unclevlad

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.

Champions III has Healing, and it is as grey notes: you have to keep track of each injury separately, because you can only Heal a particular injury once, and if you rolled higher than the BODY...it was wasted. Of course...it was rolled as normal damage...you got back the pips of STUN, but only the BODY count in BODY. So pretty much 1 pip of BODY for 10 points. Yeah, PITA. They clearly DON'T want it in the game. C III, page 29: Wow. So take some BODY, you're expected to back out? That's not very heroic. Yeah, some players might be less concerned about collateral damage, but this feels like tossing the baby out with the bath water. In Champions 3rd edition, there is no Aid or Healing in the core book, so the general antipathy remains. There is Power Drain, but it's expensive with figured characteristics...DEX is 3 points per, so 6d6 of Drain DEX, for 60 points, only gets 7 DEX. It's also very volatile; the default is that the power recovers at a rate of 1 PP per *segment*, starting the segment after the Drain. There's an adder to slow that down, but unless you really want to put a heckuva lotta points into it, it's not going to last. In Hero 4E, we get a Drain that can actually last...so now there's need for Aid to counter it. My thought is, they priced Aid as the reverse of Drain, to act as its counter, and didn't recognize the advantageous angle. Yeah, if I'm reading it right...1d6 STUN Aid, Constant (+1), Persistent (+1)...15 points. As Healing, 10 points. 1d6 BODY, same features? 10 points...for Regen that happens per phase. Repeat END. To be rude and obnoxious? Put em into an EC. So...yeah. 5E actually has a sideboard about the cost shift on page 133. I don't know why they went to 0 END...perhaps they thought at 10 points per die, costing END, it was gonna be too hard to use. So I'd say the changes from edition to edition reflect serious flaws in the earlier rules, potentially as well as ongoing attitude shifts towards healing in general.

The A's have stopped being the butt of any joke, because doing so now would just be piling on. They're not just bad, not even merely atrocious. They're approaching bad enough to demand an intervention by MLB so this doesn't continue. Astros are up 5-2 going into the 9th, so I'll go out on a limb and say they'll win tonight. Pitching matchup...along with everything else...favors them tomorrow. So if they win both? That means the A's will have 54 games completed...1/3 of the season. And they'd be 10-44. Yeah. 10-44. 4-22 in May. It's hard to believe this won't improve *some*, but 1/3 of the games is a non-trivial sample. At this rate, they'll only win 30. The 2003 Tigers hold the dubious record for fewest wins in a 162 game season...at 43. I feel bad for their fans, or perhaps those who *want* to be their fans, but come on. This isn't even tanking. Yeah, tonight's game is over, Astros win as expected. A's are now 6 back of the atrocious Royals (15-37) for worst record...who also are fielding a totally non-competitive team. A's are 33 under .500; Royals are 22. The White Sox have the 3rd worst record in the game...at 9 under .500. This is not acceptable to most fans, IMO. Not THIS level of non-competitive.

That can be said for at least 1/3 of the players in the league. This is pretty scary, to see how many make, say, $10M+, or even a paltry $3M+, a year. Oh, and of note? Hopkins IS NOT even on this list because he got released. https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/rankings/cash/ With Hopkins, yeah, he made too much, but it's also the dubiousness of long-term guarantees and the incomprehensible, labyrinthine machinations on how the money is structured for cap purposes. $7M of dead cap is listed as a restructuring bonus. What exactly that means is beyond the comprehension of any non-agent.

Six game drug suspension last year, refused to join the OTAs? Sounds like the GM is fed up with him.

I like watching tennis, generally. There's pet peeves...some of which have been addressed, like slow pace of play. But there's one that still lingers...the ridiculous practice of "checking the mark" on a clay court, rather than use an automated system like Hawkeye. There's NOTHING good about checking the mark. It's slow, it's horrifically error-prone, and therefore the chair umpire's call is not respected, leading to arguments. Match right now in Lyon, France, an ATP 250, semifinal match, tied at a set each, 3rd set is at 5-4...so every point is HUGE now. The kid in the lead thinks he's broken to win...but NOOOO...the chair overrules. The kid's French, too, so the crowd's not happy. He loses the break to make it 5-5; both players hold to send it to a tiebreaker. The bad taste isn't going to the tiebreak, it's from the terrible method to overrule. Well...since the French starts Sunday, everyone's playing clay. Numerous 250-level events. A 250 isn't that big of a tournament...they may not be able to afford Hawkeye or Shot Spot, cuz they're pretty sophisticated, multi-camera systems. But what they've said many times this week: the ATP has promised that ALL ATP tour events will have full electronic line calling...which goes the logical step further, and eliminates line judges...by 2025. The grand slams aren't run by the ATP, so they may not follow suit...especially Wimbledon and the French. Can't wait, tho. The matches simply run smoother. The players generally prefer that; even with electronic replay, there's second-guessing yourself, was that in or out? Well, at least in the end, the French kid won out in the tiebreak. BIG deal...winning the match moved him from 99 to about 84 in the live rankings, and he pockets another 20,000 euros...with a shot at moving inside the top 70 and pocket another 35,000 euros if he can win the title.

