unclevlad

Hey, the Dodgers managed to hit a home run and the batter got called out. It's early. Proof? The Orioles lead the AL East. I also think this is gonna be a wild, swingy, streaky year...moreso than normal. Pitching is going to be bizarre. No minor league work; the major league starters ahd key relievers are being monitored very closely for workload after such a short season last year. (Especially younger pitchers, I suspect.) I wouldn't be at all surprised tho, that the stadiums known to brutalize pitching, will have an even harder time this year. Coors Field is #1 in park factor by a wide margin; the Rangers have the #2 spot, also by a fairly wide margin over #3. I've always heard that it's the heat in Arlington, over the course of the summer. But hey, half the teams in the league aren't expected to compete...and the Dodgers are the heavy WS favorites, so playing in their division is going to make reaching the playoffs that much harder.

North American pro sports have largely been fairly lucky, but this looks to be the first major exception that I can recall. Marlins had that slew of positives that led to their being shut down just as the 2020 baseball season started, but this is, I think, worse on the numbers...and worse on severity. Several players have been described as being in "rough shape"; ESPN is saying severe fatigue and dehydration. No hospitalizations reported at this time.

The central problem with American society/culture is that it's nearly impossible to have a real dialogue on *any* meaningful subject. The polarization is almost complete.

Sometimes yes, sometimes NO. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/prinvac.pdf

The only way you can influence some of these lawmakers is to hit them in the wallet. "I think we'll find another city for our $100M in tourism event." And the cries of "cancel culture" sound like "pot, meet kettle." BOTH sides do it; that's one of the major problems.

With classical vaccines, another issue is, it's hard to keep the potency consistent. You want the viruses to be, shall we say, on death's door; they don't stir up much trouble, they just activate the watchdog aspect of the immune system, and they're easily and promptly dumped into the sewers. But sometimes they're just stunned; they wake up as the immune guards are coming by, and get Hostile. With these vaccines, AFAIK, it wouldn't be the same; they're not full viruses. But it wouldn't surprise me that something very similar could happen, *particularly* given that this is being produced as fast as it possibly can be. (With that occasional OOPS, like when 15M J&J shots had to be tossed.) Yah...I happened to notice my indoor tomato plant was a wee bit saggy...that's mostly from weight, the thing's growing NICE and BIG! and I'm hoping for quite a few luscious little red balls of joy later on. (Or whatever color...I have no idea what variety these seeds are from, and I use several fancier types commonly.) So, hmm, ok, it's going thru water faster at this point. Filled my bigger jug with maybe a gallon and a half, so...about 10 pounds. Tested the sore arm by lifting it? No reaction whatsoever.

Dodger catcher got spiked on a play at the plate. Yeah, I saw the hand; it wasn't pretty. He might be out for a couple days, as that's his throwing hand. But hey, THE play was way earlier. C'mon...Bellinger hits a dinger with a runner on first, in the third inning...and gets called out and credited for a single and an RBI only. HOW???? Justin Turner thought the OF caught it at the wall; he was well past 2nd, and of course if it was caught, he had to get back. They weren't thinking...probably both of em really...and Turner retreated too far so that Bellinger was now ahead of him on the base paths. So Bellinger is out for passing another runner on the bases. Each one caught some flak for that little fiasco; I tend to blame Bellinger a bit more, as he knows the score. But the bottom line was, they really blew the play. Lindor...$341M. We're in the wrong line of work............

But do you use it, or are you still using a 2400 baud modem?

Well, how nice. Arm was sore all evening, much of the morning...altho the aftermath of last night's indulgences (the wine was quite pleasant) kinda distracted me...but now, I can elevate it and barely feel anything. On Brazil: no, in many ways it's not a surprise at all. It's just seeing it's gotten SO bad is still disturbing. They're over 300,000 dead now...recorded. And I'd bet most experts would say, Brazil's undercounting. The Brazilian health care system's been overwhelmed. It is a complete disaster down there.

Youch...I hadn't noticed this but...Brazil's averaging about the same number of deaths each day as the US had, at our worst point back in January...on average, about 3000 a day. But Brazil has 2/3 the population.

