unclevlad

It's fairly rare that actions like that draw much in the way of suspensions, even when deliberate. Also, note that the clubs have largely ceded ALL disciplinary power to the overseeing bodies...league, or FIFA in this case. That way they can avoid the wrath of fans and the player. "It was taken out of our hands!" The cases where really, truly egregious actions drew MAJOR suspensions? I didn't think it was this long ago, so I might be thinking of another one, but this is really bad. McSorley got less than 1/3 of a season for it. The one I can't find right now was more recent, I think...and there was talk of *criminal* charges. But...yeah, for a stomp, I'd have no problem imposing a 2nd game at least. World Cup elimination rounds? Tough noogies. Control yourself. Of course, that's not applied any more.

No. This isn't like a fire in a fireplace. By the time such a fire is generally even detected, it's burning *acres* of forest. The scale is simply too large. If it's a square area? One acre is 660 feet by 66 feet...exactly. So 10 acres, which in dry conditions can become involved from the initial trigger in pretty short order, represents 660 feet by 660 feet. That's a half mile long perimeter, altho it's not gonna move equally quickly in all directions...the wind's a big factor. Not only do you have to suppress the fire along the perimeter, too...but how are you going to keep it suppressed, if the fire is still near it? How are you going to deliver any such solution into rugged terrain? Helicopters and aircraft have limited capacities. The natural scales of many things are mind-boggling. The carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is about 400 parts per million. A cubic meter of sea level air has a mass of about 1.2 kg per cubic meter. 1.2 kg == 1200 grams == 1.2 million milligrams. So a cubic meter of air has about 500 milligrams of CO2. Now scale this up....1 km x 1m x 1m. 500 grams. 1 km x 1 km x 1 m. 500 kilograms. 10 km x 10 km x 10 meters...500 metric tonnes. That's a VERY thin slice of the atmosphere, over a small area. Nebraska's a middling large state. Its area? 200,000 square kilometers, 2000x as much. Now thicken the atmospheric layer to 500 meters...that won't change the atmospheric density that much. So, over the state of Nebraska...not the whole US, just Nebraska...there's about 5,000,000 TONNES of CO2. That starts giving you the scope of the problem of removing the existing carbon from the atmosphere. Your fire suppression issue is similar. If nothing else, the sheer amount of HEAT!!! being released is very hard to fathom. It's huge.

I don't mind if a high-powered villain escapes...OCCASIONALLY. And it'd better be someone not too lethal. From Dark Knight...Joker blew up, IIRC, a police station and a hospital. How many died there? How many did he threaten to kill on those boats? My only real complaint about the film is that the damage and chaos that Joker represented, drew FAR TOO LITTLE of a response. When someone is a threat of that magnitude, then NOT having the death penalty for them is promising they'll never get out...so a promise they'll never escape is entirely reasonable. On the fiip side, the prison can only go so far. Defenses are static. Someone may occasionally work out how to get around them. I take the position that it's much like felony murder...if someone dies during an attempted robbery, it doesn't matter that it was your partner in crime that shot...or that he tripped and the gun went off accidentally. If someone died, it's the same as deliberate, premeditated murder. In other ways, almost ANY power constitutes at least a deadly weapon, and in many cases, might even border into a weapon of mass destruction. The judicial system, IMO, can't afford to be forgiving.

