and a ton of fun to play in character...say, refusing to neutralize poison in a party member until they confess their various sins or agree to donate 25% of the adventure's profits to the church. Hey, the gods say I have to do it this way...As a person playing a LL cleric for the last year and a half, I have to say if your cleric is turned into a heal-bot, or never gets to fight, or never uses all the really useful detection spells to make yourself like f'ing Van Helsing then a) you suck as a player, b) you play in a pretty sorry game, with c) other pretty sorry players. If you can't make a B/X cleric awesome and fun, you've got serious problems.
ReplyDelete"As Joe said above, MMO's have pretty much cemented "Cleric = Heal-bot" in people's minds, and the class has been discriminated against ever since. "
Blame-MMOs is something that bugs me a lot.
Long before MMOs were even an idea of a thing, I (and nearly everyone I've played with) thought of clerics as "heal-bots". When we cracked open the book and saw how easy it was to die, staving that off was just naturally the most important thing to us.
This probably has more to do with the fact that we introduced ourselves (and each other) to the hobby than it does with MMOs. Without a good mentor the game really looks like a combat engine with a few extra bits tacked on.Why disincentivize the fighter though? You'd think you'd want most PC's to be fighter or thieves, not going by the XP chart, clerics and thieves.
As for the off topic, its been expected that the cleric is a healer since I started and in general should take no more than one L1 spell thats not cure light wounds.
This is not really fair but thats what was expectedI'm a very good player.
I'm just not very good at real life interpersonal interaction -- ie, elbowing in.
Although, to be fair, most of the fun stuff mentioned by players posting on this blog has been stamped out by the GMs I've played with. (People making up rhymes to use as spells, for example, or bards singing little snatches of songs, or talking in character.) The GMs I know don't like anything too lively, because they want to keep the game moving, in a math sort of way. And all this comes from long before MMOs.
If you've got a more fun GM and party, I'm sure you'll love playing a cowboy druid with tracking and weather knowledge and a deep understanding of cows. But if you play around here, "it isn't working out."I've always considered the XP requirements to be a balance of power, but not power at 1st level, necessarily. The magic-user is a long hard road because at the end of it you can cast disintegrate. Thieves are wimps so they level faster than any other class. Fighters are the standard, and clerics are important because they increase the party's survival chances.
Re: the cleric issue, I've encountered the problem of players being reluctant to play clerics. In my experience, it's not so much about the cleric's expected role in the party, as players automatically pigeonholing the class as priests, which they consider restricting. They don't want to have to worry about what their god thinks, and they don't want to be the crusader-type that seems to be the default of the class.
My solution: I renamed clerics to 'mystics'. I present them as "fighters with magical abilities"; it's stipulated that those abilities come from a supernatural source (inner peace, psychic control, ancestor spirits, divinity) but not necessarily a god. I expanded their weapon list to include a few edged weapons - spears, darts, etc. Finally, I require them to take taboos, equivalent to the wu jen class in Oriental Adventures, which if they break they lose their spellcasting abilities until they have properly cleansed or atoned.
In the sole game I've run since making the changes, clerics were the most popular choice. Those were novices, though; experienced players may well complain that I've butchered the class. But I still believe that an image change is all that's needed to make clerics cool in the players' eyes.The simplest solution is to make all XP level caps for all classes equal. Everyone levels up at nearly the same rate. Therefore all classes are equally accessible for players in terms of advancement.
Did Third Edition do this? I know it's a staple of Fourth, but can't remember if it was present in Third.
Yes, 3e was the first edition of D&D to do this. I'm actually OK with it in theory, since, as I said, I don't think the differences between classes really matter enough to fret about a couple of hundred XP here or there. In practice, though, a unified XP table leads to an expectation that all classes are "mechanically balanced" with one another at every level. This eventually became the laser focus of WotC era D&D and was one of the many things about it that drove me away from it.Clerics are my favorite class in AD&D and B/X games. Like others here, I think that many peoples' reluctance to try a cleric is because they let other players pressure them into focusing on healing to the exclusion of other, more enjoyable things. When I play a cleric, I make it clear that surviving the battle is everyone's individual responsibility. Healing is for emergencies only, and if you can still take a hit with a good chance for survival, then it's not an emergency.
ReplyDeleteClerics are the first character option (because alphabetically) in Moldvay Basic. I had barely every played any games - board, tabletop or video - when I read it, and almost all I had with combat had no means of healing. As soon as I knew they could heal, and no one else could, I was certain that was their primary purpose.
I know one person's experience isn't going to change anyone's train of thought on this, but I find it hard to blame outside influence, much less MMOs, considering that "healer" was my "from scratch" childhood observation. One of my first ever moments of understanding a game involved me trying to piece together how a party could possibly survive until its Cleric was level 2, or died. But to play devil's advocate to even myself: perhaps something in Moldvay is to blame for that?You shouldn't really read too much into the Crabaugh article. It really just is eyeballing it. You cannot capture the strength of synergistic abilities with an additive build system like the one in the article. Heck, no one still has any clue how to properly balance character classes (and a lot of that depends on your meaning of "balance") and that is an easier problem that constructing different advancement scales.
