RDU Neil

Trump Can No Longer Control Pecker
 
What? David Pecker, CEO of AMI, who was recently subpoenaed. What did you think?

@RDU Neil
 
Our games use something pretty much exactly like you're chit system. Our system uses beads of different colors with each bead being with a certain amount of points and then each item on the "Luck Chart" requires a certain amount of points.  You can also combine lower ranked beads  if you need one of the higher ranked beads.  We don't use is the double of the cost after the 3rd level of luck.  Which we probably should do although, with the exception of a few PC/NPCs, it's never really been an issue. Most characters just have the 1 "draw", as they don't have any extra luck, while other may have 1 to 2 extra draws.  For a total of 3 luck beads to use during the adventure.  
 
We developed ours because the Luck system was too ambiguous and hard to adjudicate where as something hard and fast like the chi system had concrete things you could do with the luck.

I dug up my old house rules document that was last edited for 5th Ed.  Here is what I wrote on Luck Chits... though I'm editing this for updates I've made since. I think this covers it all. More detail than matters in actual play, for the most part.
 
Luck & Luck Chits 
Luck cost 5 pts per level. (Price doubles for each 3 levels bought (so fourth level of Luck costs 10 points) For each level of Luck purchased, players gain: 
1d6 of Luck to add to a Luck Roll that can only have positive results. 
They randomly draw +1 Luck Chit at the beginning of the game from “the bag.” 
------ 
Luck Chit Rules 
Each PC draws one Luck Chit from “the bag” +1 Chit for every level of Luck at the beginning of the game.  “The bag” contains 72 Chits in the following assortment:  30 White Chits, 20 Black Chits, 20 Blue Chits, 1 Red Chit, 1 Gold Chit.  A player may decide to “throw a chit” at any point during play where they think it will benefit them, the group or the story to do so.  The chits provide the following benefits in play. 
White Chits:  Lowest rank.  Using a white chit allows ONE of the following by choice of the player: 
Re-roll one roll you control 
Take an Abort Action at any time without cost of a regular Action. 
Take a Recovery at any time without cost of a regular Action or any defensive penalties. 
Defensively move a Hit Location result one level up or down on the HL chart. (Only used in Heroic games where Hit Location is used.)
Black Chits: Middle rank.  Using a black chit allows ONE of the following by choice of the player: * 
Any one of the benefits as listed under White Chits. (see above) 
Any one benefit as listed under Blue Chits. (see below)
  BUT...Throwing a black chit allows the GM to draw a chit to add to his/her pool of NPC/Villain chits. 
Blue Chits: High rank.  Using a blue chit allows ONE of the following by choice of the player. 
Any one of the benefits of the White chits as listed above.
May remove a single die from a 3d6 roll you control, to maximize chance of success/hit. (Making the roll a "3" or less does not activate a critical hit.) 
Power Stunt:  Player may choose to utilize active points of a power of their character for an effect not specifically paid for with points, but within the SFX of the power.  Ex:  A character with an EB defined as “flame blast” wishes to extinguish a fire in a doorway blocking escape for civilians. The character does not have a power that would normally allow him to do this, but by throwing a blue chit, for one action, he can put the active points of the EB into Change Environment: Extinguish/Reduce Normal Fires (or something similar) and the player can then perform the desired action. 
Minor Scene Change:  Player may choose to alter or set a small piece of the scene for character or story advantage.  Ex.  “There is a pack of dry matches in the old hunting shack. Just what I need to light my torch to fight the vampire!” or “As I fly in, I see an open skylight allowing me access to the building without breaking in!”   GM and group agreement on what is appropriate necessary. 
Make the impossible, possible:  Player may throw a blue chit to turn an action with little or no chance of success, into one with a standard chance of success.  Ex.  Even for a superhero, diving through the window of a moving car, snatching the kidnapped child out of the seat and out the other side window without causing a crash or hurting the child would be nigh impossible. A blue chit makes this a simple matter of Acrobatics and grab roll situation.
Insert Minor Dramatic Moment: The player may state a dramatic moment into a scene that can initiate story, resolve story. Similar to Minor Scene Change, Minor Dramatic Moment is less about adding an element to the current scene, as to initiating a scene or resolving one. Example: Vigilante Squad has just finished off Don Montelli's goons in the warehouse, as the sounds of sirens and stamping of SWAT boots approaches. A player pushes forward a blue chit and says, "As the police rush in, the smoke clears to find the bodies of Montelli's men, but no sign of us. The police surround the area and helicopters sweep, but we are gone, vanished in the night. My intent is that we get away and don't have to hassle with the law... at least this time."  This would be appropriate, assuming the table agreed it was within the bounds of the fiction, and didn't make things unfun, etc.
Bypassing a successful Block.  Player may choose to throw a blue chit so that an attack that is successfully Blocked still carries through, effectively negating the block.  Only a blue chit thrown in response can reassert the Block’s success. 
Move a result on the Hit Location chart up or down 3 places, either defensively or offensively. (Only used in Heroic games where Hit Location is used.)
Gold Chit: There is only one Gold Chit and it has unique abilities.  Using the gold chit allows ONE of the following by choice of the player. 
Any one of the benefits of the white, black or blue chits as listed above, without GM drawing a chit. (But this would be a waste.)
Primary use of the gold chit is to allow the player to become storyteller/GM in powerful ways.  By spending the gold chit, the player gets to insert a scene, event, plot point, result or other situation that they wish to occur.  This normally focuses on their character and that character’s Story, but it can encompass the group if all player’s agree. GM still has last word, but mostly it is a group decision on “Is that cool and interesting as a story, and does it make sense for what is happening currently?”  Whatever the event/situation/scene, it should have significant effect on current and even future plots, though specific results or repercussions may be unforeseen. Player intent is key. What is the "outcome" the player wishes to
             Red Chit: There is only one Red Chit and it has unique abilities.  Using the red chit allows ONE of the following by choice of the player. 
                        Exactly the same benefits as the Gold Chit, BUT the GM then takes possession of the Red Chit and has it to be activate a very clear obstacle/challenge/things-go-badly scene against the PCs. You spend the Red Chit knowing that karma is a  bitch.
 