Ars Magica was set in the early part of the millenium...15th century maybe? Possibly earlier, it's been forever. So with things like travel times, and projects that took months...generally, no. Not all the magi would be in play at one time. Why should we care about a few points on an NPC? What difference does it make? When it's NOT spent on combat, anyway. The scale and those descriptions are straight RAW. The descriptors mean a LOT more to me than the rolls...because what they're also talking about is when you *don't* need to roll, by giving a general, convenient translation of a scale that otherwise has none. What's a 14- Chemistry roll...AP high school, undergrad degree, masters, doctorate? The source material is, as always, useless for these arguments. Writers write what they want to write...and don't write what they don't want to write. We don't have the character sheets. Hey, maybe those guys ARE 13 DEX and Lightning Reflexes 10. We don't know. We don't see many of em trying to execute DEX skills, either...unless it's Beast, or Spidey sometimes, where it's something to be highlighted. And the standard of comparison is generally...other supers. If the average STR is 50, then someone with a 40 is gonna look puny. To borrow a useful aphorism: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We all can, all too easily, impute what our innate prejudices believe because what's presented is totally subjective, and we'll shape it to fit our preconceived notions. I personally have no problem with the vast majority of comics supers having a 23+ DEX. I DO buy starting from a position that, generally...Supers Are Better. To be sure, I'm not talking street-level or Golden Age here. That's always a massive disconnect. You say Supers, I say Supers, but what we're talking about may be 200 points different.

Yes. The player had built a multiform shifter. I suspect now, he might've misunderstood the multiform rules, because I remember he said that after paying for it, he didn't have points left. He got nailed by a near-max damage roll, on killing damage. Another case...this was character murder by the GM, IMO. Flyer with extreme DEX, therefore CV...probably 4E at that point. It was something akin to Hawkman. The GM decided that an autofire killing attack, based on ECV, versus Ego Def, DOING BODY!!! was somehow reasonable. Oh, and 5 shots. And on charges to blow off the END aspect. Blithely ignoring 2 or 3 STOP signs, or anything like the fact that an autofire based on non-standard defenses rates an additional +1. And he took PRIDE in how he build this stuff, cuz...by his math...it was SO CHEAP. Yeah, he was a rules *mangler* at heart. (Mangler being the family friendly word, rather than the accurate one.) That game largely fell apart at that point, altho it was also the end of the semester anyway, and everyone else was in college.

Yeah, there's certainly cases where linking SPD to DEX generally meant you'd buy BACK the SPD to 2. But that isn't the major problem. It's tying CV to DEX, because CV is critical for the game mechanics, for most, and it's expensive. There's a classic dissonance, IMO, about what "Olympic level gymnast" means. Because to me, it's NOT!! related to DEX, per se. It's related to skill roll. Competent: The character can perform routine tasks easily, and difficult tasks with a little effort. He’s qualified to get a job using the Skill. Skilled: The character is well-versed in the Skill. Routine tasks are easy, and more difficult tasks are well within his abilities. He’s qualified to manage or assist less-skilled workers as they use the Skill. Very Skilled: The character is a master with the Skill. Easy tasks are a breeze, and he can perform more difficult or unusual tasks without too much trouble. Highly Skilled: The character is one of the very best people in the world with that Skill. Unusual or difficult tasks which give lesser masters pause are matters of routine. He often works on cutting-edge applications of the Skill. So is an Olympic gymnast Very or Highly skilled? Highly is 16-, so we're talking 18 DEX and 3 levels. Is Simone Biles highly or extremely skilled? She's had 2 or 3 moves named for her, which clearly gets into the "new uses for the skill." Remember that an 18 DEX means a 13- in any DEX-related skill into which the person invests some effort...and that's true whether it impacts SPD and CV or not. I think levels in specific skills is significantly undervalued for NPCs. We go, oh, well, all those skill levels get too expensive!! Well, we're not gonna buy that many different skills for them. This is, for me, even more dramatic when talking about INT...in part because NCM is bogus for INT. The greatest geniuses BLOW THROUGH a 20...look up "modern polymaths" to see what I mean. This isn't the greatest of links, but it does start giving a flavor. Read where von Neumann contributed. The paradigm polymath in history was Da Vinci. I've seen lists of some modern polymaths I can't find right now, but with IQ estimates WELL over 200. By contrast? I don't believe Einstein was. He was a genius physicist, but I don't *think* he had the breadth. So with someone like Reed Richards or Tony Stark...38 INT, or something like a 28 and lots of skill levels? (Yes, this is a pet peeve of mine. Levels with INT do not apply, under the rules, to background skills based on INT per RAW.)

