unclevlad

I was.

There are some mildly crazy approaches to this, and plenty of opportunity for seriously mixed and bent metaphors as one intermixes real and fictional and sci fi...

IF the debt authorization bill passes...I'm beginning to think it will, as some Democrats voted to move out out of committee...then I fully expect the Freedom Caucus to call a motion to vacate, as soon as possible. Video today has them irate over the lack of cuts, and it seems likely they're gonna try to retaliate. This could be an interesting moment. The Democratic caucus should be talking about a) do we, or do we not, support the compromise? b) IF!! it passes, and the Freedom Caucus then calls the motion after it's cleared Congress (thus, the urgency is reduced)...do we back the motion or not? Actually voting against the motion to vacate, IMO, would strengthen McCarthy a bit, but it would damage the Freedom Caucus a GREAT deal more, IMO. c) If the Freedom Caucus moves to vacate *before* the authorization bill has gone through the whole process, then I'd hope the Dems just don't even think twice and vote against it...as now it's just a blackmail measure. Unfortunately, the rules appear to indicate that there's no limit to the number of times a motion to vacate can be called. It's a privileged motion too; normal House business can't proceed until it's cleared. But if this causes the government to default, then the consequences will be blamed squarely on them, and there's a decent shot of *severe* backlash against all Republicans. It probably won't be worth the pain we'll ALL feel, tho.

And recognize these are all patchwork solutions because there's no good general solution. RAW hates cheap healing because it practically eliminates any real threat. OTOH, too little healing is tedious as heck. Anyone who's had their characters sit around for 2 days...in the middle of the dungeon...while the cleric heals them up, is familiar with the issue. So the trick is to try to strike a balance between the extremes. This gives rise to the Goldilocks problem..."too hot...too cold...just right!" Balancing out competing factors is ALWAYS a major PITA and hard to get right. It's also, in a situation like this, highly subjective/context-sensitive...our notions of "just right" won't be the same. So IMO you're just better off figuring out how you want it to work, then back-engineer the mechanisms without regard, necessarily, for what's in the rules now. Like maybe 1d6 Healing is 5 points per d6, counted as normal damage...the BODY gives the BODY healed, the pips give the STUN. However, it takes, let's say, a full phase...or even an extra phase. Integrated into the base cost. It can be re-used at once per minute; if you want once per turn, that's at least a +1/2 in my book. The heck with the halving rule. It's NOT an "adjustment power." Or if that's too cheap for you? How about 7 points? If you want to limit Healing, then how about saying Healing always runs off an "END Reserve" since it costs END anyway. The reserve has a number of points equal to the active point cost of the power...or, nastier maybe, to the REAL cost. If you wanna shave points off, it won't last as long. The Reserve is free...but you can't buy it up. The reserve has a non-improvable REC of 1 per minute, or something along those lines. Oh, and you can't buy Reduced END for your healing. So what that it's not uber-flexible? Sure, this'd be overly restrictive for most game elements, but the whole freeform approach has major problems of its own. Sometimes a narrow approach is NOT a bad thing. EDIT: to reduce combat effectiveness...the DOT notion isn't bad, just...make it the rule. Healing is like Regen...a slow process. It's 1d6 points...per phase, or per turn, your choice...for a number of phases equal to the purchased amount of the power. +1 or half die? Another phase. So 4d6, 4 phases; 5 1/2 d6, 6 phases, with the last being the 1/2 die. The healer can walk away, the END is all paid up front by the healer. Note that this is intended to keep some lethality in play, by not allowing "here, let me just fix you all up right now."

Perhaps the upset of the year in tennis. Daniil Medvedev loses a first set tie break, SHOULD have lost the second set tie break, to Thiago Seyboth Wild...#172 in the world. Med wins the 3rd, so up 2-1 and figure all is right with the world, right? But the Brazilian comes back to take the next 2. To score his first win in a Slam match...in his second ever match at a Slam. In his first Tour-level (as opposed to futures/challengers) match of the year. Flip side? The points from last year's French Open came off Rafa's ranking this week. As he hasn't been able to play...yeah, his ranking just CRASHED. From #15, a residue of winning the French, to #132. He'll still get entry into any event he wants to play...but I don't think he'll get seeded, which just makes things that much tougher...assuming a) he tries to come back, and b) his body *lets* him play at a top-20 level again.