GM: Draws after all players.  One chit per PC, plus chits for any NPCs/Villains who may have Luck. 
Unluck:  Unluck reduces the number of Luck chits drawn for every level.  This primarily effects the GM and the use of Luck chits for certain NPCs, as it is unlikely a PC would take Unluck.  

I won't say Tennessee drivers are the WORST (Though it feels they are in the running) but 90% of them do equate using a turn signal with "Giving your position away to the enemy"

I could offer comments on the politics of impeachment, I think I'd prefer to offer a book I just read that -- mirabile dictu -- offers some political hope. Not for national politics: The authors agree that's toxic. But national politics is not the only politics, and the Federal government is not the only American government. Thank God. There is a whole other USA out there that the mass media doesn't see.
 
Our Towns, by James and Deborah Fallowes.
 
This book is excellent, and at least a mild palliative for political despair. The Fallowes’, both authors, spent four years flying in their small plane to visit smaller cities and towns across the US – the sort of places sometimes dismissed as “flyover country.” These range in size from cities such as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Columbus, Ohio that are good-size cities (but not in the league of mega-cities such as Los Angeles) to tiny towns such as Eastport, Maine or Ajo, Arizona They find many towns that are doing very well, or working hard to renew themselves. In contrast to national politics, these local communities work. Some are in red states; some are in blue states; and many of them run counter to the sweeping narratives of both the doctrinaire Right and Left. At the end, they distill what they found into 10 ½ lessons for how to build a successful town. Here they are, in brief:
 
1) People work together on specific local problems and possibilities, rather than allowing bitter disagreements about national politics to keep them apart. That is, they concentrate on practical things like, “How do we rebuild our downtown?” And the practical solutions are a lot alike whether it’s nominally conservative Greenville, SC or nominally liberal Burlington, VT. And they solve their own problems, without looking for Federal help.
 
2) You can pick out the local patriots. It doesn’t matter who makes a town “go,” whether it’s the mayor, a local business magnate, a university professor, a community activist, or just somebody who seems to know everybody. There are local boosters who enunciate visions and bring people together to make them happen.
 
3) The phrase “public-private partnership” means something real. Local business chips in, whether it’s sending engineers to help schools with their STEM curriculum or hiring ex-convicts from the state prison. They don’t just treat the community as a source of tax breaks and disposable labor-units.
 
4) People know the civic story. Because there is a civic story. Sometimes it’s about being just the right size, or about rebuilding from the bad times. A lot of times, it includes a sense of being scorned or dismissed by the big city coastal opinion-makers, and having something to prove.
5) They have downtowns. And people live there; downtown isn’t just a strip mall or a wasteland of office towers.
 
6) They are near a research university. These institutions bring in money through students and professors, spin off new businesses or whole new industries, and attract skilled people from around the world.
 
