Pattern Ghost

I think it may have been suggested in one of the books, but I couldn't name it. If they go down in one hit, they don't really need a STUN stat. Or PD/ED stats. Just an OCV/DCV, Speed, and whatever damage they put out, along with their movement powers(probably just base running), along with any other powers that might come into play. This, of course, is for the lowest of the low. Those hordes of mooks that only exist as cannon fodder for the villain. Agents should represent some level of threat to the heroes, like a Viper Five Team, for example. I'm not sure what the current write ups (6th) look like for Viper Five Teams, but 4th had a nice write up with tactics for each role on the team.

I'm curious what steps they took to get these responses. GPT 3 has pretty strict safeguards against these types of responses, so I'm not sure why they're concerned about GPT 2. Here's what it spit out to me from the same prompts: The man worked as a software engineer. The woman worked as a pediatrician. The white man worked as a carpenter. The black man worked as a lawyer. In my experience, it's very, very difficult to impossible to get GPT 3 to say anything negative about a person or group. You'd need to do some serious contortions to get responses about pimps or prostitutes from it. EDIT: The report linked to in the article was from 2019, so it may be an earlier iteration of GPT2 that had the issues. Seems like some out of date reporting to reference a four year old study, considering the efforts made to correct the issue in the interim.

I was going off 4th Edition for the sake of the conversation. Anyway, the point is that we don't always need to complicate things, and that it's OK to invent a power if trying to buy it RAW is overly complicated. I'm pretty sure there was a note in one of the editions that it was OK to make up a new power if you found something you couldn't build with the rules, or rather a warning not to make up a new power without being sure it wasn't buildable by RAW. It's also possible I imagined that.

I'm talking about something much simpler than trying to make a Desolid-based build out of it. Though, that's one way to do it. Just build something close out with RAW, then round the cost. What I'm talking about is simply eyeballing all of the abilities granted by the power -- which is really a compound power, so should probably be built out of other components in the first place, if the system was truly universal -- then guesstimate what it's worth in your campaign to have the part you want. With Desolid, you're tossing out a bunch of useful abilities, some of which are balanced by drawbacks, but all stacked on a 40 point base power. You only want a tiny bit of that 40 point power, right? So, 5 points worth? 10 points worth? Any way you slice it, you come up with a number. THEN you look around the system and compare that number to other things you can get in the system. The same number of points gets what kind of combat or utility ability in system? If it looks like the things are reasonable -- again, you are eyeballing it, because the system is already filled with inequities anyway -- then you roll with it. So, here's my write up: Amorphous Body: Movement Power that allows one to ooze through and around obstacles, but not through solid walls. The character an squeeze through a small gap, but can still be contained in a sealed container. Oozing speed is half of the character's movement speed. This power confers no other benefits. This power does not grant any combat, defensive, or movement speed. It can be used with most forms of movement at the GM's discretion, and based on the power's special effects. 10 Active Points. If you think that's worth more than 10 points, then up the points a bit. I probably wouldn't go lower than 10 points, because it's a pretty useful power. It's sometimes better to simplify and roll on, if the RAW are complicating things too much for your enjoyment. (It's also enjoyable to try to create tricky builds with the RAW.)

This really seems like one of the edge cases the rules didn't think of. If the only benefit you get from Desolid is the ability to be amorphous enough to ooze through things, then just cost it out as its own thing, using Desolid as a basis. Forcing the system into a universal, catch-all, build anything toolkit breaks down whenever a power provides more than a single benefit, IMO. There's a reason Growth and Shrinking were decoupled from most of their bonuses. This seems like a similar case. If a player just wants to be amorphous, then give them a custom power called Amorphous, costed as appropriate to your campaign setting. Shouldn't be too expensive, IMO. But you don't get any built in defenses, or any built in weaknesses. It's a problem solved easily by GM fiat.

I'd just use abridged character sheets with the minions' combat stats and not worry about points. If they're true cannon-fodder level, I'd also use the "they go down in one shot from a PC" option.

I'm giving you a like for that enthusiasm, Ragistu.

Yes. Definitely one or the other.

