Luke Cage: An Executive Summary

More away game material that ought to be showcased here:



If you want an explanation of why I feel this way: The boss fight in the final episode is okay at best, and had a little too much of "All you need to win is the power of love" to make me happy, but it was an acceptable 20 minutes to wrap up the series.

Unfortunately, there was 30 more minutes to go, and the denouement was similar to a souffle slowly collapsing.

If they had just stopped with him defeating Diamondback and Misty doing the whole "It'll be cool, I've got your back," that would have been great. All of the other stuff could have been folded into the second season.


That said, though, it's an amazingly good show and worth the time to watch. The casting is spot-on, the acting is excellent, the dialog flirts with Tarantino without actually trying to be Tarantino,  the music is great (I can't stand rap, but I can grove to funk), and it's just basically a 21st century retelling of a 1970s blaxploitation movie.

It just deserved a better, perhaps tighter, ending.

Gun Blog Variety Podcast #151 - The Bacardi Episode

I drink a rum in the mornin' (yeah)
I drink a rum at night (gonna drink a rum at night)
I drink a rum in the afternoon (why?)
It makes me feel alright
I drink a rum in times of peace
and two in times of war (make love not war)
I drink a rum before I drink a rum
and then I drink some more (hey hey hey)
-- The Pyrates Royale, "Drink a Rum", 1999

• After her recent visit to Washington D.C. with the D.C. Project, Beth reached out to offer firearms training to the representatives in her home state of Alabama. Will anyone take her up on the offer?
• For Felons Behaving Badly,  Sean takes a closer look at a man arrested for a November shooting.
• Barron’s back again, this time with a segment about ransomware that isn’t and friends who remind you why you don’t click on unsolicited attachments.
• For those who have gotten the vapors about Dana Loesch’s nearly three-month-old video about fighting the violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth, Miguel has a simple question for you: Where have you been?
• GunBlog VarietyCast Radio is proud to introduce Special Guest Charl van Wyk to our show. Mr. van Wyk was a member of the Saint James Church in Capetown, South Africa, when it was attacked by terrorists, and he was able to save the lives of many by returning fire with his pistol. In the first of a three-part interview series, we talk about the church massacre and its aftermath.
• Tiffany is still on assignment.
• What is "proprioception?" Erin not only explains it, she pronounces it!
• Protect Minnesota is against a new bill that would bring Stand Your Ground to the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Weer’d is back with part two of his three-part series on their anti-self defense press conference.
• And our Plug of the Week is for Aiming for Zero.

Thank you for downloading, listening, and subscribing. You are subscribed, right? We are available on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, and Google Play Music!

Listen to the podcast here.

Read the show notes here.

Thanks to LuckyGunner and Remington for their sponsorship, and a special thanks to Firearms Policy Coalition for their support.

Blue Collar Prepping Transcript -

Proprioception and Phantom Limbs

I hope that you’ve all been enjoying my segue into into physiological and psychological effects of survival. I realize that this is more abstract than what I usually do for Blue Collar Prepping, but I feel -- and I hope you do as well -- that understanding why we do things will help us prepare for, and ultimately cope with, our reactions when terrible things happen. This segment is really going to dive deeply into those waters, and I hope you’ll stick with me through all the science because there is absolutely a payoff at the end.

Today’s five dollar word is “Proprioception”, and it means “The sense of the position of parts of the body, relative to other neighbouring parts of the body.” If you want a demonstration of this, close your eyes and stick one of your hands out at a random angle. Then, with your eyes still closed, bring your other hand to it.

You didn’t have any trouble finding your hand without seeing it, did you? You knew where your hand was in space and found it immediately. That’s proprioception.

Fun fact: The principle is of “hand finds hand” is why the UZI was designed with a magazine that feeds through the pistol grip. This is why it’s so much more intuitive to load your pistol than it is to load your rifle -- unless, of course, your hand is gripping the magazine well.

This principle of your brain having a map of your body also explains the concept known as “phantom limb”, which is when a missing body part, such as an amputated hand, still feel present. This sensation is often uncomfortable -- sometimes it feels like there’s an itch which needs scratching, or the muscles are cramping -- but the end result is that brain insists the limb is still there and it requires stimulation of sort. Yes, this is another example of “All pain is in our brain” which I detailed last week.

