Proposal: Adopt the same character approval rules used in L4W

L4W Proposal Thread

This has worked really well for L4W. Characters are getting approved at a much faster pace thanks to dedicated senior reviewers.

I'd like to replace the old judge approval system with a senior reviewer system here in LEB.

I prefer that we get rid of the wiki template completely.

It's a total pain to follow the template.

Instead, we should just have people print their characters from Character Builder to a .pdf and then there is little review required.

One section for background. One section for .pdf. Done.

Judges are slow in reviewing PCs and people don't even want to create them because the entire template system is so bad with redundancies and such.

If someone doesn't want to pony up the money for the Character Builder and want to use the old template, fine. But the vast majority of people willing to use CB should be able to have their PC auto-reviewed immediately.

The L4W wiki sheet is a pleasure to use. The CB character sheet, as a .pdf, is significantly less informative and accessible and easy to review than the L4W wiki sheet. I can't speak for the LEB sheet as I haven't done any reviews here.

Accidental double post. How do I delete this?

WEContact said:

The L4W wiki sheet is a pleasure to use. The CB character sheet, as a .pdf, is significantly less informative and accessible and easy to review than the L4W wiki sheet. I can't speak for the LEB sheet as I haven't done any reviews here.

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I don't play over at L4W, but the sheet over there looks just as difficult to review (and presumably to build) as the one here.

All of it looks like manual entry by the player.

The CB .pdf by definition should be correct and not need any number crunching review at all. Granted, there is always the possibility of a minor glitch here or there, but the creation time and review time (for the review merely checking to see that nothing illegal was taken) has got to be many hours less for both player and reviewer.

A manual creation process and a manual review process has got to be worse than an automated creation process and a review process that doesn't check any of the numbers, it just checks whether the items, powers, and feats are legal.

When I review I check the math too. I don't find it difficult. My problem with the CB is that it frequently has calcultation errors, the summary doesn't help you see how a PC's central features function, and it frequently doesn't allow things that function by RAW or allows things that don't.

WEContact said:

When I review I check the math too. I don't find it difficult. My problem with the CB is that it frequently has calcultation errors, the summary doesn't help you see how a PC's central features function, and it frequently doesn't allow things that function by RAW or allows things that don't.

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And humans cannot make these and many other errors?

I have seen a few incorrect calculation errors in CB, but not "frequent".

And, I didn't specify the summary of CB above, I specified a .PDF of the printout. The printout has a ton of information in it (4+ pages). That's the reason it is used by hundreds of thousands of gamers the world over in their table top and online games.

I think you are overemphasizing the problems with CB and not realizing that humans writing stuff manually often make even more mistakes than CB ever does. Many first cuts at review of new characters here often have a laundry list of things that don't match or missing elements or bad math, etc.

CB also auto-adds in new rules that players and reviewers might never see once a power, feat, or item is changed. So, the next level / printout of PCs are correct for any new rules. The old rules are not carried forward blindly.

A cleaner wiki could have .pdf, background section, and a small section for .pdf corrections (e.g. auto-expertise, etc.) and STILL be a ton easier to review, and a lot less prone to error.

Btw, maybe some people have a tool that allows them to edit the template by just cutting and pasting in text without messing with the script codes. If so, great. I'm sure one exists. But if so, some people do not have access to it. That's a part of the problem. The math can be another problem.

A .pdf printer driver is free to all. Just download cutepdf or coolpdf from the Internet. And if a given player doesn't want to use CB and wants to manually edit the template, have at it. Just don't force everyone to use that stone age process.

I think I'm biased against the CB because I like to build Hybrids, and most of the CB's errors come up in hybrid builds- Battleminds not being able to choose Persistent Harrier with Hybrid Talent or Hybrid Sentinels only getting 1 at-will total, for example. This is especially egregious because people become convinced that the CB is a rules source.

None of that actually means that using the full CB printout as an alternative to the wiki template is a bad idea though. I think you should try it and show us how it looks. It's easy to upload and embed images.

Also, the approval process wad the actual topic in this thread.

I am in favor, because the current system really doesn't work.

Who would be the senior reviewers? Any volunteers/nominees?

I've been doing it for L4W, so no reason I couldn't help out here as well.