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Ability Bonuses: Causation or Correlation?
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<blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5760504" data-attributes="member: 54877"><p>I think it was always meant to be some of both, but like "Cure Light Wounds" not exactly making sense in the hit point model at various levels, it breaks down in places by trying to be both causation and correlation.</p><p> </p><p>You get this in part because of what it is trying to model. The easy way to think of it is not correlation, but that the cause and effect runs the other way. That is, the fighter isn't a fighter because he was strong and thus took up arms. Rather, he is strong because he took up arms, got good at it over several years, and in the process became a fighter, strength thus becoming a byproduct of that. But no doubt, having become strong and learned arms, he began to value those things for their own sake (i.e. did some exercises to boost his strength, looked for strength boosting magic, etc.) and this fed back into being a fighter. </p><p> </p><p>When cause and effect develop feedback loops, it starts to look a whole lot like mere correlation on the surface. In an inexact game model, this is even more true.</p><p> </p><p>This actually works better in Basic than in later versions, where it is not at all uncommon for a good fighter to have a mere +1 to hit and damage, a +2 being very nice, and a +3 limited to a small fraction. You'd have to be pretty darn weak naturally to pick up a sword, learn how to use it, and not get close to a +1 Str in Basic terms. </p><p> </p><p>The bigger the bonuses and penalties from ability scores, the more the model breaks down in this respect.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Crazy Jerome, post: 5760504, member: 54877"] I think it was always meant to be some of both, but like "Cure Light Wounds" not exactly making sense in the hit point model at various levels, it breaks down in places by trying to be both causation and correlation. You get this in part because of what it is trying to model. The easy way to think of it is not correlation, but that the cause and effect runs the other way. That is, the fighter isn't a fighter because he was strong and thus took up arms. Rather, he is strong because he took up arms, got good at it over several years, and in the process became a fighter, strength thus becoming a byproduct of that. But no doubt, having become strong and learned arms, he began to value those things for their own sake (i.e. did some exercises to boost his strength, looked for strength boosting magic, etc.) and this fed back into being a fighter. When cause and effect develop feedback loops, it starts to look a whole lot like mere correlation on the surface. In an inexact game model, this is even more true. This actually works better in Basic than in later versions, where it is not at all uncommon for a good fighter to have a mere +1 to hit and damage, a +2 being very nice, and a +3 limited to a small fraction. You'd have to be pretty darn weak naturally to pick up a sword, learn how to use it, and not get close to a +1 Str in Basic terms. The bigger the bonuses and penalties from ability scores, the more the model breaks down in this respect. [/QUOTE]
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Ability Bonuses: Causation or Correlation?
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