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Both sides.

Well, aren't you Republicans happy that you made Biden immune to save your own candidate from having to deal with the fallout of his indictments?

I'll do it: The whirlwind is being reaped. The surprising thing isn't that a presidential candidate was shot at, it's that it took this long to happen (again). In the US you can get a gun more easily than you can pay your rent or get treatment for mental health, there are more guns here than people, you can get shot doing any number of normal activities, and violence (particularly gun violence) is atypically high for a so-called "first world country". The anomaly has been gun violence against politicians and officials, which is shockingly rare given all the above. Guess who thinks this is acceptable? The whole dip**** reactionary political apparatus. They, the courts, the activists, the donors, the politicians made this goddamn situation and as long as it stayed out of their country clubs, bizness meetings, and fundraisers they did not give a **** no matter how many men, women, and children got killed because someone who shouldn't have been able to get a gun was able to. It's finally come home for them, maybe now that happened to their golden calf they'll give two ****s. More likely they come up with some deranged conspiracy theory about the deep state or some other such nonsense to explain away their culpability.

It was pretty clear that Harebrained got better at development with each successive Shadowrun title. They were very much a rookie studio run by Pen & Paper guys. So hopefully they return to the IP soon.

Roll 1 on "avoid fascist dictatorship".

The wanna be assassin apparently didn't spend enough time at the shooting range. There, I said it. More seriously, as much as I don't like Trump - or Biden at this point for that matter - no one would "deserve" that. I'm only surprised, with the state of things for a long while, that no one tried a bit sooner. And I don't think it's faked/set up. The next 10-20 years of US politics is going to be nuts. I keep wondering about civil war/internal terrorism potentials lately. Depressing.

Have any of you tried the Bonus HK Campaign? The pacing to me seemed a little bit better than in the OG HK campaign

Not counting the setting, there is 1 character (whom I remember) appearing in both games and The Technomancer sort of works with any ending for Mars: War Logs. The level design is labyrinthine and the backtracking is plentiful in both. So, you could start with the sequel.

Shadowrun Returns was a disaster of mismanaged funds and lack of experience in basically every area other than the setting. It was a fun little Shadowrun game though and the story was good. It would have been better as an old school novel. In print. On paper. Dragonfall was the good game they had promised in the Returns Kickstarter. I wouldn't mind a AAA open world Shadowrun... Just directly the director's cut and three years of post release bug fixing that make that kind of game playable.

I did play, but frankly I don’t remember much. Yes, first Shadowrun had a “tech demo”’feel” to it. Dragonfall was pretty light on plot - it was quite like opening of BG2 - you have intro, and overarching goal to gather money to progress main story and you do self-contained side missions to do it, and main story progresses in small revelations along the way. I felt that Dragonfall did world building best, and I really liked the cast of the companions (especially with extra content from Director’s Cut).

We dont want to trivialize this attempted assassination but one of my brothers said " Bruce you can tell the shooter was a Democrat. The shot was far too left " The memes and jokes are inevitable

Very hard to say something that doesn’t come across as utterly tasteless… no matter how tempting

Yeah, that doesn't look faked. Never much realistic chance it was, despite how much some may have wanted it to be. Not what an already highly charged situation needed, at all.

Probably because I played Hong Kong after SR: Returns, the pacing, choices, and combat in Hong Kong felt good, though I think I spent quite some time on the ship talking to people. I know that the hacking system changed between Dragonfall and Hong Kong, but can't quite recall how. Dragonfall felt somewhat less personal and/or impactful than Hong Kong, not counting one companion quest where I chose the unwise option and it will be haunting until I replay it (eventually). --- The Outer Worlds. Started a new game with an approximately same character. Granted, it is mostly to poke things and see if I can write a coherent essay about them. Still, Emerald Vale is gorgeous and I love the writing. On another note, for some reason I was not able to remove the DLC, so now the skill checks mid-/late-game are going to be higher.

I keep going back to how much dems are screaming that this election will decide the fate of democracy to try and convince people to vote but are not operating strategically like it is. At the very least you'd expect them to put forward someone more liked than Joe, which strangely enough Kamala is, let alone flex some of that new presidential immunity granted by the supreme council of elders....but they're just barreling forward with a strategy that looks likely to fail.....because going against Biden now could hurt their future political career. Guess the ivy league can't teach sense. Also like you said, the seeds of this were planted under Obama. If his administration had stuck to their guns to force replacement for Scalia instead of giving up and if they had convinced RBG to step down then we wouldn't be dealing with this right now. The sad fact is that Republicans are simply better at navigating the contours of US politics (even if they are also bad at actually running things) and operate to achieve total victory while Democrats are still treating politics like a gentleman's game where everyone operates in good faith. It's ****ing maddening to watch.

I just wanted to come back to this once again because now my save is working again. The bluff to not use the spell slot is awesome considering you're a charisma based caster because that pretty much translates into unlimited spells. Regarding the limited spell list, it does kinda suck but you also have some very unique spells and the Deceiver mod adds even more. I guess you could also just give yourself any spell you wanted via Toybox but I mostly got around that by combining other spells. It's great for spells that I normally don't use because they're touch or cone because all I have to do is combine it with a single target or AoE spell and now it does both spells damage and effects but in a ray or fireball or chain.

Season 2 of Earth Final Conflict, half of the fun is trying to catch what parts of Toronto were being used. The show's writing is great where Zo'or will announce something and Sandoval will helpfully explain Zo'or's ulterior motives

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F I loved it. I mean, check your brain at the door, its an homage to the 80's action movie to a "T" (including unnecessarily destructive car chases) and it leans into that motif in a good way. Nice seeing the old gang again too.

