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womble

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Posts posted by womble

  1. I'm glad you gave a concrete example akin to my 33-round full auto 9mm magazine dump with a Glock 18.

     

    Why?  Because what you just demonstrated is that with bows, the energy (a la END) is spent on the draw, not on the release.  Thus, I would expect a GM to have bow users pay END with each draw of the string, even if there's no release.  In fact, I would argue that a slow release of tension on the string (to deliberately avoid the release of an arrow) is STR use, too ... and should cost END again unless it occurs in the same Phase (given the rules on STR use during the same Phase) ... since you have to use the muscles again, but in reverse, to release that tension slowly.

     

    Thoughts?

    I'd agree completely. END cost should be proportionate to the damage the thing's doing (its AP), and paid for every shot the rules call for. I'm not sure what the rationale for using your STR multiple times in the same Phase only counting as using it once for END purposes is, but if it's a thing in the rules... Still and all, though, a stronger bow might do more damage, but if you're looking for "realistic", it should have a higher STRMin and also start to become impossible for someone who is well below that STRMin to use at all. 

  2. Well bows (and their strings) would have a maximum tension (STR) that could be used to use them, anything greater would/might cause them to break or snap, so I am fine with STR not adding to the damage as any extra STR above the STR Minimum to use could cause them to break. So in a sense the build already incorporates the "max damage" a bow could do when used to its maximum effect (ie, meeting the STR minimum).

     

    But building a Bow with extra damage to simulate it being stronger and allowing the user to add STR to the damage done might work. Maybe something like:

     

    Strong Bow: +1 damage (5pts); Only if user STR is +5 over the STR minimum for the weapon (-1/2) (real cost:3)

     

    or something like that. 

     

    Of course this question also opens another kettle of worms like, should Bows also be built with the Range Based On Strength or a variation of that. 

    If the bow is stronger, its STR Min is higher to go along with any extra damage. Bows are fixed input systems: you pull yea hard for such a distance and that force x distance energy is imparted (less inefficiencies) to the projectile when you loose.

     

    To get more out of a bow, you either have to pull harder (and it's a spring, its resistance isn't variable) or pull further (which risks damaging the thing). Compound bows can have adjustable springs, but if it's set to "He-Man" draw weight "Shrimp kid" just isn't going to be able to pull it to full draw. My bow is a 30lb draw weight at 28". I can run a fair few arrows through that before I tire. I doubt I could even draw a 120lb longbow the full "cloth yard" to my ear once. The "strong" bow simply isn't usable by someone who doesn't get close to its STRMin.

  3. What purpose is served by setting a welcome mat in front of a blank, doorless and windowless wall?

     

    Lucius Alexander

     

    The palindromedary suggests a hidden door, but in that case a welcome mat seems to defeat the purpose of hiding the door....

    Or to flatten the faces of those who assume that there's a door where there's a welcome mat...

  4. The "collateral damage" of well poisoning might not be a consideration, morally, or legally, for the characters. The fact that an army came through, got "the trots" and moved on (or just plain died because it was a desert and every water source they came to was fouled) would provide a cover for the fouling of the supplies. Large armies were prime sufferers of disease before sanitation and germ theory got gripped; it would be no surprise to nomads or habitual travellers that oases were unusable after an army departed.

     

    If the pathogen afflicting the army is biological, unless the commanders excise the afflicted, it's highly likely that any siege they set at "the next city" will fail because of disease amongst the besiegers. Such relief was pretty common. Possibly more so than an actual army of fighting sophonts marching to the relief.

  5. Rightly, or wrongly, it doesn't matter.   I think the media is focused squarely on Trump's women.  I've got no pity for Trump, but the WikiLeaks underreporting is disappointing.  Especially considering in the past when WikiLeaks released something they were on it like starving dogs.  It does give the impression, the media is run blocking for Hillary to get the TD.  Not saying it is true, and Trump needs to get everything he deserves, it just seems odd that the media picks now to ignore WikiLeaks.

    Or maybe those starving dogs chewed on the Wikileaks for a while and found it tasteless and lacking in nourishment. Like the law enforcement wallahs have.