Not most of the fantasy I've read.

GURPS has tech levels as well. Here's a detailed article about theirs: https://gurps.fandom.com/wiki/Tech_Level Your lower tech levels jump up really fast, from nothing to railroads in 2 levels? And a lot of the higher-level stuff is well into the range of "any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic." The buzzwords need assessment for what they, in fact, DO, in the 'real world.' Why is a hyperdrve at 7-8, whereas a grav drive is 11-12, and anti-grav 14-15? What's the difference between AI and ascension programming, between a jump drive and a star drive? It's a fun subject, to be sure, and I'm not trying to be overly critical. If anything, I'd say you're over-thinking the high end.

Well.... Michigan suspends Harbaugh for 3 games. Note: MICHIGAN does. When a 4 game suspension was already vetoed by the infractions committee. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/38234403/sources-michigan-self-imposes-3-game-jim-harbaugh-ban It's spin, hoping that a significant, material suspension can be avoided by splitting it up. Like these 3 games even matter? East Carolina, UNLV, Bowling Green? Probably 30+ point favorites in each.

Oh, I DID click on it, and read it. You clearly misunderstood what was in it. And while, yes, LOTS of athletes DO take that level of coursework, NOT ALL OF THEM. There are plenty who take top-level, difficult classes AND participate in high-level sports.

That approach only works if the GM throws lots of ego attacks. Plus, the typical egoist will crush the average build in any case. What's a common MDCV, in the 3-5 range? Egoist has, what, MOCV of 8? So still hits the high end 90% of the time. Similarly, how many non-egoists buy Mental Def? I'll concede, that's trickier to estimate, but many builds will have minimal amounts. OTOH, that 16 DC attack is gonna get 14 more STUN through, on average, on every successful strike. The first 6-8 or so DCs are just getting through the defenses. Necessary to have, but not impactful. It's the later ones that stun and/or KO. Now, OK, for an opponent, 16 DC attacks *can* be reasonable. If the PCs know it? They have to consider attacking tactically...more holding action, more cooperation. It's also the action economy...the BBEG typically has very few actions compared to the party. This is huge. It's something that took a long time to recognize in D&D; the really powerful villains with few attacks fell to nominally MUCH lower level parties. Those with more attacks...THEY were the big problem. What you don't want is a very powerful BBEG who's also got competent henchmen with him...or obviously worse, a group of villains more powerful than the PCs. Because now the action economy shifts. The PCs will have to spend some of their actions dealing with the grunts, or spread them among the villains, giving the bigger attacks more opportunities to do Bad Things. I'm not sure how the 12 DC standard was developed. It might be, as you say, because that's a 60 STR, but 100 tons is HIGH!!! level for Marvel. The ones that can break this tend to be the MAJOR tanks like Thing...and I don't think a reasonable build of most of em would be anything close to 350 or 400 points. I also think "average" is too campaign-dependent. How tight/loose are you gonna be with limitations? Even OIAID, on a lot of points, is a substantial discount. What is the combat style...comic book where losing phases may be acceptable, at least occasionally...or more in line with urban fantasy/superhero literature, where getting stunned is the prelude to getting SMASHED? Durability is much more important than in comic style...and that's more expensive to build. What about non-combat skills or powers? I love Create Object, whether it'll do anything combat-related or not. Or masquerade-level shape shift...basically, cosmetic only. Are you building for a game environment...or do you want playable but interesting characters you'd like to *be*, someone who might have a life other than the costume? I'm not saying you SHOULD build one over the other, I'm just saying they're quite different targets. Another issue...as we've discussed, what's your baseline for grunts, for normal attacks? If norms mostly have 2 SPD, then a 4 SPD is pretty darn good. If their CV is 4 or 5, then an 8 is plenty...almost overkill. If THEIR defenses are low, then a 10d6 might be plenty. Similarly, do you want your supers to smash through steel with one punch...or have to work on it?

