#A-4E

[usafphantom2]

A-4L-145128-VC2-OCEANA-APR76 by Michel Klaveren

[ghostwarriorrrr]

A sunset view of the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II

[looceyloo]

Been meaning to do a proper portrait of Dana for a while!

Dana was my very first D&D character who became my first Tav as well! She was a 4e Fey pact warlock whose patron was Sehanine Moonbow, so it was an easy switch to Selune.

Her mother was an Elven warrior who was sworn to protect sacred forests of Sehanine/Selune, but she was raised by her father, a wizard, in Baldur's Gate. Despite having no memories of her mother, and her father discouraging her from getting mixed up with deities and magic, Dana was naturally drawn to the moon. After her father's death, she set out to find herself.

She was the perfect Tav for a Shadowheart redemption/romance campaign!

[researcher-4e69636b]

Nick clearly wasn’t looking good: his hair was a mess and ze was stumbling and stopping all the time due to the increased back pain. Yet, ze pointlessly wandered around the Aurora with nothing better to do. Part of him hoped he would meet someone. Maybe with a gun.

@caphhhhfgjdkhgjfj-firstmate

[wolfsnape]

Qu'on aime ou pas la nouvelle adaptation du Comte de Monte Cristo, la plus belle chose qui en soit ressorti, c'est l'excitation générale des ADOS autour du LIVRE ! J'ai jamais vu autant d'élèves venir me voir au collège pour me parler d'un "super classique qu'ils ont commencé pendant les vacances, je sais pas si vous connaissez madame, ça parle de VENGEANCE" avec des étoiles dans les yeux comme ça. Donc merci le cinéma français et merci Pierre Niney

[planesawesome]

SB2C-4E Helldivers of Squadron 87 are operating from the USS Ticonderoga in May 1945.

[vajrapoet]

turning d&d 4e into a brutal xianxia game

i've always looked at D&D 4e as particularly amenable to the wuxia genre. in fact, it works as a spirit cultivation game. a problem with a lot of 4e (for me at least) is its disconnect of mechanics from the fiction. it is a game-first, player-first game, and that's a great genre in itself. but this post is looking at 4e through potential diegetic lens, with each game mechanic justified through spirit cultivation xianxia genre

as follows:

XP as Cultivation: exp serves great as cultivation. leveling up serves as cultivation progress. the three tiers work as "Man -> Earth -> Heaven" kinds of Cultivation Realm.

Powers as Techniques: each power works as a martial art technique that can be learned and mastered. this works better using the Alternative Rewards system found in the DMG, and getting powers from the world instead of getting it immediately on level up.

emphasize alternative rewards: instead of purely making level-ups the main way to get powers, have the powers be found in the world as alternative rewards. have them be of differing levels. if they find a level 14 fighter power from learning it from a bull God, they need to be a Level 14 PC with a Fighter Feat to be able to "equip" it.

Classes as Martial Arts schools: Fighters as the Fighter Sect, Wizards as the Eight School Magics Sect, etc. Subclasses or the Build Options work as School Specializations. this is the one that is least wuxia-esque to me, because wuxia is an inherently classless idea. you should be able to learn a strand of martial arts from one master and then learn a completely new and different one from another master that chooses to pick you up on.

every pc from a different school: to bridge this genre gap, when you make a PC, write the class they choose as a martial school. even if two PCs are two Sorcerers, they must come from different but perhaps similar schools. maybe one is from the Tantric Deity Sect and the other is from the Nine-Elements Yang Sect

Healing Surges as Qi: Qi is the breath or the life force. Similar ideas in other cultures are prana, ginhawa, ki, and kebatinan. You can only heal yourself as much as your inner reserves can heal you. If your Qi is tapped out, even healing potions will have a muted effect

Hit Points as Hit Protection: this one is stealing from NSR ideas. replace hit points with the idea of Hit Protection. Fighting in Wuxia/Xianxia etc. is a flurrious exchange of blows. when attacking a character, as long as they're not bloodied, they're actively fighting back, defending according to the targeted defense (blocking, parrying, ducking, weaving with AC, dodging and leaping with Reflex, resisting with Will, etc.) Hit Protection still includes personal vigor, which justifies attacks that poison or set them on fire as those attacks probably hit home to transmit those effects

xianxia lethality: xianxia and wuxia are surprisingly more brutal than one would think. it's bloody and arms are broken, legs are cut off. we move into homebrew-y territory here.

half HP, double damage: lean into this. power comes not from numbers but from techniques and traits for PCs. half HP and double damage not just for monsters, but for PCs as well. this will make fights less meat sack slogs and into tense, explosive engages.

