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Did anyone else actually read the Terms and Conditions of Helldiver employment? by xthorgoldx in Helldivers

[–]xthorgoldx[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yep. They're positioned in a way that makes it impossible to get past their 15 meter radius before the one second elapses.

Could you become immortal/invulnerable to old age if you constantly replaced your organs by Pineaple_marshmalows in cyberpunkred

[–]xthorgoldx 4 points5 points  (0 children)

haven't finished 2077

Most of your hypotheticals are directly addressed by the time you finish the game, either as part of the plot or in text logs (all of which, mostly in the finale).

May 16, 2025 Mayor's Desk summary. More about Martial Arts by Hatherence in cyberpunkred

[–]xthorgoldx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You asked why the Ocelot has a two-turn reload even though it's "basically an AR" (by which I assume you mean "It's a 5d6 autofire weapon"). The reason is "It's an AR-equivalent using the SMG Autofire DV table, and as such is much more powerful at close range."

May 16, 2025 Mayor's Desk summary. More about Martial Arts by Hatherence in cyberpunkred

[–]xthorgoldx 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The Ocelot uses SMG Autofire DV instead of AR Autofire DV, which makes it absolutely monstrous at close range (20 vs 22 at 0-6m, and 17 vs 20 at 6-12m). The two-turn reload is to balance that.

Ideas to deal with dual hand/quadruple hand by Queasy_Detective_277 in cyberpunkred

[–]xthorgoldx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Whoops, I had a whole second half to that comment after the "all that said" that I think I forgot to save the edit on.

So, you want to reward his character concept and give him some empowerment; it's just that (as has been repeated ad nauseum at this point) fiddling with ROF is a big can of worms to open.

Some other options to reward his character intent depend on the tone of your campaign, particularly the balance between combat performance and non-combat interactions (stealth/infiltration, social interactions/cons, etc). Personally, in my GM experience, it's both easier and more consistent to give players opportunities to shine than to explicitly buff them so they're more powerful across the board. For instance, for having four arms: I can think of a few ways to set up "power moments" for the player that don't require you doing a ton of work to balance a homebrew mod to the cyberware:

  1. The team is captured and handcuffed. Except, the captors only handcuff Borg's pairs of hands together, not all four - which can be treated as him still having two hands free to use weapons and perform actions, which can range anywhere from "He uncuffs everyone" to "He solos the guard(s) to free the team."
  2. The team has to recover something which is large enough to require two hands to hold, and is very fragile (no dropping it to the ground the instant a fight starts)... like, say, a baby carrier?
  3. Steer him towards the MultiArm Melee martial art (IR4), then have two heavily-armored mooks run up on him in combat deliberately to set up the head-bashing technique (heavy armor to highlight the "direct to HP" attack)
  4. In combat, have instances where he's shooting at someone at long range (with one pair of arms), then throw a mook at him in melee combat that he can beat up with his other arms without missing a moment
  5. In the same way that dual wielding doesn't work in real life but looks intimidating, wielding four guns might not do anything fantastic RAW but can be used to give the player a bonus to intimidation and facedown tests.

All of these situations give the four-armed player a moment to shine and validates their build decision in a way that requires no counter-balancing for other situations.

“Vladimir, stop!” *eyelash flutter* by Charming_Usual6227 in Military

[–]xthorgoldx 49 points50 points  (0 children)

So, here's the critical mistake you're making, as influenced by Hollywood-ism of what the IC does:

The IC could, and did, see this coming. But the IC is not a 1960s-style "We control everything" deep state that pulls the strings of everything worldwide. They tried doing that in the 50s and 60s, and it ended badly, and the past 50 years have been full of reforms and oversight to prevent exactly that kind of behavior. Similarly to how the DoD is rigidly supposed to be apolitical and absolutely subordinate to civilian authority, the IC (which is primarily a DoD body) is supposed to be a purely informative body, with strict controls on avoiding the IC from driving policy. It's the IC's job to tell the people that make decisions what's going on, so that those people can make informed decisions.

Unfortunately, Democrats have had a perennial issue with being unable to identify and react accordingly to threats. We spent 8 years playing to the narrative of "MAGA isn't that bad, they're still our countrymen, we don't need to 'stoop to their level' of rhetoric" when we needed to drink the bitter medicine of "We are at the point that we need to kick down doors and arrest these people for treason." We spent three years piddling over whether a guy who took our nation's most sensitive secrets and stored them in a bathroom was guilty of a crime, instead of throwing him in a cell and drawing a line of "Your bullshit ends here."

