unclevlad

My, my. Stephen Ross, Dolphins owner, fined $1.5M, suspended from all team activities until mid-October, and booted off all committees, can't attend league meetings until 2023. Dolphins lose their 2023 1st round pick and 2024 3rd. Tampering. Multiple times. No punishment for per se tanking but losing a #1 is rather serious, so one kinda has to wonder if the tanking (and Ross did say stuff that COULD be read that way) was an aggravating factor.

Never gonna happen. The league NEEDS to stand by this ruling to show they will respect the process, and NOT simply have it be the first of two bites of the apple to them. If the league appeals, then they slot a pony nuke into the appeals structure they've just built, and detonate it.

Looks like the Padres have gone all in. Grabbed Hader from the Brewers for 4 prospects, the MEGA deal for Soto, and another deal with Boston for a prospect. Altogether, 10 prospects and 2 roster players, getting back a closer, Soto, and first base replacement. The trade ticker ran LOOONNG..... https://www.mlb.com/news/every-2022-mlb-trade-deadline-deal Same old, same old, mostly. The AAAA teams lived up to their role.

Another point to consider. What's going on now is much like the civil rights movement of the 60s...in the other direction, of course, but otherwise similar. So, sure, history suggests the pendulum will eventually swing back away from the Republicans...altho if they can co-opt the election process itself, that might not hold...but the swing we're seeing now, is becoming clear 50 years after the last swing. So...how old would you be if this conservative period lasts 50 years?

Whoooaaaa..... Where do you get 'scared' out of this? Nooo...your take here is, I think, 100% wrong. It's not fear, it's consolidating the power grab to eliminate ANY chance of it being reversed. Your position fails to recognize that the Republicans have been making steady gains for a couple decades...and have made significant gains at the state level. Even if they lose Congress...which still is NOT!! expected...and if Biden or Harris wins in 2024, the state-level gains maintain their base. The structure of the Senate remains in their favor. Consider this: https://history.house.gov/Institution/Presidents-Coinciding/Party-Government/ The Democrats have managed to unify for only 2 sessions...the first sessions of the first terms of Clinton and Obama. (IMO, no, they don't have it now, in practice.) In the 20 Congressional sessions starting with Reagan's Presidency, I count 6 where Congress was split; 6 where the Democrats had both (but 4 of those were with a Republican president), and 7 where the Republicans had both...only 2 with a Democratic President. The 107th Congress switched hands a lot. But, here's the thing. What have the Democrats managed to pass, of their classical agenda, even when they've had a unified government? They've still never gotten a solid gun control bill through, for example. Also, this is different. Democrats try to change laws. Republicans try to change the government...to their advantage. They're talking about this openly because they need to rally across a broad base. This isn't gonna happen in a year...just like overturning Roe didn't happen in a year. But it IS working. Republicans have a Supreme Court that's heavily in their favor now...and for a LONG time to come. They've got 3 Justices under 60. More, they've shown they're absolutely willing to play for keeps to get it that way. Gerrymandering has been a practice of both sides forever...but they've shown they'll take that much further with voting restrictions and challenges. And, OK, they may be scared that the Democrats will overturn their actions should they gain control back...but the problem is, they almost certainly won't, and even if they do...the only way they can is to be just as draconian. The Republicans do not mind a gutted government...it gives corporations more room to exploit, and civil unrest plays to their arguments. To borrow one of my all-time favorite TV lines...Babylon 5, not surprisingly: Emphasis mine, but it's also there on the screen; the expressions and intonations are awesome. And it's the key there. The Democrats have little chance to beat the Republicans long term...and in the shorter term, any attempts to do so will drive them down to Republicans' level of ethics. Which is to say, none.

Nope, it's not enough for justice, I agree. But Robinson is somewhat constrained by prior decisions. What really angers me more, tho, is the gross complicity on the part of the Browns, due to how they structured the contract for this year. A 1/3 season suspension, when it includes losing 1/3 of the annual salary, is at least financially quite significant. This? The Browns made it nothing. But Robinson's punishment can't be based on that, I wouldn't think. OK, yes, it's not even slightly socially acceptable, but I hope a lineman smashes him onto the season-long IL in week 7 or 8. Nice compound fracture. Hose the Browns over too, by making it a nice 2 year recovery.

