A technically legal, but utterly absurd combination, is as follows:
Take a character with the feats whirlwind and great cleave (and all their prerequisites) and equip him with a large bag full of rodents and his weapon of choice. To kill your foe of choice, approach him, open the bag, and dump the contents to the ground. Use whirlwind to attack each rodent and great cleave to attack your foe once for each rodent you kill.
Any foe not wholly immune to the weapon you wield will be killed in one round.
(I don't use or advocate this strategy. I just find the rules loophole it exploits very amusing.)
Look at your Dex feat trees: whirlwind, spring attack, mobility, combat reflexes, improved two weapon fighting, weapon finesse.
A Dex-heavy melee combatant might swing -and hit- more than twice as often as a Str-heavy one. That more than offsets the latter's better damage.
Re:Ask the girl out on a date!
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D&D Is 30
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· Score: 1
If you kill something, you can figure out exactly how much XP you get and you can raid the corpse for loot.
If you try to trick it or negotiate with it, if you fail nothing happens and if you succeed the XP reward is determined by GM fiat. Either way, no loot.
Is it any surprise that combat stats get primary consideration?
All your modern Ferraris can be ordered with a Sequential Manual Transmission/Gearbox (SMG). It's an automatic that has hydraulics handle the clutch for you, so it doesn't waste any power in a torque converter like regular automatics or driver time depressing and releasing the clutch like regular manuals.
I am not in any way defending the status quo. I think a proper progressive taxation system would have zero deductions. There should be a formula that anyone with a fifth grade math education can use to calculate their tax liability, and the whole thing would fit on an index card.
I would also support a sales tax which had food or medical expenses exempted or a flat tax that had a minimum income threshold. Anything to make it simpler than it is now.
The parent post did not state or imply that the sales tax would not apply to necessities. Neither did someone suggest there would be a minimum earnings cutoff point.
If you exempt necessities from the sales tax or add a minimum earnings cutoff to a flat tax, I support it 100%.
Running shoes and some place to do pullups are all you need. Jog and do pushups, situps, and pullups. If you cannot afford running shoes or injuries prevent you from running, walking at a brisk pace will suffice. You can get quite fit, and the only cost is time.
If you have problems with pushups or pullups, start with sets of pushups from the knees or on the stairs and hanging from a pullup bar for a few seconds at a time and work your way up.
For the calisthenic portion of your exercise, you can do it during commercial breaks while you watch TV. So really all you need is half an hour to walk or jog three times a week. No big deal.
A national sales tax, a flat rate income tax, and generally any other simple and straightforward taxation plan is regressive.
Everyone pays the same percentage, but for someone making $6.00 an hour that percentage takes away from the money he needs for food and medical care. For someone making $160.00 an hour that percentage just adds a few months extra until his early retirement.
A graduated income tax scheme - hopefully simpler than the nonsense we have today - would only be somewhat more complicated while still allowing the working poor to get by without government welfare.
I want an S60R - 300 horsepower, 300 torque, AWD, in a safe car that nobody will expect to be fast.
I'm not one for speeding and I definitely never, ever do stoplight racing. Still, it would be nice to turn onto an on-ramp and zip right up to 55 or 60 mph.
He's probably talking about the Turbo-Diesels, which as the main article states are the main beneficiaries of tuning.
My father-in-law has an F-350 Powerstroke Turbodiesel with a plugin ECU programmer. He can dial up his torque from the factory 550 ft*lbs to well over 700 with the push of a button. In that setup he won't pass emissions tests by a long shot, because the thing will be spouting soot and his mileage will be cut in half. But diesels can take a lot of abuse, so he isn't affecting engine longevity.
I'm not encouraging this type of behavior - a 60 year old man who already has a friggin dump truck doesn't need to be fooling around in an overpowered giant pickup. I'm just saying it can be done.
Re:Beware Emissions Inspection
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Hack Your Ride
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· Score: 1
Check Consumer Reports or JD Powers.
Volkswagens made in Germany, like the Passat, aren't too bad. The Golf and Jetta sold in the US are made in Mexico, and had very poor reliability until 2003 or 2004.
My 2001 Impala is no performance car either, and the suspension is incredibly soft. It puts everyone to sleep on the long highway trips, but is hideous in the corners, even for an FWD car.
Your Impala runs a 12.xx? That's not stock, is it? What mods have you done, if you don't mind my asking? I have a 2001 base Impala, and I would love to do some mild mods to the engine - after I put in performance tires, bigger brakes, and a stiffer suspension.