Confucius

I'm glad I wasn't planning serious yard work, I will say. Notable soreness now, at 5+ hours post-shot, at the injection site. I can live with that. To celebrate...fresh chicken and garlic pasta, which I usually avoid like the plague due to carbs...gonna be tossing the rump roast into the pressure cooker for shredding, and serve a nice dollop on the side, and a salad. And a bottle of wine. Mmmm....

In other words, a typical American teenager....? So I GOT SHOT!!! Didn't feel a thing. Didn't even bleed, the RN didn't even give me a band-aid....or a sucker....... REALLY nice, tho. The local hospital had it nicely arranged, about 4 people administering shots, less than 10 minutes to get through the line, probably more like 5. The longest part was, they had everyone wait for 15 minutes before leaving, just to ensure there were no Particularly Bad reactions. I had my Kindle with me.

matcha (a form of green tea with its own unique method of preparation)

One thing to remember: when you trade away the sun, moon, and stars to move up, it's 100% guaranteed those assets you trade away are gone. It's FAR from 100% that the very high draft pick will pan out. And yet again, the NFL shows it's driven by More Money, More Money, More Money. The season's final day is January 9th. UGH. Personally I can't think of a single bloody thing I like about this.

Katana

HOLY <BLEEEP!!!> Watching USC vs. Gonzaga. Hear a whistle blow for no obvious reason based on the action; IIRC the ball was just being inbounded. What happened was...one of the on-court refs just collapsed. No contact or anything, he was off to the side, and just collapsed. ACKK!!!!!!! Never seen it, but man, the first things that come to mind are all Really, Really BAD. The good aspects are: the refs saw it as it happened and stopped play immediately; and, very good medical personnel are right there to attend. And THANKFULLY, the ref's being wheeled off but he's sitting up. Still freaky.

The death rate's dropped considerably. 6 weeks ago would be mid-February; it was about 2500 a day. Checking today, it's dipped just slightly below 1000. Once the vaccine rollout started in earnest, the daily numbers were pretty much bound to come down, as long as the vaccines were reasonably good. Barret: no uptick is good, but as restrictions are eased, new cases will tend back up. But hopefully, so will business activity. The issue everywhere is the balance between those factors, and for sure, that's a very tricky proposition. How low is Low Enough to lift some restrictions that exist at that point? And granularity is important here. New Mexico's rate has been dropping consistently; many counties are showing VERY low per capita rates, and low positive test result rates.

Iroshizuku ... a line of inks from Pilot/Namiki. As best I can recall, the first of the pigmented (as opposed to using aniline dyes) inks, of which there are several now.

LoneWolf: There's no such thing as a negative adder on a VPP. A custom power? It can be used to define one, yeah, but IMO that's not supportable here. And it isn't needed, IMO. Basically what I suggested parallels yours. 50/50 character VPP. Staff is 50/50 which goes to 25/50 because of OAF. So the combination is 75/100; and what you do isn't some arbitrary, unsupported adder, but a straightforward "Limited Power" class of limitation on the VPP: that exceeding 50/50 requires the OAF. I think that's much more clear, and makes the conditions obvious. And for me, importantly, it's within the language of the system, which an oddly-constructed adder is not. No, not at all. You're misunderstanding how it works. First: the fact that the real and control costs are the same is coincidental. You can define a 30 real, 60 active; a 60 active power would be required to have -1 in limitations, but they could be whatever the player desired at this point because I haven't included a Common Modifier. Or a 30 point power with no limitations whatsoever. Or a pair of 30 active point powers, each with -1 in limitations. Note that a 30 pool, 60 active "magic pool" can be explained as "low level spells are easy to cast; higher level spells need support, such as Gestures/Incants." Or whatever your pleasure...some others might take Extra Time instead of G/I. You can also define a VPP with pool size 60, control cost 30, and (let's say) Requires a Skill Roll. Then you can define 10/10 Resistant and 50% resistant DR to phys and energy (in separate slots) for example...because the 30 active cost on each slot has dropped to 20 real. The total real cost is 60. Or you can add, let's say, Perceivable and Nonpersistent onto each, which reduces the real cost to 15...and the pool's still got 15 more points to work with. So perhaps a 4d6 HA, 1/2 END...25 active, 14 real because it still has the RSR. The notion of "total active cost" has no meaning on a VPP or MP; the active cost is a factor for each defined slot only.

