unclevlad

I'm a lover, not a fighter.

Vingegaard finishes 2nd, too... 6th stage win for J-V. They've crushed every other team this tour.

Got a quick burst of rain about 40 minutes later. Didn't last more than a minute or two...at least at levels loud enough to be heard through a closed window.

It actually does work better in a couple ways: notably less likely to completely fizzle at the low end, somewhat less likely to get the massive STUN. It still allows massive stun, tho.

Very early AM here. Had an inspiration, working through it, when I hear rumbling outside. Huh...yeah, it's thunder. Look out the front door, to the west and north...stars. Overhead...stars. More thunder...flash of lightning. Oh, it's from the east.... Yep. Cloud bank, kind of hard to see because the contrast is bad, given the low light. Stars to the NE, stars to the south. And cloud-to-cloud lightning to the SE. Mostly...I saw one cloud-to-ground, but cloud-to-cloud several times.

Sure it was just a hangover?

They've been talking Soto quite a bit, and where he might end up, on MLB Tonight. Plesak was figuring...given what you might have to trade to get him, you'd have to plan on signing him to an extension. I can see trading Ohtani too. In the "how bad can you look"...we have a new record. Red Sox have been turned into road pizza tonight. Outfield pop-up gets lost...turning into an inside the park grand slam. Later on, with 2 outs, couple runners on, the Toronto hitter sends one straight up the chute. Pitcher moves off to the side...third baseman and catcher watch each other. It falls. Halfway between the plate and the mound. Toronto has already set the record for most runs scored by a visiting team at Fenway Park. It's the 6th inning. It's 27-4. The modern day record for runs for one team is 30...Rangers vs. Orioles. (Modern is since 1900 here.) The all-time is 36, from 1897. THAT could fall...Boston hasn't started putting position players out there as pitchers yet.

OK, but the thread's been considering the options/impact of different approaches to doing KA damage, both BODY and STUN, so it's apples to apples in that sense. The game mechanics are clearly built around normal damage without the use of hit locations, so it's still legitimate to see how any of these compare to what the fundamental baseline is. I will say it's good to bring it up. It helps to recognize that hit locations severely distort the cost of attacks versus defenses, and probably the relative values of PD/ED/Armor versus damage negation versus damage reduction. Brings up a point we haven't really mentioned yet. The core volatility of killing attack dice, for the BODY, has a significant impact on defenses. If KAs are a concern, and if they're allowed comparable maximum DCs, then you have to buy *substantial* rDef. 12d6 normal, you'll see more than 15 BODY *rarely*. And it won't be much over 15. OTOH, facing 4d6 K, 19+ BODY happens 10% of the time. So if you're thinking average defense...14...is enough...you're risking pretty significant damage. Not fatal on its own, but substantial.

I don't necessarily agree with that, but even more...I'd hate to use hit locations with normal attacks, for supers. Hand, arm, leg, foot...attack effectively misses, as it's half STUN and half BODY. That's 56 out of 216, or 1/4. Head and Vitals is 2x BODY, that's 31 / 216 or 1/7. 1.5x STUN adds Stomach, so 1.5x or 2x STUN is also 56 / 216...again basically 1/4. 'course I'm not a fan of hit locations period, but this just inserts a MASSIVE amount of volatility, in huge chunks.

Oh, BTW: for those who like to look at these things... anydice.com has a nice, simple graphical display for simple dice math. They show the exact probability of getting each value, as a percentage. But you can pretty easily read the head or tail sections for things like "how often would I exceed 40 damage on 9d6?" I'm sure there's others out there, I was happy with this. It doesn't work for the killing damage STUN probabilities, tho, of course.

OK. Stun mult 1: hands and feet; 14 / 216 Stun mult 2: arms, thighs, legs; 67 / 216 Stun mult 3: shoulders, chest; 79 / 216 Stun mult 4: stomach, vitals; 46 / 216 Stun mult 5: head; 10 / 216 Results. STUN is the amount. N is the exact number of ways it can happen (this is a 3d6 KA, rolling 3d6 hit location, so there are 46,656 possibilities. P is the probability that the damage will be the column 1 value OR HIGHER. That's as before. Note that if you want the probability for "less than this" you can just go with 100 - P. The dark line is hit locations; the yellow line uses the 1/2 d6 STUN multiplier. Note that 9d6 normal would hit 40+ STUN about 6% of the time. So hit locations increase volatility greatly, and lead to significantly higher STUN. Even 10% of the time, you're looking at 48+ STUN...on a 9 DC attack. Dark line uses hit locations for the stun mult. Magenta line is 5E (d6-1). Yellow line is 6E (1/2 d6).