Put yourself in a 2004 Volvo S60R - AWD, 300 horsepower, manual transmission. Is it as fast as a good bike? Not by a long shot. Is it more expensive? Hell yes.
On the other hand, with the bike, you have so much acceleration at your disposal it's easy to exceed what you can control. It's also highly likely you'll get seriously injured if you do lose control. The Volvo is still really fast, but you are much less likely to lose control and much more likely to survive uninjured if you do.
I wish you the best with your bike, but personally I'm going to stick with something less risky.
Two years ago a kid was drag racing with his Mustang GT with his fiance in the passenger seat and his best friend in the back not too far from where I live.
He lost control of the car and crossed lanes. The girl in the car he hit was in a wheelchair for weeks, had a concussion, and broke both of her legs and one arm. The kid was in a wheelchair for a few months, broke his back but luckily didn't sever his spine. His Mustang, along with his fiance and best friend, were torn to pieces.
My in-laws were the first people on the scene another time, when a motorcycle guy out for a joyride managed to behead himself when he lost control around a curve and hit a telephone pole.
Really fucking smart. If you want to race, do it on a track.
If I had a lot of money (which I don't), I would take to someone from http://www.nedra.com... an electric racer.
A few years ago they had a guy with an electric car run under 8 seconds in the quarter mile. Now that's a sleeper! No engine note to speak of, just the sight of a car waaaay out in front of you.
I don't break the speed limit when fooling around - stoplight racers end up in pine boxes in my neck of the woods from time to time, which serves as a good reminder to play it safe.
I prefer raw speed to handling, though. If I gun it to 60mph from a stop light, there's no risk of flipping the car or killing someone. (There would be if I had a monstrously powerful car, but I don't.)
As you probably know, better computer performance is much easier and safer to get with more RAM, faster access drives, and optimized binaries. If you have all that and then, with the proper cooling setup, you overclock, what's the harm?
Now if you just overclock as much as you can and pray, you're in trouble.
It's the same for cars. If I could afford it, I would take my car and go from a 4 speed transmission to a 6 (better power and fuel economy), get bigger and more powerful brakes (better braking), performance tires (better acceleration, handling, and braking), a stiffer suspension (better handling), and some engine modifications to go from my stock 180 horsepower to somewhere between 230 and maybe 275. Is that bad stuff? No.
Now if I just dropped a turbocharger in, dialed the boost up to 18 psi, and prayed it didn't blow up, it would be wasteful and dangerous.
Inline 6 is the most balanced engine configuration. V12 is just two Inline 6's working together, so it is also completely balanced.
So you can have huge displacement V12s that are just as balanced as any other engine. That's why V12s are in most of the exotics. Very cool stuff.
On the other hand, I think V8s are the sweetest sounding engines. I wonder if their unique engine notes are related to their relatively poor engine balance.
There's also engine weight to consider. If you have two engines with similar power output and torque curves, the lighter engine is the better choice.
However, displacement and engine weight aren't directly related. The 5.7L pushrod LS1 Corvette engine is relatively light for its size, and while its cylinder displacement is larger than the 4.6L DOHC Mustang Mach 1 V8, the total engine volume and mass is actually significantly smaller.
"Given the choice of speed or handling I will pick handling every time."
Depends upon what you want. If you aren't going to the track, and you aren't engaging in any illegal street racing - just your standard stop light goofing around and you stop accelerating before you reach illegal speeds - then you want acceleration more than handling.
The Honda S2000 and Mazda RX8 are very popular for their excellent handling and high-revving characteristics. If I could afford either of those cars, I would take the money and get the new GTO (its bland looks don't bother me). Handling isn't as good, but when I drop the hammer I'll fly to 60 mph at a rate neither the Honda nor the Mazda can match unless they did some serious clutch dropping.
If you're talking old cars, you can get a 60's or (early) 70's muscle car relatively cheap and juice up the V8 in it relatively cheap too.
What does bother me is the emergency handling and crash protection. In an impact, two tons of old Detroit steel would barely take a scratch - but the driver will rattle around the inside of the car like marbles in a coffee can.
Say you take a muscle car and add all your safety features, like 5 point harness seat belts, collapsible steering column, disk brakes with power braking, a good suspension, and power steering. Once you add the performance modifications you want you will have spent more time and money than it would cost to buy a newer car anyway.
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A technically legal, but utterly absurd combination, is as follows:
Take a character with the feats whirlwind and great cleave (and all their prerequisites) and equip him with a large bag full of rodents and his weapon of choice. To kill your foe of choice, approach him, open the bag, and dump the contents to the ground. Use whirlwind to attack each rodent and great cleave to attack your foe once for each rodent you kill.
