unclevlad

https://www.cleveland.com/browns/2022/07/a-divided-base-fans-even-families-split-over-loyalty-to-cleveland-browns-amid-deshaun-watson-controversy.html

Now, that said, there's another, mechanical level. Given a 12d6 game where most bad guys will be running at 4-5 SPD... a) how long should I anticipate a combat to take, typically? b) how long should I expect to be able to last...first, assuming just post-12 recovery, then second, taking no more than 1 extra recovery per turn? (More than that, and IMO you should look at tweaking the build.) c) what should acceptable risk of getting Stunned be? Sometimes this is campaign-dependent. In comics supers, there's a loose "gentlemen's agreement" to not nail the downed guy...and in the comics, the heroes are faster to recover. In something more realistic, getting Stunned is *extremely* dangerous; you will get targeted before you're back up on your feet, and your team may not be in a good place to cover you. (And of course, in Hero, when you're stunned, your non-persistent powers stop.) Probably some others. Feel free to add/expand. Oh yeah...and I remember something about killing damage. Ron Edwards and I had a message board exchange back when Champions Now was in development. He saw the issues with killing dice; it's one reason they don't exist in Champions Now. I believe my suggestion *within a Hero System context* was a +1/4 advantage, Lethal. Only resistant defenses apply to the BODY of such an attack. IF it's just +1/4, then the cost of resistant defenses needs to be reconsidered; they're too high at that point.

First, lemme say this emphasizes my point: we lack good standards for comparison, for what "proper" attacks and defenses should be. Because I'd argue the other way...comics portray supers as much too powerful. Thinking 750 is "cosmically powerful" is ridiculous, IMO, and it strongly influences how we think about things. Also, we want our 500, maybe 600 point characters to be the stars...if so, we can't let them be taken down easily. The points constrain how powerful we can make them...so we go the other way, and think we need to scale down military-grade weapons. Your argument about Negation is one approach; another would be to go with around 12 Resistant defense, with no non-resistant, and damage reduction. I've been leaning to the reduction angle, as negation a) is more brittle, as you note, and b) reduction sets up that multiple combined attacks can wear the hero down. But note that both of these are expensive; for the negation, that's 43 points into defenses. For 10 Resistant and 50% rDR, it's 45. It also brings up a secondary point...killing damage. From a DC perspective, 4d6K is the same as 12d6N. 8 dice knocks the former to 1+1...but that's 6 or 7 BODY, 1/3 of the time. Against 3, even assumed to be resistant...that's not a nick. And it's common. Add even 2 more DCs, make it a full 2d6? The problem is partly related to going with Negation, in that it has the side effect of massively INCREASING variance simply due to the fewer dice, and even more heavily, for that same reason, the risk for MASSIVE damage due to an only mildly unlikely roll. 2d6 will be 10+ BODY 1/6th of the time. That's much too common to ignore. But...what that's noting is that Champions was intended to be a comic book supers game...you weren't *supposed* to take BODY very often. The core issue is the translation into something like "the real world." In that sense, then yes...the fact that (IMO) military hardware damage is accurate, means it's much too high. You can play Champions at the suggested levels, or you can play realistic...can't do both simultaneously.

YESSSS!! That they caught the jerk. But for the other...how many others do this, and never actualize anything like this? Those signs are not good predictors, has been my understanding...at least individually. I daresay that if we collate a whole BUNCH of em? There's more risk. But how do you do that without moving into a Thought Police realm?

The rule as written is...not the simplest, not at first. To see how it works, it can be rewritten as 3d6 Roll <= (OCV - DCV) + 11 If my OCV is 9, your DCV is 8, I hit if I roll a 12 or less. If my OCV is 7, your DCV is 9, I only hit if I roll a 9-. The book's expression is OCV + 11 - Roll == the HIGHEST DCV I hit. Same thing...just terms have been switched around. It's given this way because the player generally shouldn't know ahead of time what the DCV is. In this form, he says, as noted "I hit DCV x"...and the "or less" is implicit.

"Do not take Viagra if your heart is not healthy enough to have sex." The notion of a reasonable person has slipped to "if a cretin can misconstrue it, you better make it clear." Dangerous but not armed would be possible, tho...think Mike Tyson in his heyday.

Excellent shape. None of this fake, square stuff...that's the shape of real bread!!!

And bailed when he needed to. Police describe him as being "discreet." BUT!!!!!! According to CNN, a person of interest has been named, and a car he drives described, with plate. Bulletin includes "is considered armed and dangerous"...so it's likely they think it is the shooter. This was just now. EDIT: 25 people shot; 6 deaths to this point. I believe there's one other that was listed as critical. Fingers crossed.....