So I did some more testing to figure out good ways of gaining wounds via hostile effects expiring on Forbidden Fists. Based on this recent thread by Tomucci, I can corroborate that using resistance affliction gear such as Defiant Apparel (for Perception Resistance) and also Engwithan Bracers (for Dexterity Resistance) will not give you a wound if it downgrades an affliction effect, which is really unfortunate. Using the test examples in that linked thread, hitting a Forbidden Fist with Chillfog while wearing Defiant Apparel and Web while wearing Engwithan Bracers won't give you a wound once their effects expire. Immunity to afflictions will also not grant you a wound, but that is to be expected (I tested it anyway in the hopes that it worked in the funky way that Immunity to Disengagement worked). However, the push/pull immunity from the Upright Captain's Belt will work with Pull of Eora and still give you a wound. I think I read about this in another thread by Boeroer, so credit to him for that idea, I just tested to confirm it works. Imagined Pain is also a great way of generating wounds as suggested by Constentin. It's not unique to Forbidden Fists, but it's really useful for this subclass since you tend to have high defenses due to stacking resolve and having Crucible of Suffering active most of the time. In fact, Imagined Pain makes Pull of Eora doubly effective here because you will now gain wounds even if it misses. The trick then becomes reducing the duration of each instance of Pull of Eora on yourself so that it can apply again for the next time it ticks and hits you. With Clarity of Agony active, I was able to get an average of 8-9 wounds from one casting of Pull of Eora. This was just with testing with affliction resistance gear so I'm sure you could get even more wounds with better optimization. I think with how quickly Pull of Eora ticks, the short duration of it's effect, and the relative harmlessness of having reduced stride, this is my ideal spell to use with Forbidden Fists for wound generation, and it's a spell that I tend to cast frequently anyway. This is slightly off topic, but I also discovered during testing that Soul Mirror reflects spells. I always thought it only reflected ranged weapon attacks, but I was using Necrotic Lance and Ninagauth's Bitter Mooring and was surprised to find that they bounced back to hit my friendly wizard when I used it against my monk. Ninagauth's Bitter Mooring is especially weird because I could also cast it on an enemy, have my monk step between them into the beam, and then it would start reflect back into my wizard. Moving my monk would then produce a separate beam that bounced back at the wizard (see the screenshot below). Not sure if that effect has been documented elsewhere online, but someone might be able to come up with a cool way of using this if it also applies to other beam spells. Maybe a way of first making the caster resistant or immune to the damage type and then creating an extra free beam?

Appreciate all the good ideas here, guys. I did some testing with all of your suggestions and also tried a few other things that I was curious about. This is on a hired adventurer cheated up to level 20 if that makes any difference. Works with Forbidden Fist ability Turning Wheel Tuotilo's Palm Helm of the White Void Kahako Nihi Lover's Embrace Does NOT work with Forbidden Fist ability Swift Flurry / Lightning Strikes Heartbeat Drumming Hylea's Talons Two Weapon Style One Handed Style (?) Reminder that this is with the vanilla game of course. Some of these findings like Helm of the White Void giving accuracy to affliction attacks and being able to get Frenzy from Lover's Embrace just by having it equipped while using other abilities are probably already known or apparent, but I figure I'd mention it here as confirmation that it still works with the vanilla Forbidden Fist ability. What's interesting is that the other gear enchantments that work with Forbidden Fist (or at least the ones that I experimented with, which are Precision Striker on Tuotilo's Palm and Always Armed + Overwhelming Assault on Kahako Nihi) are specifically said to be applicable to unarmed attacks. So Forbidden Fist might be coded as an unarmed attack but not a weapon attack, which possibly explains why it interacts with these item enchantments but not weapon attack abilities like HBD or items like Hylea's Talons, but I'm not sure if that's an actual or relevant distinction in the code. What's really confusing though is that Forbidden Fist will get the burn lash from Turning Wheel but not the shock lash from Lightning Strikes. Really not sure what's going on there. Another thing I tried testing is Two Weapon Style, which I believe doesn't have any effect on Forbidden Fist. I tested it before and after taking the ability and didn't see a difference in the recovery time. I tried this with two fists, two plain daggers, fist with Tuotilo's Palm offhand, and a plain dagger with Tuotilo's Palm offhand. For curiosity's sake, I then respecced and took One Handed Style and equipped a single dagger to see if that would have an effect on Forbidden Fist, which it doesn't as far as I could tell. I didn't see the added accuracy you would normally get from single wielding get applied to Forbidden Fist nor did I notice any hit to crit conversions, though I admit the testing might not have been extensive enough. I didn't test Two Handed Style, either. I'm thinking that Forbidden Fist is just it's own thing and none of the styles apply to it, but this might bear more testing and corroboration by others. Some other miscellaneous testing. 1) The proficiency modal for dagger and quarterstaff does indeed work the way you've both said it would, so you can get all of the benefits for free while bypassing the negatives by spamming Forbidden Fist, which is a really great idea for this build and particular play style. The small shield modal, however, doesn't work; it looks like you don't get the extra accuracy after blocking an attack if you then use Forbidden Fist, unfortunately. 2) Dance of Death will not get cancelled by the self damage you take from Forbidden Curse. 3) Crucible of Suffering and Rooting Pain seems quite strong with Forbidden Fist spam as mentioned, giving you a practically constant defense bonus and regular interrupts in an AoE. I got Forbidden Curse down to 2.8 seconds with this test character, but I'm sure you could generate wounds and these effects at an even faster rate with some more optimization.

Last I checked it gets suppressed by Blessing, so if you have a priest you probably don't want it.

Even samer here. Dragonfall left me with eagerness to move on to Hong Kong. Hong Kong made that eagerness fizzle.