So a question from someone new to the area about whether their electric bill was average or not...no, it wasn't...got me to doing some digging. Yes, last month was the hottest July...and therefore almost certainly hottest month...in history here. 6 degrees above average. Daily high temp records tied or set, 6 times. https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/las-cruces/month-july/monthly-average-temp Note that this broke the OLD record by 2.6 degrees...which is more than the deviation from average for most years. That's HOW MUCH worse the heat was this year. For August, we're currently almost 5 degrees above average, and 4 days with record highs tied/set already. That may change. The storm hitting Baja and SoCal is kicking up wind here right now; that tends to cool things a bit. And rain's likely for Wed/Thurs. Wednesday forecast high is actually BELOW 90...for the first time in 10 weeks. One doesn't expect many days below 90 in that stretch, but still...there's usually a thunderstorm day or two. Not this year. That said? By the weekend, the forecast high is back to upper 90s. <sigh>

Try again. MOST difficult. Stuff that would melt the brains of most. Markov chains? That's the 3rd class in the probability/stats curriculum...the first two are senior-level at UC Boulder. Computational fluid dynamics? Found a program at Illinois: The introductory course is senior level. These are also nominal violations, from the story itself. By the time you're a junior...at the latest...the classes are taught at graduate levels. With that kind of intensity, depth, and pace. Grad programs generally limit the coursework to 9 hours...which isn't a full load by undergrad standards. Also consider the service academies. NOT ONLY do they have intense coursework, they've got at least some of the physical duties required for cadets. THEN their sports. They're training to be officers with peoples' lives at stake.

Of course, but that's still reasoning backwards to justify the in-game aspects. And they didn't always hold. AU/AE has the mageblade...who can fight, who can cast spells. Not AS well as a full-time caster or warrior, but well. In Ars Magica, the notion of "balanced" was tossed RIGHT OUT of the window. The magi were MUCH!!!! better than the companions overall. (With plenty of drawbacks of their own, mind.) The intent was that you'd have multiple characters, sometimes playing your mage, sometimes not. And let's recognize: in the D&D source material, there are few seriously important warrior types. The power brokers are the high priests and archmages. There was no pretense of balance, at higher levels, in 1E or 2E. This changed somewhat in 3E; direct damage became far more problematic once Con bonuses applied to all hit dice. Largely false. I almost never spent any time on math homework, or a non-coding CS assignment. I didn't need to. I finished it. Yeah I was the guy that finished the math exam in 25 minutes with a perfect score. I had *plenty* of time to be active. There are plenty of college athletes who are there to try to go pro, and are taking...let's call them less than rigorous classes. OTOH...there are plenty that are taking serious classes. AND devoting 2-3 hours every day to their sport. MIT and Cal Tech play in Division III conferences. Think their athletes can slack off their course work?

That is pure, unadulterated, absolute stereotyping. Academic types can't be physical? There aren't that many, but there are former (college at least) football players who are MDs, for example. Or with other professional degrees. It's also totally absurd to assert it takes years and years. For the REALLY good? You have it or you don't. Depending on what you want to do...ok, it can take time to get all the tools you'll need. It's NOT that hard; it doesn't take that much of your attention. And by NO means does it preclude spending an hour a day working out moderately, for example. Those who have to grind and grind and grind are good...but very, very rarely geniuses. Try these: https://www.stem-by-design.com/teen-inventors-who-are-changing-the-world/#:~:text=Medical advances%3A&text=Jack Andraka%2C at age 15,cancer was not detected sooner. The image of the graybeard is related to epic-level and/or ARCH mages. And not even all of them. The exemplar early mages are HOW old?? And last: how does the average low-level wizard get around in D&D? WALKING. 20 miles a day. The stereotypes were put in place to enforce class separations in D&D...that's the ONLY reason, IMO. And heck, it never even made much sense once sorcerer was introduced. They STILL enforced the same ridiculous notions...oh, metal interferes with casting...unless it's elven chain. Oh, casters are ridiculously frail...more frail than peasants! STUPID. And they're put in place so there's a value to have the fighters...well, as something other than meat shields. So your argument is trying to go backwards from conclusion to starting point.

Pet peeve of mine, too. IN THEORY, if you're buying the D&D tropes, the problem is that magic's a tremendous slog, at least for wizards, and takes hours and hours and days and YEARS to develop even the trivial competence demonstrated by a 1st level magic user. And, of course, who's the archetypal 'wizard' visually? Gandalf. Monte Cook, in the sidebars in both AE and AU, dropped several snide comments about these tropes. One of my favorites was "why is the wizard even wearing *robes*? Instead of good, normal, maybe enhanced regular clothing? Why ADVERTISE that way?" AU and AE also have the Mageblade class...highly trained in both weapons and armor. Never reaches the most exotic spells, but that's not necessarily a great loss. In fiction, Belgarath's outfit...looked seedy, but made to order by a Mallorean tailor to last years. He had the beard, sure, but he was in very good shape. 2 points per shift was due to the expanded scale. 1E and 2E had that huge useless middle...IIRC, pretty much 8 to 14 was the same. No bonus, no penalty. A *clear* defining principle for 3E was "don't change TOO much." So, an 18 was gonna have to be +4, pretty much. OK, well...that gave a pretty natural scale, and a path for characters to improve...even if being able to do so was actually extremely limited in 3.5. None of that is related to figured vs. not figured. NCM in supers? You're slow, weak, AND clumsy. Figureds doesn't change any of that. The flaw has nothing to do with Figured; it starts with NCM, and probably continues to poor character building for the context. Figureds does NOT give you a boost per se, IF the characteristics prices are correct. The problem, I think, is the fact that figured characteristics in 5E gave you *so many* points. As Chris noted...I don't ever recall not seeing at least an 18 DEX and 18 CON either. How can you NOT, from a costing perspective? For grins, I built the same baselines...30 STR, 23 DEX, 25 CON, 20 BODY, 5 SPD and the same figureds, mostly basing on the 5E...11 REC, 50 END, 48 STUN. I didn't bother with the Leap...that's of variable value. Also, no INT or PRE (costing is the same), and no EGO. The value of ECV is build-dependent. STR is, too, of course, but 30's not crazy high, and would be appropriate for a fairly wide variety of builds. Anyway: 6E, it's 186 points. 5E, it's 127. And this doesn't count that REC, END, and STUN are horribly expensive in 5E...which argues for buying up the underlying numbers. Or using an END Reserve for some things; they're cheap in 5E. In a nutshell, I think...that's the problem. The point scale didn't change. A 500 point 5E character DOES generally have more points to spend in more places, because the characteristics are costing so much less. In 6E, you pretty much have to slap a -1/2 limit to drop the cost to the 5E levels. So to get the FUN stuff that we want, we feel like we have to shave on the characteristics.

It's absolutely still out there. According to WorldOMeters, there have been about 4.5 MILLION new cases, and about 50,000 deaths in the US *this year* from Covid. WIth about 30% of the year...and early winter...still to come. So it's still quite a bit more of a threat than even a bad flu. IIRC, a bad flu season is something like 15,000 to 20,000 deaths.

What, did you get another Fire? I had a Fire, but ditched it a long time ago. FAR too slow. Slow to boot, too, cuz the OS wanted to do too much stuff. I have 2 Kindle e-book readers; got a Paperwhite thinking the extra brightness would be good, but...eh, not so sure. But for tablets? iPad. And yes, I dislike many things Apple does too, but Android has nothing close, even now. But if you need the Google apps, well, I believe a couple are considered pretty good, altho pricey.

Some years back, I'd driven up to Denver for a gaming con. The day I drove back, there was a quite significant fire that'd been burning for a few days...and I actually ran into ashfall driving down I-25. The alternative would've been to take 285 down...MUCH longer, MUCH slower, and totally in the WRONG direction. NEARER the fire zone. So, it really is...well, possibly unlikely just due to the combination of circumstances...but by NO means unbelievable. It's the nature of fires, particularly in less developed areas.