move attack hit rate from 60% to 90%: this is something fft did well. most attacks have a 100% starting hit rate. enemy evasion values shifts that around. my idea is to raise attack hit rate to much higher. this makes defense-raising options much stronger as well and every attack becomes an important additional strike

make bloodied more potent: bloodied inflicts an injury. make this fiction oriented: a good enough attack might scar your face, or might render your arm useless and make you suffer disadvantage. this might not feel fun, but it will force creativity and the players must respect the world

improvisation: in wuxia and xianxia you actually will see more instances of the heroes using their environment to affect the outcome of the battle. throwing tables to distract, using roofs to provide cover, etc. here we move again into homebrew territory:

improvisation as default. this one is a large shift in the game. get rid of action economy. get rid of action types. you can move and do one thing. this is anything. most commonly it will be an attack. this includes even minor actions. there are no set actions you can do, no list to choose from. use your imagination. lean into the p 42 of the DMG. turn THAT into the core mechanic of the game

use essentials rules: this one is the least controversial but 4e essentials rules are the best consolidation of the rules. especially the item rarity stuff.

dare to be unbalanced: 4e's neo-golden cow is balance. don't care about the balancing. xianxia thrives on the unbalancedness of things to create tension and friction. the need to have revenge on a martial master that killed your master before, but they are a Level 28 Fighter and you're a measly Level 3 Wizard. You have to cultivate to get up to his level. You need 10,000 more years of training to get to him! now there's a reason for adventuring (collecting training manuals, finding masters, finding cultivation cores to gain XP). adopt an OSR mindset. become world-first: make the PCs rise to the challenge instead of tailoring everything to them. if they move into an area with level 8 monsters, they can choose to take those on, or just go back and go somewhere else, return at a later time when they have better equipment and better weaponry.

[funkwitz]

Ermengard Helvithra, Bane of Serpents

[talenlee]

4e: I Like the Ardent

One of the elements of Dungeons and Dragons as a game system that I hold fast to as one of its greatest strengths is the nature of the class-species based system where a player is immediately invited to create a character the second they hear about the basics of the system. To this end, there is a design space in D&D where the classes in that class system regard the potential power carried in a name that meaningfully explicates what they do. Class systems, broadly, recognise the value of names for what a class is, because that conveys tone for what a class does. A Barbarian and a Fighter aren’t meaningfully useful classes but when positioned as game systems, one of them is immediately more technical than the other.

Even if, yes, I’m sure, Berserker is the more proper term.

Anyway, to this end, a D&D character class cares about what I think of as ‘name space’ – the kinds of things you can name classes in order to make those classes compelling, interesting and memorable, the handles that players can get a grip on. This means that some titles, like Wizard, Bard, Rogue, Sorcerer, the 90s idiot’s allure of The Ninja, have value and weight to them and you can almost always directly tie the quality of a class to the name it gets, as that’s a sign that someone had a real clear idea and wanted to do something. If the weird is generic (the Seeker) or completely obscure (the Factotum), then you were odds on dealing with something that was not designed with a strong class fantasy and were about to be in for A Bad Time that was maybe interestingly broken.

And then there’s the Ardent.

Ardents are a type of support character, a Leader in the context of D&D 4th edition. While by no means their first appearance in the game, 4th is the place where they got good. 3rd edition Ardents worked in a way that I will generously call weird, and were positioned as a psionic healer and therefore in direct competition with the Cleric, one of the best classes in the game that could always manage healing as an afterthought. Not a good look there at the best of times, especially with the strongest virtue of the psionic system of 3.5 being ‘guess what rules oversight I get to dance in.’

The simplest description for the Ardent is that they’re a melee psionic supporter that leads by example and expresses emotions hard. It’s a bit of a hard class fantasy to put into a single word, right? You’re a feeler. Wait no that’s bad. You’re an emotive? Nope, that won’t do it, either. You can tell Ardent is a rough word to use since it shows up in the flavour text of dozens of other things and the Paladin even gets a starting power called Ardent Vow.

Thing is once this idea is set aside, the actual mechanical package of the Ardent absolutely rules. For a start, it’s a melee weapon based Leader whose primary attacking stat is Charisma, and whose skills back that Charisma up. You can play a skulking streetwise Ardent or a sincere politician Ardent or even just a walking threat Ardent, they all have the compatibilities. They also rely on a big weapon, meaning you get some of that anime hero vibes of a character with a huge weapon leaping into combat to have a big impact.

Because their primary focus was how things feel they could put a lot of different emotional impacts on the kinds of moves they had. That could be something like leading your friends in a direct charge against an enemy or sometimes it could be about psychically dragging your enemy towards you so every friend you have gets to make an attack on them along the way like it’s an Assist Strikers spice reel from the attract mode on an arcade.