Ahh..yeah, there's probably been some misstatements here. It doesn't reduce damage from an NND, just an AVAD. The statement that it applies to AVADs is made explicitly in the rules, but your point is still valid: fine, WHICH negation applies, if the target has different amounts of physical and energy negation? Does this create a bias? Physical attacks feel fundamentally narrowly defined because they're tied to physical, tangible objects. Energy attacks feel like they're...well...anything that has no clear, macroscopic, physical expression. Poison...ok, it has a physical expression, but its impact is based on exposure. It's a lot closer to, say, a radiation field than a baseball bat. But if you go that way, then physical negation is notably less effective, as the "works against AVADs" becomes much less applicable. What's an example of something we'd call a PD-based AVAD? Note, too, that it must be an AVAD, not an NND, so choke holds and Nerve Strike don't count. Hmm. Perhaps the language on 6E1 183 is simply imprecise? Resistant damage negation should apply when the attack is AVAD vs. resistant defense. Wellll...ok, no, it's not imprecision because it's defined to work against Drain STUN and Drain BODY...but as OP points out...which???? So yeah, there's a strong argument that the power as written, is broken. I actually REALLY like damage negation in concept, because it gives a better balance between STUN and BODY reduction, for a supers game. Pure defenses are probably better for agents and such, but when you're getting into, say, 10 DCs, using just standard defense powers means normal-damage attacks will never do BODY...even if they're AP, it's very unlikely. For a 10 DC campaign, if 20 defense is the rule...then the AP is 8d6. MAYBE get 1 or 2 through. Go up more? 12 DCs? It gets worse, as you need to address around 50 STUN as the threat level. Killing attacks? The high risk for extreme BODY (for the nominal DCs involved) does suggest Hugh's notion of some pretty notable, additional resistant defense. My defenses strategy has been to do this...or to go with the semi-abusive: increase the resistant defense, then take the negation (or sometimes damage reduction) as STUN-only. On 6 DCs of negation, that saves 10 points when it's the only limitation. So that's +6 resistant for 9...and you net out with 6 more defense against the STUN.

The system has Nerve Strike, but it's the only one. It doesn't look like I can properly build anything else, because there's no way to incorporate the "don't add STR" which is inherent in doing NND damage (per HSMA). Is there some coding in the Effect field I'm missing?

Oh, the Republicans would let it be used...but do things like maximize the difficulty in getting FDA approval (so you have to travel to Europe to get it), ensure as much patent protection as possible, and attempt to maintain it as, at most, marginally covered by insurance. So the price remains in the stratosphere as long as possible. Altho, odds are, any seriously efficacious cure, with relatively low side effects, is gonna cost an arm and a leg regardless. Now...ok, I have to qualify that. As Pariah posted a couple days ago on the trafficking bill...there's some Republicans who'll vote against anything the Dems support. Ohhh...there's a unanimous one...renaming a post office. 421-0, with 12 not voting. So it can happen!!! clerk.house.gov has every roll call vote...if you want to look through it. There's over 400 so far this year. Ohhh...if the cancer cure would cause a pregnant woman to miscarry...which is actually, I suspect, quite likely, and someone getting treatments like this *darn sure* shouldn't be pregnant.....now that would generate a NICE little fight..... /sarcOff....

IMO the rules were devised for supers. Trying to adapt so many potential alterations for different genres/levels makes general analysis impossible; there's no such thing because the rules vary so much that they might as well be completely different systems. So yes, my answers will always be driven, effectively, by the superhero-based suggestions and interpretations. I can't address every rules variant, so I'll take the one that's clearly addressed. If OP states conditions? Then I'll address those. Just to make a point: if KAs and hit locations and any kind of damage doubling is in use, the entire cost basis for normal vs. resistant is tossed out the window...I'd much rather be stunned than dead.

True, but if he's buying it as a mental power, it inherits Ranged. And how often do you see a Mental Flash in most games? There are some corner cases, but most of the time, it's best to buy spatial as mental or unusual; hearing group has active sonar, sight group can go with penetrative.

