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<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 9590858" data-attributes="member: 2067">The first hiccup here is that being a hobgoblin with a longsword matters to the DM, too, in as much as the DM is pretending to be a hobgoblin with a longsword and not merely facilitating a mathematically determined outcome between two buckets of numbers. That consistency isn't JUST important for payers.The second is that players read the MM, too. It's not a secret.I do think it's worth mentioning that game designers often operate very easily under the more gamey assumptions, because that's part of what they need to pay attention to. In order to get the math right and get the desired outcome, a hobgoblin with a longsword needs to be less of a prop and more of a bucket of numbers. But that's where the fragility or robustness of your game design comes in. If giving that hobgoblin a greatsword dramatically impacts the outcome that your designer-math tells you needs to happen and so you find yourself trying to find excuses for why hobgoblins can't use greatswords or why they never sleep (and D&amp;D, especially in early e's, was FULL of this kind of &quot;drow weapons evaporate in sunlight&quot; kind of kludges) and...you're lost. You've replaced trying to be a fantasy hero with trying to play a fantasy game. It's why this kind of thing keeps coming up. Late 3e, all of 4e, now late 5e....it's a lesson TTRPG designers keep failing to learn, because it's not primarily how most of them think of the game mechanics. Putting the numbers first is &quot;efficiency&quot; and &quot;consistency&quot; and &quot;elegance,&quot; but keeping them messy is hard and weird and leads to occasionally unsatisfying play. It's one of the conundrums of quantification that once you can put numbers to things, the numbers often become more important than the things.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 9590858, member: 2067"] The first hiccup here is that being a hobgoblin with a longsword matters to the DM, too, in as much as the DM is pretending to be a hobgoblin with a longsword and not merely facilitating a mathematically determined outcome between two buckets of numbers. That consistency isn't JUST important for payers. The second is that players read the MM, too. It's not a secret. I do think it's worth mentioning that game [I]designers[/I] often operate very easily under the more gamey assumptions, because that's part of what they need to pay attention to. In order to get the math right and get the desired outcome, a hobgoblin with a longsword needs to be less of a prop and more of a bucket of numbers. But that's where the fragility or robustness of your game design comes in. If giving that hobgoblin a greatsword dramatically impacts the outcome that your designer-math tells you needs to happen and so you find yourself trying to find excuses for why hobgoblins can't use greatswords or why they never sleep (and D&D, especially in early e's, was FULL of this kind of "drow weapons evaporate in sunlight" kind of kludges) and...you're lost. You've replaced trying to be a fantasy hero with trying to play a fantasy game. It's why this kind of thing keeps coming up. Late 3e, all of 4e, now late 5e....it's a lesson TTRPG designers keep failing to learn, because it's not primarily how most of them think of the game mechanics. Putting the numbers first is "efficiency" and "consistency" and "elegance," but keeping them messy is hard and weird and leads to occasionally unsatisfying play. It's one of the conundrums of quantification that once you can put numbers to things, the numbers often become more important than the things. [/QUOTE]

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