TheDarkness

I think one difficulty that is coming up comes from making the base for comparison a two handed sword versus a dagger. Historically, there's not a lot of manuals recommending being the one with the dagger alone unless one is already inside range. There is plenty of discussion of what one can possibly do if one is the dagger wielder not yet in that range, but that discussion is in context of solving that problem, not pretending it's not a problem. Dealing with how the game reality of a long sword may deal with the game reality of a two handed sword might yield a more concise, cogent approach. It is generally the case that the long sword is a strong balance between 'useful against armor' and 'fast enough in unarmored combat against other weapons'. While the previous posts are correct about how a the pivot use of two handed weapons mitigates one aspect of the weight issue, it does not mitigate the problem of the momentum at the end of the pivot. The only motion that matters is not the total movement, but the movement that defends or attacks, so at the end of an attack, heavier weapons tend to be slower to recover despite two handed use. Now, some long swords face the same issue, being one handed and, in the case of some long swords, weightier, but, this is mitigated in many cases by having the second hand available for a shield, which heavily defends a large section of the fighter, or a knife, or for grabbing the opponent or their weapon. I just think trying to base the rule around the extreme examples makes it harder. Reach, speed, and ability to penetrate armor seem to be the three aspects of note, Lucius is absolutely correct that the speed does not solve the reach problem, and so the weapon with reach, by definition, will have the first chance to attack at its range, regardless of the speed of the shorter weapon, since it is not at its range. To counter that, it is movement, not weapon speed, that the knife wielder needs to actually attack first against the two handed sword, and especially the long sword. This is purely talking in terms of a realistic baseline, obviously in superheroic or legendary level games, one can simply up DEX and do it that way.

I actually have worked on a general system to deal with this, I'll put the link to the discussion where I first brought it up. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, especially since it requires a fair amount of work ahead of time. The main issues tend to be that precognition tends to be some combination of: modeled as different powers that presume some foresight(my excellent dodge is due to knowing what is coming), which models some aspects but not others of seeing into the future. This one is the only approach commonly used that isn't problematic, but only models a narrow range of what precognition would allow is almost worthless, as the 'visions' one may have are purposefully limited to a point that begs the question 'should the player have to pay for this?' is too much a GM tool and not a power of the players, yet still is paid for by the player, which is dodgy in the extreme At various points in the thread I'm attaching, I discuss a setup using cards that contain campaign personas and general types of people, cards that contain campaign locations and general types of places, cards that contain tropes/conflicts/relations. The advantage of the system is that the more detail one wants, the more elements one must include(I'll choose this one location, and x number of persona cards, and x number of trope cards), and thus, the more uncertainty about what it all means, plus it aids the GM in making the vision without the GM being able to railroad away details in order to use the player's power to run the show completely. The GM sees the cards, must include all of them, but has the leeway to influence enough to make sense(well, this trope makes no sense given the two npc's the vision includes, so there must be a third, unseen npc or pc, only unseen because the precog selected too few people to view- seeing the future should not mean seeing it more clearly than the present, what is not directly viewed in the vision will often have as much or more weight as what is). Another advantage is it does give the GM story elements on the fly without turning what the player paid for into a leash that the GM has on the players.

I generally won't worry too much about making someone buy something to demonstrate every element of this. Think in terms of real world parties/banquets. Not everyone is there because they know the person throwing it that well. A throws party, B and C go because they know A well, D through H go because they either know B or C well, etc. So, I would presume that some people there are there because of affiliation with someone else. As long as the right contacts are invited, and the right venue and cause and all are in place, then it can be assumed that the effect is to get more than immediate contacts, and some of the result is not because of the contacts A bought, but that B or C has.

