Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kraydak" data-source="post: 4235952" data-attributes="member: 12306">A big advantage of process-response models is that they are robust in the sense that you can extend them to cover situations they aren't explicitly designed for.  PnP RPGs need to work in a messy, uncontrolled environment, which means that rule-sets will be used outside of their design space.  A process-response model will cover more design space.  In DnD terms, if your NPC design system and your PC design system are unrelated, you run into problems if anyone tries to treat one as the other.  This includes monsters-as-PCs, charm/dominate, allies etc...Minions are another black-box design, and the intro module *already* takes them outside of their design space (temp. hp).The second problem DnD has with black-boxes is that DnD is messy: making a good black-box is functionally impossible.  Comparing 3e to 4e monster design, it is important to remember that getting the basic stats (BaB/AC/defenses-saves etc...) right is the easy part.  If your boast is that you have a good black-box that will do that for you, your boast is empty.  The hard part is, and always has been, the specials (Ex/SA/SU).  If your black-box covers those, its all good, but by that point you have an adequate model for a process-response design, which is more robust.  This is why I am utterly unimpressed with the "4e monster design is easy" claim.  We have seen no evidence, at all, that they have a system for designing good specials.</blockquote>

Verification