The total of REAL points can't exceed 30. Real point cost is *after* applying limitations. A 30 point active-cost gadget that's OAF costs 15 real points...so he can have 2 such. Or he can have 3 gadgets, each 20 active. Look further at that text, reformatted by me a bit for clarity here: A total of 61 active --> 30 real thanks to the OAF limitation.

I would love to play in a game with relatively high character points, but VERY few limitations allowed. Some limitations kinda have to be allowed, like HA, but by and large...nope. This almost implicitly reduces the overall power level by a good margin, while also tending to simplify both character building and ongoing play. Note that it doesn't mean you can't invoke the concept of, let's say, HFO; it's just that it's not worth a limitation. (And conversely, switching to the HFO is trivial.)

What you're missing: the pool size is REAL cost. So 50 active becomes 25 real because it's OAF. You don't reduce the pool *cost*, you get to reduce the pool *size*. That's why, with the staff, it's 75 real, 100 control, and the staff limitation kicks in at 50/50. So, any time the control cost exceeds 50...the staff's in play. Any time the *total* real costs exceed 50, the staff has to be involved. That's not on one power, that's on all powers in use. You couldn't have 30 points of defenses and 30 points of Flight w/o the staff because the pool size without it is only 50/50. I love building VPPs that are, let's say, 120/60, with Requires a Skill Roll as a common modifier. It means the maximum real cost is never over 40, so I can have 3 full-strength powers up and ready simultaneously. Or make it, let's say, 100/60...60 attack, 60 defense, and 30 special-purpose (e.g. invis) or mid-level movement (flight 24m, 1/2 END) that I can transition to non-combat movement readily enough. I don't typically need an attack power at non-combat speed.

I agree, that's the answer dictated by the system. It has the major advantage of keeping things much simpler too; if the desire is to have some advantages be applied as desired rather than all the time...which advantages? Or should it be to all advantages...is that a problem? That'd take some consideration. Note that I'm not advocating that you can reallocate points; I'm saying that if you have an 8d6 AP, then you can execute it as an 8d6 attack that isn't AP. But the system doesn't support that, and I'm okay with it; it would make a complex system that much more complex. If you're talking a high-ish power environment...lots of comic characters effectively have pretty extensive power tricks. So stuff like this, or tweaking a power's SFX within limits...can be quite appropriate, especially with a Power skill. But that level of flexibility is typically not present save for a few genres, so making it the system default is a bad idea. I tend to think higher-power supers, where it tends to be appropriate.

I wasn't saying Skill Roll to activate; the VPP will require the skill roll to change slots, unless you're paying the +1 advantage to eliminate it. I would be very averse to letting you have a plain Characteristic Roll that wasn't subject to an active point modifier, when you're tossing around powers of this size. Skill roll at -1 per 20 points would still be at -4 or -5, and you only get -1/4 for that. That'll still call for a decently pricey skill to earn that limitation, so I seriously doubt a plain Characteristic Roll would be worth anything. Why not 2 VPPs? Because many of us can turn that into something truly, tremendously ugly...and what you're trying to do is a really good start because you're trying to get the actual pool size down (common modifier: OAF staff cuts the pool size in half) and the control cost as well. There would be other ways. Plus, it's trying to manipulate the skill roll rules, as the pools are easier to roll because they're smaller. And push comes to shove: the LImited Power limitation I built *is* effectively expressing 2 joined VPPs. Honestly: I suspect many of us view the staff as nothing more than SFX to increase your pool size, and thus is worth NO limitation whatsoever. If you're looking at fantasy/comics? That is all it is; how often does the staff get taken away? 90% of Green Lantern's power is the power ring; even as OIF, how often is it at risk of being lost? The 24 hour limit? Only when the writer wants to add fake worry, or put GL into a dangerous position for a bit.