But our brains can also be fooled, and this is the cure for phantom limb pain as well as other symptoms of loss. In 1998, V.S. Ramachandran - a neuroscientist at UC San Diego - conducted a series of experiments where people suffering phantom limb pain from missing hands or arms placed their functioning limb upon a table and then looked at a mirror reflection of that limb. By moving their healthy limb while looking at the mirror image, an illusion of moving the missing limb was created.

6 out of 10 patients said they could actually feel the movement coming from the missing limb! 4 of those could then use that visual feedback to relieve phantom limb pain by stretching, unclenching or otherwise doing whatever action the missing limb craved.

What’s more, you don’t even need to have a missing limb to experience this effect. There’s a trick called The Rubber Hand Illusion whereby participants have their real hand hidden from view and a rubber hand poised in nearly the same position. Both hands, real and rubber, are stroked in exactly the same way at the same time. Eventually the participants began to feel that the rubber hand was their own hand, so that when they were asked to touch their “missing” hand with the working hand, many of them indicated the rubber hand.

In effect, their nervous systems “grew” into the rubber hand, adopting it as their own. This adoption was so strong that when the rubber hand was struck with a hammer, threatened with a burning cigarette, or stabbed with a needle, the subjects actually reacted with fear and pain!

This neatly explains why frequently used objects - be they tools or weapons or even vehicles like cars and aircraft - can feel like part of the user’s body. This is because, to a certain extent, they are. Through constant use and identification of the item as an extension of the user’s will, the nervous system integrates them into its own proprioceptive “body map”.

This raises an interesting question: if an inanimate object can be considered part of someone’s body by the brain, then why not another living being? And in fact, this is exactly what happens with people we are physically close with. That loss, and coping with it, will be addressed in next week’s segment.

• Proprioception - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception
• Phantom Limb - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_limb
• Body Transfer Illusion - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_transfer_illusion
• The Rubber Hand Illusion - https://youtu.be/sxwn1w7MJvk
• Consciousness and body image: lessons from phantom limbs - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1692421/pdf/9854257.pdf

Sunder Wallbane

The following events actually happened during a game of Pathfinder I ran last night. (We're taking a break from Traveller.)

The Player Characters (PCs) were exploring a dungeon and ran headlong into a nasty hobgoblin pincer ambush that ripped them a new one. Despite taking heavy damage, the PCs managed to kill the chieftain and his cleric consort and many of the remaining hobgoblins, and so the surviving hobbos fled to an inner room and bars the doors. The PCs, bloody and low on hitpoints and completely out of magic, retired to their own secure room to rest for the night.

The next morning -- having not been attacked during the night by counterattacking hobgoblins, which was a fear of theirs -- the PCs return to the site of the ambush to see if they can get through the door and into the rest of the dungeon. The resident trapsmith takes a looks and declares that not only are the doors barricaded, but they are probably trapped as well, and so getting past them will be a long and probably risky undertaking. She further observes (because I am feeding her this info) that it would probably take as much effort, and be safer besides, if they just tunneled through the stone wall and bypass the traps entirely.

I suggested this for the following reasons:

1. They're an all-dwarf party, so tunneling is completely reasonable to them. 
2. There's a PC, Perga, who has a heavy pick and the Profession: Miner skill.
3. I like making odd suggestions and seeing what the party will do with them. This has given me hours of amusement, and if a GM can't laugh at her players, she's not properly enjoying her role. 

The party decides that this is actually a great course of action, and decide to have Perga (who is actually a Gunslinger -- this will become hilarious later) do his thing. I immediately start looking up rules for hardness and hit points of dungeon walls, and calculating how many wandering monsters will come investigate the sound of metal on stone. After I'm all set up, giggling to myself at the wickedness of my plan, I have Perga roll his Miner skill.

He rolls a natural 20.

Since this is technically an attack, I have him roll to confirm a critical hit. He does. He rolls another natural 20. He rolls again, and gets a 17. I look at the Break DC of the wall and see that it's 35. I look at the critical multiplier of the heavy pick and see that it's x4.

I think about this for a moment, then decide "Oh, why the hell not. This is a game about magic and epic adventures, and two nat 20s in a row is 1 in 400 odds. Also, it moves the plot forward, and it amuses me." The entire PC party is on the edge of their seats as I describe what happens next:

Perga carefully sets Matilda, his musket, to the side. He looks thoughtfully at the wall, as if to say "Where should I hit?" His decision made, he carefully draws an X on the wall.

