ScottishFox

My Fantasy HERO group is in the tier 4 range by D&D standards and they are finally feeling the bite of the 1/2 DCV penalty for Multiple Attacking. Now that OCV/DCVs are getting into the 11-12 range and damage output is in the DC 10-14 range they are reluctant to set themselves up for a head-shot by going 1/2 DCV. However, on the other side of the balancing see-saw I had to cap Multiple Attacks at 2 swings otherwise anyone who got stunned/flashed/grabbed/entangled would be triple or quadruple attacked and finished instantly. I find Entangle - especially the variants that don't take damage from attacks - to be very rough on game balance.

Historically speaking, so far, firing the first shot results in a 100% win rate. Not that I haven't enjoyed the almost 75 years of countries not nuking each other.

That's an irresponsible pledge. Whoever fires second in a fight involving nukes - loses.

I do like the consistency in the Russian election interference narrative. Now, apparently, it is Russian bots that caused the destruction of Kamala Harris by Tulsi Gabbard to trend... pffft. And here I thought it was just a sick burn that drew actual applause when it happened. The DNC is going to have their own Trump moment if they don't improve their game. Politics as usual isn't working for the electorate any more. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/455712-kamalaharrisdestroyed-trending-after-democratic-debate

I could see this as both combatants are intentionally DCV 0 until the Fast Draw / DEX Roll / Lightning Reflexes challenge is won. Which means whoever shoots first gets their opponent at DCV 0. This ups the chance of a called shot or critical hit dramatically. That and the fact that most Western Heroes are working with 0-1 rPD should make gunfights plenty lethal.

Yak gives Universal Translator with side effect: can't shut up.

I think you could also do HTH attack, trigger - action that takes no time, resets instantly, activated by being struck. I believe the Fantasy Hero riposte ability is based on this.

Having watched Gabbard on the JRE I have to say she's my favorite of the current crop of Democratic candidates. I'm a big fan of her stance on military involvements overseas.

What I've done for some of the former D&D players at my table was create two multipowers. First one for instant abilities (mostly attacks like fireball, magic missile, etc.). Second one for constant abilities (bless, haste, darkness, etc.). While more complicated VPP better simulates the wizard, cleric and other classes that can memorize from a list of spells, but only have so many prepared for use each day.

Sadly this is the same approach the VA used - for years. Medicare denies more claims than private insurance as well. There's no Hero in this story.

Reading medical bills is the pathway to Cthulu-esque madness. I had an outpatient surgery about 15 years ago. The bill was over $35,000. The insurance only paid about $12,000. Then there was a stream of numbers and arcane symbols only a mage specialized in billing can read and my share was less than $400. It makes no sense.

1st question: Neither party is willing to touch its 3rd rail items. Nobody will cut enough spending to medicare, social security or the military to even slow the train wreck down. We're upside down to the tune of 150 *trillion* dollars. If any of us was in debt to the tune of 7.5x our annual pre-tax wages would we be pretending we're in a salvageable situation? 2nd question: The kind of pressure that would be required at this point would be far beyond what voting could accomplish. I believe our politicians are going to crash this train and then blame each other for the mess while the number of uninsured Americans leaps to catastrophic levels as medicare collapses. It's going to get real ugly for a few years. 3rd question: No real solutions will draw votes. Politicians avoid them like the plague. One thing we're not dealing with at ALL is the supply of physicians and dentists. The supply of both is going down because the schools that create them are unable to stay in business. I have to imagine a fairly obscene level of regulatory burden and malpractice insurance rates are contributing to this. Another problem is that there has been a very nice increase in the number of female dentists (yay!), but they tend to work a LOT fewer hours than their male counterparts which means we need MORE dentists than we did previously - not less. I do not have a good answer for #3 and I'd be skeptical of anyone who said they did. It is going to take many years of effort on numerous fronts to get healthcare back on track. I'd also like the people who have paid decades of money into social security to get taken care since they actually put their hard earned money into the program involuntarily. I often wonder why we don't take an approach similar to car insurance (low monthly premiums, coverage is basically nothing until you have a serious problem) for health care. My car insurance rates have been lovely compared to my health insurance rates over the last couple decades. One of the contributing cost problems is the nature of 3rd party payers. My share of an MRI is $27? Ok, let's get it. Oh, my share is $2750? No, thanks, let's try that high-res ultra-sound first. Still - I have no good answers here and neither does either party trying to win my vote. 4th question: Nobody should accept that. We should strive to get everyone covered (*). We should temper that effort with caution and be wary of making things worse. Possibly catastrophically so. * - Side Note: Insurance and coverage aren't even the right paradigm which shows how far misaligned the whole conversation is. People need affordable healthcare. Not insurance - healthcare. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_american_way_of_dentistry/2009/09/the_american_way_of_dentistry_3.html

For my family specifically we were able to get one major item covered via medicare that we couldn't with our private insurance so I'll credit the gov't a win on that one (after the 15 month delay and lawyer fees). However, Medicare has a higher claim denial rate than private insurance and a higher fraud rate to boot. If they'd just run the program better I'd be all for it. But they won't. The cost per person is rising so much faster than wages there is no way to keep premiums reasonable public nor private. According to this article medical spending has increased almost ~70x during a time window when most things went up 7.1x with inflation. If costs aren't controlled there's not enough money on planet Earth to make this work. Sorry about the image size. It's stupid big.

