Toxxus

30 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

Iran Crisis or ‘Circus’? A Weary Middle East Wonders

I really thought we were finally going to have a president who didn't start another war.

Previously I thought Obama would be that guy, but I was wrong.

Remember when Eisenhower gave that farewell speech from the Presidency that made him seem like a conspiratorial nut-case?  Yeah, perhaps, he was just right on the money.

If I recall correctly his draft version of that speech didn't use Military Industrial Complex, but Congressional Military Industrial Complex.

Fighting Iran is just stupid.  Get out of the Middle East and let them sort it out or fail to sort it out on their own.  They don't want us there and we're 23 trillion in the hole.

Next country that needs our help (I'm looking at you Kuwait) has to pay the bill.

On 4/3/2019 at 10:01 PM, Old Man said:

Don't forget China's contributions:
 

 

Wind and Fire Wheels: "It's more important that I look impressive doing katas than actually be combat effective."

 

 

Monk's Spade: "Make this shovel more weaponlike.  More.  No, more.  Look, what don't you understand?"

 

 

Tiger Hook Swords.  "Okay what I want is two swords, only with bladed pommels, and blades on the handguards, and blades on the blades, and hooks on the blades such that I can hook one blade on the other blade and swing all the blades around on the battlefield like a shrieking psycho."

 

I've played with the Tiger Hook Swords in ancient times when I was taking Praying Mantis Kung Fu.

They're extra dangerous when you hook them and swing it as a double-length weapon.

They're also pretty dangerous when you try to do any movements with them because of the pommel blade.  So easy to jab yourself or drag the tip across your other arm as you do forms.  Looks awesome, would trade it immediately for a classic Chinese straight sword.

I have one common recurring type of dream.  Whenever one of my arms gets outside the blanket and gets cold my subconscious wakes me up by having me fall to my death or get murdered by some type of nightmarish horror.  I wake up with a start, realize my arm is cold, and bring it back under the blankets.

A more recent weird dream was after hitting the snooze on my alarm at 6:45.  I hear, "Good luck getting ready on time now.  It's 6:55."  I wake up with a start just as my alarm goes off at 6:55.  The voice?  Apparently my subconscious is getting lippy.

22 hours ago, tkdguy said:

 

Why am I never given an expensive bottle of wine?

 

The employee got off lightly. Most are fired for making that sort of mistake.

Closest I ever got to something like this was a free Dinner for two at Ruth Chris steakhouse after our waiter wandered off and forgot we existed.

The whole meal was free and they encouraged us to get a couple drinks and a dessert to make up for their failure.  Overall, pretty sweet deal.

33 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

I'm with you up to 20.  With 25, you depart from the RAW benchmarks that 30 is the pinnacle of human achievement, so I would insert a benchmark at 25, and reclassify your 25 as 30.

30 just seems WAY too high for humans in a heroic campaign.

World record dead lift is right at 500 KG and that is a single spine-threatening lift.  Not repeatable each phase until endurance runs out.  That puts a steroided-up world strong man champion at STR 21.

Someone being more than 3x stronger doesn't seem likely - at all.  Even using the extended STR chart where weight capacity goes up at a slower rate you'd need someone able to nearly double the 500 KG lift.

3 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Why does anyone see a need to pay points for role playing?

Social power and influence matters.  I have a player on my Wednesday night games who's character has 20 PRE and high social skills. 

The actual player's social skills are not great and I don't feel like he should be penalized because he can't do the things his character can.

Interactions will generally go along the lines of:

Player - I convince the guard to let us cut in front of the line.

Me - And how do you do that?

Player - With words.

I exaggerate only slightly.  The guy doesn't have persuasion or high PRE in real life, but he wants to play a character that can do well in an area he can't.

Because it is a game the ability to advance or win via certain avenues costs points.  Whether that's stealth, weapon skill or being so ridiculously attractive that NPCs are inclined to treat you favorably.

11 hours ago, Lucius said:

The palindromedary buys a level of Swinging and Missing Appearance

A palindromedary would have several dice of wtf-am-I-looking-at.  Most people encountering one would lose their first few phases wondering what just happened to their perception of reality.

On 4/28/2019 at 4:59 PM, massey said:

Well, I think there are real world Olympians and fictional ones.  Depending on my mood, I'm not always particularly impressed with people in the Olympics.  Don't get me wrong, I can't do any of it, but they're well below the level of ability we see in movies or comics.  Michael Phelps would blow me out of the water in swimming, but watch the judges in the background of this video. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejFVFtJdP3s

 

He's all the way up to the speed of "regular guy walking mildly quickly".  In Champions terms he might be a Speed 2 with a mighty 4 inches of Swimming.  Maybe.  But that absolutely sucks, and it crams normal humans into such a tight range that it's basically impossible to differentiate.  In a cinematic game, Michael Phelps should have a Speed 4 and 6 inches of Swimming at least, even though he doesn't really.