He takes his pick out of his pack, spits on his hands, and takes a few swings, limbering up like a professional baseball player. "Right, the power of the swing comes from the hips... remember the follow through..." Then he hauls back and, with a mighty swing, the pick whistles through the air and buries itself deeply into the stone.

It doesn't want to come free. He wiggles it, and there's a cracking sound as a fracture races out from the point of impact. Then another. Then another. Then the entire wall crackles as fissures spiderweb outward from where the pick hit, all while Perga is trying to pry his pick loose. Straining with all his might, he gives the pick one last pull, this time with a bit of a twist to pop the head free by prying out some masonry with it.

The bit of masonry is pried out. The head pops free. And with its departure, all 20 feet of the cracked wall collapses with a roar into rubble, leaving a massive hole into the room.

Perga looks at the wall. Looks at his pick. Wall. Pick. Wall. "Huh," he says. "Never seen that happen before."

Later that evening during post-game wrap-up, I tell Perga's player "Give that pick an epic name, because you managed to infuse it with a little bit of legend."  He chose the name "Sunder".

I told him "Congratulations. You have a Pick of Wall Slaying."


Sunder Wallbane
(Heavy Pick)
Sunder has +2 to hit against structures, and does an additional 2d6 damage to them. Against all other foes, it is considered a magical weapon but has no additional properties.

Further commentary from the GM:
Technically, magical items first need to be masterwork quality, but you live in a magical world and you double-critted, and it moved the plot along, and it amused me, and the rest of the party will be talking about this for years, so yeah, it's magical. Epic actions can turn mundane items into relics in my game.

Given that you critted and one-shotted a wall, it seems fitting that Sunder be a "slaying" weapon, and what it slays is walls. Well, structures I guess, because floors are just horizontal walls and ceilings are lifted horizontal walls and roofs are slanted walls. Don't get cute by trying to use it on non-wall things like rock outcroppings or canyons or hills, because that gets into a semantic argument like "Well, that golem is made of stone, and walls are made of stone, so etc."  No. Sunder kills man-made structures because non-dwarf engineering is feeble. The benefit of this is that so long as it's constructed and not natural, you can slay it.

This is all hilarious to me because it's the first magical weapon the party has, and it's a melee weapon, and it's in the possession of a Gunslinger who shoots things at range. I do expect that it will get more use as a tool than a weapon,  because while it's merely an adequate weapon it's an amazing tool, doing 3d6+2+strength against fabricated structures.

I also love my idea that magical weapons can be spontaneously created through epic deeds. It avoids the soulless "You find or buy a weapon" issue because Sunder now has history with the PC group. They aren't going to want to part with it, because it's sentimental to them. Instead, they're going to use it, and its legend will continue to grow. In the same way that ancestral katana were said to have inside them the souls of the ancestors who wielded them, so too will the deeds of Perga Ironfoot increase the power of Sunder Wallbane. With more epic uses and epic successes, I can see it growing into a magical weapon of legend.

I look forward to seeing what the rest of my players can do. 

The Great Meme War Has Begun

North Korea.

Healthcare.

Saudi Arabia is not on the travel ban but is receiving weapons.

An NYC police officer shot.

A 'drug-fueled gay orgy' in the Vatican (I'm not making that up).

Volvo planning to go 100% electric.

There are so many things in the news that we can talk about right now. And yet, on one of the largest, (if not the largest) news networks in the United States (if not the world), there's one common theme to which we keep returning, one repetitive news horse that has not only been beaten to death, but has been shipped off to the factory, turned into glue, bottled, delivered to stores, sniffed, applied to fingers and then peeled off like a layer of skin to gross out your friends, eaten, and used to fasten macaroni to cardboard by preschoolers:CNN will just not shut up about Trump's Twitter account. At a time when trust in the mainstream media is rivaling a controversial president's approval ratings, CNN has decided that the best course of action has been to hunt down a private citizen and pressure him into apologizing under duress of releasing his personal information.

Avert your gaze, if you're sensitive to violent images.

I want to draw special attention to this. CNN saw a gif of Donald Trump (Stop saying 45! Say his goddamn name, he's not Voldemort!) in his WWE (or as it was known then, WWF) days attacking owner Vince McMahon, but with the CNN logo photoshopped over his face. For the heinous crime that they witnessed, CNN tracked down this person, made contact with him, and seemingly discussed releasing the personal information they found. After the foul demon of a person that made this horrible atrocity apologized, they agreed to keep that information private...

CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.

... oh. Assuming said user doesn't make fun of them again? Assuming he never says anything bad again (admittedly, I've seen screenshots that prove the guy was no angel, but if you see someone post in /r/ImGoingToHellForThis, what do you expect)? Of all the things going on in the world right now, CNN decides to say "It's the Fourth of July, hold my beer" and track down a random internet shit-poster and threaten to dox him.

Anyone who's a decent person on the internet knows that there's one rule: You don't dox people. Openly advocating for it usually results in a deluge of people condemning it. It's why famous internet dickbag Wil Wheaton was roundly lambasted for suggesting we should use our real names when we game. It's why formerly respectable game journalist-turned twitchy delusional coke-fiend Adam Sessler was met with a sense of betrayal when he suggested he'd like to "put [people's address] out there."

This is the weirdest timeline.

I think CNN is still overestimating their influence. Even during an uptick in ratings, they're not even breaking 8 million viewers. Compare that to someone like Philip DeFranco, a popular YouTuber with a daily news and discussion show, who has over 5 millions subscribers and hits twice CNN's ratings regularly with his daily videos. Speaking of Philly D...

Is that normal? Is @CNN essentially threatening to dox him, or am I reading that wrong? pic.twitter.com/7LMMqo1fK5

— Philip DeFranco (@PhillyD) July 5, 2017

Now I'm no Twitter expert, but to me that looks like something close to 52,000 like/heart/thingies. Which is approximately 50,000 more than CNN got, and I had to go looking because they've spent the last 24 hours tweeting the same news stories over and over in what I can only speculate to be an effort to bury their original tweet. Either that, or they need a new social media manager. (Hey, CNN, I'm still looking for a job. Call me!).

I'd like to take a moment to reflect on the concept of privilege and power dynamics here:

• HanAssholeSolo, the thought criminal in question, is some complete rando shit-poster.
• CNN is one of the world's largest news networks. 

CNN wouldn't even have to make a clear threat. All they would have to do would be to make an attempt to contact a regular private citizen to have the result of that person making a mess of their pants. There has never been a more obvious imbalance of power dynamic here, and all I can hear from the people usually advocating against power imbalances is crickets. Literally, #CNNDidNothingWrong.

...oh. Awwwkward.

Things are about to get really ugly, people. This is a warning. Not a threat, CNN, just so we're clear. I, a private citizen and complete rando shit-poster myself at times, am not threatening you. I have no power in the dynamic between us. But I've seen the 4chan threads; /pol/ is gathering personal information on anyone they can find at CNN; Twitter has been flooded with enough gifs of Trump and the CNN logo photoshopped into various forms of comedic violence to drown an army of your scary white supremacist smug frog faces.

It's ironic that, last week, I wrote about a war nobody remembered, when a war nobody will notice is starting now. The echoes of it will be felt, as confused normies will share stories from CNN about how racist nazis are attacking them and a lot of people will have a laugh when their more edgy Facebook friends share funny gifs, but if you keep your ear to the ground and know where to look, there's going to be glorious carnage.

Keep your heads down and stay in your foxholes, my dudes. It's going to be a complete bug-hunt from here on out.

EDIT: I can't believe I'm doing this, but I'm linking to Buzzfeed, who has proven that CNN outed the wrong guy. It's a completely different gif/video altogether.  Good catch, Buzzfeed.

EDIT EDIT: A Mexican channer has taken credit for the original content, providing proof.

Gun Blog Variety Podcast #150 - Let's You and Him Fight

It's called "rooting for injuries", and it's what the anti-gunners are doing.

• Beth wrote a textbook called "Women's Handgun and Self-Defense Fundamentals", and she tells us all about it.
• A $1M bond for man accused of kidnapping a family and forcing them to... shop at Target? Sean looks a little deeper into the story.
• Barron’s back with more on the expected second wave of ransomware.
• Miguel is fired up today. He's irritated at those members of the pro-civil rights community who are blindly doing exactly what the anti-gunners are telling them to do.
• We welcome Special Guest Ali Slocum, who tells us about her journey from anti-gunner to gun student with instructor Jenna Meeks at Carry On Colorado.
• Tiffany is still on assignment.
• Pain? Anger? Sadness? It's all in your head, but Erin tells you why that's neither a dismissal nor a bad thing.
• Protect Minnesota is against a new bill that would bring Stand Your Ground to the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Weer’d starts a three-part series on their anti-self defense press conference.
• And Barron brings us our Plug of the Week for the Mission Critical baby carrier.