There's definitely some of this. There's also the part where our existing government healthcare systems are worse than private coverage in many instances. The number of veterans that have died while waiting for their already promised VA benefits is staggering and disgusting. The last family member I have who got on Medicare needed a lawyer and 15 months to get on and gets to deal with several doctors not accepting their business at all. Philosophically, I don't care if the insurance is private or publicly administered as long as it is run effectively. I don't trust the American government to handle this well. I've been paying into social security for well over 30 years and they saved literally none of the money they've collected from me. When I'm finally old enough to retire, unless they make massive changes, the money I was promised and paid for will simply not be there. Handing over one of the largest economic sectors in the country to the same government that has run us 22.5 trillion dollars in the hole and continues to have a trillion dollar a year deficit while the spending continues to climb seems like a very bad idea. I would love government run healthcare for everyone. The promises they already made to people are worth 125 trillion and change. I just can't trust the government to deliver. I think our collective batch of irresponsible politicians will run this thing into the ground before they even consider something resembling fiscal sanity.

Solid points. I agree with pretty much everything you said. But, the reason Americans (as a whole) aren't eager to change is that the system is working well enough for most of them and the government alternatives look worse than what they already have. If you don't have coverage then those government alternatives undoubtedly look fantastic. Also, sorry about your friend. Cancer is horrid and the costs - even with insurance - are stupidly high.

I think for a LOT of people it's not failing is the main issue. I've been insured for 40+ years and minus the too-low-coverage of Dental care it's been great. I've had multiple surgeries and ailments treated for very little out of pocket money. Meanwhile I have family members who have to doctor shop because a decent (and growing) chunk of doctors will no longer accept Medicare. I tried to take one of them to PrimaCare recently and they said they wouldn't take them because they have Medicare. Then I offered to pay cash for the whole thing because we really didn't want to wait until Monday. They declined. They won't touch Medicare patients - period. I had an older relative wait 3+ years for their hip surgery through the VA. They nearly committed suicide before they got the procedure. None of us are in a hurry to get more government insurance.

The first rule of Heat Club is that you get a comfortable indoor job working with computers. One of the guys I play D&D with here is in construction and due to the heat down here he has to take a couple of gallons of water to work with him AND a jar of pickle juice to prevent electrolyte problems. Triple-digit heat plus physical labor is a recipe for disaster.

I felt this way when I lived up north. If going outside means you will die then God clearly doesn't want you to live here. I left the frozen, murderous wastelands 30+ years ago.

I've been using a combat effectiveness cap for each player. Aid - Area Effect has thrown a bit of a spanner into that. My inclination is to make AoE buffs a factor on my spreadsheet so that a character that buffs has to be slightly weaker than a combat purist, but provides a net benefit to the team. Tricky part here is if everyone on the team takes buffs and the cumulative effect of 6 people buffing each other is something like (+2 OCV, +1 DCV, +7 rPD, +7 rED, etc., etc.). Combined it is a major shift in a mid-power Fantasy HERO campaign. One goal of the Combat Effectiveness sheet is to force roles to a limited degree. If you want crowd controls and buffs you can't also be the highest OCV/DCV/Damage character. One player, in a moment that made me proud, saw how disruptive his at-will Tunneling ability was and volunteered to swap it out for something else. Dungeon crawl experiences are annihilated by someone who tunnels alongside each room instead of trying to work through puzzles, traps, etc. I do have rules in place for stacking Armor and a couple of other things based on a modification of the armor weight chart (Armor X can only stack with Armor Y if it is within 2 points and it contributes +1 point to the higher value of the two). Otherwise 8 cloaks = plate armor at a fraction of the weight. Thy metal armor is no match for my velvet puffball suit. Have at thee!

We usually run with a range of 70-74, but I'll allow up to 76 during the summer when we're enjoying our multiple months of 100+ temps. This year - it's still on 70-74 since we've barely cracked 100 at all and only for short periods. Rainfall has been pretty good too. Our near drought of past years is gone to the point I'm actually nervous how high the rivers are near the roads I use. You're not wrong about the southern states in the USA either. They get stupid hot in some parts. Hot in ways most people in Europe are not going to understand. Where I live I've seen stories of people dying because some thief stole their AC unit.

Hmm, seems like I needed to give myself the old RTFM advice. It's actually under the Usable by Others advantage writeup in 6E1. "Characteristics: Characters cannot buy Characteristics as Usable By Others without GM’s permission; they should use Aid to achieve that effect." /facepalm

That is a nasty heat wave. Why do Germans hate air conditioning? Homes without AC where I live is extremely rare. That being said. Temperatures have been very moderate this summer. I'm used to 90+ days of 100+ temps and so far... nothing like that at all.

I've avoided these conundrums by double-dipping. I go see the movie alone first immediately after work (the theater is literally across the parking lot from where I work) and then take the wife/kiddo/quiz machines to the movie whenever it's convenient. But definitely get them in before they miss enough to be out of sorts regarding the plot. Granted, my kiddo goes for the munchies and my wife is so bad with super-heroes that I'm essentially watching the movie alone anyway. :S

Working on a Bless substitute for one of my former D&D players. Initial costing seemed really low as we went with +2 OCV, AoE, Usable by Others, Anyone within 10m Radius. After I considered how strong +2 OCV actually is and how it was basically an At Will ability with no END cost I began to reconsider the construction. Would this be better reflected with Aid 3d6+1 (taking default values so... 10pts for +2 OCV)? This way there's an END cost and it takes an Attack action so there's an action economy cost as well. Is there any difference in legality of the two approaches?

I have a few characters I've made off of completely random comments by my players. Entire plot twists spun up by a stray comment or two. One such character spawned from, "Oh, Ned the Baker, I'm going to write that down because I'm SURE he's a key player in the story....". He is now you snarky !@#$. Little do my players know, but Ned the Baker will be the one that will resurrect them with his mystical pastries should they fall in battle. His powers are a variety of buffs, self-only, usable by others, delayed effect, OAF - baked good, that essentially can be used by anyone who eats one of the enchanted pastries. He needs a few hours near a stove or open flame to recover his charges. I can't wait to spring this guy on the players.