Dr.Device

I don't know what you're talking about
 

I have my own hypothesis on the urban/rural political divide. (And it is only a hypothesis: I know of know empirical research to back it up, so take it with a grain of salt.) It's that small communities and large communities create different social incentives.
 
In a small community, you interact with pretty much the same group of people throughout your life. New people are born, old people die, but turnover is slow and one rarely encounters people who have no social context. This means you must fit in, because the people around you have great influence on your own well being.
 
Take barbershops for an example. Suppose you run a barbershop in a town that can only support one or two barbers. You have a limited supply of potential customers. If people decide you're a weirdo and Not One Of Us, you quickly go out of business.
 
A small community thus encourages sentiments of loyalty and social conformity. Anyone outside the community is an unknown quantity and therefore threatening. And thanks to modern media, rural Americans receive threat-signals of freaky, Not Like Us outsiders every day.
 
In a big city you interact daily with people you don't know and whom you might never see again. It is very important to get along with strangers. If you don't know who's a threat, you also don't know who's an opportunity. And it's worth keeping your eye out for new opportunities, because so much of your life depends on people you don't know: The business where you work could close, your house could be demolished to make way for a bypass, a bank in another country could throw the economy in a tailspin, and so on.
 
Again, consider barbershops. In a city that can support a hundred barbershops, your challenge isn't to fit in -- it's to stand out! Because why should customers go to your barbershop instead of the other 99? Maybe your gimmick is to cultivate a social niche, like being a Black Barbershop, or a Punk Barbershop, or a Blue Collar Barbershop, or whatever. (Cue Ray Stevens' "When You Get A Haircut.")
 
This difference in incentives becomes especially important, I think, in reactions to immigration. In a small town, the sudden arrival of several hundred people from a place you never heard of, who talk, dress, dine, worship and do everything else differently, is an existential crisis. The social order you have known all your life must change. And down in your genes, ten thousand generations of Stone Age ancestors who lived in tiny homogeneous communities are screaming that an enemy horde has arrived and you'd better be ready to fight for your life.
 
In a big city, the arrival of several hundred ethnic strangers is a drop in the bucket... and an opportunity. If you're a politician, maybe it's a new constituency you can cultivate that could tip a close election. For anyone else, the most it likely means is there's going to be a new ethnic restaurant. Impress your friends by being the first to discover it!
 
City folk can feel xenophobia, sure. They have the same ten thousand generations of Stone Age ancestors as rural folk. But there are countervailing incentives as well.
 
Like I said, just a hypothesis. I won't be offended if people with more and wider experience of both big-city and small-town folk say it's full of crap, that's not their experience at all.
 
Dean Shomshak

A question I was getting at earlier, but never really articulated -- my fault -- was:  does the Cover maneuver cause someone to freeze and go to 0 DCV, does it presuppose they're already freezing and 0 DCV, or does it even care whether or not they're at 0 DCV?  
 
The version in Danger International seemed to assume that if you successfully used the maneuver, the target would drop to 0 DCV.  Which may or may not be relevant to what it does now, except that we're assuming that, at some point, the target does drop to 0 DCV.  
 
But... if you're attempting to Cover someone who is at full DCV and attempting to avoid being hit, then you're not, strictly speaking, attempting to Cover them.  You're attempting to attack them.  
 
It seems to me that the essential components of Cover are: the ability to roll the Attack Roll before actually using the attack, the target's inability to resist or avoid the attack except for in a particular set of circumstances, and the target already being at 0 DCV.  
 
The target's inability to resist or avoid the attack seems to be baked into the maneuver... but we see plenty of fiction where the attacker does in fact either miss their Covered target, or their target is able to do something to either escape or turn the tables on the attacker.  (How many times does the covered target, within HTH range, stomp the attacker's foot, elbow them in the gut, or otherwise throw them off?)
 
The target being at 0 DCV... the Cover maneuver always has, and in my opinion should, assume that the attacker yells "Freeze!" or something similar.  The appropriate thing to do here would be to roll a Presence Attack to see if the target in fact freezes, but that doesn't seem to be specified in any version of Covered, from first to now, with the exception of the one in Danger International.  (All of the other historical versions are more or less the same from first edition to now.)  
 
