Still more Threads that make us Laugh, Cry, or Both

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Just for the record, I recently shopped for healthcare. We have 7-9 major providers to choose from that vary in price, service, and availability of doctors. I chose the fairly standard Bluecross/Blueshield (it was rated with a 95% satisfaction from the people on it, which is unheard of in healthcare). If I had a regular doctor of any kind, that last one would matter.

However, I work for the government, so it's probably a mute point anyways.

[Psychic Robot]

1. The point is moot, not "mute."

2. Lolwut?

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

What's the name of this fallacy? From here

(To be fair, I do find it a bit odd that wall of iron is instantaneous instead of permanent, with a clause stating that reshaping the iron ends the spell. On the other hand...)

[sarcasm]All these infinite wealth loopholes are terrible for the game.

I mean, just look at that game-breaking Profession skill. I mean, with little or no effort, you're guaranteed to gain wealth every time you use it. Free wealth. And if you keep using it, you keep gaining wealth! With no limit!

And all of these monsters with treasure. I mean, an 11th level wizard could waltz into an ECL 5 goblin lair, kill all of the goblins, and then take their stuff. And so long as he keeps killing monsters, he keeps getting stuff! With no limit![/sarcasm]

If my players want to exploit infinite wealth loopholes with walls of iron and crazy splatbook spells that should never have been made in the first place, more power to them. I won't even stop them. They can use cheesy exploits to create as much wealth as they want...

Of course, while they are doing this, an NPC is exploiting the efreet-calling, infinite-wishes loophole to wish for more wealth. And he's not wording his wishes properly, so instead of creating wealth out of thin air, his infinite wishes are siphoning wealth from the wealthiest individuals in the area. And guess who they might be?

And of course, all of this extra iron from the walls of iron is attracting lots of rust monsters. Big, hungry, advanced fiendish half-dragon rust monsters who've been hibernating since the days of the last wizard who created enough walls of iron to sustain their enormous appetite for metal. Oh, and they're all ghosts. With 15+ HD so no matter how many times you destroy them in combat, they keep coming back. And the only way for them to rest in peace is for them to gorge themselves on enough iron that the proper iron content of the world is returned to normal.

To say nothing of the high priest of the god of merchants. His deity was a bit put off when he noticed some upstart wizard going around, cheating all the world's merchants out of their hard-earned cash through some cheesy loophole in the laws of arcane physics. So of course, he's called for a righteous and holy crusade to restore the economy to its proper, merchant-driven state.

Oh, and while the PCs are so busy exploiting infinite wealth loopholes, and then defending their wealth from the guy with infinite wishes and the horde of rust monster ghosts and the army of angry crusaders, there's this BBEG. He's gone out and recovered the major artifact that the PC's should have been destroying instead of sitting around, generating infinite wealth. You know, the one that's an artifact, so no matter how much wealth the PCs have, they can never, ever buy anything even remotely equal to it in power.

So yeah. My players should feel free to exploit any infinite wealth loopholes they want.

Basically he is sayin that wealth exploits do not matter because the DM will punish the players who use them.

[rapa-nui]

It's basically the Oberoni fallacy in disguise.

[Psychic Robot]

I haven't read through it, but I know there's fail within.

[Draco_Argentum]

Bill, thats stealth nerfing. A DM has an issue with an ability. Instead of being a good DM and telling the players its getting houseruled he uses ingame forces to punish the PCs. ie, the DM can cockslap you with the setting. Its trivially true but like the Oberoni Fallacy self contradictory. If it was truely OK for the PCs to get infinite wealth the DM wouldn't be punishing the players for getting it.

[JonSetanta]

Quoted because the source thread is going to be deleted.

The way to fix the healthcare system is to:

1. Get the government out of it.
2. Completely privatize the industry.
3. Let doctors compete for business.
4. Let the people shop for their healthcare.
5. Quality will go up, cost will go down.

This ^^ is the simplified version of what should happen so you teenagers can understand.

It doesn't work like that.
One company grows faster and bigger than the others, puts them out of business and buys the assets, and you're left with a monopoly of healthcare.
The same phenomenon happens with nearly all unregulated capitalist markets.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

I haven't read through it, but I know there's fail within.