But related to this post, why rely on XP to disincentivize a class when you can do that much better by penalizing them socially in the game setting? The latter is a lot less artificial.So now we've got 2 heal debate threads going. (Bless you, my son :-) The one thing I will say is you have to admit that every edition of D&D through the AD&D line (OD&D, AD&D, 3E) found it necessary to increase the amount of healing available to clerics (and thus, reinforcement of that as their primary identity). WOW is really just a continuation of that same trajectory.
ReplyDeleteBalance between characters in role-playing games is very illusionary. It's not something that comes out of the system, but rather out of the play. I could have one character that could deal well with the situation, whilst another character would find it impossible. It is the gamemaster (if they so desire) who should have the responsibility of balancing the game in this manner, not the rule system.
An interesting point in this regard is that I've never ever seen a random encounter table that's been based on the experience points of a character class. Rather you are likely to meet an NPC of a given level, irregardless of their class or the experience required to reach it. So XP level costs generally only apply to PCs in practice.
Similarly most tournaments (where characters were not provided) tend to specify characters by level rather than experience points.
The only time where I've seen varying level costs actually make sense is when the gamemaster is running multiple players in separate sessions in a campaign. Which is, admittedly how many of the original D&D games were run.
When you are dealing with a party you have the added complication of how you are going to split experience amongst the party members (do you weight it evenly and democratically, irregardless of their effective level of participation, or do you bias it by what they did). Either way leads to different certain set of possible player contention.
Personally in a party situation I prefer the 3E approach of having each class have the same XP costs. Further formalised in 4E that the party was generally expected to be of a single specified level.
[Oh, and if you want a 3E version of this, ST Cooley's Buy The Numbers did a good job of analysing the individual ability costs of the 3E character classes (which results in an even more complicated freeform class system).]Clerics are one of my favourite character classes in D&D, both in parties and in solitaire play. And I think it's my experience in the later that definitely shapes my experience in the former. After all, in a one-on-one game with the gamemaster your cleric isn't expected to be a combat medic.* And so there isn't the same expectation in party play either.
In most of the games I played in divine healing was properly seen as a blessing rather than a right, and often accompanied by sacrifices to the cleric's temple/church in response (so as to stay on the good side of the cleric's god).
[* Although most will still carry at least one cure light wounds (usually as a last resort). And one solitaire game I took bless. With a little inspiration and oration it came in quite handy.]- AnonymousOctober 25, 2011 at 10:27 AM
The idea that clerics are a "healbot" is a "video game" conceit is ludicrous. Clerics have always been seen as a healbot, since the very beginning of the game, and this is the simple reason people didn't play them. If you don't want to play "support," don't take a cleric.
This misconception is related to the (pernicious) idea that PC "niches" are a post-"video game" invention (or, in its most heinous form, that D&D4 imported the "video game" concept into RPGs). These niches - controller, healer, tank - have been around for as long as D&D and to say otherwise is to romanticize your early experiences of D&D.
Furthermore, the idea that tinkering with XP progression in D&D is anything except just that - tinkering - is also a bit off beam. The XP system in D&D was broken and arbitrary from the very beginning. People tinkered with it because it begged to be tinkered with. It's not protest or critique - it's an attempt to fix the glaring errors. These errors really became apparent when AD&D introduced multi-classing (and thus showed up so many flaws in the system) and the problems weren't even recognized till 3rd ed.
I doubt anyone was protesting at particular limits; they were just tinkering with what needed to be tinkered with. "These niches - controller, healer, tank - have been around for as long as D&D and to say otherwise is to romanticize your early experiences of D&D."
I totally disagree. The only time I've felt the need to fill a niche (or somehow force my players to) in a fantasy rpg was 4th ed. The whole niche thing completely stifles role playing. I've always played and let my players play whatever class they want. It's up to the DM to make the game playable for whatever classes the PCs choose. It's up to the PCs to keep their characters from becoming walking stereotypes (i.e. filling a niche role).Regarding Clerics as Heal-bots: Someone please tell me what other class can heal in B/X or Labyrinth Lord?
Other options might include the Druid (nature cleric) or the Paladin (fighter-cleric) if you allow that advanced stuff or even the high level Ranger might get in a druid healing spell occasionally. But healing is primarily the domain of the cleric. The only other options are resting for long periods of time or potions and magic items (which magic users can crate at level 9).
There's a saying that goes, "when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". Making clerics other than what the rules shoehorn them into being requires ingenuity on the part of the players or the DM.
@Suburbanbanshee, That is a real shame that your DM's are so stodgy and inflexible. Have you considered running your own campaign?But healing is primarily the domain of the cleric. The only other options are resting for long periods of time or potions and magic items (which magic users can crate at level 9).
It's worth noting that, in OD&D anyway, there are 46 cleric spells listed in Supplement I. Of them, only two -- cure light wounds and cure serious wounds -- directly heal damage. Clerics alone can cure disease, neutralize poison, and raise dead. Along with restoration, that's the entirety of their healing-type spells. So, while I understand the notion the cleric is the original OD&D class with healing abilities, I think it's a mistake to see those abilities as the be-all and end-all of the class.