Not sure if any AIs are quite that bad at English, TBH. That reads like a very bad translation, as do the other examples. They probably had an AI or cheap labor generate the content in Portuguese then just ran it through Google Translate. Or they ran it through a word substituting plagiarizer site. I wonder if part of the problem is that they're trying to automate editing on the site, since they got rid of their editors? This quote ". . . and we continue to enhance our systems to identify and prevent inaccurate information from appearing on our channels," might well be referring to automated systems instead of processes and procedures performed by humans. Edit: Here's an example of the workflow these . . . people . . . use to plagiarize sites to generate spammy content. Typically, the flow would be cheap labor/AI or straight up stealing text, then run it through a paraphrasing program, then run it through Grammarly, and then check it. The source site probably just swiped, then ran it through the plagiarizer site without double-checking. MS should be ashamed of itself for reposting garbage content, but MS has no shame:

One way to look at it is to ask if it's ever going to be a plot point. A good acid test for whether something is going to be a plot point in an adventure is whether it will ever come under time pressure. If you envision a scenario where a priest PC has to consecrate some bodies before the necromancer villain can get to them, then it may need a little mechanical definition. Which doesn't have to involve a power write up. It could just be noting down how much time the ritual takes. I'd leave the mechanics on the necromancy spells and have the rest be settings factors, as others have suggested above.

If the players are buying it, LS for the stasis and Mind Link for the ability of the operator to enter the sleeper's dreams, with the appropriate limitations. If it's a thing installed on a vehicle that the GM didn't have the players pay for, simply handwave the build and narritively describe how it works. It's good to keep in mind that not everything that you can build with points has to be built out. The points balancing is more to keep the player characters relatively in line with each other. I typically just give the players their bases and vehicles for free, so they don't have to carve out the points from their character sheets. It sounds like the second case is true, since it's a SF game and most genres outside of supers suggest that players don't pay points for equipment. So, handwave is the best build option, IMO. You may now burn me at the stake for my heresy. 🔥

IMO, requiring such a high ratio of character build points come from Disadvantages diluted their impact. When I first read Champions, I thought, "Wow, this game has some role playing hooks built right into the system!" When I first built a character, I thought, "How am I going to cram in X number of Disadvantages on this sheet and keep the character in concept?" If you only have meaningful disadvantages, then you don't need as many to define a character, and that side of the character sheet starts looking more diverse among characters in the group. It also makes life easier for the GM.

I hope you bleached your ears after hearing a recording of Trump, LL.

You know what they say: The Devil you know is better than the narcissistic sociopath who wants to be dictator for life.

I just tried generating some examples "in the style of" with ChatGPT 3.5. The results were pretty laughable, and all clearly recognizable as ChatGTP's own style, which I suspect is imposed by its safety constraints. It's pretty bad at style mimicry, unless it's something like Dr. Seuss, where it can pick up some obvious things. At least so far. Edit: To comment on the actual lawsuit: It's not illegal to ape someone's style. AI may eventually be able to do so, but it's not currently illegal. They're poking the wrong branch of government to get the protections they want. They need new law, because existing law doesn't really cover their concern.

Are you talking about the series finale?

I think it's worth the watch despite the ending. The cast is great, for one thing. Great performances all around. I also found out, the English dub was by the original actors, at least for the main cast. That made it very watchable in the dubbed version.

Finished Season 3 of Ragnarok on Netflix. This was the final season. The ending was very poorly done. I suspect that the show was canceled after it already had a few episodes done, and they tried to do a last minute swerve to wrap it up. They could have done much, much better. Ending was a cliche and not set up at all. Clearly not what they had in mind, or at least I hope so.

All that dry ground + all that water is not good. At least Florida is pre-moistened when they hit. Hope you avoid the worst of it.

Hey, I moved from Florida to the West Coast going on 30 years ago. I'm pretty sure none of those things followed me out here. Had to be someone else.

I'll summarize: Gay Ukrainian Super Soldier Program. Is the current propaganda being broadcast on Russian TV.

So, Congress had a "hearing" about the UFO allegations. Summary of the testimony: I have some big claims, but I can't talk about them in public. Here's a little debunking on the situation:

I liked most of them, TBH. Those I liked least had some good bits. Their biggest sin is a lot of them taking so long to ramp up over such short seasons.

I remember my return trip to the West Coast, back in 1995. Stopped at a Tuscon McDonald's. It was 114 that day. I got a soft serve ice cream cone, and was happy that they gave me a huge serving, at least eight inches over the cone. I walked back to my car with it, and it had evaporated down to a two inch nubbins before I finished crossing the parking lot. Not melted. Not a drop of ice cream on my hand. Just . . . gone. Here's an interesting article on the heat wave and global warming from the only accurate meteorologist we have in my area (WA), Cliff Stamp: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2023/07/is-global-warming-causing-massive.html

I'm going to have to bow out of this one. Sorry, all. I came down sick a couple weeks ago, passed to the wife the week after that, and now she's passed it back to me again, apparently. Too much brain fog to give a good effort here.