unclevlad

3 Republicans joined with the Democrats in the Arizona House to repeal the 1864 abortion ban.  One down, one to go.
 
This might be interesting.  State Senate and House seats are all up for election.  The primaries are end of July.  In the Senate, there are 3 Republican incumbents with challengers.  The House is trickier, as it looks like they use the same districts...but there's 2 representatives for each district.  The vote on the ban here...for or against...may become material in the primaries.

3 Republicans joined with the Democrats in the Arizona House to repeal the 1864 abortion ban.  One down, one to go.
 
This might be interesting.  State Senate and House seats are all up for election.  The primaries are end of July.  In the Senate, there are 3 Republican incumbents with challengers.  The House is trickier, as it looks like they use the same districts...but there's 2 representatives for each district.  The vote on the ban here...for or against...may become material in the primaries.

I think it's fair to say that Howie Schwab was the first celebrity sports stats/info type guy.  He was big on ESPN...even to the point of them trying a sports trivia show called Stump the Schwab.  He was part of the first of the big purges at ESPN back in 2013, but continued to be valuable behind the scenes in other ways (including being Fox's NCAA bracketologist for a couple years, which I hadn't known.)

He died, apparently of a heart attack, Monday.  Age 63.

From The Athletic, through me, to Mr. P...don't say I never did anything nice for you.

 
 

ahh...hm.  Those are a bit different.  I wouldn't try to describe how it does it myself, just what it does to them.  Nerve induction should, by and large, do what's suggested.  That's how the pain box is most commonly written up. The agonizer may have had a higher setting, right?  Where it disrupted nerve signals, and might've done more...induced seizures, even stop the heart?  Disrupting nerve signals could probably do either one.
 
I remember reading what I think was a legit experiment, wherein people were subjected to minor levels of shock, heat, and cold...all at the same time, say on different fingers...and their reaction was OMG WHAT!!!! because the 3 separate signals, from 3 separate sources, amplified each other.  People YANKED their hand out expecting to see notable damage...but there wasn't any.

Yeah, a pretty stock trope is that using one's powers requires concentration, and what pain can do is make it hard to concentrate through the pain.  That's the motivation.
 
Look at the example major transforms on 6E1 304.
--impose a limitation (up to -1)
--CV penalties
--giving a Complication...unluck.
 
Several of these would work pretty well with Partial Transform.  A suggested, nasty complication is Requires 11- roll, that's -1.  There's lesser levels for Partial Transform.  
 
Here, the pain's just the SFX, the goal is to just make it HARD to do something.  And it's not cheap, as Partial Transform makes it 15 points per die.

EDIT:  oh, and note the key is concentration disruption.  Pain's not the only way to do that.  In Drew Hayes' Super Powereds series, the tech kid incorporates an itching attack into his weapon.  Massive itching might be a better way to disrupt concentration;  people are used to fighting through pain, but man, SEVERE itching?  An attack I often like is to swap the defenses on a Flash attack from Flash Def to Ego Def...a flash bang targeting the sensory centers of the brain directly.  That could be done here...instead of shutting down, overload. 
 
 

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May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your mistress's bed sheets.......

So Mr. P, never a doubt, right?
 
 
 
for those who didn't watch...
 
 

Race car in Sri Lanka veers off track; 7 dead, 20 injured

Scurrilous, clearly malicious rumor from haters.
 
There's no way those conferences would push for something like that.  Their egos say they could go the other way...with one less player on the field...and still kick butt.  They think They're Just That Good.

On a side note, the man who set himself on fire died from his injuries.  

On a side note, the man who set himself on fire died from his injuries.  

The Great Social Media Circus returns this week.
 
The NFL draft starts Thursday, along with the maelstrom of comments about the idiocy of particular teams and draft picks.  And the hype generated by the well-received picks.  And the trades.

I think we generally agree with you, but the First Amendment says they're protected speech...for the most part.  The "COVID is a hoax" may be actionable...if said by a doctor, as a violation of professional ethics.  Even that, tho, probably requires quite a bit more to it before any punishment will get handed down.
 
And how far do you want to take that?  Because you KNOW the Paxtons and DeSantises would weaponize this as fast as they could, and THEIR definition of "demonstrable lies" or "harmful speech" might well include anything counter to their manipulation of Biblical text.
 
 
 
 

That is one CRAZY sport!!!  

Something different
 
 

Because you didn't want to spend a half hour gathering up that many team logos.

In a relatively pleasant surprise, considering...12 jurors have been selected for the Trump case.
 
There's still a need for some alternates, and 2 prospective jurors were removed after having passed initially, so it's not a lock.  I was worried this could take a LOT longer.

Oh, for cryin' out loud.
 
Color Conundrum: Eagles, Packers to Play in Stadium Where Green Is Banned
 

"...crackpot in the growing pool of cringe politicians."
 