Any foe not wholly immune to the weapon you wield will be killed in one round.
(I don't use or advocate this strategy. I just find the rules loophole it exploits very amusing.)
Look at your Dex feat trees: whirlwind, spring attack, mobility, combat reflexes, improved two weapon fighting, weapon finesse.
A Dex-heavy melee combatant might swing -and hit- more than twice as often as a Str-heavy one. That more than offsets the latter's better damage.
If you kill something, you can figure out exactly how much XP you get and you can raid the corpse for loot.
If you try to trick it or negotiate with it, if you fail nothing happens and if you succeed the XP reward is determined by GM fiat. Either way, no loot.
Is it any surprise that combat stats get primary consideration?
All your modern Ferraris can be ordered with a Sequential Manual Transmission/Gearbox (SMG). It's an automatic that has hydraulics handle the clutch for you, so it doesn't waste any power in a torque converter like regular automatics or driver time depressing and releasing the clutch like regular manuals.
Most modern race cars use SMGs.
I am not in any way defending the status quo. I think a proper progressive taxation system would have zero deductions. There should be a formula that anyone with a fifth grade math education can use to calculate their tax liability, and the whole thing would fit on an index card.
I would also support a sales tax which had food or medical expenses exempted or a flat tax that had a minimum income threshold. Anything to make it simpler than it is now.
The parent post did not state or imply that the sales tax would not apply to necessities. Neither did someone suggest there would be a minimum earnings cutoff point.
If you exempt necessities from the sales tax or add a minimum earnings cutoff to a flat tax, I support it 100%.
I'm not communist, pinhead.
Running shoes and some place to do pullups are all you need. Jog and do pushups, situps, and pullups. If you cannot afford running shoes or injuries prevent you from running, walking at a brisk pace will suffice. You can get quite fit, and the only cost is time.
If you have problems with pushups or pullups, start with sets of pushups from the knees or on the stairs and hanging from a pullup bar for a few seconds at a time and work your way up.
For the calisthenic portion of your exercise, you can do it during commercial breaks while you watch TV. So really all you need is half an hour to walk or jog three times a week. No big deal.
A national sales tax, a flat rate income tax, and generally any other simple and straightforward taxation plan is regressive.
Everyone pays the same percentage, but for someone making $6.00 an hour that percentage takes away from the money he needs for food and medical care. For someone making $160.00 an hour that percentage just adds a few months extra until his early retirement.
A graduated income tax scheme - hopefully simpler than the nonsense we have today - would only be somewhat more complicated while still allowing the working poor to get by without government welfare.
Ford isn't all bad for Volvo.
I want an S60R - 300 horsepower, 300 torque, AWD, in a safe car that nobody will expect to be fast.
I'm not one for speeding and I definitely never, ever do stoplight racing. Still, it would be nice to turn onto an on-ramp and zip right up to 55 or 60 mph.
He's probably talking about the Turbo-Diesels, which as the main article states are the main beneficiaries of tuning.
My father-in-law has an F-350 Powerstroke Turbodiesel with a plugin ECU programmer. He can dial up his torque from the factory 550 ft*lbs to well over 700 with the push of a button. In that setup he won't pass emissions tests by a long shot, because the thing will be spouting soot and his mileage will be cut in half. But diesels can take a lot of abuse, so he isn't affecting engine longevity.
I'm not encouraging this type of behavior - a 60 year old man who already has a friggin dump truck doesn't need to be fooling around in an overpowered giant pickup. I'm just saying it can be done.
Check Consumer Reports or JD Powers.
Volkswagens made in Germany, like the Passat, aren't too bad. The Golf and Jetta sold in the US are made in Mexico, and had very poor reliability until 2003 or 2004.
Thank you for all of the information.
Thanks. I was just curious.
:)
My 2001 Impala is no performance car either, and the suspension is incredibly soft. It puts everyone to sleep on the long highway trips, but is hideous in the corners, even for an FWD car.
My wife's got a nice '66 Mustang, though.
Your Impala runs a 12.xx? That's not stock, is it? What mods have you done, if you don't mind my asking? I have a 2001 base Impala, and I would love to do some mild mods to the engine - after I put in performance tires, bigger brakes, and a stiffer suspension.
Put yourself in a 2004 Volvo S60R - AWD, 300 horsepower, manual transmission. Is it as fast as a good bike? Not by a long shot. Is it more expensive? Hell yes.