As far as the false equivalency thing, I do think that is a fair statement, while also recognizing that it doesn't exonerate the Democratic party of its own flaws, I just do not see strong evidence that they are wholesale the same flaws outside of those areas where elected officials' decisions are hemmed in by the structure of the state, the military, or the current states of the global balance of power. Other than the beginning of Obama's presidency, left leaning publications and figureheads of the left made public statements against his policies and approaches. A simple search will show many figureheads of the left criticizing the ACA as too little, his military choices as a betrayal of his election promises, and, most especially, his actions intended to give GOP legislators room at the table that they then repeatedly chose not to take as pointless. One can find scores of articles from the mainstream press of the left on every one of these topics, and from Daily Show to Real Time, almost all those shows routinely criticized the Dems and Obama for these policies and for their seeming ineffectual actions in electioneering. The difference is, the left, as far as major news sources, had and have to compete with each other, and thus have no one monolithic message that can reliably be cited without ignoring countless articles disagreeing from others on the left with equally large followers. The right, conversely, has one major cable news provider, that serving a party whose political strategies are not the same as the Dems. The GOP has, for years now, based most of its actions on winning elections over establishing long-term policies that are different than the Dems. Yes, especially in regards to trade and the use of the military, both are not particularly different, but this more often than not has ties to the fact that, when dealing with the rest of the world, there are not as many options as people like to believe. North Korea and the current situation is a perfect example. I happen to know one of our country's foremost experts on that topic, especially as it relates to China. There is not an expert worth dealing with on the topic that now buys into the 'crazy Kim' propaganda in the way both sides present it. North Korea has repeatedly worked on development of nukes, followed by slowing that work in response to sanctions and aid following said sanctions. While the press and leaders have repeatedly used that as evidence to prove the 'crazy Kim' thesis, neither U.S. nor Chinese experts have considered it anything other than the actions of rational actors, even if we don't like those actions. The recent attempts to change how we deal with it have only shown how thoroughly planned out those actions were compared to new attempts to stop it by way of bombast. This is not to say that the Kim's are or were admirable leaders, but that they established a long term goal, and have largely completed that goal against huge resistance by meticulously sticking with a plan for specific results geared toward ensuring sovereignty even against three major powers, two sharing borders. Treating it as anything else has proven to be a recipe that pits those powers more against each other than against North Korea. But, this is the result of elected and appointed leaders buying the propaganda we ourselves put forward to our voters, and having to act as though it were all as simple as that propaganda portrays it to be. You'll note that the exact same 'crazy Kim' approach was seamlessly followed from the father to the son. This policy had its virtues, but the current administration has spent a lot of the capital those virtues gave. For dems, this was less of an issue, being a bigger tent party these days, there is not as often one issue, aside from equality, that all dems seem to consider deal breakers, and so playing the realpolitik of the situation was an option. For the GOP, it's become a huge issue, because, focusing on election wins more than long-term policy wins, they had to increasingly play to populist issues, and so 'we need to deal with Kim' has lead into the realization that it was never as simple as it was portrayed to be. Whereas many dem voters might support increased gun control, most elected officials on that side avoided pushing that at all, while the GOP has put big dollars behind pushing forward statewide laws that they knew would not stand the constitutional test, because it played to their base, and the ability to push those messages by way of one single major cable network and smaller news sources acting as an echo chamber and source for reading the pulse of populist messages meant that there was not competition at the top to counter such policies. The RINO label is almost exclusively applied to the remnants of the camp that Buckley would most recognize, people who actually recognize politicking a two party system as being way more complex than simply always supporting one's party. It is the nature of the different structures of the two parties and the press serving their views that the dems and the left leaning press outlets will have less party unity, and that the GOP with one monolithic cable presence and a focus on election wins over anything else will lean towards similar iterations of the same populist messages. The idea that these different structures yield the same uniformity of message is an uphill claim against the structural reality in place. MSNBC, for instance, tends to be less centric than CNN, whereas FOX must put it's dollars more behind the most popular view in place in the GOP, and will have less programming dedicated to programs that focus on views that may be more valid, but less popular. Quite literally, in the last thirty years, the Dems have not had the capacity to have one monolithic message, the GOP has increasingly moved toward purity tests(RINO) and similar messages, and these two are the results of the goals and structures of the two parties and the media associated with them.

I think everything in Canada comes from Tim Horton's now.

I guess I was thinking in terms of some of the ideas being thrown around in which abort was, essentially, no longer tied to an action in the future. Opportunity of attack comes to mind in this. Having a rule that applies to all seems fairer to me than GM caveat having to deal with all such cases. It also would effectively get rid of gaming the speed chart, which is a good thing. No one would have reason to assume any unoccupied opponent was unable to mess with them.

But a true geek would claim to have known a woman on the internet, so it's inconclusive.