The other question that seems to be asked is: what if someone uses a Power to attempt to interfere?  The maneuver doesn't specify; we can always fall back on the trio of common sense, dramatic sense, and special effects.  The maneuver never existed in any version of Champions prior to 4th, so I would guess that it's not necessarily a superheroic level thing to happen.  Does it happen often in superhero games?  I know it's reasonably common for a villain to say "Freeze, or Lois Lane gets it!" and to hold her covered, but that's between NPCs, so is it something we really need a mechanic to cover?  Characters who can bounce bullets aren't likely to be fazed when a thug or a cop points a gun at them and says "Freeze!"  (The scene from The Incredibles where Bob and Lucius are facing down either security guards or cops, and they tell Lucius to "Freeze!", is a good one to note.)  
 
The additional questions I have are as follows.  Why does resolution happen at the time the maneuver is declared, rather than at the time it is resolved?  Does the attacker know that the Attack Roll is successful (from their in-universe standpoint, whether they hit or not)?  A further question is that, often, in non-superheroic genres, a 17 or 18 rolled on an Attack Roll with a weapon that has the Real Weapon Limitation means that some kind of mishap occurs: the gun jams, or something similar.  Does the attacker know that that will happen when he pulls the trigger?  I would suggest that the attacker doesn't know either whether the attack will hit or not, or whether the mishap will occur, when he pulls the trigger, and that -- therefore -- the Attack Roll should not be rolled when the attack is declared, but rather when it is launched, triggered, or otherwise used.  And, to me, an Attack Roll that you roll at the time the attack is resolved is an ordinary attack, rather than an attempt at the Cover maneuver.  Rolling the Attack Roll before the attack is triggered seems to me, from a meta standpoint, to give the player or GM information they logically shouldn't have and shouldn't be able to base their further actions on.  
 
All of the questions I asked above tend to lead me to a conclusion: the Cover maneuver either shouldn't exist or shouldn't do what it claims to do.  I'm far from certain myself what it's intended to do, nor whether what it claims to do is in fact what it's intended to do, nor am I certain that anyone else in the discussion is any more certain than I am.  
 
My feeling is that the Cover Maneuver, in order to work as written, must either follow a Presence Attack to cause the target to freeze and drop to 0 DCV, or must be used against a target who is already at 0 DCV.  Also, that the attacker won't know whether his attack will hit (nor any additional effects, such as the gun jamming, etc.) until and unless he actually "pulls the trigger", whether that's an actual trigger for a gun, or however the attack is loosed, therefore the Attack Roll shouldn't be rolled until then.  And, given that fiction is full of plenty of cases where the attack is somehow interrupted, avoided, Dodged or Blocked, etc., we shouldn't privilege Cover over any other attack maneuver. 
 
If the answers to these questions were obvious, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now.

You know what you did.

The existing default does tend to work better (if not perfectly) for stats than powers, I agree.
 
And it's never been that big a deal for me, because I mostly GM, and I just require the players to build the powers in a way that makes sense. I've had very few players who wanted to use adjustment powers (other than for healing or self boosting) anyway. And when I do play, I write up my own characters to make sense (to me, of course).
 
It is definitely one of the easiest to work around flaws in the Hero System. The work arounds are built right in, with the various advantages, The default just grates. That's all.
 
For my next kvetch, I'll go into why I really haven't liked any version of Shape Shift since 4th edition.

Read the original post.  The power is described as "player defines who is and is not affected from use to use".  That is not a limitation.  You and I are largely on the same page, except that you assume the player will be OK with the GM telling him "no, you can't define it that way" mid-game.  I am looking for the player to define how this will be limiting in play - HE gets to define the power, and we will set the limitations/mechanical build to meet his vision.
 
Not "he writes down the mechanics and the GM dictates how the power works".  That's how we end up fighting over what the ability can and cannot do in game.Define what it can do, and build the power that does just that.

Okay, kidding aside...
 
I know this will offend some people here, but I did not hold my nose when I voted for Hillary Clinton. I thought, and still think, she'd have made a pretty good president. Not great, but pretty good. Here's why.
 
During the 2016 campaign, All Things Considered interviewed several of her former Senate colleagues to get a sense of her time there. The senators spoke highly of her detailed knowledge of law and policy, and her skill and diligence at quiet negotiation to bring coalitions together to get useful legislation passed, instead of scoring noisy propaganda points to please the activist party zealots.
 
The kicker? These were moderate Republican senators. Well, former senators -- all but one had been primaried out in the Tea Party wave.
 
Some of Hillary's much-touted flaws are also a matter of perspective. For instance, that she's "calculating" and "inauthentic." Well, I certainly hope a president would think carefully before speaking and try to strike a balance between what voters want to hear and what can actually be done. As for "authenticity," I am not sure what people mean by that. I'd say, Hillary showed herself to be authentically calculating.
 