Misapplying the rule of using the higher costing power when multiple ways to accomplish something exist I'd go with:

+2 SPD - Only when swimming.

On 5/14/2019 at 2:04 PM, massey said:

 

It's a game and we use abstractions in it.  I am utterly mystified by those of you who think that Comeliness must be subjective, but Presence is something that's the same to all of us.

 

When we get right down to it, I don't know how "striking" I'd find your person with Striking Appearance.

There's that and also the scientific theory that beauty is not that subjective.

We are hardwired for it from birth.

 https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6355-babies-prefer-to-gaze-upon-beautiful-faces/

Let's say that your friend says he's dating a total 10.  She may not be a 10 based on your preferences, but she's not going to be a 2 either.  You know she's attractive plus/minus a couple notches based on preference.

I'm fine with Striking Appearance as a talent, but we used COM back in the day and I found it gave a more granular and more relatable standard.

If all primary stats are scaled from 1 to 20 with a 10 being normal then you have a pretty good idea of what a COM of 12 or 18 or 24 means.

If I say they have Striking Presence +2d6 to my players it means nothing to them.  It's unrelatable until I tack on some extra dice to a presence attack.

Additionally, it'd probably be easier to use COM as a complimentary roll to support a Seduction attempt since players will intuitively understand that someone who is very physically attractive will have an advantage in attempting to seduce someone.

5 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Yeah that's the standard for action movies now; consider Brendan Frasier in the Mummy being punched 30 feet crashing against a stone statue and flopping to the ground.  Its like people are cartoons now and they bear no relation or comparison to real life.

This is the part in the movie where I usually annoy my wife.  If you got hit that f*cking hard you'd die before you even reached the wall.

If it's Thor and Hulk - fine.  If it's funny guy in the Mummy he should burst open like a ripe melon and expire.

5 minutes ago, massey said:

Comic book action has no upper limits.  The justification is the person has super powers, and isn't at all limited to what a person could do.  Sometimes it can look good, and sometimes it can look fake, but there's no attempt to even pretend that it's realistic.

Example characters:  Winter Soldier, Superman

Even the Avenger's series, which I enjoyed immensely, had ludicrous illogical shifts in power levels.

How does Thanos - beat the hulk unconscious with a series of lethal hits - end up hitting Captain America a couple dozen times without killing him?  Given their power level differences the first solid blow should have gone in Cap's chest and out his spine.

How does the Black Widow successfully fight one of Thanos' lieutenants who hits hard enough to send the Vision careening 50 feet away and not get her arms and legs ripped off due to the strength difference?

One of my player's is a big League of Legends fan so I've been letting him find/buy a couple of items from the game for his Udyr character:

1-  Hunter's Machete:  Adds 1pt HKA - NND Fire damage to all of your attacks - Str Doesn't add to damage - Defense is not being a monster or having a shield effect.

2-  Iceborn Guantlet:  8 rPD/rED for area 6/7 on right arm only, Adds 1pt NND Cold damage to melee attacks only - Triggers only 1x per turn - Creates single hex change environment that causes Dex roll at -3 or prone (ice slick).

His primary adversary from his backstory is Lissandra the Ice Queen (ice witch - cold based powers).  He's already been warned in prophetic manner that he will be betrayed in the most unsuspected manner.  He knows that the creation of the Iceborn Guantlet required his only piece of True Ice, but he seems to have forgotten that Lissandra has the power to control True Ice.  Their encounter is going to start roughly as he finds himself being affected by his own, un-removable gauntlet.

Our party witcher has been able to pay an exorbitant amount of money to get a matched sword set (1 silver / 1 steel) that add +2 OCV (instead of +1 like most greatswords) and do an additional 1d6 hka on critical hits.

The party fire witch has a Staff of Storms that allows her to change the special effect of her spells (all currently fire based) into lightning.

1 minute ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

 

While I think the bernchmarks should be standardized, I think 30mworks fine as the "top of human possibility", so I would drop the mental stat cap to that level, rather than boost the physical stat level.  A Legendary stat of 23 provides a 14- skill roll for "basic training", which is just over a 90% success rate.  That's enough to be "legendary", IMO.

 

I  note the CON range suggested above places 25 at " the peak of human health", and 30 at "superhuman".  This is not consistent with the 6e standard that the peak of human ability is a 30.

I've always liked 20 as the cap for the vast majority with 21-25 being the range of athletes and intellectuals who border on superhuman in heroic campaigns.

Non-supers getting up to 30 feels more like a Champions setting.

4 minutes ago, zslane said:

 

I see a real preference for H-t-H melee specialists there. Would Wolverine go on that list if he was in the MCU? Or is he too exotic with his adamantium skeleton and regeneration?

 

I do like Cap a lot as a character; one of my favorites in the MCU actually. But as comic book superheroes go, I prefer those with flashier, top-tier superpowers. That is to say, either more than one stat in the FASERIP MN "Monstrous" (75) range and/or multiple powers that don't simply involve punching/kicking.