7) They have, and care about, a community college. You can’t build a research university quickly, but just about everyone has a community college nearby. These are tremendously important in helping young people of lower income to break into the middle class.
 
? They have distinct, innovative schools. Greenville is worth citing again, for its engineering-emphasis elementary school in a low-income part of town.
 
9) They make themselves open. Immigrants? Refugees, even? Yes, please, send more. They work incredibly hard, especially in jobs Anglos won’t do for any wage. (Dodge City, Kansas, is paradigmatic. As local boosters explained, Dodge City lives or dies by the meat-packing industry. And the meat-packing industry lives or dies by immigrant labor… documented or not. And Dodge City is as red as it gets.) As the Fallowes’ put it, the only Americans who seem scared of immigrants are the Americans who never meet any.
 
10) They have big plans. They can show you their 20-year plan to redevelop downtown, or the magnet school they hope to build, or the businesses they seek to attract (or create from scratch). As the Fallowes’ note, it’s absurd to imagine the Federal government attempting anything on the scale of the interstate highway system or the Apollo program, at least in the foreseeable future. But towns are doing things of comparable scale for their size.
 
10½) They have craft breweries. The Fallowes’ are not sure if they are serious or facetious here, which is why it’s #10½ instead of going to 11. But these happening, optimistic towns seem to have a lot of brewpubs. Draw your own conclusions whether it’s cause or effect.
 
As it happens, one of my gaming buddies and some of his other friends recently opened a craft brewery. So, free plug here. If you’re in Seattle, stop by the Burke-Gilman Brewing Company. Ask for Corey and tell him Dean sent you. I can’t promise you free beer, but it’s a chance to meet a fellow Hero gamer.
 
Dean Shomshak

This is the core of it all... is the power of Density Increase really a -1 Limitation?   That is essentially what this comes down to... a pre-built limitation for a specific set of powers.
 
Is getting your powers from DI as limiting as have them through an OAF? Will you not be able to use your DI limited powers half the time you want to?
 
I'd say most of the time, no... you are getting a price break without really suffering a penalty for it.

So, I know I'm much less detail oriented than some folks on these boards, and pretty loose in my rule interpretations if they make the game unfun, but I do appreciate the more structured views of others, and wanted to get some feedback.
 
Drivers for making new rule:
For END, we never liked tracking END in the RAW sense, and generally ignored it, even in supers games.  BUT, we always enjoy "Pushing" as a way to feel quite superheroic. and END is necessary to balance Pushing, obviously. ALSO, Active Point caps were important, but hazy and over time were often ignored when certain complex builds "broke the limit."  
What I came up with to address all of this is as follows.
 
END is a stat that indicates the maximum AP output of any one attack, allowed for that character. The END stat of the character shows the AP cap for the character/game. The END stat for a character must be bought to the AP level desired for their standard attack. (e.g. if they tend to have max 14d6 Energy Blast, they need to have 70 END on the sheet.) No limitations allowed for this base END stat. No attack can surpass that AP limit without pushing, this includes added DCs for maneuvers. (This means, even if the character bought a 15d6 EB, they could only do 14d6 if their END was only 70).  
So at this point, essentially I'm just establishing the AP limit for the character/campaign, right on the sheet. Look at the END stat, and you know what their max attack is. Done.
 
Any use of powers at the END/AP limit or below, do not cost incremental END. (Don't have to track action by action END costs.) Any use of a power above the END/AP limit require "Pushing" the power. A character can Push for up to 1/2 the active points of the attack. Pushing costs the AP being pushed, as a reduction in the total amount of END available for the character. (e.g. Push my 10d6 EB up to 15d6, so my END of 50 is reduced to 25.) Characters with reduced END are limited to the AP of their REDUCED END for further attacks. (With only 25 END, I can only do 5d6 EBs for the moment.) END is recovered as normal. (Spend an action to add Recovery to END total.)  
This does a really good job of making the cost of the Pushing dramatic, as the character just unleashed hell, but is now weak and can't really fight well until they take time to suck it up.)
 
Overall, the basic approach feels very elegant. Easy to see the AP of a character's attacks. (And Defenses almost always are less AP than the attacks of the game, in my experience.) It helps to avoid the work around, where various abilities stack to put the attack way beyond the AP level of the game. (The 40 AP game with the 40 Str, Martial Artist with Damage Classes and 8d6 Hand Attack and a weapon, etc. Suddenly dishing out 24d6 or whatever.)  The damage of an attack can't exceed the END of the character. Very simple.
 
