ChaosExMachina

How?

But I want to look like a giant popsicle. My blaster's snow cone abilities can only come in grape, lime, blueberry, and bubblegum!

Isn't it up to the players if the color is over the top?

Succinct summary.

Correct.

Incorrect, unless you mean that the person is also exemplared and does not have the power.

Incorrect.

Correct.

Perhaps if the arcane and pointless rules can confuse even the guide master, they need to take that as a hint to make them more reasonable. Make them exemp universally.

Oh?

So basically most of the anti-concept (and terrible) lore ideas came up at the same time? The incarnates, arachnos lackeyism, heavy magic content, patrons.

I wonder who is to blame then, and have wondered if it might be that guy who took the name of Lord Recluse. He supposedly worked for D&D. Maybe he imported a philosophy that lots of mysticism and loyalty to deities were RPG basics?

Now that is a good proposal.

Great post, but you should have just said to buff.

There are lots of people who are desperate to find any post they can rebut, so any excuse will do. Encountering attitudes like so makes me want to go into some sort of confrontational analysis of what it says about human cultures but let's not get into that.

Suffice to say that if the game had equal run and jump and somebody suggested to make it as it is now, nobody would support that, so it's not any better an idea just because it's status quo.

It doesn't make any kind of sense or balance for the base run speed to be higher than the base jump ability and it's only that way because the powers were made to be alternative choices rather than inherent.

In fact they did buff run speed just 1 issue prior through sprint. It'd make tons of sense to take some of that and transfer it to inherent fitness instead, with intent to keep the sprint speed the same as it is now, but make the base run and jump of equal speed.

The one reason I would oppose it might be choice. Base run speed is already near the border of where it gets so fast that it can be hard to control with precision. I'd support it if swift were faster with some kind of startup, but its current speed during the first 2 seconds of running.

If I were to rewrite your suggestion I'd make it "increase swift speed to be equal to hurdle but only after 2 seconds of running"

Which should tell you just how over the top they are.

The patrol XP bonus was a much better vet reward IMO, and received only a few comments that it was not strong enough. This goes way to the opposite.

Giving A merits as a trade for a few teaming opportunities is like giving people double inf for not using APPs. A nonsensical apples to oranges concept.

QOL improvements are not appropriate to gating behind high vet rewards.

Great vet rewards are bonuses like global tailor discounts, increased recipes, more inf, etc. that add to your abilities in a quantitative way.

These are pretty much game changing QOL improvements. In particular the command makes me ask what purpose is served by not giving it to everybody.

If the rewards are getting to 7 years and higher, the system could definitely use some way to pick what you want, or maybe boosters. Since 1 year rewards are biggest maybe you could only trade 1 years for other 1 years.

It's actually not that subjective. There's a certain amount of judgment involved but it's easy to declare things as quantitative or qualitative with little controversy. I just mentioned trivial and cool to include powers like the map tool because it is the sort of feature that only gets implemented as a vet reward and is specifically less of a cheat to a veteran who knows maps.

There are also quite a lot of rewards that generate little controversy, like tailor discounts and a major buff to how much you can carry. They're quantitative. The map tool is another even though it's qualitative, for reasons I just went into.

I would very much like to see Lee, maybe my favorite actor in the series, get a role in the Hobbit to play Saruman as a good guy, considering he was a fan of the books and went to audition to play Gandalf.

Oh you just hit my #1 pet peeve. People trying to pass emotional reactionism as rationality, and accuse of weakness a rational AND empathetic position. As a big proponent of rationality, I must intervene.

First, obviously an opinion that rehabilitation programs are wrong can't be rational by any ideology that emphasizes practicality. You can only back that up with opinions about how crimes can be dealt with, and where do those come from? It sounds much like an emotional, vengeance driven philosophy. You didn't provide any reason why you believe it, just dogmatic declarations.

Next, the rational, practical, and moral reasons for such programs are many. Society does not gain by spending money to incarcerate a person who is not dangerous, and certainly not if they can actually be USEFUL. Chase_Arcanum provided plenty of examples and scenarios, but beyond that, any claim that a repentant murder can never be a positive contributor is automatically absurd due to its blanket nature. The moral reasons are again a matter of opinion, but I believe unnecessary incarceration is immoral, and any moral system that cares to provide the most good (and that is the whole point of moral systems isn't it) can't support depriving society of a person who wishes to do good deeds just so people can have vengeance porn. Even more importantly, such rehabilitation programs say nothing about whether a person can be morally forgiven. It's a topic of legality, mercy, and practicality.

Ultimately, anybody who calls others bleeding hearts loses the debate automatically. It's almost universally used not to support rationality, but to insult positions that are more merciful than the traditional, expected, or popular norms. The opposite of rationality. It makes no sense as any kind of reasoning. Is there some prescribed amount of mercy that is too much? Can it be used to support ANY kind of cruel behavior? Can't a murderer simply tell you not to be a bleeding heart and let him continue?