Captain America has massive, mega-scale powers that are all bought with fully invisible power effects.

He didn't face off the armies of Thanos alone because he was suicidal.  He was taking an iconic poster-worthy pose to (gestures, concentration, extra time: full phase) to cast an all-stat / all-powers aid buff on the incoming armies.

Think D&D style paladin aura at a larger scale.  One might even argue that his Mind Control:  Only to make people do the right thing is what made Tony Stark take himself out to save the world.

DM made him do that since his back-story was normal human enhanced to maximum possible potential by the super soldier serum.

Ok, I'm not even remotely serious, but I do like hero builds using effects along those lines. 

3 hours ago, Starlord said:

 

...and away we go....

 

Alabama Senate passes near-total abortion law

I know what they meant, but that headline makes it sound like Alabama is forcing a birth rate of zero by making abortion mandatory.

Words matter!

14 hours ago, Ockham's Spoon said:

the key is that you need to define the world and framework in which you want to play to keep things consistent and reasonable.

This is the most important bit of this discussion, imo.

Make sure your players understand what LS vs. poison will and won't do in your campaign.  Those coming from a D&D background will expect it to provide immunity.  So, perhaps, you have to adjust costing based on how frequent poisons come up in your campaign.

You might also let them know, before they buy it, that immunity to all terrestrial poisons will work just fine on conventional critters, but against wyverns, manticores and demonic vipers that it will provide no protection.  That way they can make a purchase based on knowing what the ability does or doesn't do.

1 minute ago, Starlord said:

 

That sounds like Eric Bana's Special Forces character at the end of Black Hawk Down.

I think you're right!

1 minute ago, rjcurrie said:

 

I'm not sure doing the 10 shows left in the series will have a major impact on her career. 

 

In terms of her star power and such - probably not.

But those 10 shows come with 10 paychecks and if this turns out to be the height of her career then that's a big chunk of cheddar.

If she finds another project in short order (or already has one lined up) then her jumping ship might be a good thing.

Hope she finds success.

A lot of stars bail on a long running, successful series only to realize they aren't able to get a primary role of their own on another show.

24 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

It was interesting to me that Steve in Endgame dealt with his losses by walking away from the whole Avenger/superhero schtick, and trying to help other people deal with theirs. That could be interpreted as Steve giving up, although not by me.

I liked the idea that he finally accepted that he had given enough and could enjoy his own life for a change.

On 4/26/2019 at 2:27 AM, archer said:

I thought the multipower vs elemental control discussion was very interesting in the way that they broke it down between engineering/accounting types vs artistic/creative types.

One of my jobs did that for our development team and it did me no favors at all.  I was above average on risk-taking for the "preferred" developer mentality and WAY too high on the creative end.

My boss actually recommended I quit and start up my own company or something.  Luckily I convinced them to let me stay and I've been doing quite well as a developer for nearly 20 years.

You can't throw the outliers out with the bath water.

27 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Yawn.  Meanwhile, it would have been nice to have heroes be heroic and face hardship with courage and fortitude, demonstrating something to look up to and strive for rather than collapse like a pathetic wretch.  You know, heroism?  Being a better man than we are, because they're iconic figures, SUPER heroes?  Defined not by their powers but how they face difficulty? Can't have that though.  Not these days.

I can't even recall the characters name from Saving Private Ryan, but the main characters drag their battered, demoralized asses to safety and this one quietly heroic guy walks through the lunch line to get some food and then gets ready to walk right back out into the action.

He gets asked why he's going back out when he could rest and he basically says if he doesn't do it then someone else will have to and off he goes.  No fanfare, no bravado - just doing what had to be done.

It's less dramatic if the hero doesn't have an emotional breakdown, but there are some bad-ass warrior-gene guys out there that can handle these hardships without having to shatter and reconstruct themselves.

I don't expect him to go left very often.  I just like the fact it is an option.

It means he's thinking.  Unlike multiple justices on either side that are ideologically locked into party line ruling.

It's fairly disgusting that are 6 or more justices that almost universally rule in the same direction and that there are just a couple that swing left or right based on the merits of the case.

46 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Could it be that two heterosexual makes males, we are likely to rate a male lower and a female higher?

More likely it is that men (as a whole) weigh physical beauty and health at a much higher level than women do.  Likewise women are more influenced by behavior and status.

Still, if you can get high enough up the scale you can overcome this biological +/- 4 pts.  I'm looking at you Brad Pitt and Jason Momoa.

5 minutes ago, Iuz the Evil said:

This. And her dragon too, of course. The fire breathing death machine is too dangerous to leave around, unless Jon can control it.

One possible outcome I see is Drogon obeying Jon instead of Daenerys since he is the rightful heir to the Targaryen throne.

Killing her with her own dragon would be brutal on multiple levels.