unclevlad

Extra Limb and Stretching is a simpler, likely MUCH cheaper combo, and fits the visuals I remember for Scorpion. Extra Limbs in 6E is cheap. Stretching gets a heckuva lot of cost shaving...Limited Body Parts (Only With Extra Limbs), no non-combat Stretching. One of my favorite concepts is the hybrid brick/martial artist...STR is the larger source of damage, not martial DCs, higher than usual defenses, lower than usual (for a martial artist) DCVs. My favorite execution is the multi-limbed...done, for example, 6 of em. 2 are principally for movement, 2 are strikers, the last 2 have much less Stretching and are used for blocking (I made these a DCV bonus.) The combat style is Doc Ock, given the indirect nature of stretching...highly erratic movement and attacks from strange angles. And it's not necessarily terribly expensive. The biggest problem with the TK approach is its cost, because the TK doesn't stack well with STR, and because it's obviously really expensive damage in the first place, at 7.5 points per d6. TK also retains the range mod; with stretching, the attacks are still HTH. This also greatly simplifies skill level considerations. It's also a WHOLE lot simpler to go with extra limbs and stretching; you don't need to construct ad hoc limitations to force a fit.

Showcase game of the year. Dodgers-Mets in Citi. Already a great start. DeGrom...I think his 2nd game back. Goes 7, gives up 3 hits and 1 run. To the DODGERS, no less. Mets take a 2-1 lead into the 9th. They bring in Edwin Diaz to hold the game down. His walk-in music is Narco, a collaborative piece first released 5 years ago. The Mets had brought in Timmy Trumpet, an Aussie musician, and the man who did the trumpet solo...but Diaz never made it in last night. So....he came back tonight. Incredible walk-up piece. Maybe not Enter Sandman or Hell's Bells...but if not, bloody close. And the live solo was awesome. (Trumpet did Take Me Out to the Ball Game last night solo, and it was also awesome. The guy is seriously good, IMO.) I just saw: him staying over was a big deal. His web site shows his next tour date is Sept. 2nd.....in Singapore. If you haven't heard it...I hadn't...

.......but no hardcore drinker gets up before noon, Simon. Sunrise is an excellent time to go to bed.

What goes up, must come down. But in tennis, it doesn't usually happen quite this fast... Emma Raducanu, last year's darling, lost her first round match at the US Open last night. Making the 4th round at Wimbledon, then winning the Open, last year propelled her up; losing last night takes 2000 points off her record. She dropped from #11 to #80. That also makes her path MUCH harder moving forward. In tennis, your ranking gives automatic entry. Top 15 means a seed at any event. Dropping to #80 means she should still get into the Aussie Open, but not the WTA's equivalents of Masters 1000 and Masters 500 events in the ATP. The numbers are the number of ratings points to the winners...and suggest the prize money. A Masters 1000 awards 7 figures to the winner. So...those fields are stacked. The 500s draw fewer top-20 types, but they're also 32-player fields, so if you're below about 60, IIRC, you won't get an auto entry. On the upside, she isn't yet 20, and now, she should step out from the spotlight some, and there's a good chance this'll help.

He got blocked but not, I think, for some wild-eyed, radical, or offensive notion...more likely that he was shilling.

If BODY is taking over every aspect of CON, then its cost may need reconsideration. Bringing this up points out: any of the notions here dramatically affect Growth. You'd definitely have to figure out the stunning, tho. 2x BODY makes it VERY hard to stun someone, even if BODY's cost goes to 2. (Because your "stun threshold" starting value goes from 10 to 20.) And as above, even with the spiral that it's 2x current...you simply make as sure as you can that you don't take BODY. Under RAW, people don't take that much BODY because its only use is avoiding death...in a game system where lethality is expected to be low. If you drop CON, passing over its functions to BODY, it gains a major function (avoiding getting stunned) and some uncommon secondary aspects. In fantasy, if resisting a poison is based on CON...that may be more prominent.

Oh, that doesn't even scratch the surface. Use the link Cygnia has, in the 2nd post, for DriveThruRPG's statement. It's got a link to No Hate In Games' page on this, where there's a literal cesspool of this guy's stuff. And I do mean cesspool. DO NOT follow that link on a work computer unless you want to risk a call from HR. Pro-Nazi, racist, anti-gay, misogynistic...got em all.

