unclevlad

And these days, most are freelance...not employees. Ergo...no benefits. No leave, no insurance, no pension. You get stuck with both sides of the social security taxes. Knock *at least* 1/3 off your rate per page, I would think. There's a reason why consultants charge what look like obscene hourly rates, if you translate it to a yearly rate without thinking...because it doesn't work out that way. At all. And, yeah, the art is horrible SOOO much of the time.

What individuals possess the knack you mention? Cuz to me, I don't see it being worth any points. I'll grant: my interest is in supers, and this might not be the case for agent-level games, but the vast majority of Random Scene Junk is useless by Hero rules. Unless you're a brick, of course, and we're talking steel safe doors, jail cell bars, cars, cubic feet of rocks or concrete, and the like.

Yes. Grail was specifically speaking of tunneling from the outside of the entangle. And he's right. The only balancing factor for allowing tunneling from the outside, rather than from inside, is it is taking up another character's action, and actions are the currency of combat. I'll grant, it's quite likely to be a bargain...but using Tunneling against an entangle is an explicit *option.* So...? Just say no. Then symmetry is maintained. Or, just say yes, both sides can do it...but change the costs so it's not so bloody dirt cheap, and so, SO badly misaligned with the costs of Entangle. Honestly, Tunneling is the second most specialized form of movement in the game, IMO. FTL is more specialized. Tunneling is incredibly rare...even teleporting at least short distances is vastly more common. So another approach would be to allow it from inside or outside an entangle...but ONLY allow Tunneling when it darn well FITS. At least for supers games.

I think regulators may look at that acquisition with a very jaundiced eye. It's bad enough to have WarnerDiscovery to be as big as it is. Plus, they're cutting costs in part because they've got such a massive debt problem, from the merger. https://the-media-leader.com/just-how-big-is-warner-bros-discoverys-debt-problem/#:~:text=originates from WarnerMedia.-,Warner Bros.,profit) — of 5.0x. This is NOT!!! the time to take on more debt to finance another acquisition, even if the prices look pretty good. Oh, and the Feds are looking to raise interest rates fairly sharply to try to get inflation down...which will make things worse for Warner.

This was one of the angles why I said Zaslav's strategy of pushing theatrical releases might not work because the theaters might not cooperate...some of em by closing. Story notes that theater revenues are still down about 1/3 from 2019 levels. It's just HARD!!! to churn out popular films that often.

We can only hope we last long enough for the next roll....

Progress has never been under attack from every direction simultaneously before.

Sam Darnold had best be putting away his windfall this year. It's the 5th year option, kicking $18M his way. He's an unrestricted free agent next year. And Baker Mayfield was named the game 1 starter for Carolina today. I daresay Darnold will hang around the league but it seems very unlikely he'll be considered as anything but a backup...or worse, just depth. 3rd string. With a SHARPLY!!! reduced salary. For those of you who are Panther fans? Better luck next year....... I absolutely don't trust Mayfield as a leader, and if he's your better choice............

To take that further, Coric's career high rank was 12. He made the QF in Hamburg (an ATP 500) in July, so he's been making a comeback. Plus: he beat Nadal in the 2nd round...Nadal's first match since Wimbledon, where he had to withdraw. Rafa's health, conditioning, and game are all question marks. Now, to be sure, taking out Auger-Aliassime and Tsitsipas is great. But...no Fed, no Joker, no Zverev. The top of the men's game is not at all solid. We're seeing quite a few players vaulting well up the rankings. Cam Norrie's gone from 50ish to top 10 in just over a year. Taylor Fritz has gone from around 40 to #12. Carlos Alcaraz has SHOT!!! up...140 at the start of 2021, 30 at the start of 2022, now 4th. Some of this is just aging. Cilic is down to #17; Bautista Agut to 18. They were top 10. Some is injury, wear and tear, I think difficulties and uncertainty in scheduling due to Covid...many very good players have lost their usual spots in the rankings, so they're SERIOUSLY under-ranked. This is true on both sides. Garcia hit #4 back in 2018. And go back to the women's final at the US Open last year.

I think anything I could say about the post above could only be made in the political thread.........

Not DC, but anything relating to HBO Max is meaningful... https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/hbo-max-removes-sesame-street-episodes-1235345685/ So one has to wonder what they're going to keep.

I don't know for sure, but I'd look at skill rolls. --You want basic skill rolls to succeed. It's a game, and failing simple checks half the time isn't fun. --Conversely, if 10- is the baseline for a 3 point skiil, then what do you get for 2 points or 1 point? This is particularly true for background skills, where +1 is 1 point. Drop a 1 pointer to 7-? That feels almost like fumbling in the dark, and a waste of a point. And the other area would be combat design: I think you want more hits than misses, both the try to keep combats a little shorter, and to keep the PCs on their toes.

3d6 is also easy to work out exactly. There are exactly 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 25, 27 ways to roll 3-10; flip side, reverse that to roll 11-18. 3: 1 in 216 (0.46%) 4-: 4 (1.85%) 5-: 10 (4.63%) 6-: 20 (9.26%) 7-: 35 (16.2%) 8-: 56 (25.93%) 9-: 81 (37.5%) 10-: 108 (50%) So 11- is 62.5%, 12- is 74%, etc. So one thing this will do...is draw combat out, because misses become notably more prevalent. 11- is 5 out of 8; 10- is 4 out of 8. If we use a SPD of 4, that's 1 strike every 2 turns. It'll matter. And as Derek notes, there are ripple effects. This would make, for example, AoE 1 Hex attacks a tad more attractive, because you're only hitting a DCV of 3. Even a -2 OCV Range Mod is getting VERY painful, as would multiple attack penalties. Autofire...multiple impacts is based on how well you make your roll, so you'd be consistently getting 1 less. LOTS of things change.

2 1/2 minutes in, and he can't even start an intro? Nope....

Can I get an amen from the congregation???? https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/18/tech/auto-warranty-robocalls-case/index.html Hopefully the text spammers are next...........

Oh, I think it's part of Desantis' motive, to quash the storyline anywhere and everywhere he can, so his side's propaganda has no forum for counter-arguments. The fact that he's trying to dictate what a workplace can say to its employees feels like it's a serious overreach of state power. But I think where it'll get hit hardest is in the vagueness, but that's more problematic to overturn, most of the time, than overreach.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/chicago-police-officer-charged-after-kneeling-on-14-year-old-boy-s-back-in-arrest-video/ar-AA10QxC6?cvid=3820a810c19b442984a1fb45f590bfcc

Easton Oliverson has been released from the ICU. He's taking, and able to take a few steps...his neurosurgeon believes he should make a full recovery now...which is awesome, because there was only the slimmest of hopes he'd *survive*. Yes, it was that close. But it's still gonna be a long, probably somewhat delicate recovery. I'd think the area where the skull fractured, is likely to be of particular concern for several years.