Can we list the same person as The Captain and The Misfit? There've been cases where this is, IMO, true...............

To give Trencher some support here...... It's important to recognize that our criticism of the artistic merits of these products...may not be mirrored by the great unwashed masses. Critical observers can likely be ignored, as we're a tiny, tiny minority. The AI drek may well be like the Wal Mart python, squeezing out quality in a push to the bottom.

FTFY I've felt the wait killed them, as they had a 9 day layoff. It killed their roll...they were a freaking 21-1 (!!!!) before that. 5 back in the loss column, with 14 to play...and caught the Padres for the WC. (And the Padres played solidly, going 9-6.) Win the tie break game. Sweep the 2 NL series. It was a dream!!! stretch. Til they had time to wake up..... Game 2. In Boston. Happened to ALSO be opening night for Great American Beer Festival in Denver...a CRAZY!! night inside the Convention Center. Yeah, I was there that year. Couple TVs got set up. Picture was pretty bad, but it was packed around em. And it was neck and neck...Sox won 2-1. Wasn't there for game 3; Saturday at GABF has 2 sessions, the afternoon session is when the medals are announced. It's the bigger one. I was at that one...which tended to make hitting the evening session...impractical, shall we say. And the least attractive; lots of the best stuff is gone, the reps are all tired, they're ready to call it. And if you'd hit both Thursday and Friday night? At GABF, there was no limit on how much you could have, per se...and a WHOLE lot of not just good, but STRONG!!! beers. Sam Adams had Utopia there...it's ~ 18%. Dogfish Head had a bunch of odd special bottlings, usually 10+%. Pizza Pro Solana Beach, Tomme Arthur's starting point before starting up Lost Abbey...Shark Attack, a triple red. WOW. More barleywines and imperial stouts than you could count. Yeah. NOT a good idea to try to repeat after only a few hours. And the taste buds were generally feeling hammered; this was also the height of the Hop Bomb trend, so it wasn't just the alcohol that did it.

O ye of little faith. Nuggets in 5. No clue about the hockey. Side thought: Vegas must be loathed by many, many front offices in multiple sports. An *expansion* franchise, started from NOTHING...yet into the SCF twice in 6 years. They spend money; 4th highest payroll in the NHL. But hey, they make it WORK, where soooo many teams don't.

So now we'll have another team in High Drama mode. Do the Celtics keep Joe Mazzulla? Remember: at the start of the season, expectations for the Celtics were low, after the Udoka dismissal so late. He got them through the season with the 2nd best record...but the playoffs, UGH. Barkley ripped him last night, for never changing the game plan. OTOH, it's also easy to rip Tatum and Brown for being AWOL in too many games. Caught a bit of Greenberg and SAS on Get Up (before switching to the French Open)...Greeny felt Tatum and Brown did nothing to make each other better. And Brown's a free agent. Do you (over) pay him? Is he worth the supermax, near $60M a year???? I'm biased...not against Brown per se, but against ridiculous contracts like that. The Celtics in general will have a hard time self-evaluating, tho. Significant success...but serious issues, too. In all 3 playoff series.

Before you say that, look up the NBA all-time triple-double leaders. --Westbrook (198 in 1094 games) --Oscar (181 in 1040) --Magic (138 in 906) --Lebron and Jason Kidd (107, in 1421 and 1391 games respectively) --Jokic (105 in 596) And he's only 28. He's almost the poster boy for load management too...certainly, the Nuggets are not pushing to play him if there's issues. They also don't overuse him when he does play: less than 34 minutes a game, the last 2 years. Put those together...and barring the unforeseeable, he should have another 6-8 solid years. He could pass Westbrook; that's by no means a given, but it's not out of the question. It's a lock he'll pass Magic. Early lines...different sites give different odds, but Nuggets are -400, Heat +300. The series line is Denver -2.5, +120; that means if they win in 4 or 5, you win the bet. If 6 or 7, or they lose the series, you lose the bet. Of course, this is the kiss of death this year. As late as the start of the playoffs, the Nuggets were +1100...but "favorite" after "favorite" has fallen apart. In hockey, it's Vegas as a narrow favorite. Good thing the Heat and Panthers don't share a stadium. The schedules clash completely, as both Denver and Vegas have home court.

