unclevlad

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....

But how many people would try to come up with some way to ADD tunneling? Multipowers are a cheap way to go; you don't use more than one at a time. And note, that's the kind of issue that underlies making it the rules default...but it's also one that justifies going a different way with a house rule. RAW should err on the conservative side.

That smell forced the mayor out, and the sale has apparently been canned for now. Dodgers become the first team to reach 80 wins...and their magic number to clinch a playoff berth is 30. In mid August... Yankees continue their serious tailspin. 9 runs combined in their last 7 games.

Well, yeah. But let's be honest here...if Trump wants the nomination in '24, he'll be the prohibitive front-runner...and may well run with very little opposition. Even if he doesn't, in a general primary season...how many states would Cheney potentially carry? How many states would she get *crushed* in? No Trumpist is going to vote for her. I was kinda thinking about it...the Lincoln Project, perhaps? It's too early for her to try to run as a 3rd-party conservative independent...but laying the groundwork to grow a New Conservative Party? That I could see.

It's one reason why I dislike catastrophic failure...in general, barring making it very rare. (Like rolling a 1 on a d20 is a potential catastrophic...then roll d100. Another 1? Oh dear. But that's 2000 to 1.) And, that said...catastrophic failure is fine in some campaigns, where the tone fits, or where maiming or dying is temporary. I'll also grant that D&D's "1 always fails, 20 always succeeds" can become darn near tactical, compared to Hero's "3 always succeeds, 18 always fails." There was a school of thought, back in 3.0, where you just use the insta-kills against the BBEGs...because the damage from most spells, where they'd make their saves most of the time, just never cut it. A 5% chance of ending the fight was STILL better than what you'd get otherwise. The damage system became broken with the big 3.0 Con changes. That actually points out an advantage of a WIDE uniform distribution...d100 to even d1000. It's less about the granularity in the middle, and more about letting you assign auto-success or auto-failure to the remote tails...on d1000, perhaps 1-4 and 997-1000. 1 in 250. But 1000-sided dice would be...awkward at best, so you're generally rolling 3 d10s. Which one is which digit? It opens the door to cheating...and I saw it with certain players. At times, too, in the heat of the game...players can get too into it. Be that as it may, the math side gives you a better practical framework. No reason to work these out at the table. The math's not bad, if one took a class in probability anyway. A quick and dirty approach is to go with the expected number of successes. This is simple, as long as you know the probability of success on 1 die, P. The expected # of successes is simply P * N, where N's the number of dice. So rolling 9 dice with target number 9...you expect 1 success on average. That doesn't mean you'll always get 1...sometimes you'll get 2. But it's a general gauge. If your expected number of successes is, say, 0.5...9 dice with target number 11...you can recognize your chances are bad. Mathematically precise...the probability of 1 or more successes is 1 - (the probability of NO successes). If P(success) is 1/9, then P(failure) = 1 - P(success) = 8/9. The probability of no successes on N dice is simply P(failure) ^ N. So this kinda thing can be worked out. OK, don't do this by hand, but it's easy to write a spreadsheet. 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 .333 .167 .167 .139 .111 .083 .056 .028 1 .667 .833 .833 .861 .889 .917 .944 .972 2 .444 .694 .694 .742 .790 .840 .892 .945 3 .296 .579 .579 .639 .702 .770 .842 .919 4 .198 .482 .482 .550 .624 .706 .796 .893 5 .132 .402 .402 .473 .555 .647 .751 .869 6 .088 .335 .335 .408 .493 .593 .710 .844 7 .059 .279 .279 .351 .438 .544 .670 .821 8 .039 .233 .233 .302 .390 .499 .633 .798 9 .026 .194 .194 .260 .346 .457 .598 .776 10 .017 .162 .162 .224 .308 .419 .565 .754 11 .012 .135 .135 .193 .274 .384 .533 .734 12 .008 .112 .112 .166 .243 .352 .504 .713 13 .005 .093 .093 .143 .216 .323 .476 .693 14 .003 .078 .078 .123 .192 .296 .449 .674 15 .002 .065 .065 .106 .171 .271 .424 .655 16 .002 .054 .054 .091 .152 .249 .401 .637 17 .001 .045 .045 .079 .135 .228 .378 .619 18 .001 .038 .038 .068 .120 .209 .357 .602 19 .000 .031 .031 .058 .107 .191 .338 .586 20 .000 .026 .026 .050 .095 .175 .319 .569 First row is target number. Second row is P(Success) for that target number, on 1 die. The far left column is the number of dice. The other columns are then the probability of FAILURE...of not getting any successes. Getting 1 success is...plausible. But in Shadowrun in many cases, you need more than 1...and that's when life gets HARD.

I think they don't want it to be a super-cheap escape power. Movement rate is largely irrelevant; 2m gives you a 1m half move, and how often would you need more? So all you have to buy is the penetrability, it's only 2 points per, and it's PD only. Now contrast this with Entangle, where there are firm restrictions on buying up the additional DEF for the entangle...and you have to buy more balanced. 2m Tunneling through up to 12 PD is 26 points; this beats a 4d6 Entangle with +8 PD (max) and +2 ED (required) that costs 60. And while Teleport and Desolid are alternate escape routes, there are advantages to block escape by those means. There's nothing in RAW to stop tunneling, So, yeah, it's a totally illogical distinction, but it's not the only one in the book. And note that they make pretty clear, that they don't want Tunneling to be anything but blatant. Fill In is fairly expensive, and still listed as Obvious...the ground's clearly disturbed. I've always felt it's one of those "well it's a power you see occasionally so we gotta include it, but by gosh we don't want to."

Not surprisingly, Liz Cheney lost the Republican primary in Wyoming. By a LOT. Race called by AP with a quarter of the votes in. At this point it's about 60-40 against her.

Ouch. It's possible Serena just played her last match, because she just got blown off the court 4 and 0 against Raducanu. Raducanu's the 10 seed, sure, but to get bageled is saying she was non-competitive, and in just 2 weeks...won't become competitive. The first set was perhaps misleading, too; Serena did break once, but she struggled hard to save in every service game, and Raducanu basically cruised.

Well, if a 5% granularity isn't good enough...3d6's granularity is far worse. Between 7 and 13, the difference between is just under 10%, up to 12.5%...so it's VERY coarse. Why is a bell curve better than a uniform distribution, in your opinion? Yeah, percentiles are more granular...for tables, you likely want that. But for making hit rolls or skill checks? 5% granularity is probably plenty good enough. Shadowrun exploding dice...remember that Shadowrun (at least the editions I played) was counting number of successes. There wasn't much totaling. I think there was some in 1st Edition...but that got dropped. The uneven distribution of outcomes WAS a huge problem, and as you note, there was no difference between 6 and 7. And not much difference between 6 and 8....even 6 and 9. But you can work out the probabilities easily. Target 2: 5/6 Target 3: 2/3 Target 4: 1/2 Target 5: 1/3 Target 6: 1/6 Target 7: 1/6 Target 8: 1/6 * 5/6 = 5/36 Target 9: 1/9 Target 10: 1/12 Target 11: 1/18 Target 12: 1/36 So you're only losing about 5% going from target 6 to target 9. I don't think many GMs really understand that any target number over 5 is becoming a fishing expedition, especially if more than 1 success is needed. And when you hit 10, 11...it hardly matters. 12? It doesn't matter, it's Fat Chance. If you explode on a 5...the probabilities are Target 5: 1/3 Target 6: 1/3 Target 7: 5/36 Target 8: 1/9 and so on. So you make a really funky looking distribution. It might *sound* better but I don't think it is.