Oh my....in a pretty shaky game all around, D'backs take a 6-4 lead into the bottom of the 9th. Bring in Selwald, the deadline acquisition brought in to be their closer. Sewald gets jobbed a bit on the first batter; a clear strike's missed. But overall, he's VERY shaky. Walk, hit the batter, go deep into the count before a grounder to first gives 1 out and runners on 2nd and 3rd, now with the lineup rolling over. Leadoff man pops out. Tatis walks to load the bases. Soto sends one out there......but a couple feet SHORT of the wall. Fly out. Game over. EDIT: and game 2 isn't close. D'backs 8-1; a grand slam blew open a semi-close game. More Padres mistakes hurt them...Soto lost track of outs, so a fly ball that called for a pretty good catch, turned into a double play because Soto was on 3rd. Some not-so-good defense too. FanGraphs dropped the Padres' shot at making the playoffs from 23% yesterday, down to 12%...despite the Marlins also getting swept. And honestly, I think that's too high. They have talent, fine, but they just play BADLY too often. FanGraphs thinks they'll win close to 60% of their remaining games, and the schedule is reasonably favorable...but the team is at best a paper tiger. D'backs and Marlins are now TIED. Philly has a small working margin, but SF has the 2nd WC, with Cubs/Reds tied a half game back, and then Marlins/D'backs another half game back. Then it's the Padres, a full 5 back of the Marlins and D'backs...and lost the tiebreak with the D'backs now. 5 teams within 1 game for 2 spots.

I'm not sure whether watching ANY preseason game, or being a Bronco fan, shows the more severe form of masochism.............. Besides, stuff like that will continue to happen through about week 8 these days....

Oh MY...Boston at the Yankees, Cole's on the mound for the Yanks, so realistically it's a MUST WIN game for them...the rest of their pitching staff isn't doing well. But the Sox are being aggressive...loaded the bases with none out in the second. Got one infield out, forceout at the plate...but then BOOM... grand slam. Given the Yankee lack of offense, their comeback chances are Not Good. It also doesn't help that Cole's approaching 40 pitches in this inning alone...and it's only the 2nd. If the Yankees lose again...it'd be their 7th straight...they'd fall 8 back in the loss column to Seattle, 7 to Toronto, for the last playoff berth. With less than 40 games to go. Out west, where 3 separate series had to be shifted due to the approaching hurricane...D'backs blew a great pitching performance from a rookie starter. 7 innings, 1 hit, no runs...but the D'backs ran into 2 outs on the base paths and left runners on all over the place. This is an important series for NL wild card. D'backs slip back to 3 up on the Padres, but still 2 back of Miami and Cincy. If D'backs sweep the Padres today, the Pads are in desperate shape. If the Pads sweep, the D'backs continue to lose ground, and continue to lose games they need to win. A split hurts both...but helps keep the Padres on life support, at least. These are the last 2 meetings of the regular season, with the adjusted schedules; it's not like the last few years where most games were divisional games. Padres' win last night gave them a 6-5 season lead. The split, they win the season series, which is the first tie breaker. If the Padres lost both, then the D'backs take the season series, and that means the Padres are effectively 6 back, instead of 5 back. Oakland has been mathematically eliminated from winning the AL. Their division elimination number is 3; their playoff elimination number is 8.

You're using the wrong DEF in computing the STUN probability. You're using rDEF. That's why most of em are WAY too high. For some of these characters, the entire defense is "don't ever get hit"...which I've seen but is, IMO, idiotic. But Sapphire still has a 20% chance of being stunned, using DEF instead of rDEF. That's at least twice as high as I'd tolerate, but I build to real, dangerous fights.

Perhaps this lawyer's heard how many of Trump's lawyers in the past have also been indicted....

That makes it a new exemplar for "damnation by faint praise."