So Memorial Day evening fizzled. Celtics flail again and lose badly. Dallas doesn't even show up at home. Give up a goal 4 minutes in, another midway through, and a killer 3rd less than 4 minutes later. 6-0 wipeout puts Vegas into the finals.

Bet against the bookies. Celtics were -7.5 tonight. 2 minutes left and the game's over...Miami by 19. Tatum rolled an ankle on the first play of the game, and the Celtics fell apart. Tried to make a comeback in the 3rd, but that fizzled, and the Heat buried them in the first half of the 4th. NO ONE on the Celtics stepped up. Barkley ripped into them at halftime for terrible ball movement and doing nothing but jack up 3's...AGAIN. 9-41 right now, and at this point, it's long past mattering. And ok, you could argue that maybe with no ankle turn, it might've been different...but the Celtics blew the first 2 games at home. The Heat will get the credit they deserve, and the Celtics will get *hosed* by the Talking Heads, as they deserve.

All 3 of those images look software-created to me...not drawn, even on a computer. Pure software.

It's not a ref scandal in terms of on-court stuff. Lewis is being investigated to see if he violated a rule about league personnel posting about the league activities, including refereeing, without approval. There's a social media account where there was considerable posting in support of Lewis and other refs. I think this is even less significant than some of the NFL gambling suspensions...because they posted allowed, legal bets...from inside NFL facilities.

Eh, they *can* drive with some moisture, because F1 handling issues are just different than oval-course racing. F1 requires a broader skillset as a car designer or driver, I'd think, but driving in the wet isn't, IMO, part of that.

And they whirl and they twirl and they tango Singin' and jinglin' a jango Floatin' like the heavens above Looks like woodchuck love...............

Oh yeah....and for those of you dying to put Jumanji in for J here??? Neenerneenerneener...... (hey I'm going into second childhood soon, right?)

Jenga not that i woulda been very good at it, but hey, making the tower crash down is fairly amusing in any case, right?

You don't necessarily have to spend an arm and a leg for out-of-combat healing. The key here is that when the re-use duration has expired, the maximum effect rule gets reset. You're back to zero applied. So: Healing 1d6+1 (13 points); let's use Standard Effect, so 4 pips, or 2 BODY. Decreased Re-use...take your pick. 5 minutes is +1; 1 turn is just +1 1/2, which is still just 32 points. That'll fit easily into a Healing/Aid MP. Heck, make it 2d6, so 3 BODY using Standard Effect for convenience, is 50 points. Combat healing can hit 50 active pretty easily...4 dice, 1/2 END. That's probably too much for some genres but it's still reasonable for higher-end fantasy, and certainly for mid-level supers. For another approach for combat healing...APG has a couple alternate rules. First is extra time for full effect. In exchange for moving a step down the time chart, the Healing automatically gets the max result...pretty much saying, the healing gets applied twice. That gives everyone one good round of healing. Option 2: allow Cumulative on Healing, with the proviso that you can't apply the increased maximum that Cumulative has. You're still limited to maximum effect. 3d6 Healing with Cumulative would let you heal 9 BODY total, for 45 points. This feels better than the extra time rule. A house rule might be that you can't use Cumulative and Decreased Re-use together...or, you can't use Decreased Re-use down to the combat scale, 1 turn for sure, possibly 1 minute. Even 5 minutes is too long to be considered combat use. 2d6 Cumulative, Re-use 1 turn is 60 active. NOT cheap, I grant, but that'd be 6 BODY per turn, should that much be needed.

