Pattern Ghost

I was just responding to your comment on raw numbers there. Of course, there are a lot of other factors in play. I don't really see a full-blown civil war happening anytime soon, but there are enough extremists (future moderates, if things keep going the way they have been) out there to cause real problems.

There are about 696,000-697,000 police in the US. There are about 336,000-337,000 National Guard members (including support units) in the US. There are about 1.3 to 1.4 million active duty military personnel in the US armed forces (including support units and those deployed around the world.) A single million people acting up at once is a catastrophe of unheard of scale. Just 1% of the population is 3.3 million people . . . we'd be in deep doo-doo if that many people started acting up all at once. Could they actually overthrow the government? Probably not, but not for lack of bodies, even at those numbers.

Smart, low PER guy: Low INT, buys up INT-based skills or skill levels. Smart, low INT Skill guy: Low INT, buys up PER rolls with one or more senses. A High INT isn't required to represent an intelligent person. In hero, INT is more like mental agility, quick-wittedness in the moment, perception, etc., so you could easily have a 10 INT absent-minded professor type, with high skills who's brilliant, but doesn't think fast on his feet. So, what you're trying to accomplish is already built into the system.

Yep, a true master of both pickin' and grinnin'.

Greyhound - My Champions Online Speedster Blue Streak - Speedster with a potty mouth (I think we have a Herophile on the boards who has a character with this name) Barnstormer - Flying Speedster focused on Aerobatics Faster Blaster - My father-in-law's City of Heroes character (he didn't like thinking up names )

Note that once you've saved the file to another format, you can then print it to PDF by selecting the "Microsoft Print to PDF" printer option from your list of printers, if you're on a Windows PC.

Another way to look at balancing basic defense levels (to attacks vs PD/ED) is to determine the number of hits from an average attack it would take to KO the character. If it varies too far out of the norm, bring it back in line. Let's say the average main attack for characters is 10d6 in the campaign, with some lower damage characters sitting at 8d6 and higher damage characters at 12d6. That gives average rolls of 28, 35, and 42. So: Average Character with 25 defense: At 30 STUN: 8d6 (28) Takes 3 pts per hit, 10 hits to KO 10d6 (35) Takes 10 pts per hit, 3 hits to KO 12d6 (42) Takes 17 pts per hit, 2 hits to KO At 35 STUN: 8d6 (28) Takes 3 pts per hit, 12 hits to KO 10d6 (35) Takes 10 pts per hit, 4 hits to KO 12d6 (42) Takes 17 pts per hit, 3 hits to KO At 40 STUN: 8d6 (28) Takes 3 pts per hit, 14 hits to KO 10d6 (35) Takes 10 pts per hit, 4 hits to KO 12d6 (42) Takes 17 pts per hit, 3 hits to KO OK, I'm not going to run this for every level of STUN possible, but it's pretty apparent that 25 is a high average defense when the offense average is 10d6. This campaign is going to have fairly long fights. (Consider also that the first round happens on Segment 12, so everyone gets a post segment 12 Recovery after the first round, further lengthening the fight.) Contrast this with the Big Blue Book write ups, which is a "campaign" that has similar average attacks of around 10d6, with a few 12d6 main attacks and fewer 8 or 9 DC attacks. Seeker goes down in 2 hits from a 10d6 or 12d6 attack with his 15 PD, Obsidian can soak up ten 10d6 attacks and 4 12d6 attacks with his 30 PD (but only 4 and 3 with his 20ED), Quantum's 22 def and Jaguar's 19 def both soak up 3 10d6 attacks and 2 12d6 attacks, while Defender's 18 defenses soak up 2 from either, same as Seeker. So, how does 40 DEF guy look? Let's assume since he wants to be tough that he has at least 35 STUN: 8d6 (28) can't harm him on average roll. 10d6 (35) can't harm him on average roll. 12d6 (42) 2 pts, would take 18 hits to KO. And since he's going further than usual off the average, some more: 14d6 (49) 9 pts, would take 4 hits to KO. 16d6 (56) 16 pts, would take 3 hits to KO. So, unless he's facing the glass cannon, he's looking pretty good for achieving his goal of being nigh-invulnerable. Unless someone Entangles him and shoves him into a swimming pool. He's also going to be pretty ineffective with an 8d6 attack against an average character as seen above. But that's just the basic stats, what else is he putting on his character sheet? Personally, if someone's pushing the base numbers very far out of the norm, I'd limit them somewhat in other areas to limit system abuse. For this character, I'd limit his exotic defenses to one or two (Mental Defense, Life Support, Flash Defense, KB resistance, etc.), probably one. So, he can have some Mental Defense so that mentalists don't just steamroll him and he can be an effective blocker, or have some KB resistance to help with bricks, etc. But his defenses shouldn't be allowed to cover every base. Maybe let him take some broader defenses but require a Vulnerability to compensate? Things like this should be considered. A far as offensive effectiveness, let him take some Martial arts, but enforce the 40 AP limit. The various Martial attacks with a "target falls" effect will make him a more useful combatant, as will Grabs, etc. If you're using the expanded list, I think there are options that would help with body guarding. (I'm kind of fuzzy on the rules for taking a hit for someone else, but I'd look into those rules if someone was running a character like this, and make sure they understood them.) If his offense is coming from his STR, he could also buy a Brick Tricks MP at 40 AP, which would give a great deal of versatility. What I wouldn't do is let him build a completely ineffective character. That's why I suggested limiting further exotic defenses above, then followed with beefing up his offensive capability. Letting the player dump all his points into various defenses while not putting any points into offensive (or movement) capabilities will make for a lot less fun character for both him and his team. The concept isn't terrible, really. If he's running STR as his attack then it's not like a 40 STR character is exactly a wimp, is it? It just happens to look that way due to the high average defense values in the campaign. (If you analyze the BBB characters, it's basically a 10d6 average attack campaign, but 50 pts worth of PD/ED is brick level.)