Believe the gun has been recovered, but according to NYT, running near-live updates, the shooter has not been caught. 6 dead so far. Big questions around the area about whether to hold other events planned for this evening. The bastard deserves going full medieval. And the Republicans will still push for More Guns as the defense....

Offensive Strike is net -1 combined OCV and DCV, for the standard maneuver. Another point is defenses and their interaction with DCV. I agree it's more complex, but until you can do it...? Your assessments will be lacking. There's 2 areas of the system I'd love to see addressed. #1: "realistic" damage scaling. How big is, say, Cyclops' eye blast at full? In some cases, we've got some guidelines for raw STR (Marvel's game)...but should exponential STR translate to linear damage, and how much damage does a Ben Grimm do with a punch? We do have some damage numbers for *some* military weaponry, but relatively older stuff. Nothing like an M1-A2 main gun (or most vehicle-mount weapons, I think). What could help is to translate point levels to the higher-end damage scales. #2: suggestions on defenses, once you've determined damage scaling. How much total defense is recommended for, let's say, a 12 DC attack? These aren't simple, I'll grant, as campaigns can have fundamentally different premises. A comics campaign is all about stunning and hard fighting; dying is rare. An urban fantasy/superhero campaign (Harmon's Wearing the Cape, Hayes' Super Powereds) can be a LETHAL campaign...characters do die, or get seriously hurt. Getting clobbered is Really, Really Dangerous. Defenses are of necessity higher. (Sometimes, so is running, or calling for HELP! when you're just flat-out outclassed.)

As has been said: active points doesn't work well, necessarily. DCs are more straightforward. Quite a few things...martial maneuvers in particular...are weird for active point determination, but trivial for DCs. Martial DCs, Weaponmaster, Deadly Blow...those count to DC caps. Martial maneuvers, I'll sometimes allow a bit of flexibility. For example, if the standard damage cap is 12 DCs, I have no problem with an 11 DC martial strike and a 13 DC offensive strike. Skill levels...you have to consider, IMO, the tradeoff. It's 2 SLs for 1 DC. If the player seems balanced overall...CVs, damage, speed...then trading off 2 CV for 1 DC should not be an issue, even if it tips things over the damage cap.

Fair, but this didn't buy back the recovery, so recovery is per turn, like any other Drain. It'd take some pretty exceptional overuse to get you down that bad. 6E2 107 disagrees with you. "...when he reaches a negative BODY score equal to his starting positive BODY." 'Starting' strikes me as the key word, but the door is open. Aid to BODY...doesn't affect 'Starting', IMO. BODY Drain...same. The trap? Growth, or other powers that give BODY. Is this "starting BODY" or not? For example, I like Normal Mass for Shrinking. IMO it's a good justification for more defenses...1 level of Shrinking with Normal Mass means your density is 8, which is steel. Conversely, tho, it's plausible to say you also get some BODY from this. DI is similar. So..what is "starting BODY"? The simplest answer is, it's the BODY characteristic you paid for...end of sentence. Note that with Growth or DI that are always on...it's recommended that you buy the effects...which with Growth, would include the extra BODY.

As Hugh says, Change Environment is exceptionally open-ended. in that any number of real-world events might be incorporated, plus a wide range of fantastic effects. And you're doing this with a rather short list of defined options, so those options have to be overloaded. Speaking of Transform...I spent way, way too long last night realizing what "mineralogical/metallurgical Transforms" could do with a mass of granite. Oh my....

Good horror realm there. The essence, IMO, of effective horror is sharp incongruity, keeping everyone off balance. Love the Zodiac beast notion, but I dunno if I wanna deal with that many levels of Growth....

More D&Dish, but dimensional travel may cause powers to misbehave. Something like the plane of shadows might, for example, cut healing in half...including recovery.

Technically, tho, by RAW a minor side effect is 1/4 of the active points in the power...OR 15 points, whichever is greater. So just applying it to a couple dice is potentially overkill, even when it's the full -1/2. Might be doable, tho...as 1d6 Drain to BODY and STUN. They're both defensive powers, so the half effect rule applies. I probably wouldn't allow Standard Effect here, as that's below-average damage, and you're getting 2 beneficial roundings. It'd always translate to 1 BODY and 2 STUN drained. That's likely tolerable, but should add up enough to be a deterrent from overusing it.

Interesting brownie protection plan there....

The peloton can often demonstrate courtesy when there's no significant impact. Probably why Cort was just told "you take them."

