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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sir Brennen" data-source="post: 3922227" data-attributes="member: 553">Sure, there's lots of things that can be boiled down to an exercise in statistics. But tell me, can you demonstrate numerically the more powerful item between something that lets you levitate for 10 minutes and an item that lets you breath underwater for 10 minutes?You could simply base the math off of the numeric level for corresponding the spells, and call it "science". But is it really? Spell levels themselves are somewhat arbitrary once you get away those which have a very specific impact on combat. Many are where they're at because "they look right". Flying for example. So your base assumptions for magic items (spells) are not 100% science to begin with. Add the portability/accessibility/frequency of use aspects of turning them into magic items (usable by any class, unlike spells), and this causes it to be even harder to pin down. So yeah, it is more art than science for many magic items. I don't see any problem with stating it as such.But where do you get that many other aspects of the game are being treated the same way? I've seen this from the 4E alarmists quite often; taking a single statement about one small aspect of the game and assume it exemplifies the designer's approach to the entire system.In fact, I see much more "science" with things like the power curve and class abilities than we have in 3E. The approach is, however, another complaint from certain corners: balancing classes based on combat effectiveness. But this is where you can have hard numbers to balance against. The prime example in 3E is the bard; weak in combat, but excels in non-combat/social situations. But can you numerically, scientifically demonstrate how his non-combat abilities balanced against, say, the fighter's combat ones? No, you can't.Again, this is something 4E looks like it'll be addressing by making social interactions more like combat, i.e. giving you a system with numeric assumptions so you can actually have some sort of baseline to gauge the effectiveness of a class like the bard outside of battle.Encounter design can be a "science", but again, only if you stick to creatures with well established CR's and abilities which have predictable effects on combat. Just like magic items, though, once you start having monsters with abilities which aren't adding a straight modifier to AC, Attack, Damage or Saves, it starts drifting back into the realm of art. For example, how much of a bump is a levitating creature's CR? Is it the same for a 1 HD creature as it is for a 15 HD creature? What about one that can teleport at will to the nearest corpse in sight, but the corpse is destroyed. Do you adjust the CR if it's all alone in a stone room or if it's standing in the middle of a battlefield full of bodies? Yes, having explicit formulas that were always accurate would be a beootiful thing, but in a game where anything can happen, even more so than real life, you're never going to be able to pin everything down.</blockquote>

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