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It really, really isn't. Remember that you can't just look at the numbers and say "that's the absolute objective nature of the virus, case closed". We know for a fact that nobody really has a good estimate of actual # of infected in the US, for example, and that will be true of many other countries as well. Every epidemiologist or public health expert treats the positive test / mortality rates with due caution, and never as an absolute basis for judgment. Even if we set aside the near future impact, we can look at what has already happened. The flu has *never* forced a relatively developed nation like Italy to have overflowing hospital corridors full of patients, wartime triage measures where you treat healthier people rather than the most sick people (i.e. tacitly accepting you can't save the latter), and so on. The flu has never hit Wuhan or Seoul as hard as this has. Nations don't like doing lockdowns and border shutdowns. They really really don't want to do it. Even doing it for a few days costs untold amounts of money. These things cause stock market crashes and depressions. You don't do it unless all the experts are screaming at you that **** is really hitting the fan. There is uncertainty & dilemmas about what exactly to do for each city/area and exactly how bad it is going to get. I wouldn't go out and tell people X is exactly how many people it will kill so Y and Z is exactly how everyone has to respond. However it is super definitively clear that this is not 'just the flu'.

I think the isolation is getting to Gfted. Cabin fever!

why? sure, insult may have been directed at you (and others), but you need always consider sources, yes? am personal reassured when we see who it is who most frequent insults Gromnir. reddit cellar dwellers and conspiracy theory nutters. misogynistic and racist dopplegangers? insults from such quarters is reassuring rather than discouraging. hoarding tp and meat at start o' what is gonna be a +12 month situation is asinine and only serves to force those most vulnerable to leave their homes more frequent, 'gainst dr. advice, to acquire their basic needs. there is no food shortage or paper product shortage at this time. supply chains is temp overrun by the monolithic stoopid hoarding instincts o' too many. yeah, try and keep self supplied with basics and buy more than normal 'cause you wanna minimize trips to stores anyway, but the hoarding is so comical stoopid at this point. pretending as if only a select few has ever needed take care o' family as excuse for selfishness and ignorance is arguable sociopathic. etc. *shrug* me and mine. conspiracy. crippling polarization. regardless, always consider sources, 'cause insults may be compliments in disguise. HA! Good Fun!

Well I have several friends, three kids and a wife (who is my best friend) - I also have 5 nieces/nephews and a big family. Still I wouldn't run out and buy all the face masks and hand sanitizer I can get so that people who really need it can't get it anymore. Caring for friends and family doesn't mean you have to act like "après moi, le déluge". Hey that should be my family motto from now on. Bit unwieldy though...

Because David Hasselhoff has been looking for it.

OK, correction, no GROUP of people are inherently bad. Unless they are Yankees fans.

Having to stay home has some advantages. Not that our company's cantina would be bad, but homemade's better. Savoy cabbage with potatoes and a sunny side up. Now onwards to flatulance.

Distracted by game Thanks to the dude in the shade Wasteland 3 is cool I'm not far in the beta, but it's a lot less janky to control and the systems feel a lot more modern. Good stuff. Skills have a fixed requirement instead of raising/lowering success chances. You pick a duo of characters to start with, either pre-defined like Punk Lovers, Father-Daughter, Mentor-Student, or make them from scratch. Some of the backgrounds read like they might lead up to something later down the line beyond the initial stat boost they give, but no idea. Voice acting and conversation animations so far have been pretty good and conversation skill checks (read: options) reasonably frequent. Though so far I kinda regret picking up a shotgun, it lacks the close range punch I'd expect.

They should not have been re-instated. Iran is a bad actor. Obama agreed to a deal with a nation that was and would continue to act in bad faith. It was a bad deal that, at the time it was abrogated, they had not openly broken. Trump should not have broken it. Not because Iran isn't faithless, and not because the treaty wasn't a bad deal. They are and it was. But because an agreement made with the United States should be honored by the United States. Presidents are beholden to the promises of their predecessors so long as the other party has held up their end. Otherwise any deal made by the US (apart from ratified treaties which are law by definition) is really just a deal with THAT President. Who would ever enter into such?

My daughter is livestreaming a tap class in our living room and my son is attending a 4th grade Zoom meeting in his room. My wife is sendng video workouts to her PE students, and I just set up a google drive so students can digitally submit biographies on Renaissance figures. This is the future.

Yeh, humanity is pretty much over.

I have not read much from him besides in the PoE and Deadfire subforum - but this is wild. I think he should give himself a warning point...

We've been watching a lot of cooking shows during the quarantine:

IIRC PS4 and XB1 were a lot more even sales wise in the US than anywhere else (just about everywhere else it was a bloodbath in Sony's favour).

