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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9179914" data-attributes="member: 6790260"><p>How is it a bad thing to have a CR system that actually tells you the general tendency of how difficult a monster is? How is it a bad thing to know that players could choose the Noodlergy or Saucery subclasses of Pastamancer and overall be statistically similar?</p><p></p><p>Your first question is bizarre; it is like asking, "Is it good to know if a machine works or not?" I would argue that, barring purposes which genuinely should not be (e.g. "exterminate all life" or "enslave the minds of others" or other morally objectionable things), it is always better to know that something successfully achieves the purpose for which it was designed.</p><p></p><p>As for the second, the designers themselves. Hence why I advocate for designers having clear design goals. They made the game; they decide what the stuff in it is supposed to do. (5e's pillars are not clear design goals, but they are important principles from which design goals can be built, for example, if "socialization" is a critical component of the game, design goals related to that could include "every class has at least one tool useful for contributing to social encounters." The fact that social encounters exist and are important is not, in and of itself, a clear design goal, but it gives the foundation for building clear design goals.)</p><p></p><p>As I have said repeatedly, there are many things in D&D (or any game) that cannot, <em>even in principle</em>, be tested with this kind of modeling. Those things will always require real humans, with thought and judgment, doing testing. But a sword is designed to do a certain amount of damage. A spell of level N is meant to do less damage than a comparable spell of level N+1 and more damage than a spell of level N-1. Two subclasses of the same class should, in general, be comparable in their contributions to the party. Etc. </p><p></p><p>These things can all be subjected to simulation <em>in addition to</em> human testing for things that need the human touch. You don't need the human touch to test whether Champion's crit bonus is able to keep up with Battle Master's maneuver damage. You don't need the human touch to run a hundred thousand encounters of 4th-level parties against six ghouls to see if ghouls are killing player characters at the expected rates.</p><p></p><p>Human testing cannot be eliminated. Period. It will always be essential. Period. But simulation and modeling can be a powerful tool, both for checking to make sure that the things you make actually achieve the goal for which they were designed, and for helping us dedicate that essential human labor to the most useful things it can be, because it progresses slowly and people-time is valuable.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9179914, member: 6790260"] How is it a bad thing to have a CR system that actually tells you the general tendency of how difficult a monster is? How is it a bad thing to know that players could choose the Noodlergy or Saucery subclasses of Pastamancer and overall be statistically similar? Your first question is bizarre; it is like asking, "Is it good to know if a machine works or not?" I would argue that, barring purposes which genuinely should not be (e.g. "exterminate all life" or "enslave the minds of others" or other morally objectionable things), it is always better to know that something successfully achieves the purpose for which it was designed. As for the second, the designers themselves. Hence why I advocate for designers having clear design goals. They made the game; they decide what the stuff in it is supposed to do. (5e's pillars are not clear design goals, but they are important principles from which design goals can be built, for example, if "socialization" is a critical component of the game, design goals related to that could include "every class has at least one tool useful for contributing to social encounters." The fact that social encounters exist and are important is not, in and of itself, a clear design goal, but it gives the foundation for building clear design goals.) As I have said repeatedly, there are many things in D&D (or any game) that cannot, [I]even in principle[/I], be tested with this kind of modeling. Those things will always require real humans, with thought and judgment, doing testing. But a sword is designed to do a certain amount of damage. A spell of level N is meant to do less damage than a comparable spell of level N+1 and more damage than a spell of level N-1. Two subclasses of the same class should, in general, be comparable in their contributions to the party. Etc. These things can all be subjected to simulation [I]in addition to[/I] human testing for things that need the human touch. You don't need the human touch to test whether Champion's crit bonus is able to keep up with Battle Master's maneuver damage. You don't need the human touch to run a hundred thousand encounters of 4th-level parties against six ghouls to see if ghouls are killing player characters at the expected rates. Human testing cannot be eliminated. Period. It will always be essential. Period. But simulation and modeling can be a powerful tool, both for checking to make sure that the things you make actually achieve the goal for which they were designed, and for helping us dedicate that essential human labor to the most useful things it can be, because it progresses slowly and people-time is valuable. [/QUOTE]
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