(It's interesting to note that the druid, which also has access to healing abilities, isn't usually viewed primarily as a healer. I wonder why that is.)"So, while I understand the notion the cleric is the original OD&D class with healing abilities, I think it's a mistake to see those abilities as the be-all and end-all of the class."
And yet, "cleric as combat medic" as a primary role was there from the early days, at least here in LA. I think the lack of any non-magical healing skill or non-magical healing at all (other than rest, which could take a character out of the action for days or weeks, as I recall) provided the incentive for clerics to "stock up" on Cure-type spells, so comrades could quickly rejoin the game.
"It's interesting to note that the druid, which also has access to healing abilities, isn't usually viewed primarily as a healer. I wonder why that is."
It's been a long time since I've looked at the rules, but I wonder if that's due to a) the respective stereotypes, with the Christian-based cleric being seen more automatically as a healer and b) healing spells coming at later levels for druids. (As I recall...)It's interesting to note that the druid, which also has access to healing abilities, isn't usually viewed primarily as a healer. I wonder why that is.
Because in OD&D the Druid has a much greater selection of direct offensive spells and they are the ones that tend to be taken. I've found that in general players have much more fun inflicting damage on others than they do in preventing damage to themselves. Defensive magics in any class are usually a secondary consideration; actually using spells on another is a tertiary consideration at best (but that is where many of the clerics spells lie).
These niches - controller, healer, tank - have been around for as long as D&D and to say otherwise is to romanticize your early experiences of D&D.
I disagree strongly. The idea that a party should be balanced is a very modern interpretation of D&D, and is often actually a lot less fun. It forces a stereotype on play that limits it and reduces play opportunities. [The formalisation of this philosophy in 4E is one of the reasons I detest the philosophical basis behind 4E.]Oh and the reason why players have more fun causing damage to the world is not that necessarily that they are homocidal maniacs, but rather in doing so they fulfil a psychological need by interacting and changing the imaginary world they are interacting with. Defensive measures, on the other hand, tend to insulate them more from the imaginary world by reducing the effect that it can have on them.
All IMNSHO of course.This is only a minor variation on what everyone else has said, but for me, it's not just cure light wounds, but that at every spell level, there's one and only one spell that is bound to be useful in any particular adventure.
Sure, you might get to have fun with "sticks to snakes," but you're bound to meet a human/humanoid adversary whom you would like to see "held". And your companions in agony over their giant spider bites have a right to hear you explain why you didn't take Neutralize Poison.
BUT THEN AGAIN, fighters and thieves don't have many choices either. (One-handed or two-handed sword? Die in battle or when I "find traps" the hard way?)
So, I think RP is on to something about players wanting to do soemthing rather than help someone else do something. In the campaign I play in, I have a cleric, and the fun is definitely in reminding my party members that their death is imminent and that they should get right with The Law.@Brian
I think your example kind of illustrates the difference between people who think clerics are "heal-bots" and those who see clerics with a broader view.
I always found multiple cleric spells to be of great value in most every quest. From the level two spells 'Hold Person' is great, but so is 'Silence 15' Radius'. Silences and cripples mages or makes your party extra-sneaky. Cast 'Light' on a sling bullet and shoot it ahead to light up a room (and let the world know you're coming...) 'Find traps' can save the whole party after you lost your thief who was sure he'd found the last trap etc...And that's just from the Labyrinth Lord basic spell list.
And, as for those party members dying of poison? Well, that's what they get for insisting that I go all "heal-bot" and use all my 4th level spell slots for 'Cure Serious Wounds'.
There are lots of choices for clerics, fighters, etc. when it comes to how they want to play, but many players (not necessarily here) want to maximize combat/fighting so you end up with a bunch of fighters with plate mail and longswords/bastard swords and clerics with nothing but healing spells. That's probably always been the case, but I think it's been made worse by the later editions of D&D and MMOs.- AnonymousOctober 25, 2011 at 8:56 PM
For those disagreeing about the "niche" roles of PCs ... I'm not saying this is a good thing or "good role playing" (whatever that is). I'm just saying they have always been there. I'm pretty sure that the book What is Dungeons and Dragons? recommended party balance, and lots of modules recommended taking a mixture of PCs into the dungeon to cover all roles. But most importantly, players for all of eternity have noticed this property of "balance" and how you need a healer in your party, as have GMs, and it's a pretty natural part of the game. Tactics have been created on the assumption of these roles, and people have been working on the basis of them for years. There's even an early letter to the Dragon magazine sage advice column by a wizard complaining that the fighters are using him as a tank because of his low AC.
James, the Druid came out later and according to your own views of it, was originally presented as a monster in Supplement I. Maybe the presentation of that class as slightly malicious less supportive is the reason it doesn't get seen as the healbot? Clerics at low levels, especially, are almost entirely support characters, primarily there for their cure light wounds and bless capabilities, which (especially in early D&D?) were unique to clerics. Also Druids have weaker armour allowances, which maybe makes them less reliable healers in combat.