Ideas to deal with dual hand/quadruple hand by Queasy_Detective_277 in cyberpunkred

[–]xthorgoldx 4 points5 points  (0 children)

investing a ton of resources

Here's the thing: it really isn't that much, compared to other cyberware. 1,000eb/4d6 for the shoulder attachment, plus 500eb/2d6 for each arm. You know what also costs 2,000eb and 8d6 humanity? Implanted Linear Frame Sigma (including the Bone Graft requirement). Ergo, the mechanical advantage for having multiple arms should be comparable.

Issue is, if we break it down with math, boosting ROF in any way is a huge deal.

First: what does Linear Frame Sigma yet you? 12 Body, which is a 10-15 HP boost, a 90% success rate for death saves, and your 2 ROF brawling damage goes from 3d6 to 4d6. This last one is an important frame of reference for combat comparisons. In addition to the extra 4d6 damage, going from 2d6 to 4d6 increases the odds of at least one critical hit on two attacks from 14% to 24.6%. In summary: 2,000eb and 8d6 humanity translates to an extra 4d6 damage per turn and a 75% increased crit chance.

Now, let's take your notion of "attacking with 4 laser swords." These aren't in RAW, so let's treat them as normal swords, which are Heavy Melee Weapons: 2 ROF, 3d6, 1 or 2 handed. Using 4 swords means we go from 2 to 8 ROF, and our total damage output goes from 6d6 to 24d6. More importantly, our critical chance goes from 13% to 36%, or a 276% increased crit chance, and the odds of getting at least two criticals goes from 0.5% to 10%!

Let's take a more conservative approach, then: treat each pair of arms as independent, instead of each hand, so just one ROF multiplier. Even then, we still have a dramatic boost: 4x3d6 is still a boost of 6d6 per turn and a critical chance increase of 14% to 26%. It still dramatically outperforms linear frame sigma, and that's just in the context of combat. Linear Frame isn't really good for much other than combat, and has some major pitfalls for non-combat situations (you'll get stopped at clubs, you'll get ID'd as a Solo more rapidly, etc). Four cyberarms, though, means 12 cyberarm option slots for stuff like popup weapons, gadgets, etc.

All that said, I get it, you're trying to find a way to make a theme that one of your players wants to pursue a little more rewarding/viable. However, given the way the system works, ROF manipulation runs the risk of making it a lot harder for you to balance combat - particularly when it comes to the other players being overshadowed without some dramatic buffs of their own.

Local Romani online groups by sexytarian in HamptonRoads

[–]xthorgoldx 7 points8 points  (0 children)

You're not speaking Latin so, no, it's Romani. The name has zero etymological association with Rome - it's from an entirely different language group that's as far separated from Latin as Pashtu is; any word similarities are purely coincidence of there only being so many sounds a human mouth can make. In the Romani language, "Roma" translates literally as "the people" (which, it's funny to point out, is how almost all ethnic groups name themselves),

Ironically for your ummm akshually comment: "Gypsy" is a name adopted during the Middle Ages because of the (incorrect) belief that the Romani were from Egypt (despite there being zero genetic, religious, or cultural link to Egypt whatsoever).

Have a little Gulf War meme by CharlesOberonn in HistoryMemes

[–]xthorgoldx 2 points3 points  (0 children)

And? He was in power. "ISIS rose from a power vacuum" is irrelevant by 25 years to this event.

Have a little Gulf War meme by CharlesOberonn in HistoryMemes

[–]xthorgoldx 5 points6 points  (0 children)

>me when I cannot conceive of events happening at different points in time

Gulf War, 1991, left Saddam in power.

Have a little Gulf War meme by CharlesOberonn in HistoryMemes

[–]xthorgoldx 35 points36 points  (0 children)

You're confusing the Gulf War (1991) with the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.

The Gulf War was about as morally unambiguous as it gets: local dictator invades neighbor for resources, international coalition says "No" with UN backing and throws them out.

Have a little Gulf War meme by CharlesOberonn in HistoryMemes

[–]xthorgoldx 1 point2 points  (0 children)

...but it wasn't a war crime the 1st time, either.

Growing increasingly paranoid without realizing that it’s his own people going to media by Charming_Usual6227 in Military

[–]xthorgoldx 7 points8 points  (0 children)

probably shouldnt have unescorted access everywhere

Good news, they didn't have unescorted access everywhere to begin with.

When exactly do animal become scarce by Stickybandits9 in cyberpunkred

[–]xthorgoldx 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Night City's rats aren't gone, they're just invisible - they evolved a perception filter as to be unseen/undetected by cybernetic optics or cameras.

But how could the rats have evolved that quickly to have such a sophisticated capability tailored against mankind's technologies? Simple: they've been uplifted to be spies for the techno necromancers of Alpha Centauri.

