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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5045166" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, I certainly endorse the &quot;get it all working first&quot; approach.I do respectfully disagree about the nature of what model tests what. The PC has feats and powers. If you want to test the &quot;bare math&quot; then essentially you'd need to strip your PC down to a single generic power and forget about feats unless perhaps they directly increase a defense or damage. In essence you're pitting a fully featured PC against &quot;half a monster&quot;, of course the PC always wins! The math was NEVER intended to balance that at all. It was always assumed from day 1 that monsters would have more than just base powers, just like it is assumed that PCs have feats etc.There is one other somewhat unrelated thing I am wondering about as well. It isn't necessarily directly relevant to detecting the influence of changing math, but it may bear on it. What really is the &quot;set point&quot; for PC survivability? I would have to imagine that the system has to assume an average PC survival rate that gives roughly at least a 50/50 chance of a PC surviving in excess of 100 combat encounters. In other words I'd figure its tuned to give the PC about a 99.5% or higher encounter survival rate. This may well be why you find it necessary to push the monster levels up in order to see useful results, given that your error bars easily let you hit 100% as the system was designed to work.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 5045166, member: 82106"] Well, I certainly endorse the "get it all working first" approach. I do respectfully disagree about the nature of what model tests what. The PC has feats and powers. If you want to test the "bare math" then essentially you'd need to strip your PC down to a single generic power and forget about feats unless perhaps they directly increase a defense or damage. In essence you're pitting a fully featured PC against "half a monster", of course the PC always wins! The math was NEVER intended to balance that at all. It was always assumed from day 1 that monsters would have more than just base powers, just like it is assumed that PCs have feats etc. There is one other somewhat unrelated thing I am wondering about as well. It isn't necessarily directly relevant to detecting the influence of changing math, but it may bear on it. What really is the "set point" for PC survivability? I would have to imagine that the system has to assume an average PC survival rate that gives roughly at least a 50/50 chance of a PC surviving in excess of 100 combat encounters. In other words I'd figure its tuned to give the PC about a 99.5% or higher encounter survival rate. This may well be why you find it necessary to push the monster levels up in order to see useful results, given that your error bars easily let you hit 100% as the system was designed to work. [/QUOTE]

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