Ardents had a special ability that fired off when they got bloodied, which was rarely worth worrying about. They had another ability that change how you related to opportunity attacks, too – either you were better defended against them (prompting you to be more reckless about how you moved), you were better at dealing damage with them (and therefore became more mindful about forcing opponents into positions to deal with them) or you got to deal more damage when you got hit by them (in which case you were suddenly an immense idiot trying to get whacked on the snout all the time in combat just so you could retaliate with nova spikes).

They also grew well. See, they were a psionic class, which meant early on you picked some at-will powers and then instead of getting encounter attacks, you swapped those at-wills for other at-wills and got instead power points to choose how to fine-tune your powers for points in combat. This could lead to things like a slow burning opening turn setting up a late-combat nova, or vice versa, or maybe you’d find you had one power you loved to use all the time and focused on using it, with your other powers as niche, sometimes fooders. As an example, Demoralising Strike is a power you start with and, using no power points, just gives enemies a -2 to defenses when you hit with it. If you augmented it though, it would impose a penalty of -X, where X is 1+ your con mod, so in some cases, -5, or -6. This is a big swing and makes things very easy to hit and paints a very broad target.

On the note of painting a target, they also get the power Forward Thinking Cut, one of my favourite 4th edition powers ever. Used just on its own it’s a solid melee attack that gives everyone adjacent to you +1 to hit. That’s a perfectly reasonable power on its own. It can be augmented once to allow a higgledy-piggle side-step charge, but then it can be augmented a second time to instead allow two other characters to come with you on the charge. This kind of flexibility delights me, where it goes from a serviceable every-time power and then upgrades into a power for transporting people into the fray at the very start of combat.

It’s such a cool class about creating cool feeling moments.

Shame about the name.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[nauteno]

✒️Inktober2024 Day15 to 18 Guidebook/Grungy/Journal/Drive(I skipped day14🤪)

[usafphantom2]

A-4E-149666-VF126-MIRAMAR-DEC92 by Michel Klaveren

[ghostwarriorrrr]

🇹🇷🔥 Turkish Air Force - F-4E 2020 Terminator

The F-4E 2020 Terminator represents a significant leap forward in the capabilities of the Turkish Air Force. This comprehensive upgrade enhances the venerable F-4E Phantom II with modern Turkish-made weapons systems, showcasing Türkiye’s commitment to self-reliance and advanced military technology.

Background

With a storied history dating back to the 1960s, the F-4E Phantom II has been a pivotal player on the global stage of air combat. Serving multiple nations and seeing numerous conflicts, the Phantom carved out its place in aviation history as a versatile and rugged aircraft. Türkiye’s decision to upgrade this aircraft stems from a strategic imperative to leverage existing assets while infusing them with cutting-edge technology to maintain relevance in modern aerial warfare. The 2020 Terminator program is the Turkish Air Force’s ambitious initiative to retrofit these fighters with state-of-the-art systems.

Strategic Importance

The ability to exert air superiority and conduct precision strikes is paramount in a region marked by dynamic security challenges. The F-4E 2020 Terminator’s enhanced capabilities contribute significantly to deterrence, and the demonstration of Türkiye’s advancing aerospace industry serves both a strategic and diplomatic purpose.

Upgrade Overview

The 2020 Terminator upgrade, realized by Turkish Aerospace Industries in collaboration with ASELSAN, constitutes a multifaceted improvement over the aircraft’s original design. It touches every aspect of the aircraft’s systems, bringing its avionics, armaments, and electronic warfare systems into the 21st century.

Avionics:

The modernized multi-mode pulse Doppler radar extends the aircraft’s detection range, allowing it to lock onto and engage targets from greater distances. Integrating a Hands-On Throttle-And-Stick (HOTAS) system enhances pilot control, minimizing response time during high-stakes manoeuvres. Color Multifunctional Displays (MFDs) replace outdated gauges, providing pilots with real-time data visualization for improved situational awareness.

Armament:

The Terminator’s weapons suite has been revolutionized with a mixture of Western and indigenous munitions. Long-standing armaments like the AIM-9X Sidewinder are joined by Türkiye’s own precision-guided munitions, such as the SOM cruise missile, capable of striking strategic land and sea targets with formidable accuracy. The UAV-230, a domestic innovation, represents the pinnacle of Türkiye’s missile development, offering supersonic ballistic delivery of a range of warhead types over substantial distances. The BOZOK, MAM-C, MAM-L, and Cirit missiles exemplify Türkiye’s expertise in laser guidance and smart munition technology, enabling the Terminator to engage and defeat a broad spectrum of target profiles with unerring precision.

Electronic Warfare:

To contend with the contemporary battlefield’s electronic warfare environment, the F-4E 2020 Terminator incorporates an advanced Electronic Support Measures (ESM) system for rapid threat identification and an Electronic Countermeasures (ECM) suite to confound hostile tracking systems. Moreover, chaff and flare dispensers have been integrated to provide decoys against incoming missile threats, enhancing the aircraft’s survivability in hostile airspace.