I'll put that up with the "half partisan, half courtesan" line about the House Republicans for Line of the Month.

Plausible, but can we blame the script for his constant pouting?  
 
That said, I think ALL the Star Wars movies get far less criticism than they deserve, because we so WANT to like it that we overlook the many faults.  Who doesn't want a lightsaber and a starfighter???  Who doesn't want to be super-cool Han?  Vader's WAY more cool as the Mysterious Villain than he is as the Fallen Savior.
 
 

Heinz Teamed Up With Mattel to Bring Us the Mashup We Didn’t Know We Needed: ‘Barbiecue’ Sauce

"...crackpot in the growing pool of cringe politicians."
 
I'll put that up with the "half partisan, half courtesan" line about the House Republicans for Line of the Month.

STUN-only PD/ED could make sense, but it's not in the rules.  As usual, the devil's in the details.
 
Change resistant to +1/4...where?  Nonresistant is effectively -1/2 for DR.  Resistant is +1/2 for PD and ED, and Resistant Protection is 3/2...effectively +1/2.  The only time it's 1/4 is the limitation on DN...so it's the aberration in my book.  
 
In terms of 'limits'...that's up to each campaign.  For 12d6?  14 DEF and 6 dice of negation would be high *in my book*.  I use much more of a 'real life' basis...that bad guys may be trying to KILL the good guys.  Get one of em down, they may not stop.  There's a risk of BODY, sure...but practically no STUN.  Note that my charts are on 4 dice of negation...not 6.  Remember, 2 dice of negation eliminates 7 STUN.
 
My baseline for total defense is...don't get stunned very often.  No more than 10% of the time, because you're a sitting duck until you recover from being stunned...and others *will* take advantage.  There's only so far you can take that, given finite resources.  That's why I look at the distribution curves.  My process:
 
1.  How much BODY do I want to stop?  This needs to be 100% resistant, because killing attacks are the threat, not normal attacks.  (Your campaign can be different, and if so, vary this.  Unless KAs are just not gonna be used, tho...even if they're toned down, where perhaps in a 12 DC game, KAs are capped at 3d6?  That's still 10 BODY on average, and 13 is still fairly frequent.)  
 
2. What's my CON?  One of the targets is that "no more than 10% risk of being stunned"...and that's tied to CON.  I'm stunned if RolledSTUN > (BODYDef + CON).  In the negation case, RolledSTUN is using the smaller dice pool.  For 12d6 attacks...14 BODYDef, 20 CON would be 34.  Is 3 dice negation enough?  Heck no...I know that at a glance.  9d6, mean is 31.5, so 35+ is barely above average.  I can use AnyDice to confirm...yeah, it's 28%.  FAR!!!! too high.  How about 4 dice negation?  8d6...mean's 28...maybe.  35+...9% of the time.  36+ drops down to 6%.  Perhaps I go with that 1 extra point of BODY defense...or a 21 CON.  One last check...5 dice?  7d6, mean is 24.5...max is 42.  Needs 35?  That's averaging 5 per die...that's WILDLY unlikely on 7 dice.  Let's crosscheck...AnyDice says?  1.2%.  Probably overkill.
 
3.  A secondary check is, how many strikes can you take before being knocked out...ignoring recoveries, at least initially.  Let's say we like the 15 BODYDef with our 20 CON, and 4 dice of negation...slightly on the cautious side.  15 DEF against 8d6 means 13 STUN getting through on average.  How many of those you can take depends on how high you buy up your STUN...which is cheap.  I like resilient characters...so...probably 4 shots, I'd still be standing.  OTOH, 5 dice negation with the 14 BODYDef?  On average, only 10's getting through, and I can probably take a 5th hit.  It might be OK.  But we probably need to examine how often our guy's gonna *get* hit.
 
4.  The # of strikes issue is why Damage Reduction is a bit worse.  Yeah, you won't get stunned, but you take 14 STUN from the average now, not 13.  The bigger hassle is the interfering nature between DEF and DR.  2 points of DEF only eliminates 1 point of STUN, after the DR.  (I assume 50%.)  It calls for a different build...a bit lower CON is clear.  I think of DR with characters who won't get hit as much...projector types who can use range to their advantage, mobile types that are simply harder to target en masse, high base DCV, that sort of thing.  
 
The bigger problem with DR is simply the very high base cost.

I'm not really a fan of Beta Ray Bill. I enjoyed the original story by Simonson but I feel I don't like these characters that sort of steal the uniqueness of other great characters sort of like the Superman Family characters and the Batman Family characters.  There should only be one Superman and Batman.  Then handing out a magic hammer to a whole bunch of people so we have a bunch more Thors.  Also, Bill is essentially a slightly more powerful, more noble, and improved Thor.  I don't want that so yeah not really a fan.