(You can't get much more spontaneous and authentic than Donald Trump. Still think those are always good qualities?)
 
Hillary did not project a warm personality on the campaign trail. Fine with me, I'm not voting for someone to have a beer with.
 
Some people also objected to her and Bill's fundraising. They particularly didn't like some of the sources for the money. Well. Until someone figures out a way to really and truly get money out of politics -- without replacing it with something even more damaging and less democratic -- it's harder to get elected without money, and you can't do good in government without getting elected. The Clinton fundraising machine helped a lot of Democrats. Hillary would have entered the White House with a lot of Dems owing her and ready to advance her agenda.
 
I admit, Hillary seems to have a shifty relationship to the truth. It seems to be a common flaw for politicians so I grade on a curve here. The Hillary-lies that stick in my memory -- I particularly think of her story of landing in Bosnia under fire -- seem designed to make her look braver and more interesting, rather than meant to harm others.
 
Deleting the emails didn't look good either, but as political crimes go this clumsy attempt at damage control doesn't offend me much. FBI Dorector Comey didn't think it was prosecutable, so I'll let it pass.
 
Finally, consider Hillary's enemies. I suspect the far Right wouldn't hate her so much if they did not assess her as deeply dangerous to them. That is an endorsement in itself.
 
All in all, Hillary was a pretty bad candidate. But like I said, she might have done okay as a president. I'd have voted for her even without Donald Trump as the alternative. She wouldn't have pleased the progressive wing of the Dems, but I'm rather centrist myself.
 
Dean Shomshak

Thanks for the info!
 
My next character will be another originally-villainous archetype, the Robotics Mastermind (I think that's right).
 
I played a lot more Champions Online than I ever did CoH, but I think I like the play style of CoH better. In theory, I really liked the more freeform nature of powers in CO, but I feel like they never got the balance as good as it could have been. It also felt sort of like a half measure. One thing I definitely missed in CO was the CoH teleport. An actual teleport instead of a weird desolid+flight.
 
I'd love to see a super hero MMORPG that was more Hero-like in its philosophy, with special effects more separated from mechanics. I have ideas, but the probably isn't the place to go into them. 

I saw this on the Book of Face yesterday:

Language evolves.
 
Existing words weren't serving a needed purpose, so a new one was created. 
 
It happens all the time.

You seem emotionally invested in this. What is it exactly about "Latinx" that bothers you? Do you have a better word for talking about a mixed gender group of Latin-American descent? Or talking about non-binary folk of Latin-American descent?

Language evolves.
 
Existing words weren't serving a needed purpose, so a new one was created. 
 
It happens all the time.

The way I see it -- and this is my GM opinion, everyone else's may differ -- is that if you don't have any offensive mental powers, and if you don't spend any points on OMCV, then you don't have an OMCV score.  If you don't have any offensive mental powers, but you really want to, you can spend points on it, and you'll buy it up from 3.  Why you would want to, I have no idea, but the option is there.
 

(Damn! I said I had done my last post here)
I bet you could come up with 100 different ways a character is going to notice and be disadvantaged with strength zero (or 1 if we are doing 6th RAW). What problem is Mr Zero OMCV going to have in most normal games. The GM will not have to work hard with someone selling back STR, he is entitled to say he is not interested in putting in the time or mental effort to make the OMCV sellback worth it.
 
The rules are not just about the players...powers, complications and sellbacks need joint buy-in.
 
Doc
 
 

The people I see criticizing the Batwoman trailer are primarily conservatives and anti-feminists who don't like that this version of Kate Kane is taking a loud-and-proud "I am woman, hear me roar" approach to her life. Basically what it comes down to is that this Kate Kane is someone who, if she were a real person, the critics would not like and wouldn't be able to stand being around. That's fine, but that doesn't make the show bad, or even potentially bad, it just makes it something they shouldn't waste their time watching. Not every tv show is going to appeal to everyone. Not every superhero tv show is going to appeal to every superhero fan. The volume of hate expressed online is not a reflection of the likely quality of the show, in my view, but rather purely a reflection of how easy it has become for shrieking harridans to find a (like-minded) audience and be heard.

But, on the plus side -
 
Come to the Phantom Zone!Live forever! See the universe! 
 
It practically sells itself.

But, on the plus side -
 
Come to the Phantom Zone!Live forever! See the universe! 
 
It practically sells itself.

Are Endgame spoilers okay in this thread?
 
I'll wrap this in spoiler tags, just in case.
Here's what I'd like to see for a Fantastic Four movie

Are Endgame spoilers okay in this thread?
 