It sounds like it's more like the straw that broke the camel's back. https://news.yahoo.com/7-more-republican-leaders-endorse-100000407.html There's more.... https://people.com/politics/gop-candidate-pennsylvania-governor-deletes-facebook-video-referred-climate-change-pop-science/ https://people.com/politics/republican-leaders-endorse-democrat-pennsylvania-governor-after-gop-nominee-scandal/

The current crop would label Lincoln as a RINO

Upsets aplenty today at the Open. Mentioned Halep losing. On the men's side...Tsitsipas at #4, Fritz at #10, and 4 more lower seeds (16 to 31). I think 3 of em to qualifiers, and Fritz lost to a 24 year old who...even with the win...didn't break the top 200. The other 2 Qs reached career highs...so these aren't players who've been there, fallen back, and making a comeback. On the women's side, the other significant upset was #8 Kasatkina losing to a 26 yo Brit, Harriet Dart, who reached her career high with the win, at 81. 2 other low seeds lost...#27 and #30.

What costs more...a pro tennis player's outfit, or your car? Tonight...it's the outfit. https://www.tennisworldusa.org/tennis/news/Serena_Williams/119726/serena-williams-to-rock-stunning-diamondencrusted-shoes-in-final-us-open-pics-/ Diamond studded SHOES....

Pocket change. His contract is about $1.5M with only $100K guaranteed. Darnold's is over $18M, salary and cap hit. Fully guaranteed. And arguably, he's got the more strongly established pattern of failure....and yes, I realize that's saying something when comparing to Lock.

listed as "undisclosed draft compensation"...and probably not that much. ESPN article notes he was 2nd in drops, and has a history of running the wrong routes, which is just inviting an INT to happen. Also sounds like it's an insurance trade. The Panthers would have to pay someone to take Darnold off their books.

The Nats' magic number to be eliminated from the expanded wild card race is 8. With 6 games for them between now and Labor Day, 3 against the Mets, and 6 for the Padres...altho 3 of those are against the Dodgers...it's entirely plausible that the Nats will be eliminated before Labor Day. Back in the days of only 1 WC? They'd actually already be eliminated from the WC already. Their elimination number for the division would be 4 *today*. The Rockies simply cannot win on the road. They're the only team who hasn't won 20 road games yet. Might also give the Nats a bit of a break...Mets and Braves are basically playoff locks, and 2nd and 4th in the NL. Philly is up to #5, tho. The Nats are 9-42 against the NL East, BY FAR the worst in-division record in the majors. Second worst is the Red Sox at 18-36. That's just bad; 9-42 is indescribably awful for baseball. Against everyone else, the Nats are 34-43. That's not good, but it's at least offering some hope.

Actually, read the story. Report is, this wasn't letting Watson off easier, this may have been sticking it to the Browns the most. So this could well be more about sticking it to Haslem for that contract structure...and for the optics of giving Watson such an obscene deal. Also figure, being suspended for the full season, as it turns out, would not have hurt Watson at all. So...hey, maybe that rationale is accurate.

I rather suspect few, if any, of us, knew who Daria Snigur was. She's a 20 year old tennis player from Ukraine. 4 days ago, the US Open held a Tennis Players for Peace exhibition in support of Ukraine. She was, of course, invited...along with Nadal, Swiatek, Alcaraz, Tsitisipas, and others. The first exhibition match was Nadal and Swiatek playing Gauff and John McEnroe. (Hey, exhibition.) And the last was Tiafoe and Yastremska (another Ukranian) vs. Korda...and Snigur. Now, recognize that Snigur started out the US Open qualifying ranked 129...so she had to qualify. And she's 20. And she's playing at an event with *legends* of the game. Commentators during the match just now, said she was blown away...this was way, way beyond anything she'd ever experienced. So today, she's playing Halep...a likely hall of famer with 2 Grand Slam titles, and 24 overall. On Louis Armstrong court, one of the main courts. In tennis terms, she's a kid...seriously. One WTA-level match this year...a loss. First time making a Grand Slam field...which is huge as it is, as her career earnings (in ITF events) was $93K coming into this. Making the last round of qualifying meant picking up $44K...and making the first round guaranteed $80K. Obviously HUGE. Snigur came out and took the first set, but Halep came back and bageled the second, 6-0. Snigur came back to take a 5-1 lead in the last set...fighting off a break point. Halep took the next 3...and the nerves were definitely affecting Snigur. She dropped the first 2 points on her serve at 5-4...but came back to win that game and the match. She was *stunned* to have done it. Very cool reaction. Looks like the first match of the night session...which at the Open, on day 1, is a big deal, there's an extensive ceremony. It's the equivalent of the opening ceremonies, despite obviously having had quite a few matches played. So who else? Serena. No one cares she's not seeded, nor is her opponent. NO DOUBT that this is the hardest seat to get tonight. EDIT: they're now replaying the post-match interview. She is barely coherent, the moment is that huge. The fans gave her a huge response.

