ScottishFox

One option is very high damage weapons (mounted knight charging with a lance) and just battering the dragon unconscious inside its ultra-hard body. 20 points of rPD/rED is going to put the dragon out of reach anything that isn't highly amped up. Great Axe plus Haymaker gets you into the 3d6+1 to 3.5d6 Range. A few levels on damage could get you to 4d6 HKA which means you're still doing 0 damage on anything short of a critical hit. One classic way I've seen of handling this is the dragon has reduced (or zero) armor for area 13. A weak spot to exploit.

This one strikes shockingly close to home (I live in North Dallas area). Local mayoral candidate busted on 109 felony charges of election fraud. https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2020/10/08/carrollton-mayoral-candidate-zul-mirza-mohamed-arrested-voter-fraud/ From the article: To find out who was behind the scheme, officials began a surveillance of the postal facility. A box of the requested ballots was picked up at the location on October 7. Investigators followed the person, later identified as Mohamed, back to a home in the 1600 block of Bennington Drive in Carrollton and contacted a judge to get a search warrant for the house. Once inside, deputies found the box containing the requested ballots, with several of them open. The fraudulent driver license used to rent the P.O. Box was also located during the search. Sheriff Tracy Murphree said, “The fact an actual candidate for public office would engage in these activities is appalling.” Basically he was having ballots sent en masse to his P.O. Box and got caught. Early voting for us Texans starts in just a few days.

My wife was on Rituxan for a couple of years for her ultra-rare ear condition. This year she reacted to the medicine, developed acute onset CVID and her body decided to eat a couple of pints of blood. She developed none of the symptoms classically associated with low oxygen (blue lips, pale, etc.) and instead seemed to get weak, sluggish and act kind of drunk. After I carried her to bed she kind of crawled in place unable to move herself to her usual sleeping spot. I called 911. Her resting heart rate was up to 145 and her blood oxygen was in the toilet. Paramedics said she'd have been dead by morning. They ended up giving her 3-4 units of blood at the hospital. I'd be shocked if Trumps numbers were that bad based on how my wife looked with similar numbers (she was a little lower - right at 80 - but dropping). On the plus side - We're about a month post cochlear implant and she's doing WAY better off all the crazy immuno-suppressants and she's finally off the immuno-globulin infusions and blood thinners she had to take while her immune system built back up.

Based on how she's presented herself so far a few years of Ivanka would be a serious improvement.

Texas numbers continue to do well despite the school openings. I will say that in-person attendance at our local schools are down 50-60% from the norm so that's probably helping keep the numbers down. Still, the rate of non-compliance I see with masks isn't having the Fear the Walking Dead level impact I was worried it might. Hospitalizations are less than 33% of what they were at the peak. Death rate isn't quite as low, but it is as low as we've seen in a few months. I'll admit I've liked this idea for a few months now. Not because of Trump, but because the illness is so heavily impacting the extremely old and sick and the death rate is so incredibly low among school kids and working age adults. Seems like a targeted re-opening could be achieved with a little more precision and finesse than we've seen so far.

I'm concerned that we'll easily get into a worse situation by using draconian, ineffective lockdown methods (like Hawaii is currently using) while we simultaneously fail to stop the spread of the illness and drive most of the population into abject poverty because they aren't allowed to work. I still have friends in Hawaii and it is BAD right now. But at least you can eat a $5,000 fine and up to a year in prison for jogging in the park or swimming alone at the beach. Good luck paying that off while you're not allowed to work.

I ultimately resorted to using a complicated Combat Effectiveness sheet that had both a total points the players could have at each Tier of the campaign and then individual caps within that. Players were allowed to exceed the cap by one rank for their signature trait or ability if they wanted as long as they didn't pick the same thing as another player. The Fire Witch did more damage, the spirit monk was the fastest, the earth bender could maintain multiple durable barriers, etc.

In my campaigns I have generally required a pyramid scheme of skill levels. After you have two 3pt levels you cannot get another until you have a 5pt level. After you have two 5pt levels you cannot get another until you have an 8pt levels. and so on. Still, you have to cap overall skill levels or CVs or players will go nuts.

I took a variation of an old adventurer's club Combat Effectiveness calculator (this problem has existed since the beginning of HERO) and modified it for my campaign. It's imperfect and could use some work, but it kept things within rough constraints so the players didn't get too crazy (20x Levels with Swords, for example). Here's an old one I used a couple of campaigns ago.Fantasy Hero Combat Effectiveness.xlsx

Seems like the ultimate put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is test.