Prosecutors in the case had asked for 25, so figure, that's the high bound. 18's a long time...especially as the guy is 56. His non-repentance is likely to mean he's not going to be paroled early, too. The police "fund raising"...yeah, read that one too. Sounds like 3 grifters. One big help for me: I ditched my telco landline ages ago. Internet's through cable; the landline uses VOIP (voice over IP, aka internet calling), which is --MUCH cheaper --has more services built in...most particularly, anonymous call rejection, spam filtering, and even call screening...the caller has to hit a button before he's allowed to reach my phone. Basically, many of the same services your phone offers...because the call has to go through a smart system, rather than a dumb switchboard. The FTC's been VERY slow in forcing the telco's to upgrade. Even through most of the '20 election, I wasn't actually getting bombarded with junk calls. Unfortunately...I started collecting social security last year...and can sign up for Medicare later this year. THAT has triggered a spate of calls and junk mail, from companies wanting to feed you information about it all. It's legal because it's practically impossible to write laws without loopholes...that also don't become overly restrictive. "Nuance" is something that's almost impossible to achieve, I think, in modern law. Even if one starts with it, case law ends up chopping it up into "yes this counts" or "no, the term doesn't include this behavior"...at which point nuance is dead.

The head of the Oath Keepers is sentenced to 18 years. An aspect of this: the charges included sedition, and the penalties were upgraded for fitting the legal definition of terrorism.

Sugar content in cereals has certainly been something bemoaned by health pros for ages. How bad are they? https://www.metroparent.com/parenting/advice/kids-cereals-sugar/ And how many of em did YOU have? Me...too many. It's also worth noting...those are listed by sugar content. If you consider overall carb content, they're even worse, not surprisingly...they're cereal grains, which means, mostly carbs. But explicitly promoting them with the candies strikes me as a whole new level of irresponsible, as it teaches kids that candy is food.

That's cool. You like the Jags, so we can get back at you if we so desire, easily............... Well, not as easily as we can Mr. P, but easily enough......... I'm gonna go out on a bit of a limb. Celtics play another good game to win tomorrow night..... ....then revert back to form and lay another egg on Saturday in Miami.

Yeah, it's not that we're implicitly against variable defenses per se...but that they won't work, OR, that to make them work, you'll need complex, unique mechanics, in a system that's already knocked for being too complex. The area where it isn't complex is, the basic mechanics of rolls is consistent among the classes of rolls. This by itself means that variable defenses starts with 2 strikes against it for me.

Elsewhere, some poetic justice. DeSantis' campaign kickoff event turned into a massive dud, as Twitter couldn't handle it. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/24/desantis-launch-marked-by-horrendous-tech-failures-00098700 Double black eye, no less...DeSantis and Musk.

Not that I actually mind if that particular club has its little travails...oh, did ya'll see that there might be problems with the bid to buy them? Apparently there's quite a few limited partners, some overseas. Vetting is apparently something of an issue. But the reason why they couldn't get the trademark is that some *BLEEP* jumped them. Haven't heard of this for a while. I still remember way back in the day...someone bought the domain registration for abc.com...and got a nice, hefty check from ABC for the name. Cheap, cheesy, and a clear abuse of the system...but legal. Speaking of legal, or at least legalities... https://www.sportico.com/law/analysis/2023/washington-commanders-sale-brian-davis-urban-echo-energy-boa-lawsuit-1234723610/ I seriously doubt this case has any merits. Even if I'm wrong on that, even if they win and can get the drafts returned, assuming they ever delivered them (and there are no serious legal issues, like ties to banned organizations or possible money laundering)...the suit's asking for a totally absurd amount in punitive damages. That alone is enough to convince me it's a spite move or temper tantrum. Could be wrong; it could be that there were expenses related to putting together those assets, and the hope is to squeeze BofA to recoup them. But mostly, my money's on temper tantrum.

Only caught part of this yesterday, and largely forgot about it til now. Rule change for the upcoming season. From NFL.com: The argument is player safety. They really, really want to eliminate the kickoff return. I think they'd like to get rid of it altogether...but that would make a surprise onside kick impossible. That said: I can readily see teams keeping 9 players up within 10 yards of the onside kick line, with 2 back to simply fair catch. This also may be another, possibly secondary, factor in moving away from McManus...who had a big leg, but for this season (it's a rule for just this season at this point) it may be that it doesn't matter. I also think there'll be a self-reinforcement/feedback aspect to this. If FCs are easy and not painful, then more teams may choose to practice them less, to leave time for situations that actually matter.

I don't hate the Lakers. I did hate their incredibly stupid moves...and I don't like LeBron. But I wouldn't wish Kyrie on any team unless they've shown they deserve it...and that characterization, I think, only applies to certain select NFL teams.

Multiple factions might actually agree with this. The difference is which segments each would choose to start with.

Hey, back when I took the Putnam for a few years...42 (out of 120) would be an EXCEPTIONALLY GOOD score...