Pushing also becomes very dramatic... not being something you can do every time... as you need to recover just to get back to normal operating levels.

You can get really specific, and make any Defenses that also would normally use END be reduced as well, until recovered. This tends to only come into play with "active defenses" like force wall/barrier, since normal resistant defense, no one buys it "costing END" even for force fields, but if they did, it would.
 
In play, this has worked really well, where heroes realize they need to Push to really hurt the big bads, or save the crashing bus, lift the battleship, etc. But they know they will be weakened and ineffective after the fact, for a couple rounds at least. So they have to be strategic with its use.
 
The only downside, is that allowing 1/2 AP pushes, can send certain attacks into really high dice, so understanding that a 70 AP/END campaign will have some 21d6 shots being thrown at least a couple times during the game, so usually it is the GM that needs to be prepared that their villains defenses are appropriate.
 
Thoughts on this? We generally like it. It helps in character construction, campaign balance, and dramatic super-combat moments.  (Heroic level games, where pushing is NOT common, really just ignore the whole END thing in general.)

I like this idea and am also of the opinion that there is something here to manage fatigue in superheroic games in a very different way.
 
I think I have read everything any seen any difference between constant and instant powers.  There is little difference between traditional armour and force field in this system.  This ties a bit into the issue with density increase.  Might there something about running a constant power that would decrease the AP cap for other powers?  I was trying to think of something that might be used to dictate how many different powers might be active at the same time.  I have considered REC, BODY, REC/3, CON/5 and I am thinking that possibly END/10 might be best, it would be an additional disincentive to push too often.
 
Doc

Regarding the productivity question:
 

Without knowing all the mechanics of your changes, all we have to do is wait for the Big Bad to make one attack - then we retaliate with Pushed attacks, and he cannot abort to turtle up.  BTW, what stops the Bad Guys from pushing the same way, or will only PCs be allowed these significant benefits?
 
 
My +4 PSLs is wrong - I was thinking Multiple Attack.  Let's rethink:
 
For 60 points, and 60 END, I can have a 12d6 Blast.  If I make that 3 shot Autofire (another 15 points), and buy 4 2 point OCV levels (another 8 points), and bump my END to 75 (3 more points), I have spent 28 points.  I now have +4 OCV, so if I would have hit with my base 12d6 attack at normal OCV, my Autofire attack hits three times.
 
I could instead have bought a 15d6 Blast with the same levels and END bump, which would average 10.5 more damage past defenses.  As long as each 12d6 hit gets 5.25 or more past defenses, the Autofire is the better choice.  And if I push the Autofire attack...three hits at 18d6 vs one hit at 22 1/2d6.  Yup-this looks like my Multiple Attack workaround.
 
 
Depends, again, on the desired game style.  It can be frustrating (and boring) for one lucky shot at the start of the combat to take out one player's character from a lengthy combat.  This exacerbates that problem.  It also removes a different "dramatic combat moment" when that KO'd hero recovers just in time to make a key action.
 
 
If you make the player suffer inordinately for the mass aspect of DI (especially when few other powers get these "logical consequences" like "make a PER roll to spot the obstacle and a DEX roll to avoid it if you do see it, both at -1 per 10 meters velocity - when you are flying that fast, it's hard to avoid the trees"; "your Shrinking stealth bonus is also a penalty to others hearing you talk, and to PRE attacks, as you are itty bitty"), it's no wonder no one buys the power.  The source material often sees the pavement crack, but rarely if ever impedes the character more than that.  Simple solution, though - 1 meter of Flight (oh, and I don't even have to spend END to hover in your game...).

Well, since your thread title specifically invites me, I’ll chime in.  However, at the risk of disappointing, I kind of like this concept as a game-simplifier, and as a Supers game mechanic.
To start, I think a lot depends on how other current rules for Pushing apply.  By RAW, Pushing is not something you can just choose tactically.  “Oh, it’s Firewing – OK, everyone Push to the max in the opening segment 12 volley so we can put him down quick.”
 
Consider a 4 player group, each with 12d6 attacks (selected because that’s a pretty standard Supers norm).  What will a well-defended opponent have?  Typical defenses are 20 – 25.  Give our MegaVillain 35, and normal attacks plink about 7 STUN per hit past his defenses.  If we go much higher, standard attacks become useful, which I assume is not the intent. But if everyone pushes to 18 DC in Segment 12, Firewing gets hit by a couple of attacks (and I find a 50% chance to hit pretty conservative – 3 hits seems more likely, and 4 are not out of the question) which each punch through 28 STUN.  That’s 56, 84 or 112 STUN past defenses, depending on how many hit.  I doubt Firewing will take BOD – exceeding even 25 BOD on 18 dice is pretty unlikely – but being Stunned or KOd gets a lot more likely.  And if the first hero Stuns him, the other three are pretty much guaranteed to hit.
 