Problem is I want better choices. I feel like my options are belladonna or ricin. I don't want these options. I want good ones.

Looks like Texas might luck out. After an odd mega-spike in cases it has continued to decline. New cases are dropping again after a couple weeks of going up (school back in session most likely). Hospitalizations remain less than 33% of peak and the number of deaths continues to decline. Can't wait for this crap to be gone.

All that debate did was confirm to me that while I felt my choices in 2016 were godawful - they were not as bad as my choices in 2020. It's unbelievable how bad that debate was. At one point in the debate I was wishing Trump would just shut up and stop interrupting so much that I mentioned it to my wife. Me: He's interrupting WAY too much. Like - this is hard to watch. Wife: Joe Biden looks weak. Me: That doesn't bother you?! Wife: I like that he's taking it to him. Somehow, impossibly, my three-decades-of-voting-Democrat wife is now more conservative than I am. I am probably going to join my fellow Vote Giant Meteor 2020 friends and vote Libertarian again.

Haven't worked on it, but absolutely loved that game and setting. It felt like Catholic D&D - praying to the Saints actually did something and the forces of Satan were everywhere. It captured the feel of the kind of fears medieval Catholics would have had. I wonder if its possible to get that game running on Windows 10? EDIT: Oops! I though he said Darklands.

In the past I've been more strict about balancing out the point costs of things, but since we're running with the 5e content straight from the PHB we're relying on Wizard's balancing (or complete lack thereof) for this initial run. My previous converts were fairly easy because I had already DM'd 5e for them for a year or longer. They trusted me enough to try the new game system. The current group hasn't had me as a DM before and are long time 5e players. So I'm easing them into it more gently.

Not sure what that has to do with Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton's affair.

If memory serves at the time Bill Clinton had the extramarital affair it was felony sexual harassment based on the law of the time and his relative position to Monica Lewinsky. I feel pretty confident that Trump has had affairs as well, but not while President and with people who worked for him.

You are getting the gist of it. The proficiency value is converted to overall levels with the caveat they can only be used on saving throws if they are proficient in that saving throw. So far it's been a great compromise. I get to DM a HERO game and my 5e veterans get to play a game they're mostly familiar with. The dice are a little different and there are some changes to combat operations, but it's close enough to 5e that they feel comfortable building and levelling their characters.

Commentary like that belongs in the politics thread.

It's a reverse attack roll the way I do it based on the spell casting ability of the caster. So if an attack roll would hit on a 11 or less then a saving throw works on a 10 or less. Attack roll of 13 or less would be a saving throw of 8 or less. Attack roll of 14 or less would be a saving throw of 7 or less and so on. To keep the numbers roughly matched to D&D percentages I do keep track of which classes are proficient with which saving throws and they get their proficiency modifier added in.

Straight conversion, but I suspect after a few sessions of play that some stats will get more attention than they would in the usual 5e play. Our barbarian has an 18 CON and everyone else has a 14 (which is very common in 5e due to point-buy price breakpoints).

It's been a fun campaign so far. Currently the crew is taking a Dungeon Crawl break from the mass setting absorption in the classic In Search of the Unknown. I believe it's the first adventure published by TSR for Dungeons and Dragons. It's so old nobody at my table (besides me) knew what it was. I slightly predate D&D, electricity, pyramids, fire and other modern novelties... One other aspect of the setting that was a big change from convention is that there are no known Gods. Almost everyone worships The Light and fears The Dark. Much smaller numbers of people worship (secretly) spheres of influence rather than specific named deities such as The Harvest, The Wind, The Sea, The Hearth, etc. Shepherd Flynn worships The Storm (Tempest Cleric template) and his access to unconventional spells has lead to some suspicion from his fellow Shepherd. In one episode Shepherd Flynn heard the name Varkuul in the rolling thunder of a lightning strike and upon inspecting the impact point - found a spiraling image of lightning burned into a tree stump. He carefully cut away the wooden disk and carries it hidden on his person. A plot point that won't get exposed to the players until very late in the campaign is that the old Gods are as sheltered / imprisoned by The Hold as the humans are.

I expect Trump to win the in-person voting by a large enough margin for him to declare victory. Then mail-in ballots will roll in over the next several days reversing that outcome. Then cries of foul play and a legal kerfuffle the likes of which we have never seen. I don't think either side will accept the election outcome regardless of who wins.

