unclevlad

2 "milestones" will almost certainly be passed tomorrow. 1. Worldwide # of cases reported will top...20,000,000. 2. US deaths per capita will exceed 500 per million.

The double pistol shot is an area where you probably should roll the dice completely separately, and roll the stun multipliers separately. That should mostly mitigate the stun-related risks...high AND low. Yeah, Red Pen physical works great in cases where autofire doesn't model the effect. Autofire allows for multiple targets, which isn't desired in these examples. A telekinetic punch would be another, and someone with extra limbs could be a third, when all the blows are at the same target. I've got a pretty nasty build: moderate STR, tons of extra limbs, +STR only with the extra limbs, stretching only with the limbs. Easy to define an HA with the effect of 3 limbs striking together. So you have a brawler-type who can hit ya even if you're 15m away. Autofire also doubles the cost of Reduced END, which becomes very significant at times.

Division II and Division III cancelled all fall championships. It looks like the decision was based on a high number of schools opting out. What disturbs me is how many states are planning to push forward with high school football: https://www.maxpreps.com/news/qiL5GOXkFkyfJ9jwZ8wb-g/where-the-start-of-high-school-sports-stands-in-all-50-states-amid-pandemic.htm

With the sound on, or off? The HIGHLY disturbing part starts around the 1:25 mark. Starlord's underselling this, IMO. It is really, REALLY bad. It has also been pulled: https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/06/business/hasbro-removes-trolls-doll-poppy-button-trnd/index.html

I'm not a fan of Red Pen on killing attacks. Notionally, that's just odd. A killing attack is implicitly one where the force is concentrated into a small area, with the intent of penetrating to reach organs. Red Pen suggests a blow that's spread out. A good test is, "describe to me in English what this power does." Red Pen physical might be a magnetic attack, a largeish ball-like pulse perhaps. Red Pen energy: cold can often be considered this way. But now...Red Pen killing physical? Red Pen killing energy? If you can sell me on something...ok.

They're really not clunky in practice; the easiest thing to do is just roll the damage normally, then split the BODY into 2 halves. It is probably true that this will be slightly LESS effective overall, as the larger dice pool is more likely to roll near-average. To see: take a 'perfectly average' 12d6 roll, 2 of each. Halved, it's 6 BODY twice, 42 stun, 6 BODY for determining KO. With a pair of 6-die pools, both sixes and no ones will happen 6C2 * 256 times, or 3840, out of 46656. So about 7% of the time, you get 8 BODY out of it. Plus, I think the notion of "split the BODY in half and apply them" would help avoid things like "you're only rolling once." Mechanically, yeah, it's in between a stun-only and regular damage. It's almost an advantage...almost...in a game where collateral damage and damage to bystanders is considered a major issue. As the damage DC cap rises, it can also rapidly become a cheap, low-impact limitation on a blast or HA. The defenses tend to be there to soak up the total STUN.

To start with, reorganize into sections. I'm shorthanding. Cost: Base skill gives 11- roll; 3 points for single attack, 5 points for group, 8 for all. +1 to roll for 2 points. What it is: determine target's defenses, find flaws to bypass them Requirements: discriminatory targeting sense Effect: Make roll exactly; make by more, reduce defense by....... Limitations: Cuz right now things are tangled up. Anyway...how would this work on a mixed defense...a target that has, say, 20 Def, 10 normal, 10 resistant? If I'm firing a normal attack, I clearly don't care about the distinction, so I want to reduce the normal because each roll will work a whole lot better. What if I've got the Resistant as Impenetrable, but not the normal? What if I have it as impermeable? Think a classic force field, with the normal defense being the character's personal toughness. What defenses exist...especially if this is cumulative? Can it work against a defense bought with invis power effects? I would NOT allow the option of applying this to hardened/impenetrable. Either say it is, with the lowering effectiveness, or don't. I don't generally like "with GM permission" unless there's clear guidance as to why the GM should allow it. As a player? What would scare the HECK out of me is that this is an assassin's dream. It's an ambush power, more than a straight combat power. Still, I start from the position that this is a poor idea from the start. Decreasing defenses is the same as increasing damage conditionally. That needs to be factored into the cost...or, be quite expensive, as it is with CSVs. I'm very worried about the ambush aspect, where the ambusher can have 2-3 phases to turn the target's defenses into Swiss cheese.

Buy the package as restrainable. DON'T try to split things into the bow part and arrows part; that way madness lies because definitions won't be able to cover the varying effects on the arrows. In some cases, the bow doesn't add to the damage...think flash arrow. But in others, it will. Define the shots as blast, flash, KA, whatever, and work out, based on special effects and the attack types, what the arrows alone do when used as stabbing weapons. Insofar as OP's bow multi...beyond the point that, yeah, you can't link framework to framework, I wouldn't ever allow buying the equivalent of martial maneuvers in a framework.

Half of all survivors, or half of those hospitalized, who survived? I would well believe the latter. If we take as a working estimate, that 40% of those hospitalized die...then half the rest is another 30%. It would be nice to have things broken down by age groups, tho, as older folks are at extreme risk. Still...if I was 30 again, I wouldn't be happy with, say, a 1-2% risk of severe complications should I get infected. Those are not good odds.

The CDC tracks hospitalization due to Covid-19. From just now: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html and scroll down a couple screens. That is, I think, per 100,000 population...not cases. 130 per 100,000 is 1300 per million, or about 430,000 total hospitalizations. BUT, note that this won't catch, let's say, cases where the patient died w/o ever going to the hospital. So, *roughly speaking* we're looking at 10% of recognized cases are serious. For contrast: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm Roughly 1 to 1.5% of flu cases require hospitalization. That's not specifically LT HE, but...figure if the medical bill for each hospitalization averages, let's say, $20K...which is probably LOW...we're already at almost $900M in medical expenses. For LT HE...well, ok, the correlation may not be that great, but let's tie things together. 160K deaths, 430K hospitalizations...if it gets bad enough to put you into the hospital, you are in SERIOUS trouble. From that info alone, the suggestion that the percentage that will be suffering a good 2-3 months even after being discharged must be *significant.* Yeah, you can overplay this. This is an aggregate over all age groups, and older people raise the rates significantly. Still...fine, do you really want to deal with a 2% chance that your kid's gonna end up in the hospital, fighting to breathe, should he catch it? And take the outbreak at the Georgia camp SERIOUSLY. 44% tested positive...260. Every set of parents is going to be sweating bullets until their kid's cleared...so the impact is far higher than that maybe 10 or so will end up in the hospital. So just gauging by the risk assessment numbers is also absurd.

I think my answer is self-evident from my posts. But...not screaming, at least not when it's the media types. Their effort now reads as active disinformation to push a political agenda, regardless of the consequences. That deserves something harsher than a few screams.

Aw, come on. What's so hard about Brighnasadh and Lughnasadh? Well, other than I forget the -dh in the spelling...it's silent...and Gaelic/Celtic language pronunciations are a royal pain. I like to draw names from Celtic myth, or sometimes think "this guy should be Irish...what would his real name be," so spent some time learning some basic pronunciations. The rules are quite different.....

I wonder how many of the school officials pushing the suspension feel that wearing a mask is an infringement on their rights....

Our cure is going to be worse, because it's the worst of all worlds. Inadequate precautions, mixed messages, refusing to abide by (and enforce) fundamental practices. It's going to stretch out our economic issues FAR longer than other countries. Europe is trying to reopen sensibly...whether they can or not, we'll have to see. Sweden found out, too. They did nothing for a long time. Their economy STILL got blasted. This is not either-or...it's not "we stay open and thrive, or we shut down and wither." If we stay open, we still do not thrive. That's the cornerstone takeaway. There is no good outcome here. There is probably no mediocre outcome. Those are simply not on the table. MANY, MANY people will get crushed by this. Overall there is nothing that can be done to stop it completely. It CAN be slowed. Germany shows that. South Korea shows that. But there will be massive harm, directly and indirectly. There are, however, TERRIBLE approaches. Sweden. Brazil. The US. Major business downturn AND failure to contain.

For that matter...Blast with Variable Special Effect. This can make for very high versatility, relatively cheaply. Not *as* good but also nowhere near as expensive or complex. A VSE Blast with, say, -1/2 Variable Limitations AND Requires a Skill Roll (-1 per 20 points) can be a character's sole attack power, yet allow major versatility, at reasonable cost. I say the easier skill roll because there's already -1/4 from the variable limitations, so the net is -1/2. You won't get that many more points if it's -3/4, but crunch the numbers and go with what works. And clearly, we could theoretically make this RKA instead of Blast.....

From an ESPN story: On the upside, the university president backed not playing at all, if the players did not feel safe. If there's substantial truth here, there are gonna be coaches losing jobs. This is why I want to simply shut down college football. I don't trust the schools to monitor football. I don't trust the coaching staffs to put individual health as a priority over the team. The entire culture of sports generally, and football especially, pushes back against this.

Fine. Skip China; they might be lying. But they can locked down a LOT more, so perhaps not. India probably isn't lying, but also probably lacks the facilities. Either way...so what? Compare to every country in Europe, which includes Russia. Yesterday: 19,000 cases with a total population of about 750 million. 2x the population, 1/3 the cases. With the exception of Luxembourg where the population is very small (and thus rates can be inflated)...every country in Europe is right under 1 new case per 10,000 people (Moldova) or is better. Only 6 countries in total are worse than 1 case per 20,000 people, altho going back to the data from 2 days ago, Spain's having more problems. SWEDEN got their numbers controlled. We're not a little worse, we're TREMENDOUSLY worse. The American response has been a complete failure.

Who said the Marlins would be irrelevant? They're 5-1 and a half game up on the Braves. So maybe they'll have to figure out how to make up some of those games after all....

But remember to make sure it's chlorine-free bleach. And it'll whiten those teeth!!!

There is a tiny bit of doubt left, for me. We shall see what happens in November.

Scary read. But there's something worse. A late paragraph: I question whether the US dysfunction is at such a level that even experiencing the pandemic won't be enough.

Pym particles.

Fun story at FiveThirtyEight: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mlb-records-that-could-fall-in-a-60-game-season/ Interesting point...everyone recognizes that someone hitting .400 this year is reasonably likely. But there's the other major rate...ERA. The record is Bob Gibson's 1.12. This year? Lance Lynn has 3 starts, 18 innings, and a 0.49. And every year, you see a few extremely hot pitchers with insane numbers well into even May.

One other point. Trump's compass is the stock market. As long as it's doing well, things must be going well...and negative pushback is obviously just another baseless attack. So why change?

I said pig, not jackass. The only surprising thing about that story is, people think it's news. From what we can see, it looks like a consistent pattern with Trump is he'll establish a view, and once he commits to it......forget it. It's a filter now. Information contrary to that view gets slammed by the filter; if it gets through at all, it's unrecognizable. He asserted it'd go away back in, what, April or so. Things did drop...a little. For a while. But never that much. Looking at WorldOMeters...the 7 day average for new cases bottomed out in early June...but at 21,000+. That's 1 per 16,000...not great at all but that might have been a rate we could handle. But then, of course, 2 weeks after that it was higher than the April peak. And 7 weeks later it's still insanely high.