     

    Or maybe those Wikileaks revelations are just "old news" (one for/from the "Oxymorons" thread :) ) and they're just in the usual feeding frenzy about the most recent scandal.

     

    I get the impression that Clinton's "malfeasances" are "no worse than your run-of-the-mill politician". If you vote for pretty much any politician ever, you're going to be voting for one that has flaws and foibles and has done questionable or possibly incautious things, and things you don't agree with. 

     

    Trump is simply a whole new level of crazy that most politicians would never have the imagination to approach and if they had some sort of fever dream to come up with the concept, they'd have the "nous" to take some febrifuge, some antacids and a nap, and come back to sanity.

  6. You only pay END for your STR once per Phase​, regardless of how many times/ways you used your Strength that phase (CC 15). So a weapon with STR Min (10) costs 2 END, regardless of what kind of weapon it is, or how many attacks you make with it. It doesn't matter if the weapon has (or gains) Autofire, or is used in a Multiple Attack, the END cost from STR is still only 2.

    It's still a bit wierd that shooting an assault rifle could be more tiring than firing a pistol, and both equally as fatiguing as engaging in armed melee combat.

  7. What I read about the alleged sex tape suggests it isn't even a very good one. Grainy footage of mixed-gender bed sharing in a South American Big Brother-alike "reality" show. Definitely disgusting. Yeah. Won't do the woman in question's career any harm, I think.

     

    The mind boggles, though, at the double standards of a man who admits he fancies his daughter and once owned the rights to Miss Universe.

  8. The full name is "Aluminium Oxynitride". It is classified as a "Ceramic compound":

     

    Still, "Transparent Aluminium" has a nice ring to it. Why not use it?

    I'm fully aware of what it is, which is why I asserted that it is not transparent aluminium.

     

    The biggest reason not to use the Trekkie fantasy name is because it's misleading. Calling it a "transparent metal" implies that the compound posesses important metallic physical properties like ductility and electrical conductivity, which it does not. You cannot make "transparent aluminium" foil, or use it for cabling. 

  9. From my point of view that is only a distraction.

    Born of people incapable to accept thier own shortcommings and looking for Distrations and Scapegoats.

    A common mistake while growing up, but not a unsourmountable one.

     

    I managed to overcome that pattern of reality-denial and distraction despite having something that qualifies as mental illness. If I did it, everyone can do it.

    I really need to write my theory over on the non-gamign discussion.

    You are not a population. Your assertion that "everyone can do it" while possibly true is largely irrelevant. They don't, so we're stuck where we are.

  10. We are so overtaxed with "things we need to fear", we have no way of approaching any of the issues.

    Realising what we did accomplish will get more done then having a new "thing to fear of the week".

     

     

    I our soceity not supposed to be aging? Are we not supposed to get smarter with age? Then why is the entertainment and news industry appearing dumber and deeper into fear/hate mongering every yera?

    I find that first part optimistic. Populations don't work that way. Fear gets people to clamour to those with power (who need to keep the votes) to "Fix or do sumfink", and that's one of the very few levers we proles (including the scientists) have on the political classes. Having the pollies bask in their past successes is not a good way to get them to do something new.

     

    Fortunately, the compelling science behind anthropogenic warming and the monstrous consequences of inaction are helping the self-interested start to do the right thing. Hopefully it'll not be entirely too little, too late (it's already somewhat both of those), and we'll be able to mitigate the changes to levels which we can adapt to.

     

    As to the society aging leading to smarter people: why do they get youngsters to fight wars? Because young people are braver and less aware of their own mortality. Brave enough to get things done. How many revolutions have been started by septuagenarians?

     

    And the entertainment industry isn't any more hatemongering than it ever was. It's dumbing down so that the post-industrial wasteland will be populated by pliant proletariat, fat on bread and content with circuses.

  11. I am tired about all the fear and hate mongering. Can we stop with that fad already? It grew old half a century ago.

     

    Without the fear (actually certainty) that if we didn't do something about it, it'd get worse, we wouldn't have done anything about it. And it would have got worse rather than better.

     

    Same applies to the current climate catastrophe staring us in the face.