So, I went to bed. Then I fell asleep, and dreamed that I was having trouble getting to sleep because of noises outside. Then I realized that it was a dream because a) I don't have a window over my bed and b) the construction work is on the other side of our building. So, I got super annoyed and decided to wake myself up. I tried turning on the light on my nightstand, which didn't work. Then all the stuff on my nightstand disappeared. Then I tried annoying my wife who was lying beside me into waking up (she wasn't, really, just in my dream, so it didn't work), then got out of bed and had some random doctor walk into my dream bedroom. So I grabbed him by the collar and yelled at him to wake me up. Which came out as a squeaky yell like the kind you do when you're half woken and your mind is waking up faster than your body . . . only I didn't, really. But it managed to finally wake me up. Now I don't want to go back to sleep and dream that I can't sleep again. Worse. Dream. Ever.

From the article above: People really need to learn that emotional hijacking* is a real, tangible phenomena, and that even otherwise intelligent people are ripe for manipulation of their lower-level thought processes. Most people calm down and start reasoning even after a strong stimulus, but the social media, easy internet access, and smart phones make a constant, unhealthy level of negative stimulation possible. Trump supporters, conspiracy theorists, etc. are not all idiots. This makes them all the more terrifying, IMO. *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala_hijack

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/no-warp-bubble/

Wish I'd thought of that.

Didn't think they'd find my secret base so soon. Sigh. Time to pack up, I guess. The self-destruct should take out the rover at least. So, some satisfaction in that.

So, I got my brain tickled on Tuesday, returned to work on Wednesday and Thursday, got my booster shot on Thursday after work, was down for four days (counting today) with shot reaction, required to get my brain tickled again for those symptoms . . . I'm starting to lose count of my COVID swabs. Probably pushing ten at this point.

That's actually been an ongoing public health problem in rural India for years. 2015: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/india-rejects-the-toilet-how-government-sanitation-drives-have-failed-to-sway-those-who-believe-going-outdoors-is-more-wholesome-10466041.html 2020: https://www.cnet.com/features/in-india-an-indestructible-toilet-may-be-the-key-to-saving-lives/

I gave up on expecting common sense a long time ago.

Also mandatory, due to working in a hospital. Good news, it came back negative last night, so I returned to work today (er, Wednesday, since it's past midnight now). Feeling a lot better. I think my niece just discovered a virus that wasn't in this year's flu mix. She's uncannily good at it.

TBH, I'm frequently surprised that people don't know things I consider pretty obvious. 🤷‍♂️

The answer is C.

Cancer actually won the war on Christmas in 1998. All holiday sale proceeds since then have gone directly to his offshore bank accounts.

So, I was talking to this 20 year old co-worker one night, and told her I was stationed in Berlin when the wall fell. She said, "Berlin had a wall?" I think most people of our generation have heard of Josephine Baker. She's pretty iconic, IMO. But people can't remember a wall that came down in 1989. They're not going to remember much about anyone famous for WW II exploits (and a solid career prior). Most people would be stumped at the mention of Audie Murphy, too, and he was about as white bread as it gets.

House-flipping sounds like more of a Hulk gig.

Well, something has knocked me and the wife on our behinds over the weekend. Onset jibes with exposure to our unvaccinated niece on Thanksgiving. (She's nine.) Hoping we don't have it, but I'm getting tested tomorrow.

Various groups, including the NRA, do aggregate individual stories of self defense with a firearm that are found in media reports. Getting the information to a wider audience is the problem, I suppose. I typically listen to the local radio "news" talk station on my way to work. Typically, one or two defensive gun uses hit the airwaves. The rest (like the one cited from earlier this month) are usually brief reports you'd have to devote enerty to digging for, if they make it into the press at all. Here's a site that has a map of defensive gun uses in the US. The top has options to filter for year, or for last 90 days data. If you click on a blue dot, the event is summarized immediately below the map, including a link to the media report of the event: https://datavisualizations.heritage.org/firearms/defensive-gun-uses-in-the-us/ Note that the data is incomplete, as it relies on someone finding and submitting a media report to be updated. For example, you won't find that defensive shooting in Seattle from September 3rd that I linked above. I think the last time the board hive mind went down that particular rabbit hole, the general consensus was that it's hard to find unbiased and conclusive data. This table on Wikipedia of 2015 FBI data may be useful, though, because it actually defines specific crimes. It's also sortable by column. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States_by_state I found this plot, which compares gun ownership rates to gun murder rates at the bottom of that same page: