unclevlad

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.

That isn't the joke. The joke is the obscene contract provisions that made the fine necessary.

Pointed out on MLB Afternoon Baseball, as Dodgers-Brewers gets underway... On this date in 1967, Tony Conigliaro was hit in the face, shattering his cheekbone and damaging his left eye. There were no ear flaps at the time; this is one of the most-cited incidents that led to them. He was 22, just starting on what was a potential Hall of Fame career pretty much...he set the record for youngest to hit 100 home runs (in the American League) during the '67 season, and was an All-Star. He did manage a comeback, and had 2 pretty good years, but his vision deteriorated.

Maybe not what we really wanted, but 2/3 of a season pretty much, a substantial fine, and the groundwork so if he doesn't behave, the league can increase it. There's that requirement to receive treatment. So if something comes out where he's doing it again, one would think the league will come down MUCH harder. And this should be it. The PA agreed, so his grounds for appeal seem to be nonexistent. NYT has an article today, about how the Texans enabled all this...and of course, they're skating completely. I have to admit, I may have to catch the introductions and/or first series, if that Browns/Texans game is available. Hopefully the fans will try to set a sound level record with the intensity of their booing....

The Rangers canned their president of baseball operations yesterday. Can the Angels be far behind? They've had a history of *awful* roster construction and seriously misguided contracts for quite some time. Coincidence or not? Angels won 94, 100, and 97 games 2007-9. Playoffs all 3 years. Lost in the DS in 07 and 08, then in the CS in 09....to AL East teams, when the AL East was dominant. (2 of those years, they were knocked out by the eventual WS champs.) Then in Nov. 2009, they name a new club president, elevating the VP for sales and marketing. And have made the playoffs once since then...and got swept. Granted, the Royals made the WS that year...and won their first 8 playoff games...so it wasn't unique. But that's the only year.

That's what takes these bills from Misplaced Morality to Reckless Ideological Blindness. I get the quasi-moral position...when does "life" start? But there can be outside, serious issues. This is one, and IMO the absolute, first one: medical necessity. The lack of it shows, IMO, that the real goal is to punish sexual activity outside of marriage, and consequences be damned.

The exec resigned 6 years after the incident.

Was anyone aware that the Cowboys reached a settlement...for $2.4M...with 4 cheerleaders who said a senior exec filmed them, while changing, back in 2015? That was back in February. I hadn't. Mike Florio brought it up on PFT, as an example of the disparity in punishment between senior execs/owners, and players...and that's something the league would NOT want brought up in court. Because according to Florio, it was never reported to the league...and the league has never done anything. The exec is no longer with the Cowboys...but how can this NOT be a potential personal conduct violation? And it's *required* that these be reported...so there darn sure looks like a massive coverup....