Right. Called shots have notable drawbacks that are separate from a hit location table. Hmm, I need lunch, but I'll take a swing at the hit locations. It's not particularly different. I suspect, tho, it'll still be too easy to do high STUN. For reference: 72 STUN on 4d6 KA per 6E is 1 in 3888. For 12d6, it's about 1 in 2 billion. So saying, oh, they have the same potential max, is grossly misleading. On 12d6, you'll exceed 50 only about 6% of the time...and exceed 54 about 1%. On 4d6, you'll roll 18+ about 16% of the time, and obviously, 1/3 of the time you'll get the 5 or 6 STUN die. So over 5% of the time, you'll do a minimum of 54. So it's quite a bit more often. Whether it's at the level of 'unreasonable'? That's a subjective evaluation, and much depends on campaign style, and of course, how often the group agrees to use/face KAs. Comics supers? Certain foes will have KAs but not that many. Urban fantasy, there's probably quite a few; the bad guys are more likely out to kill. Superhero (novel) fiction can lean either way.

One writer criticized MLB for not doing that, but yeah...how could they have known, in time to do anything about it? And looking ahead...Harper left, Scherzer left, Soto's leaving. That's a lot. That suggests it's not a player-friendly franchise...and that's massively magnified by the pettiness of this incident. Getting free agents to jump to DC might be quite difficult.

I vaguely remember they had that as an ad campaign...with specifically Ro-Tel. One of the (figurative and somewhat literal) issues with Velveeta is the salt. There's a TON of it. Now, OK, cheese generally is on the high side...but Velveeta has double the salt listed for cheddar cheese. And while I'm not a diehard organic-only type, to get the kind of shelf stability Velveeta has, takes a WHOLE lot of preservatives. When I found out my blood sugar was closer to incipient hospitalization than to being healthy, I really started reading labels a lot more. BP was also high, so, not just sugar/carbs, but also salt. I used to like having some Campbell's Chunky Soups around as a quick, no-work lunch...but then I saw the salt. GAH!!!! Fruit juice...that's a healthy drink, right? BBBBBBBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTTTTTT!!! Sugar contents are THROUGH THE ROOF. 8 ounces of Mott's Apple Juice...29 grams of sugar. 7.5 ounce can of Coke...25 grams. Greek Gods yogurt had some really nice flavors...and 15 grams of added sugar. Sneakier? Plain yogurts have the lowest sugar; the same brand, same style, but vanilla flavor...major added sugar. One of the issues is...ok, it's easy to recognize that yummy big burger, large fries, and 32 oz non-diet soft drink is Really Bad For You on multiple levels. Cutting those out is a matter of willpower. What's harder is those nasty, hidden sources in the choices we make...like the Chunky Soup, like the Velveeta. And that's the chunk we have to learn to...if not remove, at least recognize. (Lunch today had deli ham and smoked turkey...fair bit of sodium. In a grilled meat and cheese sandwich. But dinner...only salt was what I put on. Breakfast was actually 0 salt, as it was liquid...strawberry-cherry smoothie and coffee.)

This isn't accurate any more, I think. Major films are a company's "earnings report" for a quarter, more or less, so when the box office numbers slide...when critical reviews aren't good...it's analogous to a company missing its earnings statement. Even if there was a profit...it wasn't good enough profit. That's modern business.

My, my. There's burning your bridges down, then there's burning them, blowing out the supports, and seeing them wash away in a 500 year flood... This is the latter. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2022/07/19/nationals-refused-charter-juan-solo-flight-home-run-derby/10100914002/

Then why did 6E shift from 1d6-1, for the stun multiplier, to 1/2 d6? SOME volatility is a good thing, but with the d6-1, or worse, your suggested d6, the degree becomes gross. Both in the absolutely, utterly insane max damage...a brick taken from full STUN to negatives with *1 shot*??? And the VERY high frequency of extreme (high and low) damage. Yeah, fine, the KA will bounce off the brick quite a bit...but it ALSO bounces off the far less heavily armored blaster, or perhaps does a bit of BODY to the martial artist...but otherwise no STUN. The key isn't that it doesn't even tickle the brick...yeah, it doesn't matter there, if it's 5 STUN too low or 20...but in other cases, it does. And the fact that your proposal allows 10 STUN per DC means it's nothing but random. It's, as someone pointed out, D&D Disintegrate...keep trying til they miss their save. Or Flesh to Stone. Save or Die was derided *heavily* in the later stages of 3.5, and that's what you're suggesting. No. Volatility of this degree has NO advantages.

The first TT was a lot shorter to be sure, and Pogacar finished ahead of Ving...by 15 seconds. Pog finished 3rd, Ving 7th. Barring mishap, there's no way Pog gets 3 minutes back. A minute, maybe 2 minutes? Might not be out of the question, but the gap now is just too large. Pog needed to gain time on Ving today to have a real shot...not lose 1:08.

I suppose, but my head connects it to tuna casseroles...canned tune, canned cream of mushroom soup, potato chips.... It was worse than it sounds...late 50's, through the 60's, was a food desert.

The problem exists any time KA DCs are allowed to be equal to normal-damage DCs. I'll also suggest that the problem with combat length is inherent, or nearly so. The genre has 2 types of fights: versus mooks, or versus real opponents. Mooks should drop quickly and easily; Batman and Robin clear out Joker's or Riddler's minions in a couple panels. It's easy to give the mooks too much, when you're dealing with them in a quasi-modeling approach rather than a narrative one. Then with the real opponents, the fight's supposed to go on.