I'd say I really don't know quite how to rank things to get to a few condensed points, I'm going to regret my decisions later I think. Rules wordings. The game is really assinine about this. Punching someone with a fist? It counts as a "melee weapon attack", but not an "melee weapon" or "attacking with a melee weapon". You have to keep in mind whichever kind of attack your spell/ability/feat ties into, and your GM might have to ruin your carefully planned out turn and have you restart your planning. This is not a problem specific to melee, but they're the ones that most often get hit the hardest by this. Concentration: You can only keep one concentration spell active at a time. Great in some ways, but a hassle to keep track of and makes spells that hold your concentration much less appealing. You will also almost always choose the same non-concentration spells, because it gives you one less thing to remember, which leads to a very much cookie-cutter feel. A cleric will always have Spiritual Weapon handy, it's non-concentration, uses a bonus action and it's a relatively low level spell. Spiritual Guardians is the same thing, use an action to cast, Concentration, does Continous AoE damage that scales with spell slots spent, and slows down enemies for a 10minute period or until your concentration is broken.. Feats: Ties into the one above. You have very few feats, they come at fixed points in the class and not tied to character level, can be used to either raise stats or get a feat. Some feats are just so very much better than others. War Caster gives you advantage (Roll 2d20 and pick the highest dice) on Concentration checks against damage, allows you to use Somatic spells without needing a free hand (So you can have a weapon and shield always at the ready, instead of having to drop your weapon and pick it up from the ground if you want to cast a spell) and let's you cast a single target spell as an opportunity attack. Or you can take Weapon Master and gain proficiency in 4 weapons and +1 to your Dex or Str ability score. Not bonus, score. Yay. Skills; Are generally all determined at character creation, if you want a new skill you have to use a Feat to gain 3 different skills or tools. You don't dole out points anymore, skills are your ability score + proficiency bonus (That rises with character level), so if something changes after character creation you will have to sacrifice that build you wanted next time you get an Ability Score Improvement (Feat) if you want to learn that skill. Or spend months with a personal trainer, paying him every day. "Bounded Accuracy": 5E is based around this, essentially all checks and ability scores are "limited" to 30, except when they aren't, so they've limited the scaling on everything. Proficiency bonuses range from +2 to +6, you only apply this bonus to things you are proficient in. So you can't really roll for attributes anymore, because those stat bonuses are worth too much, if you get lucky you can start with +5, so you apply that as a wizard would to Intelligence, the Cleric - devout as he is - chooses Religion as a skill, he has studied under the High Priest of Amaunator - but he will still, statistically, be schooled about his own religion by that Wizard, until level 13 when they will be equals.. Doesn't really help with point buy either, since Intelligence is less important than both Wisdom and Constitution, and possibly Strength if the cleric wants to punch people in the face for whatever silly RP reason. And that "bound" is not very difficult to break in various ways, rogues and bards get "expertise" in certain chosen skills allowing them to double their proficiency bonus, so hitting +10 in a skill by level 5 is far from hard. So you will end up with cookie cutter attributes aswell, 15-14-13-12-10-8, I actually ended up the second smartest character in a group because I refused to use the cookie cutter attributes, with 10. General encounter balance. The game is "balanced" around 6-8 medium combat encounters per day. If you don't mind that kind of slog, the game will eventually become somewhat balanced, because the casters will be able to do bugger all because they will be out of spell slots since they recharge on long rests, and fighters, monks , rogues and warlocks will become more balanced since they recharge on short rests. My group would never stand for something like this, it'd be a boring non-stop grind, but if you don't do this your casters will have access to all of their slots, so you need to up the ante - and it's easy as all hell to wipe a party this way because the maths get thrown out of whack. The monsters. 3.5Ed had tables for upping monsters level, 5e does not, so you have to improvise. I wanted my group to have an encounter against a minotaur in a mansion, it'd be an easy encounter for the group. I gave the minotaur a chain-mail upping his AC by two, increased his attack bonus by +1 and 34 more HP to even out the action imbalance. Nearly wiped the group out. Classes. Certain classes have really been left by the wayside. I felt so bad for the GM's girlfriend that decided to play a Beast Master Ranger... Magic Items. They're supposedly really rare now, meaning that the only way to really get a magic item is through dungeons since you can't buy a magic sword for your fighter. And your fighter really, really needs that magic weapon, because while casters don't care about mundane weapon resistance/immunity, because spells, Melee Warlocks, monks and shapeshifter druids get "natural" magic weapons after a while, your ranger, rogue and fighter don't ever get something like that. "Oh, look, a golem... anyone wants pizza? I'm sitting this one out"... ... "Hey guys, the pizza is getting... I was about to say cold, but it mutated legs and walked out... Oh, and me and Mindy started a family, and now our daughter works at the nursing home. Speaking of which, she wonders if anyone here needs their diaper changed?" **** me if some fights won't turn into a slogfest, especially at higher levels when casters have to plow through the books to find out the exact wording of a spell, check the AoE range, reference either the drawn board or ask the GM to specify the exact positioning of enemies, double check the action economy if they can actually do what they planned, and then execute. The fighter rolls his three attackrolls, the rogue gets two rolls, back to the next caster... Atleast the old editions had morale rolls for enemies that could cut things short, but why have any replacement rules for that? Wow, I have to send a kudos to whoever decided on the time between auto-saving time on the forum software, I got 3 hard reboots out of nowhere. Also, sorry for the rantiness Indira, I tend to grow bitter from remembering I've had to play 5e for months while waiting for my favourite game to come up again..