Thank you for downloading, listening, and subscribing. You are subscribed, right? We are available on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, and Google Play Music!

Listen to the podcast here.

Read the show notes here.

Thanks to LuckyGunner and Remington for their sponsorship, and a special thanks to Firearms Policy Coalition for their support.

Blue Collar Prepping Transcript -

It’s All In Our Heads, But That's Okay

About two weeks ago, I received an email from one or our listeners in reaction to my segment on PTSD. I won’t go into great detail on what the letter said, because it’s personal and not my story to tell - but I can say that the listener thanked me for the segment and said it had great applicability to his situation, because he was about to observe the anniversaries of the deaths of two of his children.

So I hope my segment helped you, dear listener. And thank you for writing, because it brings up a worthwhile topic for discussion: why does loss of a loved one hurt us like a physical injury?

The answer again comes from Lawrence Gonzales’ book Surviving Survival, and it’s very simple: the brain is the organ that interprets what is and isn’t pain.

It doesn’t matter to the brain if you’re upset because you’ve stubbed your toe or if you’re upset because you’ve lost a loved one. All it knows is that you’re upset and showing the physiological signs of it -- increased heart rate and blood pressure, rapid breathing, crying, yelling or screaming or cursing, etcetera -- and so the brain dutifully interprets this as pain.

There are two effects going on here. The first is that the brain doesn’t differentiate between emotional pain and physical pain, because to the brain there is no difference. Pain, anxiety, arousal; all of these are interpreted by the brain from nerve signals that the body is sending out. So when someone looks at you and says that your pain is “all in your head”, you go ahead and give them the stink eye, because duh, where else would it be?

What’s more, because the body sends signals to the brain, and the brain loves to notice and remember patterns -- recall the phrase “Fire together, wire together” -- this means that your posture can influence how you feel. If you adopt a posture of grief -- shoulders hunched, head forward of your hips, face in your hands -- you will start to feel sad even if you have nothing to feel sad about. Similarly, if you smile, the neurons that fire when you smile go “He’s smiling! Therefore, he must be happy! So we’ll feel happy!”

This gives us some effective strategies for coping with grief. First, realize that something “being in your head” doesn’t make what you are feeling any less real. Everything you sense and feel is by definition all in your head, so just stop with that self-defeating line of thought. You feel what you feel, and your feelings are valid.

Next, adopt a posture that your brain doesn’t associate with sadness, and you will start to feel better. (Incidentally, this is why exercise is also good for helping overcome grief and depression -- your brain associates other mental and emotional states with those postures, as well as the endorphin release that comes from exercise).

If at all possible, adopt a posture of a desired emotional state. For example, putting a pencil between your teeth uses many of the same muscles as smiling, so -- fire together, wire together -- you start to feel better because your brain thinks you're smiling and therefore happy.

Finally, understand that your desire to lash out in anger is completely understandable. I thought I was just a jerk with a hair trigger temper because every time I stubbed my toe I had an instant, white-hot desire to hurt, maim, kill and destroy whatever object I’d bumped into. Well, as it turns out, this is actually a reflex that’s been hardwired deep into mammalian brains as a survival mechanism.

If the brain senses pain from the body, its first assumption is that we are being eaten by a predator, and so our immediate reflex is to kill whatever is hurting us before it kills us. The fact that you’ve been able to think “Why would I want to murder a doorjamb? That’s a ridiculous overreaction” isn’t something to be ashamed of; instead, feel relief that your mind was able to realize you weren’t being eaten and was able to reign in that impulse before you did something drastic, like hurt your hand punching the door.

Don’t ever feel ashamed of your feelings. What you feel isn’t your choice, but how you react to those feelings is.

• Surviving Survival - http://amzn.to/2shaYUE

Doctor Who: A Final Reprieve

Spoilers.

So here we come at last, the mysteries having been unraveled. The Doctor Falls, for the first 42 minutes or so (the average length of an episode) is, no doubt, very good. The clever flashbacks of the Doctor outsmarting both Masters while tied to a wheelchair and the house under siege were all very serviceable, with the stand-out moments being the cognitive dissonance of Bill barely holding her personality intact inside of a Cyberman body to the point which she still only sees herself while everyone else is skittish and fearful around her, and the Doctor showing shame for the first time since choosing to not save Davros in last year's premiere episode.