If I spent an extra 6 points for +30 END, I take no effective penalty for the first Pushed attack, since my END drops from 90 to 60, I can keep going at full power afterwards.  Invest 60 points in extra END (some of which, perhaps, you offset with lower REC, since you no longer need to recover END for any reason other than Pushing) and your 5 SPD character can Push for an extra 6 DC every phase for two turns.  It becomes easy to make Pushing the norm, rather than the dramatic choice you are looking for.  Of course, capping END at 5x the campaign DC max would avoid this issue, and higher caps would at least mitigate it. 
If Pushing is only allowed for heroic actions (RAW), and not just “I want to win/get solid damage in”, then this issue is mitigated considerably.  But if it’s free as long as you accept the END cost, not so much.  I get the sense you want Pushing to be a tactical choice without the RAW “only for really heroic actions” rule.
 
The other limiting factor for Pushing has always been the EGO roll.  You don’t mention that above.  If the maximum Push follows RAW (10 AP + 1 AP per point the roll is made by), you will not get the dramatic Pushes you are looking for.  However, if it were, say, 10 AP + 5 per point the roll is made by (i.e. 1 Damage Class per point), this seems like it might work better, making the Ego roll also a limiting factor.  A character with a 14- Ego roll would be able to add 5 DC (not a lot different than the 6 added above) on an average roll.
 
Tack on “you spend the END for the amount you try to Push” and this becomes a bigger tactical gamble.  I try to Push for the full 30 AP, make, say, just the base Ego roll, get an extra 2 DCs but lose 30 END.
 
MORE SPECIFIC QUESTIONS:
 
Should the END limit (and Push costs) limit AP or DCs?  I’m inclined to go with DCs rather than AP, except that this makes the END limit below harder to balance. 
 
Should the END limit be based on only the attack, or factor in other powers?  You mention defenses, but movement also factors in.  The Brick with 70 END can punch for 14 DC, and move his Running of, say, 15 meters.  Meanwhile, the Blaster can fire off his 14 DC attack, fly 50 meters and maintain his Barrier he set up last phase, a second kick at 14 END.  Maybe the limit should be “your maximum END spend in 1 phase without Pushing is limited to 1/5 of your END stat”.  Now the Blaster in my example needs what, 180 END, instead of 70.  Not a huge impediment.  I would also keep the DC cap, largely due to things that add DCs without adding END cost. I think you still need DC caps.  END is pretty cheap, so not a huge cost to bump up the AP/DC I regularly use.  But nothing in your comments indicates that other caps will stop being enforced.   Does this mean our 70 END, 70 STR Brick cannot benefit from a Haymaker?  That seems odd.  Although a Pushed attack would be a lot more effective (especially if he buys some extra END to allow a few +4 DC pushes with no restriction on his normal damage).
 
What happens to Increased and Reduced END under this model?  Perhaps both go away, given increased END (especially on a non-attack power) seems meaningless, while reduced END seems to accomplish little.  They may be more relevant if total END usage in a phase without pushing is capped.
 
Let’s think that one through a little more.  I buy my 12d6 Blast at 2x END, so I save 20 points.  Instead of 60 END, I need 90.  An extra 30 END costs 6 points.  OK, pretty much a no brainer that I increase the END cost and buy the extra END.  I think Increased END goes away under this system.  No biggie, as one goal was eliminating END bookkeeping, and increased END really links to that resource management aspect.
Even if we get rid of Costs END, Reduced END and Increased END, Bricks using Growth or Density Increase get a break.  My 60 STR Brick paid 50 AP for his STR, and needs 60 END.  Or he can buy a 15 STR and 9 levels of Density Increase, saving 9 points and getting +9 PD and ED and -18 meters Knockback for free.
 
How do Combined or Multiple Attacks work?  If I want to add my 4d6 Flash to my 12d6 Blast, do I need 60 END, or 80 END?  I suspect 80, given I am getting a combined 16 DCs with this attack, at no penalties (other than having to pay the points for both attacks, but I have to pay the same points for a 16d6 Blast).
 
But multiple attacks?  Our 60 STR Brick wants to knock the heads of two opponents together, so he uses a full phase action, halves his DCV and takes the -2 OCV penalty to both attacks, but he also now needs to either Push (and still can only get 45 STR on each target, since he can only Push half his AP), or have 120 END instead of 60?
 
