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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 4238773" data-attributes="member: 54877">You've already received the technically correct answer of, "Yes".  I'd like to use Gen. Eisenhower's method of "When you have an insolvable problem, enlarge the problem space," to give an answer that might be more acceptable to more people.A lot of common D&D (and gaming) labels are applied very loosely.  For a directly relevant example to this dicussion, consider that we keep hearing that in 4E, "the PCs are special."  That's true, but incomplete.  Actually, in 4E, "characters made up of classes, paragon paths, etc. are special."  Whether or not they happen to simulate a character played by a DM or player is irrelevant.  Sure, the DM doesn't need to stat out a 15th level fighter when a similarly capable brute will do, but nothing is stopping him.  And for that matter, the exact same thing applies to the minion/non-minion distinction.So there is a "PC" black box creature producer.  If you want an actual PC, you use it.  If you want something that simulates fairly closely something more or less like a PC, you also use it.  OTOH, if you want something that simulates a monster, or a minon, or an NPC--you use a different black box.  No matter which one you use, you get something that is plausible in the simulated world.  Just don't get too caught up in the labels.  For example, if you wanted a "boss" leader that was potentially very scary but had a glass jaw, suitable for a 1st level group, a moderate level minion might make a lot of sense.Now, to be fair, if the above was 100% true in D&D, you'd have a "monster as character" write up for every critter in the MM, not just the 12 or so that get it.  At some point, you have to make a trade between purity and page count.  But that is where the the black box/white box analogy starts to fail, unless you know its roots.  Before black and white box, there was "mess of process in a tangle that no one could understand very well, even the guy who built it."  Even when you cleaned it up, using various structures, it was still messy and prone to break--more likely to break when tinkered with than anything else.  OTOH, the guy who did understand it very well could tinker a lot.  So white boxes are not the opposite of black boxes, but simply an intermediate, useful stage--boxed, but still somewhat open for examination.  In a sufficiently complicated process, white box practically implies that specific sub components are themselves black box--because that's all black box is--a way of managing complexity.</blockquote>

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