I'll wrap this in spoiler tags, just in case.
Here's what I'd like to see for a Fantastic Four movie

Are Endgame spoilers okay in this thread?
 
I'll wrap this in spoiler tags, just in case.
Here's what I'd like to see for a Fantastic Four movie

Are Endgame spoilers okay in this thread?
 
I'll wrap this in spoiler tags, just in case.
Here's what I'd like to see for a Fantastic Four movie

Supes and Thor are just different characters.  MCU Thor isn't comic book Thor, but I still like the character.  Up to that point, we've had 3 Thor movies and 3 previous Avengers movies to get to know him.  We've also had those clips with Thor and his roommate Darryl, and honestly by Endgame we just really really like Thor.  Then when he's got his chance to undo everything bad, it turns out the villain has beaten them to the punch.  It's the Ozymandius "I did it thirty five minutes ago" moment.
 
And so Thor chops his effing head off.
 
Here's a guy who we've spend 6 movies growing to love, and we completely understand his frustration and despair, and he has a completely human moment and he does what many of us might do in that moment.  He becomes more like Eric Draven in The Crow, or Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven.  It's a completely righteous execution of a completely terrible man.  It's cathartic, and yet it doesn't put anything right.  It's not a great heroic moment, but it is a great heroic failure.  It's an awesome moment in the film.  It's final but in a sense it's also anti-climactic.  We're expecting there to be this great battle where the heroes fix everything, and instead Thor kills him and now there's nothing for the heroes to do except live the rest of their lives in a half-dead world.  Thanos is dead, but the heroes still lost.
 
Superman's neck snap isn't unjustified.  I'm not saying he's a villain for killing Zod, or even that he was wrong.  He had to do it, but the filmmaker didn't give it nearly the same dramatic weight as Thor's decapitation.  They haven't even established that Superman has a code versus killing at that point.  Obviously he doesn't want to kill Zod, but there's no indication that he has anything more than the normal "reluctance to kill" that all of us have (and that we get no points for).  Now again, Thor doesn't have it at all, but they aren't the same character.

I'm going to speculate that you are white, male, heterosexual, cisgendered, nominally Christian, and have a reasonable job. (I apologize if I got any of that wrong.) You don't have to worry about being discriminated against because of your religion, ethnicity, or gender. You are well-fed, clothed, have a roof over your head, and have no more than a theoretical worry about how you're going to pay for these things. Of course things are going pretty well for you.
 
Unfortunately, for people not like you, Trump is making everything worse.

There's debate about everything, including whether or not the Earth is flat, so I don't find the existence of debate meaningful.
 
An individual can be subject to multiple jurisdictions. Almost all of us are. I'm subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, the state of Texas, and the city of Austin. If I were in the military I'd also be subject to that jurisdiction. If I travel to England, I'm subject to the jurisdiction of that country, but still subject to the jurisdiction of the US (unless I go through the complex process of renouncing my citizenship). The amendment does not say subject exclusively to the jurisdiction of the US. The argument that being subject to another jurisdiction somehow means they aren't subject to US jurisdiction is entirely specious.
 
Besides which, to argue that these children are not subject to the jurisdiction of the US is to argue that their parents also are not. If they are not subject to the jurisdiction of the US, then they are not bound by its laws. If that were the case, US law enforcement would have no authority over them. 
 
Children of anyone with diplomatic immunity have always been excluded for exactly that reason. They, in fact, are not subject to the jurisdiction of the US. That's what diplomatic immunity is.

There's debate about everything, including whether or not the Earth is flat, so I don't find the existence of debate meaningful.
 
An individual can be subject to multiple jurisdictions. Almost all of us are. I'm subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, the state of Texas, and the city of Austin. If I were in the military I'd also be subject to that jurisdiction. If I travel to England, I'm subject to the jurisdiction of that country, but still subject to the jurisdiction of the US (unless I go through the complex process of renouncing my citizenship). The amendment does not say subject exclusively to the jurisdiction of the US. The argument that being subject to another jurisdiction somehow means they aren't subject to US jurisdiction is entirely specious.
 
Besides which, to argue that these children are not subject to the jurisdiction of the US is to argue that their parents also are not. If they are not subject to the jurisdiction of the US, then they are not bound by its laws. If that were the case, US law enforcement would have no authority over them. 
 
Children of anyone with diplomatic immunity have always been excluded for exactly that reason. They, in fact, are not subject to the jurisdiction of the US. That's what diplomatic immunity is.