The issue only lives with killing damage. You'd have to target the defensive adjustment to match, and this risks spreading defenses out too much. I'd prefer to stay with normal dice, and make Lethal an advantage. Perhaps for +1/2: --the BODY rolled goes against resistant defenses only --versus the STUN, target gets full resistant defense, but only 1/2 non-resistant defense. --Damage negation: these are advantaged DCs, so reduce as normal, if the negation isn't resistant. Haven't done any testing, just tossing it out there.

But a small batch of cheese sauce is not hard to make.

But at this point, Vin has over 3 minutes in hand. A bad mechanical issue shouldn't cost more than a minute; the cars should be reasonably close on the rest of the stages. A crash can, of course, take anyone out, so it's not a complete lock, but it's close. Otherwise, J-V has too strong a team to allow a successful attack on a flat stage.

Yep. Granted, the race is close to over, but...it's over. Barring crashes or withdrawals, it's over. Vingegaard now has about 3:30 on Pog. Yellow: done. Vin has an 8 point lead now in KoM. There are fewer than 8 left to get. Polkda dot: done. Van Aert's had green locked. The only question left is whether he can set a record. He has more than 2nd and 3rd combined. Which means J-V has 3 of the 4 individual jerseys; Pog has white, and that's been a lock for a long time too. Van Aert...insane. Most aggressive on the day...in the top 3 on *all 3* climbs.

For me, this is completely backwards, because Volatility is NOT the friend of the PCs. PCs make 1 or 2 rolls, typically, against any individual foe, and hey, if one comes out good? Doesn't matter. The PCs have to absorb ALL the hits, because they don't go away. Math time. Taking your suggestion...normal damage does 1,2,3,4,5,3 BODY. Mean is 3 BODY per...ok. Variance is 0. OK, that's no different, actually. The variance using standard normal damage (for BODY) is 0. Checking with a quick 3d6 (equivalent to 9d6)...BODY done ranges from 7 to 11 73% of the time; 6 to 12, 88% of the time. The problem is, the STUN is therefore massively dependent on a single d6. Here's a section of the resulting stun outcomes: Stun dam 20 N=45 P= 67.3611111111111 Stun dam 21 N=27 P= 65.27777777777777 Stun dam 22 N=27 P= 63.19444444444444 Stun dam 24 N=68 P= 57.947530864197525 Stun dam 25 N=9 P= 57.25308641975308 Stun dam 26 N=9 P= 56.55864197530864 Stun dam 27 N=38 P= 53.62654320987654 Stun dam 28 N=30 P= 51.31172839506173 Stun dam 30 N=59 P= 46.75925925925926 Stun dam 32 N=33 P= 44.21296296296296 Stun dam 33 N=27 P= 42.129629629629626 Stun dam 35 N=27 P= 40.04629629629629 Stun dam 36 N=70 P= 34.645061728395056 Stun dam 39 N=9 P= 33.95061728395061 Stun dam 40 N=66 P= 28.858024691358022 Stun dam 42 N=30 P= 26.54320987654321 Stun dam 44 N=27 P= 24.459876543209877 Stun dam 45 N=39 P= 21.450617283950617 Stun damage is the result. N is the exact number of ways it can happen; for example 45 STUN is 15 BODY, x3, or 9 BODY, x5. P is the probability, therefore, of rolling that level of stun OR HIGHER. So about 1/3 of the time, this method gives 20 STUN or less...little or no STUN will get by defenses. And almost 30% of the time, it'll be 40+. The maximum possible stun on standard 9d6 is 54, and that's a once-in-a-lifetime roll (probability is 1 in 6*9th, which is ~ 10M.) The max on 3d6 with a stun mult is 90...and it's only 1 in 1296. RARE, sure, but 7776 times more likely. The probability of 54 or more is ~11% using the 3+1 rolling idea. So, what kind of defenses do you need now? Unless you really *want* the PCs to get stunned *routinely*, that is. Also note: this forces changes to Damage Negation which are fairly awkward, and very likely makes Damage Reduction almost essential, because massive STUN is what you MUST worry about first. Damage Negation is...actually, kinda interesting. The way it would have to work is, 5 points to negate 1 BODY...BEFORE the STUN roll is even made. So if you have, say, 20 points DN, you knock 4 BODY...the 10 BODY rolled --> 6. THEN you compute the STUN the target takes, based on the 6 BODY damage. That might work very nicely, truth be told...if the stun roll's insane volatility can be tamed. That's the looming disaster, that stun volatility. Note that in 6E they realized it..and went from d6-1 for KA stun mult, to d3. Going to d6 is just that much worse, even with the mild drop in damage. The average BODY drops from 10.5 to 9, on 3d6...15%. But rolling a straight d6, instead of a shifted d6, means that the 4+ stun multiplier goes from 1/3 to 1/2 of the time, and the high knockout threat 5 or 6 stun mult is 1/3 of the time rather than 1/6th.