We're only a few weeks in, but so far here are some of the background elements. When the story begins there are only two known races. The Humans of the Hold and the Shepherds - who escaped the shadow realms and have been the desperately needed protectors of mankind for a thousand years. Humans of the Hold share a powerful affinity for the light of day and have the following traits: * Humans who spend most of the day exposed to the light heal BOD at the rate of their REC/day instead of REC/month. * They are a strong and vigorous people and during the day recover from exhaustion (LTE loss) with a single hour of rest. * They find inspiration in the light and have advantage (5e term) on all skill checks and attack rolls while in direct sunlight. The conversion of this is to roll 4d6 and take the best 3 dice. * Humans of the Hold are terrified by the night. They have disadvantage on skill checks and attack rolls after darkness falls. Roll 4d6 and take the worst 3 dice. Shepherds * Are strongest at night and weakened by sunlight. They have the opposite advantage/disadvantage traits as the Humans do. * Can see in the dark * Do not eat, drink nor sleep * Can generate areas of consecration where the evil creatures of the night cannot enter without burning to ash (1d6 to 3d6 NND damage - does body - per phase) based on how close they get to the Shepherd. Shepherds working in tandem can cover much larger areas. * Shepherds cannot gain the benefit of resting unless they watch over 1 or more Humans during the night. Shepherds who have no one to protect begin to starve to death. * Shepherds are not born, but made by way of a process known only to the Keepers (the lords of the Shepherds possessed of strange and terrifying powers). The daily cycle of night and day is interrupted by two hours of The Gloom which falls over the hold during Dawn and Dusk. During this time a swirling gray hangs in the air and visions of times past or futures yet to come will fade in and out of sight. The inhabitants of the Hold know not to look at an apparition for any length of time or the images will seem to become more real and often try to lure them away from safe areas or, when close to nightfall, try to distract them long enough that they cannot reach the common gathering grounds of the Shepherds. One cosmetic aspect of the world is that color is absent at night. A torch or lantern will only more brightly reveal the black and white reality of night time. Sunrise returns color to the world as soon as it is brightly lit enough to see. The Night is dark and full of terrors. Not having a Shepherd around at night is extremely dangerous - almost suicidal. The creatures that emerge are drawn to the living and scour the wilds and cities alike for unprotected prey. If you need to travel you have to join a caravan with a Shepherd in it. Taking to the roads for a multi-day trip without protection is certain death. So far, in terms of party development: Shepherd Flynn has become increasingly concerned that the Keepers and Shepherds aren't the benevolent protectors of mankind that everyone believes they are. Flynn seeks to protect his people above all and lies with the truth like an Aes Sedai to keep them out of trouble. Shepherd Gim ( later arriving player also wanted to play a Shepherd ) is a strictly by the book type of Shepherd and is growing increasingly concerned that Shepherd Flynn has strayed from the faith - perhaps heretically so. He reports to Keeper Grim secretly to voice his concerns when he can. Blue is a lazy ne'er-do-well whose primary goal is getting enough money for eat and drink without doing anything resembling honest work. He's only along for the ride to avoid well earned jail time and to pique his interest in the strictly forbidden arcane arts. Arietty is thick-skinned barbarian who is hoping they can find a cure for whatever malady that has been afflicting her since the eclipse (she's playing a half-orc and her racial traits are now visible in a world that is 99.99999% human). When the visions appear in The Gloom they portray seductive scenes of great violence, avarice and cruelty. Civilization was made for the weak - the strong take what they want when they want. Blue and Arietty are both convinced the Shepherds are parasites of some sort, but neither wants to die when the sun goes down so aside from giving Flynn a hard time they don't give it much thought. Occasionally my wife's fire witch joins in and my daughter will play with her beast master (Lorelei and her pet stag - Venison). All of the characters - since the eclipse event - have retained their color at night. This draws a lot of unwanted attention if they aren't careful (think chanting and levitating during the Salem witch trials). They are changing and for now only Shepherd Flynn's vigilance has kept them from serious - potentially fatal - trouble with the authorities.

I was waiting for the Coronavirus numbers to flip after the schools opened and it looks like we might be seeing the beginning of the case explosion: The single day new cases is the highest ever. Hospitalizations and deaths are at the lowest numbers in a couple of months, but I wonder if they'll stay that way after the new cases flow through the system. Yikes.