Complementary question: would it increase or decrease the enjoyment? Honestly: I seriously doubt I'd ever buy Negation, if it was rolled, so for me, the whole thing would be moot...except to say that a change that makes an inefficient power LESS attractive, seems unwise on the surface. I might define a basic Defense power...let you put in PD, rPD, ED, rED, work out the total costs based on what you put in. If nothing else, it'd unclutter the sheet. There is one manipulation with Damage Negation: make it STUN only. That's -1/2. Still: that's just break-even with buying straight PD and ED, assuming you have enough DEF to bounce the BODY, which is the sensible approach to STUN-Only Negation OR Damage Reduction. I rarely build an overall defense just based on any one thing anyway. I actually like Damage Negation, STUN Only...not for price efficiency, but I build to avoid too much BODY, then I can use the STUN only Negation or Reduction to get that back to where I want it to be. I *can* be hurt...not easily, but it's possible...while I'm also able to last and I don't risk getting Stunned frequently. Mmm...well, OK, come to think...if Negation is rolled, I might just buy CON a few points higher in a 12 DC game.

Amusement in the NHL. Vegas Knights take the first 3 in the western semis, but lose game 4 in Dallas...and now game 5 in Vegas. So it's going back to Dallas with Vegas up 3-2...but now probably with more pressure on them. Dallas is under "win or go home" pressure, but hey, they've greatly beaten the odds by getting this far. And in the NBA finals...Boston had, I believe, a 9 point lead going into the 4th. Miami makes a run to tie...but a funky play when they had a 1 point lead, led to a basket with an and-1 foul, AND a technical foul...giving Boston a 3 point lead. It grew to 7 with only a couple minutes left. Miami comes back. With 17 seconds left, Celtics up 1, Marcus Smart gets fouled...and makes 1 of 2. Miami gives Butler the ball...he weaves down the right side with Horford on him. Bit of a fumble, Butler goes up, Horford rakes across the arms. Butler's behind the line...3 FTs. Butler makes all 3. Miami has a 1 point lead with 3 seconds left. Boston calls TO. Inbound to Marcus Smart. QUICK!!! turnaround...RIMS OUT!!! BUT!!! A Celtic's sitting under the bucket...tips.........GOES IN!!!! HUGE QUESTION...was it in time??? This is one of the situations where the NBA's made great rules...there's all kinds of evidence. So was it???? YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CELTICS WIN BY 1 and force a game 7. Miami fans are going...whwwhwhwhwhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?????????????????? Teams up 3-0 have been 149-0 150-0, I forgot Denver. This is only the 4th time it's reached 3-3. So now we have the Battle of the Aphorisms in Boston. "There is nothing new under the Sun".... or "There's a first time for everything." What kinda bites is, game 6 in the NHL western final is also Monday, and they start only a half hour apart. Well...TNT makes it easy to stream the hoops.

It may be covered by whistleblower statutes, and there may be other ways to breach the NDA. There are limits here, and this policy *might* go outside the bounds of the NDA. It wouldn't be the first time it's happened; the "anti-woke" crowd doesn't seem to let little things like existing laws stop them. See: DeSantis in Florida. And this getting out, will encourage the media to dig, and potentially encourage others to spread more of this. Even if it's legal, it's an abuse of authority, and IMO a breach of public trust to attempt to conceal policy changes and resulting actions.