I would further say that, if movement is more dynamic, then what is the best move to use will be less likely to remain the same from turn to turn. As it stands, if your best move is hth or ranged, with the movement rules as they stand, that presents a picture of where you want to be every single fight, and makes it much much simpler to just use your power move every time. If the combat is more fluid, if your opponents and you have a greater capacity to reasonably use cover, then it is less likely that as often you will be in the position to use your power move, and will have to adjust. It is important to keep in mind that this alteration to the movement rule does, in fact, represent more dynamic movement. I would also say the target of opportunity rule is essential, or, conversely, I would imagine that some powers would get built that mimic this, like a triggered area of effect(not sure if that's strictly legal, but something along those lines) that only takes effect if someone is making a move through that passes close to your character while your character is not otherwise occupied. This basic premise is a common rule in many games to avoid exactly the problems associated with making movement more free. It is not a fix, per se, as reasonably representing combat. In fact, hit or miss, if they pass too close to someone who can stop their charge, their charge is effectively ended at that point in many games. Since the alteration is so clearly an increase in dynamics as far as movement goes, it is considerably difficult to argue that it will then lead to less dynamic decision-making in what power or maneuvers will be used. If your opponent can more easily break from you, this will reduce the overall opportunities to use the same hth power in successive phases. If they can more readily obtain cover, this will more readily make using a ranged blast in successive rounds less likely. If they can more readily interpose themselves between a charging attacker and their target, this will reduce the ability to take advantage of every target of opportunity. I still hold that the motivation to block or punch should be based on the situation demanding it, whether the situation is tactical or role play related(block? I'm overconfident, blocking is for fools! as an example of the latter). However, I agree that more dynamic situations should lead to more situations in which the fallback power or maneuver simply has no place in the moment.

What would happen if aborting to a defense when you don't have a segment was made contingent on a perception roll?

The only thing I don't think I'd lean toward using is penalizing a character for using the same thing over and over. For some things, that might work, but you quickly could face some difficulty, since many of these things can be used to cover groups of actions that really have the same effect, so it could easily turn into penalizing the build when the actual effect is presumed to vary. For example, Atom, a boxer, is basically using strike a lot. Now, I'm sure one could make or use builds for jabs, crosses, hooks, and uppercuts, but, in a way, making them do the build that way is making them pay for some things that one could interpret as being, in game terms, the same effect. Penalizing more striking would be less realistic, not more. Likewise, in fantasy, if you don't picture your berserker sword fighter as disarming people, he or she is stuck with cutting and thrusting. In an unarmored duel, our would be swashbuckler, if we want to go with realism, is going to thrust a lot, but now he can't. I know that there are builds in martial arts to approximate all sorts of things, but when it comes down to it, if dueling with a thrusting sword, one is probably going to thrust more often than not. Motivation to change up one's combat should come from the logic of the fight, imo, and it needs to be taken into account that most builds are actually an array of narrative uses that just happen to share the exact same game effect, so penalizing repeated use may just encourage making more builds to get around a penalty, builds that aren't actually adding any narrative quality that the single power wasn't entirely able to do on its own in the first place. If there is no reason in the callibre of enemy they are fighting to see a different technique as more useful in a segment than what was used before, I tend to ask myself if the enemies are truly providing any challenge to the players. Also, if the movement rules are done as stated, then it will be much harder to actually repeat one's action segment after segment, as the other pieces on the table are not as trapped in a particular melee as before, and so some segments may be giving chase. Granted, as stated, this would add value to movement powers, but it would also incentivize area effect purchases for exactly that reason. I'm not sure what the result would be. As an aside, Nolgroth's abort as part of a multiple attack is awesome. My thoughts on the problem of combat lasting longer, endless chains of dodges(or shield use) or such: I think this is not insurmountable, but it changes the narrative structure of fighting, which can be good. If we assume every fight to be a contest between two groups or individuals until one is 'vanquished', and run the game this way, then this will mean fights will too often be long, protracted issues where defense and escape are so readily available due to being able to move more freely and abort more freely, and so to get the nice clean feeling of total vanquishosity will require a lot of slogging and lot of chasing. If we alter this, to view each confrontation as a less easily defined thing, we could change this. When the enemies are evil or have no compunctions about leaving behind a few of their own, a confrontation might start out looking like it might last a while, but quickly finish as this enemy opts out of a bad situation, then another, and the few who remain get stuck very quickly being outnumbered by the heroes. And the sheer power of movement will make escape more possible. If your knight with sword and shield is fighting his evil counterpart in the context of a larger confrontation, he might very well be trying to hold the other at bay until the rest of the party is freed up to help. In fact, he might be purposefully taking on more than he can chew, knowing that he can probably last a little while before getting overwhelmed by a more experienced and brutal knight. Yes, every battle will not measure as high on the vanquishosity scale, but when it actually does happen that foes are so thoroughly vanquished, through a little luck and some good planning by the party, the value of the victory will be worth it. So, the main effect I would expect to see is: more people escaping combat, longer battles if going to completion, greater ability for lower powered people to tie up higher powered people, more area of effects. Oh, and if you track Endurance or somehow determine this, I think that SHOULD play a big role. In which case, some fights will be won by the fighter who tires last.