Operational Capability:

The F-4E Phantom II, transformed by these integrated systems, emerges as a multirole platform capable of dominating beyond-visual-range air-to-air engagements and precision ground-attack missions. It can operate in complex electronic warfare environments and deliver various ordnances based on mission requirements, making it a flexible asset in the Türkiye Air Force’s inventory.

Significance:

The F-4E 2020 Terminator project is a hallmark of Türkiye’s aerospace ambition and its push toward defence autonomy. By retrofitting and modernizing its Phantoms, Türkiye maximizes the value of its existing fleet while also establishing a foundation for future indigenous aircraft development projects.

Munitions Details:

The advanced, indigenous Turkish weaponry integrated into the F-4E 2020 Terminator underlines a significant shift toward self-reliance in defence technologies. Each munition type brings unique capabilities that enhance the platform’s lethality:

UAV-230: A domestically-developed ballistic missile, this supersonic weapon delivers high-precision strikes at long ranges, challenging enemy defences with its speed and reduced radar cross-section.

BOZOK: The versatility of this laser-guided munition makes it ideal for engaging both stationary and moving targets with high precision, ideal for close air support.

MAM-C/L: These smart micro munitions are designed for tactical flexibility, allowing for precision targeting in complex engagement scenarios, from anti-armour operations to counter-insurgency roles.

Cirit: A highly accurate laser-guided missile system designed for low collateral damage, Cirit is adept at striking soft and lightly armoured targets with pinpoint accuracy.

SAGE Munitions: TUBITAK SAGE, Türkiye’s leading defence research and development institute, has contributed a range of munitions enhancing the Terminator’s operational capabilities across various domains.

Conclusion:

The upgraded F-4E 2020 Terminator is a testament to Türkiye’s determination to retain a competitive edge in aerospace and defence technologies. The integration of modern avionics, armaments, and electronic warfare capabilities ensures the aircraft’s continued relevance in modern air combat, and its presence in the skies serves as a deterrent in a strategically complex region.

[nocternalrandomness]

A color bird from the Turkish Air Force roaring through the Sakarya River Valley

[researcher-4e69636b]

Nick was cleaning the Aurora once again, since it’s been a long (for him) time since he did it last time. Currently ze was arranging some random things in one of the storage rooms when some sort of technology fell down. Luckily, Nick was fast enough to save it from a hard floor at the last moment but he heard a few clicks of buttons.

“Shit.” The researcher thought, squeezed zirs eyes and froze in place. But nothing changed. Or, at least, he thought so. When Nick opened his eyes there was no mechanism. And, wait, there weren’t these things around when he was cleaning... In fact, this whole storage room was different in its entirety. Nick’s eyes widened and he quickly got up, not sure what to do.

“Aurora?..” Nick said a bit louder than zirs normal volume, running his eyes around the new storage room.

@caphhhhfgjdkhgjfj-firstmate

[oraclefreak]

I think it's really interesting how Cater is portrayed in a very superficial way in canon, but the fandom made their own takes on his character and end up making content of him being a mentally ill teenager. I agree with it partially, but if I think about it for some while; I end up believing he is the person to be blank when no one is near. Like, when you see him with people he is trying very hard to fit in and to be liked. But it tires him very much. When he's alone, he doesn't show much emotion because there is no one to see him at that moment. In a way, it's a neverending circle of feeling like he's never going to be loved and then getting proof that he is well-loved. And I don't think he would post his struggles online, at least not on a main account (<- this is about his character in canon, not the funny way people portray him for fanon content... I like social media aus with a bit of struggler Cater).

I am not even sure he would be funny on social media, because yes, it would gain him a reputation but only as a funny guy. It is difficult for people to see funny influencers being serious, because there is an image built of them that sorta stays there for a long while. I don't think Cater would like to be seen as "just a funny guy" unless it was a guaranteed 100% success. He actually cares about Magicam pictures a lot, and he is interested in fashion (and has a crush on Vil Schoenheit in some way, canonically). One way or another, he wants to be respected but feels a lot of inferiority when it comes to comparing himself with other people.

Canonically, Cater having a side account for consuming relatable content feels okayish. Yet a part of me believes he wouldn't. Like, it's nice he can relate to other people; but he'll never relate to those around them. He is superficial in the way he interacts with others, because - for example - he is constantly thinking they'll never reach out to him when they graduate. He feels alone in his own world, he feels accepted in social media. Would relatable content make him feel better about how he is feeling? I don't know. Maybe he tries to actively avoid it so he never feels bad, and is in a constant state of emotional numbness when alone. Maybe he consumes the content but never goes and post it. Maybe he posts it??? On a side account??? Cater isn't a character known for his predictable ways of acting...

[planesawesome]

McDonnell Douglas F-4E