So work out the cost of 3 DC negation. First principle...the cost is based on the *better* of the BODY and STUN. So 3 DCs killing --> 3.5 BODY. OK, 3.5 resistant is 5.25 points. 3DCs normal --> 10.5 STUN, meaning there's another 7 STUN blocked. That's 7 def...with Stun Only, which in other areas is given a -1/2 value. So that's 4.667 points. Total so far is 9.9+...call it 10. The effective KB resistance is 3 points, so that's 13. Now, tho...as LoneWolf points out, negation applies to AVLDs and NNDs. That's pretty much making up the difference. So yeah, against nothing but standard attacks, it's not as effective. But it is more versatile. On the second: not relevant. You never roll those dice. It's not like you get to pick the highest. Which one protects you from being stunned better? That's a complex question. It depends on the overall defenses, and the CON in question. Take 12d6 attacks; target 1 has 4 dice negation, target 2 has an extra 14 defense. Case 1: target 1 is stunned on 33+ rolled; target 2 on 47. Target 1 is stunned 17.9% of the time; target 2, 22.6%. Case 2: target 1 is stunned on 30+ rolled; target 2 on 44. Target 1 is stunned 38% of the time; target 2, 40.1%. Note that case 2 can be nothing more than 1 less defense, and dropping CON from 20 to 18. So damage negation is more sensitive to the overall defensive configuration. Also note that this is versus normal damage. The stun multiplier issue...that might be worth doing some numbers. Note that damage negation doesn't even exist in 5E, tho, and it's NOT recommended to use the hit locations chart in a supers game...or possibly the increased STUN mult advantage, but that's increasing DCs. But basically, it's not a good idea to analyze against the 5E 1d6-1 STUN multiplier; negation wasn't defined around that. What I've been contemplating is damage negation versus damage reduction...and more specifically, whether reduction needs to be adjusted. Reduction does go back to 5E, where negation didn't exist, and where d6-1 STUN mults did. So that 4d6 K could readily do 18 BODY and 72 or even 90 STUN. Even 30 defenses...seemingly a lot for a 12 DC campaign...leaves you stunned for sure, and if you've taken a couple more normal shots, quite possibly knocked out. Damage Reduction was necessary to help constrain that massive high-end damage potential. That doesn't exist any more...but the cost hasn't changed.

Comment on either Around the Horn or PTI today about Morena and the Angels, WRT trading Ohtani. Moreno won't trade him during the season; he'll wring every last buck he can out of him first. Also took a peek...FiveThirtyEight gives the Dodgers and Astros > 99% chance to win their division...and it's not even Aug. 1st. Yankees are 98%; I presume the difference, such as it is, is that they've got more competition in their division.

Because it's more convenient, cheaper, and therefore more profitable in the short term, to do nothing. Because the Repubs don't want ANY oversight whatsoever, so they can profiteer easier. They'll assert that a) we all know weather runs in cycles, so who says this is climate change? b) even if it is, who says man's actions are contributory? because there's no smoking-gun proof. Mmmm...I dunno if they're spewing hate, or just their normal techno-denial strategy, and hyping their paid puppets to offer up their manufactured stories. This is particularly true because they don't want you listening to science...they want thoughtless drones swallowing their propaganda. Science consistently refutes them......so of course, scientists are lying. Now, OK, some of this is that the Democrats push heavily for impact reduction in pollution controls, carbon reduction, etc. And since Democrats are hellspawn, well, anything they want HAS to be bad. So there's probably some hate in there too....

One of the funniest stat comparison charts I've ever seen...Atlanta Open tennis, John Isner vs. Ben Shelton, a 19 year old who just won the NCAA singles title, playing his first ATP-level event. The stat line...career aces. Shelton...10. (In his first match...not bad.) Isner...13,800 and some...

Not sure I agree there, CRT. So, yeah, what you're saying may be correct, but this suggests the bar to clear isn't particularly high. Side thought...LOS isn't significant for this discussion. Power doesn't need it. The key aspect is the penetrating nature of Spatial. You *can* buy the Mental Illusions with Normal Range (base points x10 meters)...and even Limited Range on top of that, if you want. It'll still work when you're a few rooms away from your victim. But this is also why people have commented about the untouchable mentalist, when you start combining mental powers with a penetrating sense.

I would require you to buy them as Detects. IR and Ultrasonic are priced as adders. Plus, these would be very, very limited by comparison. IR is rather indistinct; it wouldn't readily let you distinguish most objects in a room. Can't see an image on a monitor. Ultrasound, can't hear anyone speaking to you.

The balance is, he can't do it for free. Someone pays for them with character points, in a superhero campaign, or with money in a heroic campaign.

Red Sox coaching staff is in deep doo-doo, I think. 2nd inning. Cleveland has runners on 1st and 3rd, no outs. Rolling ground ball between pitcher and first. First baseman takes 5 full steps to his right to try to snare a ball...when you can see the 2nd baseman in position behind him to make the play. First baseman clanks the ball off his glove...well, he's moving. Ball deflects towards 2nd. He continues that way, picking it up. He then whirls and tries to throw to first...blindly. And wildly. It hits the dugout fence, but the runner who started on 1st still makes it to 3rd. Cleveland ultimately scores 3 that inning. Then, in the 8th...same play. Rolling ground ball between pitcher and 1st. First baseman does it again...goes after the ball, clanks it, recovers, fires blind and wild, and throws it away. He only gets 1 error on this one because it only resulted in 1 base. Bad plays, yes...but worse instruction. The first baseman's job is NOT necessarily to try to grab any ball in range; and trying to make the wild, miracle play is generally a Very Bad idea. And the guy's mostly an outfielder...all the more reason to make sure he gets a LOT of practice time and guidance from the coaches.