OTHER END OUTGROWTHS
 
Do I still have to pay +1/2 to make an END-using power 0 END before it can be Persistent?  That seems like a ripoff if I could have kept it Constant and never had any issue with my END.
 
What about powers with Charges?  The advantage of 0 END is buried in the limitation value, but my DC will still be capped by END, so I get no benefit, plus I lose the SuperPush your system allows to those with non-charged powers.
Hmmm…for 60 points, and 60 END, I can have a 12d6 Blast.  If I make that 3 shot Autofire (another 15 points), and buy 4 PSLs to offset the Autofire penalties (another 4 points), and bump my END to 75 (3 more points), I get to make 3 12DC attacks per phase instead of 1 for 22 points.  Looks like I have found my workaround for Multiple Attacks! 
 
Actually, it feels like “cannot be pushed” is a bigger limit in a game where Pushing is enhanced like this, even more so than in a game where pushing is common and allowed with no Heroic Action or ego roll requirements.
I have not thought through the character design issues much.  On the one hand, if everyone's END (and REC, reduced END, etc.) spends change consistently, no big deal.  But some character concepts will have to buy more END.  How many Martial Artists have 5x their AP in END now?  On the other hand, a higher SPD character gains a lot, since he no longer needs to buy the END and REC to cover his END usage in those extra phases. 
If my character is knocked out, he is now useless after he recovers to 13 STUN (say, dropped to -2 and has a 15 REC his next phase), as he also has only 13 END.  Practically, this means being taken below 0 STUN takes a character out of the fight, unless we modify the "END after recovering from being knocked out" rules.  Maybe this is OK if we want to eliminate the "falls down, gets back up again" aspect of some Hero combats.
 
There are likely to be more ripple effects that would only be discovered in play.
 
OVERALL
 
Probably needs some more in-depth design and playtesting, but I think this could be a really "Supers-feel" modifier to the END and Pushing rules.  Outside of truly heroic pushes (or specifically exhausting powers like the Human Torch's Nova Blast), how often do the characters in the source material suffer fatigue from use of their powers in combat?  Really, only in long, drawn-out combats.  This approach would remove that inconsistent END management issue.

1/2 AP pushes seem really over the top to me, but if it works for your games, go for it. What happens when someone pushes and rolls unexpectedly well and kills a villain? Do your villains get built to be able to handle 35 Body of pushed attack in a 70 AP game? If so, doesn't that make a regular 70 AP attack rather ineffective? This also seems to me to encourage the "go it alone" approach, if players can fairly easily get 1.5 AP, why bother coordinating attacks, etc?
 
The math seems fine, just overall the power level seems high to me.
 
- E

I read Matthew Yglesias at Vox, Elizabeth Warren has a plan to save capitalism.
The subject is Elizabeth Warren's proposal to change corporate governance All corporations with more than 1 billion in revenues would have to get a federal charter The charter would expand the kinds of stakeholders that corporations consider in their decisions, from just shareholders to also employees, and even customers and surrounding communities.  To that end, companies would have to allow employees to elect 40% of the boards of directors. Also, if companies pay with shares, the shares can't be sold until five years after they were issued and three years after the last company stock buyback Any political activity would have to be approved by 75% of both shareholders and board members (and again, some of those would be employee-elected) I'm not sure this would pass a 1st amendment challenge? This is meant partly to counter Freidman's directive to maximize shareholder profits (within the limits of the law) Of course, that means corporations lobby heavily to change what "limits of the law" are. See the line about requirements for approving political activity. It is hoped this will help encourage reinvestment, reduce executive compensation, and improve corporate behavior, using Capitalist methods, not socialist redistributive ones. Then, I found a couple of responses at National Review, with Samuel Hammond's Elizabeth Warren’s Corporate Catastrophe
Don't do that; it will turn the corporate unicorns into glitter glue (his imagery, not mine) Yes, Germany has similar requirements, and they manage to be the economic powerhouse of Europe, but they haven't produced as many unicorns as the US has the labor share problem is best explained with real estate prices Wage stagnation is best explained as resulting from a decline in productivity (I was under the impression that productivity was up?) Fiduciary Duty is not really the primary driver it is claimed to be. Volkswagen had board members partly chosen by employees, and they still managed to be an old-boy network doing naughty favors. Employees helping choose board members didn't fix the problem.  and Kevin Williamson's Elizabeth Warren’s Batty Plan to Nationalize . . . Everything
This one is batty itself. and doesn't seem accurate. The main argument was that if we put annoying restrictions on our big corporations, they'll go away and take their moneymaking with them.
 