But I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about the extra innings. The last 20 minutes or so.

From the moment Missy and the Master approach the elevator onwards, the episode ramps up to full speed and delivers one blindsiding knockout blow after another. The unanswered question of why Simm's Master regenerated; Missy's change of heart and loyaties; the mutual backstabbing -- Missy with an Assassin's Creed style wrist knife, Simm's Master with a laser screwdriver blast and the implication that she won't regenerate from it.

Make no mistake, though: I completely believe that Missy is not dead, and the trick she pulled earlier in the episode proves it. That woman who told him a long time ago to always carry a spare regeneration circuit,? That was Missy telling him that then. But when did she actually tell him? She'd have to have gone back earlier, as obviously wasn't carrying one then.  No, Missy made it off that forest floor somehow, I firmly believe that. Besides, The Master's been far more dead than just a body on a forest floor. 

Master, Rule Thyself

And in that vein, I'd also like to take note that Michelle Gomez and John Simm have downright astounding chemistry. Capaldi and Gomez have chemistry, but I'd like to think that Ainley and Delgado,  if they could see Simm and Gomez, would have been proud of how well they chewed the scenery together. It was simply amazing watching them work side by side in what I believe to be the first multi-Master story. The hints of Ten's sad motifs were a nice touch in the opening scenes as well. contrasting neatly with Missy's motif of eerie chanting just before the assassination.

Also, Missy's umbrella is sonic. I adore that.

Bill's story is also neatly wrapped up with a season-long Chekhov's gun (something that Moffat is getting progressively better at) as her grief summons Heather, aka The Pilot from the first episode of the series, and turns what could have been a throwaway line into a completely justified Deus Ex Machina and giving her a properly modern outfit for once.

I've been dreading this season for one reason and one reason alone: Peter Capaldi quickly became my favourite Doctor, rivaling even my childhood hero of Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor. The Pilot's final act of compassion allows him to begin the regeneration process as he staggers about, flashing through his previous lives, before Twelve's innate stubbornness kicks in and he refuses to regenerate. His words echo in my heart as he proclaims he never wants to change again. I, too, would keep Capaldi for as long as he's physically capable of playing the role. But I know that isn't possible. 

"When the Doctor was me..."

It was at that point that I was granted the most wonderful gift I could possibly imagine. Twelve manages to stop his regeneration and is confronted by a familiar face: himself.

His first self, the cantankerous white-haired visage of the First Doctor, played by none other than the man who portrayed William Hartnell in An Adventure in Time and Space, an excellent docu-drama the BBC made about the creation and filming of the beginning of Doctor Who. With this being the last episode of the series, it can only mean one thing: the regeneration won't happen until the Christmas special, and it's going to be special indeed.

The parallels are perfect. The First Doctor fell, "wearing a bit thin" as both he and the War Doctor said, after turning back a Mondasian Cyberman invasion in The Tenth Planet. The implications of this absolute cracker of a blindside means that One is going to be there to ease Twelve through his regeneration, and it'll mark the first time the First Doctor's properly been in a story since his final one. His previous appearances have all been stock footage, filmed separately (due to illness in The Three Doctors), and played by Richard Hurndall who, while decent, is blown away by David Bradley's portrayal. I wonder if this has anything to do with the Caretaker's remark about re-visiting familiar faces... 

I *did* warn you about spoilers.

You absolutely, positively, cannot miss this episode. The episode alone is on par with my previous favourite of the series, The Lie of The Land, but the addition of Missy and The Master and the surprise appearance of the First Doctor tip the scales heavily. I have never so much been left on edge waiting for an episode that's still six months away.  

I Hate Barbarians

In the comments section of my "I don't like clerics" post, I was asked which class I'd modify next.

As you may have guessed from reading the title, while I dislike clerics for being too good I absolutely detest the barbarian class. While there is nothing inherently wrong with the concept of an illiterate savage who wears very little and tends to froth at the mouth in battle, it's the execution of the class that annoys me.