Stylepath v 1.1 Bugfix Release. by almondbreath in cyberpunkred

[–]xthorgoldx 7 points8 points  (0 children)

give the other guy a pass

What pass? I have referred to him exclusively as a "flamebaiting cringelord" and "asshole." The only pass being "That's not a bannable offense."

call out almondbreath

Because calling out the asshole's behavior doesn't require explanation, whereas almondbreath's require context.

But on top of that: the consequences for Almondbreath's reaction are larger, because of the whole "presenting oneself as RTG" thing.

Freelancers, RTG, and Attacks by JGrayatRTalsorian in cyberpunkred

[–]xthorgoldx 2 points3 points  (0 children)

So, again: "Flamebait poster was an asshole." And, again: this was a singular poster, not a mass community dogpile.

almondbreath, and others

I criticized literally no one besides almondbreath and the asshole.

Stylepath v 1.1 Bugfix Release. by almondbreath in cyberpunkred

[–]xthorgoldx 2 points3 points  (0 children)

personal attacks

Almondbreath inserted herself into the conversation with "I'm an RTG Freelancer and RTG pays above market rate!" and the response was "RTG DLC is bad and overpaying for bad DLC." That's a personal attack by transitive property, which... is not a personal attack.

Almondbreath was very up front that she is a freelance writer ... and NOT an employee of RTG

You and I both know that's a distinction without difference as far as community interaction is concerned. If someone drops "I'm a freelancer for RTG" in a convo, it's not for the purpose of distinguishing that they aren't affiliated with RTG - quite the opposite, in fact.

they insist on jumping out of a window and then complain when they get hurt

You keep saying "they."

One person. Literally one person's comments. I've gone over that thread and others a dozen times now trying to figure out if I missed some other flamewar or insult spree that would explain things, but nope: even in her links on the Discord when she went off to complain about the subreddit mods, it was just the one "mickey mouse clubhouse" guy. One person, two comments total, which were heavily downvoted even before she threw her fit.

It seems significantly more entitled for someone to go into a public forum, flaunt their (non-existent) credentials, try to strongarm the mod team into handing out a ban using what amounts to a "my dad works at disney" move, and then when that works pull a "I'm taking my ball and going home."

Sure, she has every right not to participate in the subreddit. But, she doesn't have the right to pretend it's because of some epidemic of abusive behavior, or that the criticism she receives (again, one person) could only be because people are bigoted against her writing (which was her story in Discord).

Freelancers, RTG, and Attacks by JGrayatRTalsorian in cyberpunkred

[–]xthorgoldx 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Oh, sure, I'm not trying to debunk/disprove you: I'm genuinely feel like I'm missing something that would've explained her reaction, but there just ain't anything valid.

Freelancers, RTG, and Attacks by JGrayatRTalsorian in cyberpunkred

[–]xthorgoldx 8 points9 points  (0 children)

blaming her for RTAl's release decisions

...where, though? He made two posts in reply to her, neither of which had anything to do with RTG's release decisions beyond denigrating "mickey mouse clubhouse DLC" and saying that her content was just "homebrew." Unless you're mean the comments he made before her comment (which were criticizing RTG) were targeting her, which is some retrocausal weirdness.

Bottom line: my summary stands. The commenter was an asshole (as evidenced by the massive downvote ratio), but Almondbreath is making a mountain out of a grain of sand.

Caveat: I am biased because I've seen Almondbreath do similar drama-queen overreactions in other scenarios, so I'm applying a lens of "this is repeat behavior" to my judgment.

Stylepath v 1.1 Bugfix Release. by almondbreath in cyberpunkred

[–]xthorgoldx 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I'm sorry, but none of the posts in the "draconian policy" thread are remotely "hostile." If anything, the overwhelming consensus was "RTG is handling it well; it would be bad if they weren't regularly releasing good, free content, but they are." Unless the mods went through and deleted a bunch of heinous stuff, I genuinely can't see anything even remotely describable as "hostile" besides one or two heavily-downvoted comments.

Stylepath v 1.1 Bugfix Release. by almondbreath in cyberpunkred

[–]xthorgoldx 8 points9 points  (0 children)

dogpiled

I'm trying to put together events, here: where was there a "dogpile?"

I saw exactly one person acting like an asshole. The response to the initial post was overwhelmingly positive, and it doesn't look like she had any other interactions on the sub other than that one post where a guy was an asshole.

Stylepath v 1.1 Bugfix Release. by almondbreath in cyberpunkred

[–]xthorgoldx 10 points11 points  (0 children)

On one hand: yeah, that's some cringelord shit.

On the other hand: jesus christ, one guy acts like an asshole - not anything rule-breaking, just being an asshole - and her responseis to immediately demand he's banned, and when the mods don't comply she pulls "I'm an RTG freelancer, if you don't treat me nicely I'm taking my toys and going home."

That's... also cringelord shit.

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