Ok, cool. So... Megabosses next?

I tried micromanagement. It makes things worse The character runs towards the spot and halfway runs back to start the back and forth again

It's US only. That not entirely a negative, on the other hand, because much of what is on Hulu ends up being distributed by Netflix or Amazon here in commie Yurop. Heh. Assuming Hulu isn't going to be fused with Disney+ eventually.

I have come to this thread bearing the image of peace. When in doubt, remember: this is why we need to get along. (I'm only half-joking, by the way.)

*in Gregorian chant* BOOoooOOOoooOOOYaaaaa! Good new everyone! I stopped by the store and scored 12Lb. of rice, pasta and sauce (youre my boy, Gorgon!), Spam, tuna, eggs and bologna. Im going to go boil a dozen eggs for longer term storage.

I now know Mamoulian's voice!

Sir, sir, Prime Minister! Will you be authorizing the entry of any coronavirus refugees to Absurdistan this upcoming week? The world is growing increasingly desperate and Absurdistan is literally infinitely vast...wouldn't it be morally unjustifiable to let anyone else unnecessarily die from this crisis if you can do something to prevent it?

Point me to the passage where I took a jab at Poland or where I said that Poland is not a country - or live with the shame that you can't read properly.

Well, IIRC, BG 2 had worse. I get sometimes pissed off, because of stupid pathfinding, but it is not every day, like it was with older infinities... Anyway, played more of PoE today as well, and hopefully I'll find few more hours in the evening. Main course of today's gameplay was Zahua's personal quest in Whitestone Hollow. If anyone is interested in seeing the whole Concelhaut affair, feel free to watch the video, which I had a time to finally publish it today

Im not interested in paying for another service.

Why? I see no change in outlook, writing style or behaviour here. He's pretty consistent.

It strikes me as a strange comparison because Germany was the aggressor in WW2. It seems rather tone deaf to make the comparison.

Ohh it's about hoarding. One thing though. Isn't it better to stock up instead of shopping when everyone is infected ? Food production is not super labor costly, it's prioritised, if necessary purchases will be rationed. I know everyone says don't hoard, but a stash to get you through if you get infected, so you don't have to leave your home ? I mean, really.

That just reminded me, I need to hard boil all my eggs for long term storage. That and I love hard boiled eggs and salt.

My group is still playing 3.5 and has no desire to change, and although there are some occasional discussions to be had, it's nowhere near as bad as that.

I was pretty surprised going from m2 SATA to m2 NVMe at the difference it made to loading times. They seem to be very keen on 'instant resume' and the like, so a lot of throughput will help with that. I would be surprised if it maintains the 2.2GHz though, same way as a discrete graphics card won't permanently maintain its boost clocks. I'd suspect that the rumoured 9 ish TFLOPs- so a bit under 2 GHz clock- is what you'd get for routine operation.

I shall sign up!

My black eyed peas and snap peas are starting to sprout! It took about 10 days. Fastest ever IIRC. Soil PH, it matters!

Not really, I rarely mod games outside of bugfixes and technical upgrades. I've heard good things about Clan Quest though.

Going to try a Bloodlines run since nothing is really holding my interests at the moment. Any mods or anything that are needed or recommended?

I've been playing This is the Police. I started out trying to be a good, upstanding police chief, but now I'm on the take and I even ordered a hit on one of my own officers. He was a snitch. Where did it all go wrong? I blame the pills.

But people are everywhere. There's just too damn many of them! On the bright side, since I've been told not to come in to work for the rest of the semester (while still being paid), I get to go play in my garden where there are only squirrels and birds and no damn humans.

More of Pillars of Eternity blind playthrough. I have just finished The Master Below quest and with for me unexpected outcome We'll see what I might get out of that later

Red Hand Spearcaster. I just love ranged