I'm still working through Reason Magazine's response:
https://reason.com/blog/2018/08/20/elizabeth-warrens-corporate-buttinskyism
 
 
Sorry about the long post. Doing little summaries sometimes helps me understand complex proposals.
 

"...Rand Paul, right? Squirrelly little guy, nowhere near the big deal I am, but he's okay."

Here's to being on the side of desperate men. For whatever acts they may have committed (or not) to get them incarcerated, the use of what amounts to slave labor should be completely unacceptable.

Nicole might like the 1990's version of Eagle Shooting Heroes, a kung-fu comedy where people fly all over the place. It also involves shoes that accidentally fall off their wearers and become deadly projectiles, ingested invertebrates used as torture devices, the three cheesiest-looking monsters you will ever see, martial arts techniques that warp time and space, and the unluckiest master villain since the Coyote. It's probably a bit dated by now, but I always thought it was hilarious. The fights were choreographed by Sammo Hung, who clearly enjoyed satirizing the "flying people" films popular at the time and came up with some truly outlandish scenes.
 
Although there was an official US subtitled release (that license appears to have lapsed), the original subtitles that came with the 1993 theatrical release (at the time, Hong Kong was still ruled by the British, and they insisted that all films made in the colony have English subtitles so that censors knew what people were saying; why there were British administrators in HK who did not speak Cantonese can only be explained as arrogance) are in themselves comedy gold. Those subs are hilarious, including deliberately mistranslated dialogue that was spoken in English,

Now, most people would say, "Well, what were you drinking in the first place?" with that idea... except on these boards, where such ideas seem eminently reasonable and worthy of serious discussion.
 
Hera sent a storm to threaten Heracles, so... weather manipulation?
 
In battle with Artemis, Hera gathered a cloud and made armor of it that was proof against all of Artemis' arrows, then flung hail and ice at her to defeat her.
 
Seems she had a lot of abilities.

The (secretly recorded and subsequently transcribed and published) discussions among the captured German physicists imprisoned in Britain after the US atomic bomb attacks on Japan make it clear they were not close to a working bomb either in terms of theory or in terms resources needed to assemble a critical mass of fissile metal.  In the days following the announcement of the Hiroshima bomb many, perhaps most, of their conversations were on the topic of the bomb they never succeeded in making, based on the telling but still really vague information about the bomb's yield (~10 kT of TNT) and that it was delivered from a B-29 (which gives you useful information about the bomb's size and weight).  For a while they could not see how it had been done.  That was about the theory, and it left out any consideration of the needed industrial base for making the thing.
 
I think they would have been more astonished to learn that the US took two more or less independent routes toward building nuclear weapons. 
 
One was the gaseous enrichment method, isolating the fissile U-235 from the less useful U-238; this plant was at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  The uranium bomb was theoretically easier, but it required resources in quantities that Germany had no hope of assembling from the areas under their control.  Gaseous diffusion of uranium more or less requires you to work with uranium hexafluoride, an exceedingly nasty substance, which required a vast quantity of nickel in the diffusion filters, and the valuable alloy elements (like, specifically, nickel) were among the critical "shorts" in wartime German industry.  I once read a passage to the effect, "Gaseous diffusion is easy to understand, but the only possible option for the gas is UF6.  The Germans looked at UF6 and its properties and shuddered, and spent the rest of the war half-heartedly casting about for a different gaseous uranium compound."
 
The other was transforming the more common U-238 into plutonium-239, which was done at the Hanford works in Washington.  That requires a remarkably complex chemical processing plant (complex because once it starts operations you can't send a human in there).  But plutonium is "hotter" (it's a more potent neutron source) and the actual bomb requires a more sophisticated design so that (1) it won't fizzle in your face as you build it, (2) it will explode when you want it to, and (3) it will survive intercontinental transport intact enough to do (2).  That was rather difficult, and it was the plutonium bomb that was tested at White Sands (they were confident enough in the uranium bomb that no test was deemed necessary).
 
Both manufacturing facilities required very large amounts of electric power, also; Hanford being only a modest distance from Grand Coulee Dam was important factor in the selection of that site.  Germany wasn't particularly short of electric power, but they didn't have the the almost limitless reserves of it the US did.
 