It's the mind control, and by extension, mental powers generally, that would worry me. Telepathy also becomes a lot more potent. Yeah, rolling the damage negation gives the same average result, but as Hugh points out, another roll, more counting, slower game. Damage negation is inefficient as a defense; we know this. 2d6 negation averages 2 BODY resistant and 5 STUN. That's no more than 8 points, but it costs 10. Its advantage is, it IS convenient...it speeds the game up. And as you noted...more volatility, which IMO is NOT a good thing. ESPECIALLY on defense. Getting Stunned is bad. You're at 1/2 OCV and 1/2 DCV, so very vulnerable. Your nonpersistent powers stop; the key might be Flight, as you'll fall. You may or may not hit before you recover from being stunned, but still. And many power constructions justify a Nonpersistent. So, what do you do? To start with: probably not take negation. If I did elect to? I'd try hard to buy a couple MORE dice than I'd need. To wit...let's go with 12d6 attacks. Average is 42. 48 or less is 86%; 50 or less is 92.4%; 52 or less is 96%. Let's further state a 23 CON; that seems reasonable for 12 DCs. My total DEF + CON gives me the number to avoid being Stunned. I'd consider getting stunned from 1 strike in 7 to be too risky. 1 time in 12 or so...yeah, might be closer. So my target DEF is 27. If I have RAW Damage Negation, I simply count 3.5 per die. Let's go with 4 DCs...that's 14 points of my 27. I'll probably go with 3 nonresistant and 10 resistant. Let's verify...13 DEF vs. 8d6. 37 STUN would Stun me. 36 or less is 96%. So a small improvement. If I roll my Negation, and the attacker's rolling his full attack...need a quick simulation. OK, no problem. Done. My risk of stunning goes from 7.6% to about 10.8%. That's pretty significant by my lights. If I up my DEF to 14, it drops to about 8.3%; if I go up to 15 DEF, it drops to about 6.3%. I'd buy at least 1 more point of DEF...and probably 2. Note that the flip side? I'm generally TAKING less, because I can roll high on my negation. This is rolling a 12d6 attack, rolling 4d6 negation + 14 DEF and 23 CON. There were 100,000 trials run. # times stunned: 8340 net stun 0 count 2390 <= 2390 net stun 1 count 987 <= 3377 net stun 2 count 1215 <= 4592 net stun 3 count 1682 <= 6274 net stun 4 count 2049 <= 8323 net stun 5 count 2576 <= 10899 net stun 6 count 3082 <= 13981 net stun 7 count 3438 <= 17419 net stun 8 count 4035 <= 21454 net stun 9 count 4349 <= 25803 net stun 10 count 4888 <= 30691 net stun 11 count 5265 <= 35956 net stun 12 count 5597 <= 41553 net stun 13 count 5650 <= 47203 net stun 14 count 5760 <= 52963 net stun 15 count 5714 <= 58677 net stun 16 count 5389 <= 64066 net stun 17 count 5331 <= 69397 net stun 18 count 4925 <= 74322 net stun 19 count 4431 <= 78753 net stun 20 count 4032 <= 82785 net stun 21 count 3487 <= 86272 net stun 22 count 2978 <= 89250 net stun 23 count 2410 <= 91660 net stun 24 count 2004 <= 93664 net stun 25 count 1635 <= 95299 net stun 26 count 1325 <= 96624 So 30% of the time, I can laugh off the attack, pretty much...and on the flip side, it's about 20% that I take 20+ stun, which is on the high side. The variance is notably higher. Now, OK, if that's what you want...fine. The net result is that it's a LOT harder to figure out what a balanced level of defense is, and this is IMO a VERY Bad Thing.

Another incident of a horrible result due to bad rules. Penn State vs. Duke, the lacrosse national championship semis. 15-15 at the end of regulation...lacrosse often has high scoring. The OT rule is.....next goal wins. So *each possession* is huge, much more than hockey, soccer, or football. Duke gets the faceoff. Move the ball, move the ball. An attack on the goal...the kid dives as he shoots...the fact that there's a stick involved allows lacrosse shots to happen from an amazing variety of angles and positions...it's IN!!! GAME OVER!!! EXCEPT...... Lacrosse has a circle by the goal, called the crease. Offensive players can't be in the crease, as that would interfere with the goalie, and likely for safety. The shooter's right foot was clearly OVER the crease line. It's hard as heck to see, but a replay angle showed it. Crease violations are not reviewable. Reviews for some things are allowed at the national quarterfinals and later...but not for crease violations. And this is on the sudden victory shot. Second semifinal is coming up shortly. The final is Monday.