Actually, in the first response you have somebody asserting that the dearth of non-combat mechanics makes 4e a roleplaying-centered system like White Wolf. Then Capt. Epic Fail shows up and simply declares everything the OP says to be false without actually refuting it. And Seeker95 declares that everything the OP says is false because his account is only four days old.

After that, this comedy cavalcade degenerates into something resembling rational discussion, so I stopped reading before the bottom of the first page.

[K]

Quoted because the source thread is going to be deleted.

The way to fix the healthcare system is to:

1. Get the government out of it.
2. Completely privatize the industry.
3. Let doctors compete for business.
4. Let the people shop for their healthcare.
5. Quality will go up, cost will go down.

This ^^ is the simplified version of what should happen so you teenagers can understand.

It doesn't work like that.
One company grows faster and bigger than the others, puts them out of business and buys the assets, and you're left with a monopoly of healthcare.
The same phenomenon happens with nearly all unregulated capitalist markets.

Or they stay independent and form cartels and just price-fix, a practice nearly impossible to prove by the finest antitrust lawyers in the land.

[K]

I haven't read through it, but I know there's fail within.

Actually, in the first response you have somebody asserting that the dearth of non-combat mechanics makes 4e a roleplaying-centered system like White Wolf. Then Capt. Epic Fail shows up and simply declares everything the OP says to be false without actually refuting it. And Seeker95 declares that everything the OP says is false because his account is only four days old.

It's weird, but I feel that this really is a moral vs. logic argument.

The 4ers are like "I like this 4e mechanic because I didn't like that 3e mechanic" and the 3ers are like "this 4e mechanic is actually objectively worse by almost all criteria than that 3e mechanic."

Then the 4ers respond with "but I didn't like the 3e mechanic, so you have not convinced me."

Yes, I understand that they like the fact that there are no rules for 4e RP because they didn't like the 3e mechanics and they can now default to free form, but no rules is not better than even semi-functional rules.

White Wolf had extensive RP rules for everything from mind control to stats for influence or wealth. 4e's nod to RP in its minion's and treasure packet system is just not the same as a fully developed system(even though WW's system, like 3e's, was poorly constructed).

Here's a sweet little slice of that thread:

:

Only way? No. Important that my class have a unique feel to it? Yes. Fluff just doesn't give it a unique enough feel for me.

Whereas the uniqueness of many characters comes from the players and not the class. I find the each class has a uniqueness about it even if they are built with the same mechanics. I also found that everyone's characters were different in every other edition, too. Even back to the old blue box I started with when a fighters sole maneuver was "I attack". It was all in the description.

[Crissa]

The problem for shopping for healthcare is that you don't actually know what is covered until you have it. You have a list, and maybe they follow it. Or maybe they don't. They don't make more money from being honest with you on what they do and don't treat.

And you can't opt for more or less treatment - there's the treatment they offer, and that's it. They don't tell you before hand that they consider losing your voice an acceptable loss or not. They don't tell you what happens when you hit the limit of what they'll pay for and yet are still not cured nor dead.

That's like shopping like playing roulette blindfolded is a game. Yes you pay and you choose, but your options are not what they appear to be.

-Crissa

[SunTzuWarmaster]

My point was that I had, indeed, shopped for healthcare, but my experience on the "it is better if the government stays out of healthcare (or not)" argument and the "normal people don't get to shop around for healthcare" discussion is not particularly valid becuase if we used a socialist healthcare system, I likel would have ended up with the same thing.

Crissa, they do provide a list of what is covered and what is not covered (it's probably 100 pages long, but it is there), and at my work people rate their company each year based on their satisfaction, and we are given the mean satisfaction and standard deviation. A mean satisfaction of over 95% with a standard deviation of 3 indicates that almost no one is unhappy with the plan. I can't think of any more information that I would wish for as a consumer, being that we already have significantly more than amazon provides (we have the personal stories too).

[Prak]

For something a bit lighter...
cake wrecks

It's a blog about cakes of utter fail. I especially like the 9-11-08 entry...