The Soviets succeeded in building their own atomic bomb in 1949 because (1) the Soviet Union and its empire is big enough they could assemble the resources to make the components, which the Germans did not, and (2) Klaus Fuchs gave the Soviets the information about how to produce the fissile metal and how the Americans were building their bombs.  There is debate about exactly how much of Fuchs's reports actually were directly used in the Soviet bomb projects, they did provide the huge benefit of the knowledge that someone else had done it and the general approaches used in their work.
 
There's also the issue that Germany had no plane (or rocket) that could deliver the bomb; Fat Man weighed more than 4 and half metric tons, and the V-2's payload was 1 ton.  Probably they could have reworked the FW-200 (the only four-engine bomber they had) into something that could deliver it, but it would have taken another nontrivial R&D program.  That would not stop them from putting it in a U-Boat and blowing up harbors with one, but you don't nuke Moscow, Manchester, or Magnitogorsk with that (let alone anything in North America), and they would have needed needed to do that to win.

My memory is that Tarawa is well documented and as a more compact operation the casualty rate is both higher and better known, but I need to get to the library to confirm all that.

It's your classic "Radiation accident" "I want to dump all 10 points (of xp) into Mental def!" GM:"OK, I'll set up a scenario where you have a psych break, and become resistant to Mind Control (-1) or Mental def, you're choice" "Sounds cool"

I don't think her Regen would have been fast-acting enough to eliminate his influence, something he had to "refresh" every 24 hours. And since she was in his presence nearly 24/7 during her "thrall" phase with him, I don't think her healing ability would ever have been able to overcome the constant infusion of his virus/pheromones. Killing Reva caused a psychological break that instantly made her immune (she was able to walk away from him that very moment). I don't know if there's a clean Hero System game mechanics explanation for that, but the meta-explanation is that she spent XP on the necessary power(s) (and for the tv show, the writers simply made it so).

Here's to being on the side of desperate men. For whatever acts they may have committed (or not) to get them incarcerated, the use of what amounts to slave labor should be completely unacceptable.

D-Day landings "The British and Canadians put 75,215 troops ashore, and the Americans 57,500, for a total of 132,715" https://www.historyonthenet.com/d-day-statistics/
 
"The First U.S. Army, accounting for the first twenty-four hours in Normandy, tabulated 1,465 killed, 1,928 missing, and 6,603 wounded...Canadian forces at Juno Beach sustained 946 casualties, of whom 335 were listed as killed. Surprisingly, no British figures were published, but Cornelius Ryan cites estimates of 2,500 to 3,000 killed, wounded, and missing, including 650 from the Sixth Airborne Division."
https://www.historyonthenet.com/d-day-casualties/
 
The number missing were most likely the ones who were killed in the water before reaching the beach. (And keep in mind that this is the number for the beaches, mostly not counting paratroopers, except for the British, or casualties on ships and planes.)
 
1465 + 1928 + 6603 + 946 + 3000-ish then compare that to the 132,715 who were there will give you the percentage. It'll come out roughly to 10.5%
 
If you want it broken down by segment, there's 86,400 segments per day so you'd divide your total number of casualties (which looks to be around 14,000) by 86,400. That's a rate of casualties among the Allies of about one every six segments on the beaches. But keep in mind that casualties weren't evenly distributed throughout the day.
 
Those are numbers from the first two links googling "number of casualties on d-day". There's several other links that look promising if you want to double-check the numbers.
 
You could probably get good results from googling "number of casualties fill-in-the-blank landing" then just plug in Okinawa, Sicily, Iwo Jima, or anyplace else you want to look. 

I don't want to be in a city labeled most liveable.  I wanna be one that's something like affordable.  Vancouver BC is among the former, and not among the latter.  Don't know about the rest on the list.
 
I will also point out that one might arrive at the same "most" list if you set a cutoff minimum population, and from there used rather racist selection criteria.

This is gold for long campaigns.  If the players are reliable then you can, at the time of the pointless death, have the player make a roll.  It is meaningless but it allows you the opportunity to pass a note. Tell the player that they are, by the dice, dead.  They can decide to die right here, ignominiously, and roll up/design another character, or they can use that roll to spot a magical mushroom that heals them, on the agreement that there will be a dramatic moment in this or the next session where they will achieve something huge but die in the achievement.  That moment will be down to the GM but the player can, if they spot an opportunity, suggest a heroic action to the GM, knowing that this will be their last moment in the campaign.
 
Eventually your players will know this is something you do and there will be no need for subterfuge, but this allows a few WOW moments before it becomes a feature of the campaign.
 
Doc