Cornet yes; Kyrgios, not so much. He's probably the last person ANY player wants to play on grass. His worst opponent is himself. If he can keep his act together, he can beat *anyone*. He was playing at an insane pace...some of his service games were over in literally less than a minute on the clock...and that includes time to get balls off the court, reposition ball people, and get him balls for the next point. He was stepping to the line, one little rock, then BAM!!!!!!!! He's cracking 140 on the T. And Tsitsipas couldn't handle his constant BS. Between points, between *serves* when Tsitsipas was serving. Both McEnroes, at different points, mentioned, this needed to be stopped. Patrick was more irritated, calling K's antics disrespectful to the game. I dearly wish tennis organizers would slap him hard, but they rarely do much. Tsitsipas actually came closer to being disqualified...he hit a couple balls in anger that, had they hit anyone...would've been instant DQ. The rules need to give chair umpires the power to call conduct violations more often, AND encourage them to do so. At one point, one of the linesmen walked up to the umpire and reported Kyrgios saying Bad Things...which, if fans can hear it, is a violation. Kyrgios got the warning. But he was calling the linesman a snitch...and that's bullying the officials, which IMO should ALSO be a violation. Medvedev does a lot of this too, and I'm thoroughly sick and tired of both of em.

The point, tho, is all that data is making the player passive...do what the card says to do. And that only works for initial positioning. Once the ball's in play, players don't react well, a fair bit of the time. But you're right. Hits the same as last year, but runs are down...not quite as bad as 2014 and 2015, about the same as 2013, down 1/2 a run a game from 2019 tho. HRs are notably down...from 1.28 in 2020, 1.22 in 21, to 1.07. Walks are down a bit, as are strikeouts, altho they're still notably over 8 a game.

Ahhh...I was wondering. I caught the replay of the finish; that wasn't very wide, and IIRC from the map, there were some turns. That sets up for problems when everyone's pushing hard.

I caught the start of the bridge; was watching it when the live broadcast ended, which killed the ability to replay it (at this point). Nasty crash on the bridge...almost everyone got back together to get the same time, but 7 riders never did. 3 lost 8 minutes, 4 lost 11. Couple of em looked looked quite sore, so it seems plausible some of em won't start tomorrow. Elsewhere, Alize Cornet upset Iga Swiatek at Wimbledon...rather easily. Swiatek never looked comfortable, never got a great run going, and Cornet won rather easily (4 and 2). It was Swiatek's first loss of the year, after winning 6 consecutive tournaments and 37 consecutive matches.

First: is this in the right forum? Champions Now is a separate system, and...checking...I don't see a Transform power at all. (Plus, it's options-light, so minjor, major, and severe don't seem to fit.) If this is 6E, I refer you to 6E1 p. 306, the Transforming the Mind section. It may be cosmetic, minor, or major by RAW. Me, I like the general notion that "the mind fights back." So I prefer to say you gotta work for it...always major. But the rules here are rather sparse. You wanna build a Manchurian Candidate? That should be major work. You want to confuse, erase, or plant something briefly witnessed? That shouldn't take long. I think the rules are left vague so the GM can adapt things like that as he likes. For example, something kinda secret...? That might require a Telepathy roll to find first.

Something along these lines came up this afternoon, during the Philles-Cards game. Getting late in the game. One of the players pulled a defensive card from his back pocket...and this kinda set John Kruk into a bit of a tizzy. That players should be allowed to make their own mistakes, so they'll LEARN the game. About how over-coaching doesn't help young players. I'd say something like that Kruk guy is real smart, but...well...it's John Kruk. Still, I totally agree. Not just baseball, most sports. I do think baseball's probably the worst, tho.

Colorado running back to the Big 12 would be moderately amusing. Those 4 would make the Big Southwest geographically huge too. These reports tie in with other comments...that Oregon and Washington will have to look for landing spots ASAP. Maybe some of these moves won't get done...but ya gotta figure some of them will. So, yes, I think the Conference of Champions is on emergency life support at this point. And I think there's absolutely a squeeze play going on. The Pac X is, we all think, basically dead. The ACC probably will survive, but they'll have to consider expanding, I suspect. Reports are that the Big Midwest may consider further expanding. Got to think the goals here are: a) establish strong conference networks to boost TV revenues b) dominate the national broadcast schedules in both football and basketball (Fox, ESPN, CBS), pushing for major rights deals c) overwhelmingly dominate the entire bowl season, and particularly the playoffs, where the mega-bucks are. There may not be active collusion among the conferences...each is probably going to try to get the best deal they can, but that will still lead to the same endgame.