I tend to agree, though I would love to see studies of the meditation-contemplation-action triad that is the norm of traditions in the East conducted. Most studies even close just study meditation as a means for relaxation, which are a bit of a waste of time, as Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism all had practitioners who rather well defined the pointlessness of that practice many centuries ago, so where the studies seek to discount meditation, they are actually proposing a strawman, and where they seek to support it, they often aren't stringent enough. But I digress.

To clarify, in Eastern tradition, thought is broken into two categories. One type of thought is considered just another sense. It is cold, and therefore my thoughts respond to this by being annoyed, for example, because I don't like winter. The other is considered the thoughts undertaken by one's Buddha nature, which is a much more complex issue, influenced by samsara(cause and effect) as the other is, but not based on ignorance, in a way twice removed from the cold, not because it isn't cold, but because the cold's relation to me isn't special and directed. Perception is just perception. Consciousness and awakeness(in short, enlightenment) are not synonymous. Thus, consciousness and the buddha consciousness are not one and the same. The buddha retains his memories because he is not reborn. He escaped the cycle. Everyone who is reincarnated does not carry their memories with them, and so, in Buddhism, that is often not the same as a soul or spirit. Now, there are groups that hold that certain affinities carry over, like judging a child to be the reborn form of their old master based on them choosing some old favorite thing of the old master's from a group of choices, but this is affinity in the nature of the being, not the memory of the being. If enlightened, one does not choose one item because they liked it in the past, that would be false, as liking it in the past has no bearing on liking it now, they choose it because in the now, it is in their nature to find an affinity to the thing. That said, we can easily get into the endless whirlpool of what buddhist scholars hold versus what rank and file buddhist practitioners hold.

Nirvana is not a place, it is a mental state. The entire mechanism for attaining good karma is entirely based on mental state and actions coming from it. The East does not obsess over agency the way the West has, because in both philosophy and religion in the West, Christianity played a huge role, and so free choice became a concept heavily focused on. Proving it, disproving it, its centrality to all things in Christianity is huge. In the East, choice is always limited by other's choices, and not looked on as nearly the same way. The selling point of Buddhism is not giving agency, it is assumed that people make choices, it's explicitly part of the problem. It is in proposing a solution to suffering. Further, throwing the sacrificial virgin into the volcano is not, by default, about agency, but, like most religious practices, social in nature. To hold this position in my society, I am expected to do these things. Some may have actually believed, but, as can be seen in modern China, where many Taoist rituals are followed, if you actually talk to people doing them, they have no confidence it actually gets that result, it's just the 'proper thing to de' as a demonstration of things like filial piety, etc.

Unfortunately, a requirement for internet interaction and news watching is knowledge of the Gish Gallop. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop

I don't think agency actually prevents what he's getting at. Certainly not in Buddhism, since it rejects distinctions, of which, the distinction between two souls would be seen as just a momentary glimpse of universal unity being misinterpreted. Taoism as well, for similar reasons. Buddhism categorically rejects the idea of agency that comes out of Christian debates in the West. Ignorance, not sin, is the sole cause of not becoming a buddha. No right action, right thought, none of it is possible without concurrently ceasing to be ignorant. You do not suffer because of what you do, you suffer because of ignorance. You literally cannot do good without ceasing that ignorance. You do not choose to not be ignorant, you cease to be ignorant because a path lifted that veil. You absolutely need the lesson of samsara, the world of cause and effect, to do so, and the lesson of samsara is that there are results of your actions AND there are results of endless other causes and effects, and without even the most remote in that chain, you might not reach enlightenment. You do not choose to be enlightened, your enlightenment merely becomes the effect of infinite causes and effects around you, a handful from you, and their multitude means that you would be a fool to claim that your efforts determined the outcome. As such, agency, passivity, even lacking a choice, are contributing factors, and so agency is just a tiny blip in a field of tiny blips. But then, in Buddhism, afterlife, heavens and hells, are all part of samsara, and something one must grow out of the need for. Pure Land Buddhism, as a famous example, has a heaven, the Pure Land, but the only reason you are supposed to want to go there is to study unimpeded with its buddha and get over all those things.

They all had the plan when she said that. Dems and GOP. Had the plan. Her actual quote was along the lines of passing it would allow it to be viewed as what it is, as opposed to the rhetoric of it. If I recall correctly, the portion of her statement everyone likes to say isn't even the whole sentence it's from. I have come to think that Dan Quayle was not an idiot for suggesting keeping an eye on asteroids, and, at best, just not the best orator, but again not a slobbering imbecile for his duck quote. The moment I realized we were doomed was when Howard Dean's run was over for yelling like a middle aged man. I wasn't even a big fan of his, but that was why we decided he couldn't be president. He yelled like a man who is of the age able to run for president, ergo, it was over. The false use of this Pelosi quote by a dishonest journalist was just playing on that same effect, tie something seemingly negative to a person and repeat it, forever. Like Dean and Quayle, this quote is neither damning nor particularly germane to the quality of the person who said it. It says a lot about the person who cropped the quote originally, and any who knowingly do so, but that's not anything new. Not saying you were aware of this quote's lame history, just pointing it out. Pelosi was actually making a salient point, that, at that point, all anyone was getting was rhetoric because, pre-vote, passing or opposing the bill had taken a much greater focus for politicians than the actual full content of the bill itself, which they did have access to and sufficient staff to have a grasp of if they did their jobs. Short version: what you wrote is something she said, but minus the part that explains its meaning, which is actually in the original quote, in the same sentence. The popular quote, minus the actual meaning, was a hack job, done specifically to misinform. Original quote: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.“

One, in many cultures, the soul is never, ever, defined as one's consciousness, and in most, it could, at best, be defined as just a piece of it. That's talking about cultures that have some definition of what a soul is. Further, in many, memories are not tied to the soul at all. Given that, the clone who receives the soul will have the memories, and, in the now, experience the world as a creature with a soul(assuming the original is dead), but it's memories, being copies and not having that soul, IF ONE ACCEPTS THE SOUL MAKES ANY DIFFERENCE TO THIS WHOLE TOPIC, are not the same as the original, who did have a soul when experiencing those memories, and so, they are by definition still different, even if the same soul now inhabits the body as the last one. Further, if one takes 'soul' to be the whole consciousness of the being, the clone need never be given the experiences in the first place, nor be animated until needed. And, at that point, the soul flitting in is somehow completely robbing the clone of agency. Now, no Eastern tradition posits the soul as being the entirety of consciousness of the being, but that still leaves a lot of room for variation in their ideas of what entails a spirit or soul. Christianity is terribly vague about what the soul is in that view, so any speculation would require defining which idea of the soul we're dealing with, though in any case, that being inhabiting the body of a clone, soulless or otherwise, is basically a parasite. At worst, like a demon, at best, Firestorm.

The claim that it's early in the GOP healthcare process is false. They've sworn to repeal since it was put in place, it's no one's fault but theirs if they didn't actually make a plan in all that time.

Agreed. This also leads to a backwards devaluing of something that is cheaper, even when it might be better. I think we all know some well paid slackers, and some poor people who work hard.