I agree with Hugh, just roll all four, drop the lowest. For one thing, there's really almost no decision. You'd always re-roll a 1 (91 of 216 3d6 rolls have at least 1) as there's no potential loss. You'll re-roll a 2 because potential gain is MUCH better than the risk (125 cases have no 1; of these, 64 have no 2, so you have 61 more cases with a 2, but no 1). So we're up to 152 out of 216 where the re-roll is a no brainer. Flip side: when all 3 dice are 4 and higher, re-rolling is more likely to cost. That's 27 cases. So by and large...the only borderline case is when the lowest roll's a 3. All dice 3+ has 64 cases; all dice 4+ has 27. So there's 37 cases where you might do this. It's slightly advantageous to re-roll, but remember that all 3 dice are 3+ in this scenario, so there's lots of 13+ showing. LOSING some damage may be worse than gaining some. Which also brings up potential metagame considerations that I'd rather avoid, particularly when it's simply not going to be an issue often enough. As for using this on Blast, allowing possibly multiple dice...a LONG!!! time ago, the group I was playing with did some Legend of the Five Rings. L5R has the full "roll D, keep K" mechanic...but it was built into the system, including in pricing. IIRC, skill levels added unkept dice; baseline characteristics added kept dice. The characteristics were FAR more expensive. Now, ok, in L5R you also had exploding dice...d10's, so exploding didn't happen often...but that makes for a very complex analysis. I remember doing a fair bit of Monte Carlo crunching...exploding dice means you don't have a fixed, finite set of rolls...for all sorts of combinations. What's better, 4 keep 3 (4K3) or 5K2? It was interesting, but I'm pretty sure I've lost all those notes; that was a couple moves ago. Here, we don't have exploding dice, but the value of these extra dice is still tricky to evaluate. It'll vary, depending on how many kept dice, how many dropped dice you have...if the attack is 6 dice, then adding 2 droppers will have a better cost-benefit balance than adding 4. A 10 die attack, tho, can likely do better with 4 droppers. (I suspect the sweet spot is gonna be when about 1/3 of the dice you roll, get dropped. 10 kept, 4 dropped is 14, so dropping 4 is about right.) And the more droppers you add, the more this does risk dragging things down a bit...particularly as attack power rises. 12d6 with drop-5? That's 17 dice, finding the lowest 5 will take a bit. Another issue here, generally: the basic mechanic does modify damage, so it needs to be considered in DC evaluations and/or attack active point caps. So I'd definitely start slow...adding a single dropped die option to killing attacks is pretty straightforward. Adding multiple dropped dice...to KAs or normal attacks...is rather harder.

As a side point to the above... The CBA as written, probably couldn't support what Mr. P wanted, and obviously allowed those contract terms. It wouldn't surprise me, tho, that a) language regarding contract structure like this, is adjusted in the CBA, so this dodge isn't allowed, or b) should a similar case arise...not just the incident but the contract and its timing...a MUCH larger fine should be plausible. I think the Browns were idiots with the trade, and the contract. There wasn't anything against them doing the contract like that, tho, but outside Cleveland, I daresay there's a strong majority that feels they're dirty, dirty, dirty for it. Last thought. Watson will be eligible to come back against the Texans...but how ready can he be?

Yeah, there are some maneuvers for that. Generally, applying limitations to skill levels is legal, but narrow. Laser sight on a gun can be +OCV or a PSL for range mods...or even both...and have a Focus limitation. It's discouraged for most things. As LoneWolf said...there's Set and Braced as standard maneuvers anyone can do. 6E2, page 56. There are also ranged martial maneuvers...but I believe those are only in Hero System Martial Arts. They're included in Hero Designer, tho. They're quite nice.

Jim Kaat has been one of my favorite baseball analysts for a long time. Quiet, thoughtful, and informative. He just finished calling his last game moments ago, after more than 30 years in the booth...and that, after a LONG, ultimately Hall of Fame baseball career. He still sounds amazingly good; any of us will be ecstatic to look and sound as good as he does at 83.

The gift that keeps on giving..............

NYT points out, tho, that this deal will only exacerbate players' calls for a bigger share of the pie, as this clearly is a pure cash grab for the schools.

OMG....... https://news.yahoo.com/parents-easton-oliverson-little-league-122147827.html At least the kid's talking and able to move somewhat... First time it's happened...and I daresay the LAST time, cuz Little League will probably never use bunk beds again. A weird flashback for me. About 15-20 years ago...weird nightmare. A sense there was someone else there. Thrashed around...and actually threw myself out of the bed. Not a bunk, of course, but my right leg *slammed* into the edge or corner of a solid, heavy oak table. The bruise didn't clear up fully for about 3 weeks, IIRC.