Some of these died ages ago, like HoJo's. Not sure I can remember Arthur Treacher's at all.... I do remember Sambo's...and hooooo boy was their imagery racist as heck. I mean, it was blatant enough for a kid to see it, if not exactly understand it. Several of those are victims of corporate shenanigans...which isn't surprising. The ownership history of companies can be convoluted as heck, and as the (very good) host mentioned...buying a company can be done for a multitude of reasons. My favorite root beer was Hires...but they were bought out *many times*. They're a subsidiary of Keurig (yes, the coffee pods company) Dr. Pepper...and basically quashed in favor of A&W...which is a gross miscarriage of commerce. Speaking of franchise spaces getting razed...we had a Church's Chicken that was closed...oh, several years ago now. Before Covid. The building remained boarded up and fenced off...really something of an eyesore...for quite some time, then the whole site was leveled. It's still empty...at least a year later. But this hasn't been a great period to expand. Conversely...one of the local McD's decided it was a pretty good time to remodel. They took out the *entire* existing site; it had one of those play areas in front, that I heard was generally MUCH more of a problem than a draw...and a weird caboose-like thingy, disconnected from the main storefront, in the back...and rebuilt the entire site.

Well..... Arizona drafts Andruw Jones' kid #2 in the draft...some apparently had him rated #1. He signs for a nice, tidy $8.2M signing bonus. And injures his shoulder during his first MLB batting practice. Certainly out for the year. "Unsure" if he'll be ready for the start of spring training next year. Talk about a snake-bit franchise.......... In other news, Mike Trout has a rare spinal issue that, from reports, is going to be a problem for the rest of his career. The stories suggest it's largely manageable...but from the sound of it, it could flare up at any time and cost him time. It's a couple weeks this time. Worse, his track record is really bad. Since the start of the 2017 season, including this one, the Angels have played 806 games; Trout has played in 460. Obviously, last year was the worst, but he only played 140 in '18, so that's still missing 15% or so. And he's out at least for a while as he gets it looked at. It's blindly, foolishly optimistic to expect this will get better, too, as Trout gets older...unless there's some surgical repair option. Odds are that back surgery lays him out for a year...back surgery tends to need a LONG rehab.

Everything old becomes new again.

A snippet from a few days ago, from that article: Of course, if Cal joined them..... I'm not sure the SEC would care, quite honestly. In the major mens' sports, those 4 schools are afterthoughts...at best. Oregon had a few years under Chip...that's about it. A 20-team conference is a joke, too. It's impossible to have anything close to a legit champion, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the bowl committee took a harder look at overall schedules...the conference regular season champ might well have been gobbling Ding Dongs. I'm also wondering if adding those 4 would be more *disruptive* than productive. Travel. Scheduling. Fan disinterest...diluting classic rivalries. Marketing issues...there's largely a Midwest focus to the conference now, but 6 West Coast teams...? Ugh. It'll be bad enough with UCLA and USC...if UCLA isn't blocked...but they have better reps and markets. If they try to swallow all 6 West Coast programs, I wouldn't be surprised if they choke...and within a very few years, shed some schools. Another issue with 20 schools is splitting the TV and bowl money in so many ways, that adding weak sisters definitely could be a net loss.

Sense is free....and your total would actually be 27. The costs are tricky. First, since all the built-in senses have both Sense and limited Discriminatory, I'm not sure they're even factored in. As Hugh noted, I think the root cost is tied to the complication value. 25 points would get you Very Frequently, Greatly Impairing. 5 more for it being a targeting sense, and 5 more for Range...that's 35 for Sight. For hearing, take your pick...decrease the frequency or the degree of impairment...deaf is usually easier to work around, I think (not *easy*, just easier than blind)...so I think it's got 20 points, plus 5 for range.

While I agree with the potential problem, it DOES work, by RAW. Page 148, emphasis mine: The limitation wouldn't apply just because it's looking through a wall. Besides...would you allow it if the character simply bought Penetrating on his Sight? It's a ton cheaper. I agree that it's a build that shouldn't generally be allowed, but it absolutely is RAW. OP, read the rules about Mental Powers and LOS. Your questions are answered there directly.