On the other hand, with the bike, you have so much acceleration at your disposal it's easy to exceed what you can control. It's also highly likely you'll get seriously injured if you do lose control. The Volvo is still really fast, but you are much less likely to lose control and much more likely to survive uninjured if you do.
I wish you the best with your bike, but personally I'm going to stick with something less risky.
Two years ago a kid was drag racing with his Mustang GT with his fiance in the passenger seat and his best friend in the back not too far from where I live.
He lost control of the car and crossed lanes. The girl in the car he hit was in a wheelchair for weeks, had a concussion, and broke both of her legs and one arm. The kid was in a wheelchair for a few months, broke his back but luckily didn't sever his spine. His Mustang, along with his fiance and best friend, were torn to pieces.
My in-laws were the first people on the scene another time, when a motorcycle guy out for a joyride managed to behead himself when he lost control around a curve and hit a telephone pole.
Really fucking smart. If you want to race, do it on a track.
If I had a lot of money (which I don't), I would take to someone from http://www.nedra.com... an electric racer.
A few years ago they had a guy with an electric car run under 8 seconds in the quarter mile. Now that's a sleeper! No engine note to speak of, just the sight of a car waaaay out in front of you.
What were you driving?
I don't break the speed limit when fooling around - stoplight racers end up in pine boxes in my neck of the woods from time to time, which serves as a good reminder to play it safe.
I prefer raw speed to handling, though. If I gun it to 60mph from a stop light, there's no risk of flipping the car or killing someone. (There would be if I had a monstrously powerful car, but I don't.)
It depends upon what you are trying to do.
As you probably know, better computer performance is much easier and safer to get with more RAM, faster access drives, and optimized binaries. If you have all that and then, with the proper cooling setup, you overclock, what's the harm?
Now if you just overclock as much as you can and pray, you're in trouble.
It's the same for cars. If I could afford it, I would take my car and go from a 4 speed transmission to a 6 (better power and fuel economy), get bigger and more powerful brakes (better braking), performance tires (better acceleration, handling, and braking), a stiffer suspension (better handling), and some engine modifications to go from my stock 180 horsepower to somewhere between 230 and maybe 275. Is that bad stuff? No.
Now if I just dropped a turbocharger in, dialed the boost up to 18 psi, and prayed it didn't blow up, it would be wasteful and dangerous.
Inline 6 is the most balanced engine configuration. V12 is just two Inline 6's working together, so it is also completely balanced.
So you can have huge displacement V12s that are just as balanced as any other engine. That's why V12s are in most of the exotics. Very cool stuff.
On the other hand, I think V8s are the sweetest sounding engines. I wonder if their unique engine notes are related to their relatively poor engine balance.
There's also engine weight to consider. If you have two engines with similar power output and torque curves, the lighter engine is the better choice.
However, displacement and engine weight aren't directly related. The 5.7L pushrod LS1 Corvette engine is relatively light for its size, and while its cylinder displacement is larger than the 4.6L DOHC Mustang Mach 1 V8, the total engine volume and mass is actually significantly smaller.
Intel has name brand recognition, that's all.
AMD's work fine, and since AMD doesn't charge extra for having the 'Intel' brand, you can get more bang for your buck with an AMD.
"Given the choice of speed or handling I will pick handling every time."
Depends upon what you want. If you aren't going to the track, and you aren't engaging in any illegal street racing - just your standard stop light goofing around and you stop accelerating before you reach illegal speeds - then you want acceleration more than handling.
The Honda S2000 and Mazda RX8 are very popular for their excellent handling and high-revving characteristics. If I could afford either of those cars, I would take the money and get the new GTO (its bland looks don't bother me). Handling isn't as good, but when I drop the hammer I'll fly to 60 mph at a rate neither the Honda nor the Mazda can match unless they did some serious clutch dropping.
To each their own.
I agree:
If you're talking old cars, you can get a 60's or (early) 70's muscle car relatively cheap and juice up the V8 in it relatively cheap too.
What does bother me is the emergency handling and crash protection. In an impact, two tons of old Detroit steel would barely take a scratch - but the driver will rattle around the inside of the car like marbles in a coffee can.
Say you take a muscle car and add all your safety features, like 5 point harness seat belts, collapsible steering column, disk brakes with power braking, a good suspension, and power steering. Once you add the performance modifications you want you will have spent more time and money than it would cost to buy a newer car anyway.
No actually, I only own a sedan. I just wrote it from the first person to mess with your tiny head.