pawsplay

If it's "technology," it's cash. If it's a powerful item, it's magic and costs points. So, for instance, in Tolkien, a mithril shirt is magic, and costs points. But in a setting where the city watch wears mithril shirts and has repeating crossbows, that's all cash.
One way to avoid all this is to avoid trivial magical items and situations that require them entirely. Heroic fantasy usually works better if characters invest in CSLs rather than "+2 broadswords" and such. A better magical sword is Armor-Piercing, or intelligent, or ignores non-living armor and cuts only flesh, or simply sheds heatless light without fuel.

Buy down the characteristic and then apply Focus to the reduction.

Given how few (none?) transgender characters are presented, I think it might be cool to say a few of the characters are living their authentic gender, and further, have one or two characters change their gender presentation from when they first appeared.

Talk it over with your players and figure out if they're actually onboard with this first.  The possible "twist value" isn't worth the possible "this isn't what I signed up for" factor.  And once you've had that conversation you're in a perfect place to transition into mining them for ideas which will be vastly better than anything we can give you since they'll come from the people you're playing with and who best know their own tastes. 

Mail-in balloting has worked for decades without any discernible problems. Further, if someone did commit mass mail theft, they would go to jail for 1000 years and all the affected people would be given the opportunity to cast new ballots by the election commissioner.

Wood Elf, probably not. Wood elves in ME are "dark elves," which is to say they just never visited the Shining Shores. I would use the High Elf package with a toned down Intelligence and Presence, and a different cultural package.
Dunedain, strictly, aren't all that different from the Westerners and other common folk. Probably +1 Body and Con due to their height and heartiness, and more likely to be good-looking. Conceivably they might get a slight boost to PRE or EGO but we don't see a lot of them, outside Aragorn himself, so that's speculative. Aragorn, with his pure blood and Maiar and elf ancestry, also gets an extended lifespan, but those aren't common traits outside his bloodline.

Washington Post: USPS workers sound alarm about new policies that may affect 2020 mail-in voting
 

Co-founder of conservative Federalist Society calls Trump's tweet about election delay 'fascistic' and 'grounds for impeachment'

I think for elves you could use the Elf template from Fantasy Hero Complete, with the High Elf lens, except I wouldn't give them an EGO bonus.
 
The dwarf package is probably fine as it is.

Has anyone made or know about any Middle-earth racial or cultural package deals? I did a bunch of MERP conversions for 4th Edition way back when, but I lost my work a long time ago. I never shared my work because it wasn't finished, so it wouldn't show up on the search. I'm okay with any edition even though I prefer 5th Edition; I can convert as necessary. Thanks in advance.

Mail-in balloting is crucial to Americans living overseas, and American military stationed abroad. Neither of whom appear to be supportive of Trump overall. All the polling I've read to date suggests that voting by mail favors the total for Democratic candidates. I'm beyond confident that if it favored Republicans, Trump would be solidly behind it. We also have to consider that it's the safest way to conduct the ballot while maintaining social distancing. How many Americans is it acceptable to disenfranchise, or put at risk of disease, to deny Trump "ammunition?" I expect if he wants to contest the election result he'll find some other unfounded excuse if denied this one, and his followers will believe him.
 
But you bring up a good point, in that Trump has long parroted whatever left-wing-conspiracy theory extremists on the Right put out on television, radio, or the Internet. He seems to have a permanent paranoid world view, genuinely believing hidden groups are deliberately working against him. Because he's just that important.   But IME those who rail the loudest against something are often those who are most inclined toward what they rail against. Trump being treacherous himself, would naturally be constantly looking for treachery from others. I'm willing to bet he's tried to think of some way he could commit mail-in-ballot fraud to favor himself.

Let Trump try to cancel/delay the election...
 
Article II, Section 1 covers this.  The president and vice president are limited to a four year term in office; the number of terms they can serve is defined elsewhere (22nd).  The of start/end of that term is set by Congress, currently the 20th of January.  We won't have a president or vice president on January 20th if the election doesn't happen.  Following the order of succession, we'd say hello to president Pelosi (or different person, if she isn't re-elected by her state vote).  
 
He'd like that result even less than conceding to Biden.
 
Also, polls show the main place his claims are gaining traction are with his base - depressing odds they will turn out/mail in their ballots.
 

Police are responding to protests against police brutality with... more police brutality.  I think that pretty much sums it up.
 
The total resistance to any actual dialogue about changing police procedures, or ending coverups for police misconduct, has been really eye opening.

Well, there's Psychological Limitation: Code of Honor, and there's reputation.
Note that bushido's honor system does have an internal component. People killed themselves over disgraces. The difference was that the greatest disgraces were those that offended someone else, rather than being offended.

I wanted to let everybody know that my physical copy of Champions Now arrived today. And even though the package looked like it had been run over multiple times, and was ripped open on one side. The contents were absolutely pristine. So I'm happy.

Simple: "Victory" sign while gazing at your target.
Complex: ASL interpretation for The Realm Slim Shady while twirling your Focus (burning censer)

If you have to do the Hokey Pokey, that's arguably Restrainable as well.

I have the concept down, I think. What I'm a little iffy on is the "typical" numbers.
 
Gang of Tommy Gun toting thematic thugs spraying down bullets
Defense: Missile Deflection
Effect: 4d6 Piercing Blast in a cone / 6d6 Entangle if you get up in their faces
Let's imagine there's ten of them, sort of clustered together. Each "hex" is an ordinary person with DCV 6, Defense 0, and Body 10, with SPD of 2 and a move of 6 hexes. They also have a 2d6 Presence against presence attacks.
So on their turn, everyone in their general area takes a bunch of damage unless they can make a Missile Deflection check, and things like Force Wall mitigate the effect. If you are punching or grabbing them, you instead get hit with an Entangle.
On your turn, you can try to take out one or more hexes. So lets say you have 6d6 Blast and shoot at one. On a hit, you do 6 or so damage, so without extra effort you can probably take out one every other round pretty easily.  If you have Mind Control, you can target each one individually with their Ego 11 and if you win, remove that "hex" from the hazard. Once all the hexes have been cleared, they are no longer a hazard. If they are conscious, they are defeated, or at least they can't do anything to attack. Maybe a thug starts pointing his gun and the hero just grabs it out of his hand and slaps the thug upside the head with it.
Given the nature of suppression fire, heroes behind large objects aren't necessarily targeted. So against this hazard, squishier heroes without Missile Deflection probably hang back until they can move in and take out a smaller number of foes. The bad guys, in turn, can't do anything threatening unless they are staying more or less together as a hazard. One nameless thug can't duck behind a pillar and snipe someone.

That's what I was thinking. Thanks!

"Does the Earth have the same Damage Reduction as a giant space amoeba?" is the quality discussion I come here for.

The latter. Always On specifies that Advantage. Also if you read the text of Persistent, is first of all reduces Endurance cost to 0 anyway, and has language about not turning on automatically. Always On would obviously supersede that.

"Does the Earth have the same Damage Reduction as a giant space amoeba?" is the quality discussion I come here for.

"Does the Earth have the same Damage Reduction as a giant space amoeba?" is the quality discussion I come here for.

my favorite part about this is that hulk and she hulk are cousins