[CatharzGodfoot]

For something a bit lighter...
cake wrecks

It's a blog about cakes of utter fail. I especially like the 9-11-08 entry...

Zao gao!

[Maxus]

In a similar vein, here's something that makes me laugh...

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/list.html

I recommend Jeanne Hachette, Tsutsui Jomyo Meishu, Hiroo Onoda, Alexander Solonik, Alvin York, Voytek, and Yogender.

That list may expand as I read through more of them.

[Prak]

And I of course recommend General Fucking George S. Patton.

[Maxus]

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/musashi.html

Read it and scroll down to the bottom.

All I'm sayin'.

[Koumei]

So now we know that Musashi was reincarnated as either Frank or K. Cool.

[Maxus]

It gets better. Here's something from Plutarch's Life of Caesar, pulled from the same website.

Before they could charge, the cohorts which Caesar had posted behind him ran foward and, instead of hurling their javelins, as they usually did, or even thrusting at the legs and thighs of the enemy, aimed at their eyes and stabbed upwards at their faces. Caesar had instructed them to do this because he believed that these young men, who had not much experience of battle and the wounds of battle but who particularly plumed themselves on their good looks, would dislike more than anything the idea of being attacked in this way and, fearing both the danger of the moment and the possibility of disfigurement for the future, would not be able to stand up to it. And this in fact was exactly what happened. They could not face the upward thrust of the javelins or even the sight of the iron points; they turned their heads away and covered them up in their anxiety to keep their faces unscarred. Soon they were in complete disorder, and finally, in a most disgraceful way, they turned and fled, thereby ruining everything, since the cohorts who had defeated the cavalry at once swept round behind the infantry, fell on their rear, and began to cut them to pieces.

So, Frank, K, who gets dibs on being the reincarnation of Musashi and who gets to be the reincarnation of Caesar?

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Wow, a guy who perfected the art of "face-stabbery".

[JonSetanta]

Wow, you guys are new to this.
Animals usually aim for the vitals first when making a serious kill; nature pushes towards brutal efficiency, always, because that's what works best.

Us humans tend to be slow on the uptake, though. Or maybe we really weren't designed to kill each other.

[K]

It gets better. Here's something from Plutarch's Life of Caesar, pulled from the same website.

Before they could charge, the cohorts which Caesar had posted behind him ran foward and, instead of hurling their javelins, as they usually did, or even thrusting at the legs and thighs of the enemy, aimed at their eyes and stabbed upwards at their faces. Caesar had instructed them to do this because he believed that these young men, who had not much experience of battle and the wounds of battle but who particularly plumed themselves on their good looks, would dislike more than anything the idea of being attacked in this way and, fearing both the danger of the moment and the possibility of disfigurement for the future, would not be able to stand up to it. And this in fact was exactly what happened. They could not face the upward thrust of the javelins or even the sight of the iron points; they turned their heads away and covered them up in their anxiety to keep their faces unscarred. Soon they were in complete disorder, and finally, in a most disgraceful way, they turned and fled, thereby ruining everything, since the cohorts who had defeated the cavalry at once swept round behind the infantry, fell on their rear, and began to cut them to pieces.

So, Frank, K, who gets dibs on being the reincarnation of Musashi and who gets to be the reincarnation of Caesar?

Frank is probably Musashi and I'm probably Caesar. It's been well established that I'm a Charisma fighter.

[ubernoob]

Wow, you guys are new to this.
Animals usually aim for the vitals first when making a serious kill; nature pushes towards brutal efficiency, always, because that's what works best.

Us humans tend to be slow on the uptake, though. Or maybe we really weren't designed to kill each other.

Humans are trained as a species to wound rather than kill from birth in modern cultures because murder is "bad". It is rare for a person to go with instinct over training with how powerful the brainwashing in today's world is.

BTW, I always go for the throat, eyes, gut, and nuts. People stopped fighting me after a certain point.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Humans are pathetic at killing each other with our innate weapons. Probably because the old plains primate social structures involved a lot of fistfights for dominance and whatnot.

[Roy]

This is not a thread. It's still pathetic though, both in the proposed builds and the flawed logic.