• The level abilities they get stink of pandering. "Fast Movement? Well, okay, I guess if they don't have horses... Uncanny Dodge? Trap Sense? this is a melee class, not a rogue... DAMAGE REDUCTION? Oh, fuck right off."
• They have 12-sided hit dice. Think about that for a moment: On the one hand, we have the Fighter, a class dedicated solely to combat, and it gets d10s for hit points; on the other hand, we have a class whose schtick is "get really upset and beat on things like the Hulk until they stop twitching" and they get d12s. No, that's just wrong. 

http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0360319/mediaviewer/rm1315507712

Really, the only thing about this class which I like is the Rage, which I'm pretty sure is the main reason people play barbs. But look at how they progress: rage at 1st level, then a rage power every even level. This is the exact same progression as fighter bonus feats. 

So here's how I'd change things:

1. Delete the Barbarian class altogether. 
2. Increase the Fighter's hit dice to d12s, as is right and proper. 
3. Make a "Berserker" archetype for the fighter which gives rage and rage powers in place of fighter feats. 

That archetype would look like this (with a lot of cutting and pasting from the barbarian class and replacing the word barbarian with berserker):

The Berserker (Archetype)

For some, there is only rage. In the ways of their people, in the fury of their passion, in the howl of battle, conflict is all these brutal souls know. Savages, hired muscle, masters of vicious martial techniques, they are not soldiers or professional warriors—they are the battle possessed, creatures of slaughter and spirits of war.

Rage (Ex)
At 1st level, a berserker can call upon inner reserves of strength and ferocity, granting her additional combat prowess. Starting at 1st level, a berserker can rage for a number of rounds per day equal to 4 + her Constitution modifier. At each level after 1st, she can rage for 2 additional rounds. Temporary increases to Constitution, such as those gained from rage and spells like bear’s endurance, do not increase the total number of rounds that a berserker can rage per day. A berserker can enter rage as a free action. The total number of rounds of rage per day is renewed after resting for 8 hours, although these hours do not need to be consecutive.

While in rage, a berserker gains a +4 morale bonus to her Strength and Constitution, as well as a +2 morale bonus on Will saves. In addition, she takes a –2 penalty to Armor Class. The increase to Constitution grants the berserker 2 hit points per Hit Dice, but these disappear when the rage ends and are not lost first like temporary hit points. While in rage, a berserker cannot use any Charisma-, Dexterity-, or Intelligence-based skills (except Acrobatics, Fly, Intimidate, and Ride) or any ability that requires patience or concentration.

A berserker can end her rage as a free action and is fatigued after rage for a number of rounds equal to 2 times the number of rounds spent in the rage. A berserker cannot enter a new rage while fatigued or exhausted but can otherwise enter rage multiple times during a single encounter or combat. If a berserker falls unconscious, her rage immediately ends, placing her in peril of death.

This ability replaces heavy armor and tower shield proficiency.

Rage Powers (Ex)
As a berserker gains levels, she learns to use her rage in new ways. Starting at 2nd level, a berserker gains a rage power. She gains another rage power for every two levels of berserker attained after 2nd level. A berserker gains the benefits of rage powers only while raging, and some of these powers require the berserker to take an action first. Unless otherwise noted, a berserker cannot select an individual power more than once.

Any berserker who meets the powers’ prerequisites can select and use rage powers. Totem rage powers grant powers related to a theme. A berserker cannot select from more than one group of totem rage powers; for example, a berserker who selects a beast totem rage power cannot later choose to gain any of the dragon totem rage powers (any rage power with “dragon totem” in its title).

This ability replaces all bonus feats gained at even levels.

Greater Rage (Ex)
At 11th level, when a berserker enters rage, the morale bonus to her Strength and Constitution increases to +6 and the morale bonus on her Will saves increases to +3.

This ability replaces armor training 3.

Indomitable Will (Ex)
While in rage, a berserker of 14th level or higher gains a +4 bonus on Will saves to resist enchantment spells. This bonus stacks with all other modifiers, including the morale bonus on Will saves she also receives during her rage.

This ability replaces bravery 4.

Tireless Rage (Ex)
Starting at 17th level, a berserker no longer becomes fatigued at the end of her rage.

This ability replaces weapon training 4.

Mighty Rage (Ex)
At 20th level, when a berserker enters rage, the morale bonus to her Strength and Constitution increases to +8 and the morale bonus on her Will saves increases to +4.

This ability replaces weapon mastery.

I had hoped to be able to include a Hero Lab file for the Berserker, but it's taking me longer than I expected to figure out how to make the editor do what I want, so I'll have to post it later. But here's an archetype that does nothing but increase the Fighter's hit dice to d12. It has no other requirements so it'll stack with everything else. Enjoy!