  12. If we can't get out of the Solar System, we'll be functionally restricted to the sort of Interplanetary society developed by Niven and Pournelle's Moties, becoming ruthlessly efficient at the use of non-replenishable resources (there's a finite, large, but finite tonnage of any given metal within the Solar System) and subject to some pretty draconian restrictions on population. Whether we'll specialise quite as hard, is a question; a lot of fictional transhuman settings involve significant bioware and cyberware augmentation to fulfill specific niches more effectively. Assuming we manage to hold it together long enough to get a functioning infrastructure outside the Terran gravity well, and that's by no means a given.

     

    Even agrarian societies had specialists: the smith, the charcoal burner, the Lord of the Manor; most pre-industrial societies had a sharp demarcation between the roles of the genders. The apparent greater diversity in any individual's skills is, I think, an illusion. A modern human's "Everyman Skill" list would have as many entries as a feudal serf's, easily.

  13. Plus, he specifically talked about preventing her from picking judges.

    "By the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks.  Though the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know."

     

    Hillary won't get to make Supreme Court nominations until after she is President. If he was talking about voting, like the Trump translators say, instead of shooting..it would already be too late.

    I think the Trump-spin is that he meant for people to vote for him so HRC doesn't get to be Pres in the first place. Which would work, if Trump won't appoint gun-control Justices. So the fig-leaf, to mix a metaphor, at least carries some water. It's just gonna leak out the various holes...

  14. All the backpedalling is disingenuous. If he wanted to encourage people of a certain viewpoint (in this case, the viewpoint that gun ownership rights would be curtailed to a greater and unwarranted degree under a Clinton Presidency) to vote for him to preserve those rights, he could have just come out and said "...the Second Amendment people, maybe there is: vote for me," rather than the coy insinuation, eminently deniable, of "I don't know..." It is plain to see that he knew what he was saying, knew he shouldn't and knew the furore it would raise. The denials and post-hoc rationalisation are simply risible attempts by his staff to cover an ass he really loves to flash about; and who's to deny that it's a successful political approach so far? It also avoided him actually making any promises himself to not appoint any anti-gun Supreme Court Justices.

    Trump has fully grokked (right or wrong) the concept that there is no such thing as bad publicity. So to get lots of publicity without even having to make a policy commitment, it's meat with gravy to him.

  15. On other forums I've seen Sanders supporters say a one-term disastrous Trump presidency...

    Dangerous thinking, that. With the state of the USA today, if Trump won the Big Chair, he could point at all sorts of economic successes at least, 5 years down the line, just from the inertia built up to get the economy performing at its current state. Personally, I'm starting to wonder whether that's Trump's plan: get in, do nothing, ...?, Profit!

     

    I still think that the "disgust" reflex is strong enough on average to overcome the general monkey-brain manipulation tricks Ol' rug-head is pulling. At least I hope so.

  16. As a long time (over 30 years now; _gulp_ ) LARPer, I'd personally struggle to be involved in a superhero-level action-focused LARP, for similar reasons to my scepticism about LARPs where projectile weapons are commonplace and supposed to represent current RL SotA (or even approaching that) in that field. I've tried Vampire LARPs, and the various mechanics to represent the super powers of such creatures really get in the way of the actual RP, even as they can do in high-powered "Heroic Fantasy" LARPs. Supers games have such a wide variety of powers and effects that it would be very difficult to convincingly represent on a 1:1 scale.

     

    It's easier to do in a LRP (lacking the "A" for "Action") where game mechanics can be expected to be much more table-toppy and abstracted, since "hard skills" aren't as much of an issue.

  17. Well its obvious "knowingly and willfully" fully indicate intent, but 'OR otherwise makes available' and 'OR uses IN ANY MANNER prejudicial..." are also there.  Obviously, basic grammer says the OR separates the other statements from the "knowingly and willfully" part.  Clearly "knowingly and willfully" are separate and don't apply to those parts...that's why I didn't bold them.

    No it doesn't. It separates them from the "furnishes, transmits or otherwise..." parts. The intent section applies to all of the subsequent clauses.

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