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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mmadsen" data-source="post: 1559033" data-attributes="member: 1645">Quantity vs QualityIn the real world, Lanchester's Square Law has been used to argue for quantity rather than quality.  If twice as many tanks are four times as effective, and three times as many tanks are nine times as effective, why bother paying for quality?  A tank that's twice as good is only twice as effective.  A tank that's three times as good is only three times as effective.What this neglects is that quality is often multi-dimensional.  A tank gun that's twice as accurate (that hits twice as often) is twice as effective; doubling its accuracy doubles its kill-rate.  A tank gun that's twice as powerful (that kills in half as many hits) is also twice as effective.  Thus, a tank armed with a gun that's twice as accurate and twice as powerful is four times as effective.We see this in D&D monsters and characters all the time.  A CR 2 creature has twice the hit points of a similar CR 1 creature, making it twice as effective -- but it doesn't stop there.  The CR 2 creature is also harder to hit from its higher AC.  (Depending on the attacker's to-hit bonus, it may be twice as hard to hit, but probably not.)  The CR 2 creature also hits more often and does more damage when it does hit.Doubling all four of those attributes (difficulty to hit, difficulty to hurt, ability to hit, ability to hurt) multiplies a monster's combat effectiveness by a factor of 16 -- which is more-or-less what we saw between the Goblin and the Ogre.</blockquote>

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