I think one of the reasons you hear this more about Republicans is that, since a while before the Tea Party came around, it has been fairly common for GOP members who go against the party to be labelled as RINOs and face running against other Republicans seeking to replace them. There really isn't an equivalent that is nearly as common for the Democrats as the RINO label, and that seems to be entirely a purity test. Heck, the last Democrat I can even remember being called a traitor with any frequency was Lieberman. Democrats, on a number of issues, have members who vote the other way. Gun control is one example. Health care was another, getting them on board for the ACA was a long process, and not all went with it. I think the main problem with the Democratic Party is that they concede influence in the name of getting along with people who only want to undo the programs the Dems are implementing, and thus allow things to creep into their legislature that is later used against them. They are not a party who can exert strong control on the voting of its members, but I don't think this is actually a bad thing. Their voting base is much broader, demographically, than the GOP, and so they have to play a broader game.

I'm curious how people who didn't like Superman killing Zod by breaking his neck feel about Wonder Woman plunging a sword into a guy who turned out not to be Ares. It seems the same to me, the only difference is the overall tone of the movie.

Part of it is also that the glove is much, much larger than the fist, and so even glancing blows that would not hit at all bare knuckled shake the head. This is also the problem with a lot of protective head gear. It actually can maximize the chance of getting hit because it enlarges the overall target. Additionally, there is the market need for drama in the ring, and so technical fighters who play a conservative game tend not to get a lot of billing. Watch old footage of Charley Burley for a good example of this effect, the matches, for the neophyte, are boring to watch, because the vast majority of hits that occur only occur when he's good and ready for a hit to occur, and because he could control the match so thoroughly, he had no special need to go for knockouts to win the match. For people who understand what he was doing, it's amazing skill. Charley Burley was part of a group called the Murderer's Row, black, top-tier boxers who fought each other routinely because for various reasons, they couldn't get matchups with people their callibre. In Burley's case, it was likely the pace of his matches in many cases, which don't sell tickets.

Consider the location as the spell. So, the great pit of australian oddities is lethal to anyone who has stolen the holy vegemite, or at least reveals their guilt by way of spider bites and kangaroo punches.

Death Tribble once tried to organize a capillary cavalry, but it was all in vein.

I've unfortunately been designing my own game, and reading through a ton of games to see what kind of issues I'm likely to deal with and how others have dealt with them, so I'm undoubtedly mixing up settings like crazy, sorry about that. I took your comment about limited magic to mean rarer when you meant less powerful, my mistake! And, in response to the first paragraph, I was refering to the leaders of non-magic using states that sought to use technology against magic using states being suddenly dead, insane, or wishing they were. I was more trying to illustrate that, even non-cosmic levels of power like simple shape shifting, clairvoyance, and such would be boons to the magic using states as far as being potentially far better informed about their rivals than their rivals could be about them, and the advantages of that. Even without the level of power being cosmic, healing, shape shifting, ability to convey thoughts or speech across distance, ability to give people cursed items(it's just a shiny ring!), diplomatically and tactically, a state with access to these would be very difficult to deal with, because the guns have to get to their destination to be of any use. Oddly, it seems to me to be the little spells that players might not make regular use of that, for a kingdom, have the greatest impact. But those comments I made were more in relation to setting ideas rather than character level things, and I wrote them as an exercise in 'why might magic still prevail in the setting' than 'why, in game, would a character use magic'. Anyway, I digress again. Nuts and bolts for players. Assuming that the technological kingdom is a human one, lack of night vision is something I would want to take advantage of if I were playing someone who does have it who is in danger of dealing with someone with guns. At that level, though, I feel the gun issue is not a huge hurdle either way, as the party is not going to be able to simply barrage people with gunfire with such weapons, and, conversely, they have the chance to do decent or significant damage if they manage to hit before melee occurs. I think terrain will become a really important factor at that point, and melee might actually be delayed as players decide it is wiser to play the terrain until they can safely get close. More cat and mouse, I imagine. One nice thing is I think the presence of guns could bring the combat values of the stealthy characters and the ones who can normally charge in and crush with big spiky mallets into some parity, as the spiky mallet guys might more often need the stealthy ones to disrupt the ability to fire of enemies with guns. Further, depending on the setting, guns might be unwise in certain situations. In populated cave networks, they'd draw far too much attention, though hand waving for the sake of having such adventures is pretty much canon, since armored people sword fighting in caves should also draw too much attention, but we've all done it. One of the nice things about guns is that few things make a pirate adventure feel more right than parrying with your cutlass while you unload a pistol into the scurvy dog...