Rystil Arden
First Post
Hmm...interesting. I think the problem with your Toughness point is that I'm not trying to compare Dodge and SF, nor would I be trying to compare Dodge and Toughness if we made a Toughness comparison some way down the line. In order to normalise for the effects that feats are not equal, we're not comparing Dodge to SF at all. Rather, we are comparing the amount that LAO is better than Dodge to the amount VSF is better than SF, without directly comparing Dodge to SF. Why am I proposing this comparison, though? That's because I can't understand why you won't reject LAO but you will reject VSF (for the record, I would also reject VSF, so I'm not seeing why the common-ground we share here is not enough to lead to common ground on the other)IcyCool said:Well, we aren't finding that at all. YOU may be finding that, but as I pointed out in my quick breakdown, there are some important differences that you are ignoring. Small, but important.
*sigh* Right then, after reading the page 3 and 4 of your quoted document (I'll finish it this evening, in case I'm missing something vital), I suppose I should say, "flawed analogy" or rather, your analogy is not specific enough. We can't make a literal comparison (my bad for using the wrong term there), but we need to strive for as close to it as possible. There is a place for analogy, it is an important part of the learning process, and it helps us get a handle on difficult concepts. But I think the problem is that perhaps you are simplifying your analogies a bit much. Or perhaps I am not simplifying enough (although as we are trying to be as accurate as possible, I think over simplifying is a bad thing in this case). We could, after all, compare this feat to Toughness. They are both feats, are they not? But this feat seems clearly overpowered compared to Toughness. Your analogy is much closer, in a literal sense, than the toughness analogy. But while you find that satisfactory, I do not (for the reasons stated above).
As to the document, I dredged it up because I thought it would be more instructive than saying something like "I study analogy for a living", since that comment is not really helpful at all and just sounds erudite, whereas the document should at least be instructive to the situation at hand.