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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5919326" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, in RQ there really is no meta-element. Hit points are CON (END? I'm forgetting my RQ stat names) + SIZ. Damage is STR + SIZ. Damage reduction is purely simulationist - if I know how tough a creature's hide is, I can assign it damage reduction by comparison to the armour rules and the other creatures in the rulebook.To hit numbers, also, are just a reflection of raw ability (stat mods) plus skill (the rest). I assign this as fits my conception of the monster.The closes to a meta-element in RQ is POW, but I can assign that as I see fit. And there is no way of using POW as a luck stat to affect my to hit, or hit points, or damage avoidance. I can assign it on something like the same rationale that I would assign CHA in D&D, and it won't spill through into other elements of action resolution.Well, I don't know the answer. That's my puzzle.So, in AD&D, hit points have a meta-element (as explained by Gygax, and as recently recapitulated by Mearls). So do saving throws, per Gygax in the AD&D DMG - unlike in 3E, where I think saving throws are pure process simulation, in AD&D saving throws also reflect luck, divine favour etc. To hit numbers have the least meta-element, but the way they are abstracted into a one minute round suggests that they may not be entirely devoid of it (ie a high level fighter having such an easy time hitting a rust monster perhaps reflects not only increased skill, but perhaps increased luck, divine favour etc).So in AD&D, suppose I'm statting up a pirate king. How much meta should he have? If I give him 3 HD, does this think I mean he has quite a bit of meta compared to a commoner? Or just that he's really big and muscly? Maybe if I give him an 18 STR and 16 CON that suggests the latter, but perhaps he's strong, healthy, untrained but meta-rich.Or, to flip it around: I consider the questions you stated upthread:What is this opponent the PCs will be facing? What's it like? How armoured is it? How fast? How tough? How deadly? What else can it do?In RQ, once I've answered those questions, I have the creature's stats and percentiles.But in AD&D, once I've answered those question, I can't stat up the creature yet, because until I know how much meta it's going to have, I can't finish the job. Perhaps its size puts a floor under its HD (if it's as big as an elephant, it better have at least 8 or 10 HD), and its armour puts a floor under its AC. But setting a floor isn't the same as telling me what the value is.Like I said, 4e answers the question about how much meta by saying "OK, give it enough meta to be a mechanically adequate challenge for its level". The meta is treated simply as a device for achieving a certain type of challenge level and pacing.But how does, or should, AD&D answer the question? If it answers it in the same way, then it turns out that AD&D monster design isn't that different from 4e after all - except maybe the meta-elements that 4e distributes across AC and hp, in AD&D get shoved all into hp, with AC being treated in a purely simulationist fashion.But maybe AD&D can go a different way. For example, you could say, give it enough meta to make it seem about as tough as it does in fairy stories, or mythology, or popular fantasy fiction. I think classic D&D took this route with undead - but then in B/X you can see it breaking down, as a whole lot of crappier made-up undead are slotted in above the vampire and the lich because we needed higher level undead to challenge Companion and Masters level PCs. (That is, they resorted to a 4e-style answer to the question, How much meta?).And relying on the fantasy tradition also makes it hard to work out how much meta to give your new inventions.A game like Burning Wheel shows a different sort of solution here. It emphasises very much building monsters in the way you describe - assign the stats that give the correct answers to those questions - but then it allows an appropriate number of Fate Points to be given to the monster, completely orthogonal to answering those questions, in order to give it the right amount of meta for it to do its job in the game.But D&D can't go this way, because with to hit numbers, saving throws and hit points it bundles its meta into its non-meta in an inseperable combination.Does that make any sense?</blockquote>

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