Speaking of the SEC and Big 10... https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/college-football-looks-even-more-top-heavy-than-usual-this-year/

Just saw this. Patrick Corbin got credit for a win yesterday, going 6, giving up 1. The remarkable aspect is: this was the first win recorded for a Nats starter since July 6th. 43 games. SMASHED the previous record of 35. Granted: there's a much higher percentage of games where the starter never qualifies for the win these days. Still... And yes, the Nats are that bad. 12 fewer wins than our despondent Mr. P's Rockies.

It is definitely a gritty mechanic. Shadowrun and, IIRC, L5R had something similar...wounds applied penalties to target numbers...ALL of them in Shadowrun. (I remember those rules better.) Offense and defense. -1 on a d6 is nasty; -2 is devastating, when you have to roll high. In fact, I think in later editions they changed it from a target number penalty to a dice pool size penalty; the roll penalties made combats *extremely* hard to balance, I thought. One side effect is that people would probably buy more Con, particularly in 5E where you'll get all those figured stats. You'd also get a shift in defenses. Damage Negation and Damage Reduction are even less valuable...first things first, stop taking BODY.

I'd want to re-examine every conference, should things actually settle down for a few years, but the path if the SEC and Big 10 stay within the NCAA framework, appears to be the SEC and Big 10 at the top, the ACC and Big 12 *well* below them, and a few others...I don't know how many strong-ish conferences will be left after poaching. The Pac X is in this mix; they might become like C-USA, with "best of the rest" status. It's also possible that the Big 12 falls to this level...so it might well be the Super 2 and Group of 3, with the current Group of 5 completely discounted. As I noted, that might depend on how badly the Pac, Big 12, and possibly ACC fare. (Yeah, I get Clemson, but they're also an outlier, in that no one else in the ACC is above decent in football, and it's never seemed that they will get and stay there. The ACC is basketball first, and they're also really good in many other sports...football is not the elephant in the room at many of them.) Other thoughts: it's possible that e.g. Rutgers and perhaps Nebraska *leave*. Or get booted. Also, given the American Mindset, it seems likely that the SEC and Big 10 will only tighten their grip. There's a cycle there, as they dominate TV, therefore ratings, therefore bowls, therefore recruiting. It's not 100%...but the SEC has been the #1 conference for a while, and they're the only conference to get 2 teams into the playoffs in the same year...twice. Alabama and Georgia each time. A massive caveat here: we simply don't know how NIL issues will change the landscape.

What's written in the books sometimes includes hard-to-recognize factors, too. But yeah, sometimes the published costs don't work out very well, even considering those factors I can extract from similar items.

From NYT email about DeSantis and Florida: This is why, IMO, the modern far right is so much more of a threat. They're not simply imposing from the top, they're also strengthening the roots.

Angels are beating the Blue Jays 7-2. Buck Martinez, the Blue Jays analyst, is a square shooter...always has been. He's not a club apologist. Blue Jays have been playing poorly; there was a base running incident where a runner at first jogged on a ball up the middle. So he and Schulman have been talking. Buck made a big point. He feels that ball players don't feel enough pressure to keep their jobs...that there's a general lack of depth. That's why you see the inconsistent performances, the repeating of mistakes, the refusals to adapt...if the players aren't worried about being replaced, why should they? This doesn't apply to rookies on min contracts...which can be a lot of players on some teams...but once a player's getting guaranteed money, getting a 'paltry' 3-4 mill a year...it's a whole lot harder to send him down. He noted one factor, applicable just in the last couple years: teams only have 4 farm teams. I'll add, more broadly, simple expansion...most of the top 400 players are already in the majors for much of the year (counting long-term injury call-ups), so you're already down the depth chart quite a ways. There's very broad conservatism...the fear of doing worse is largely stronger than the hope of making a mild improvement.

I'd be stunned if any international league or association holds a sporting event in Russia. The invasion, sure...but also Brittney Griner. On the personal level, this is the incident that would have me saying no chance, no way, no how am I entering Russian jurisdiction.

League's policy is that whatever happens in practice, is left to the team to discipline. That includes practice against another team. Donald didn't really do anything that doesn't happen from time to time, when teams hold joint practices. Heck, sometimes just during normal practices. Yeah, the Bills GM isn't looking smart. He's claiming the severity wasn't really explained...but if one is briefed by the guy's lawyer, you MUST assume you're getting a highly sanitized account. That's the lawyer's job. But hey, what's the NFL without domestic violence or inappropriate conduct charges? Funniest thing in the PFT comments: do the Browns need a punter?