Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5064257" data-attributes="member: 82106">I think the thing is with the math of 4e you have to really do a game design before you start to appreciate how these things play out. I don't find any notions about "math dudes" convincing at all. Its addition for Pete's sake. You don't need "math dudes" to figure out if your addition adds up, lol. I mean I HAVE a math degree, trust me you don't need any kind of higher math, or even algebra for that matter to design a game. That isn't the issue.The issue is more like you first come up with a basic framework. In the case of 4e its d20 + 1/2 level for PCs. This is nice and simple and only needs adding and dividing by 2. Chances are they also decided monsters would be d20 + level from the start as that's nice and simple too and gives you a bunch of numbers to play with for PCs (+15 over 30 levels give or take). Now, you pretty much HAVE to come up with this framework right at the start because otherwise how can you even discuss what else you're going to do? All other numbers need to be related to each other and to the framework in order to evaluate them. You can't keep monkeying with it much beyond the start because as you develop more and more of the game you'd have to change EVERYTHING that follows after every time you mess with it. Maybe you can afford to evaluate a couple of options at the start, but that isn't going to tell you much about which one will work best in the full system because there is NO way you're going to be able to build 2-3 entire game systems all the way up just to see which one is best. You've got to commit yourself pretty much at the start.Now as you go on and add more subsystems like armor and weapons and whatnot and as you have different classes and features and feats that tweak things various ways you're BOUND to find that certain issues show up, like how do you allow for light armor to work with stat bonuses and heavy armor to give just an AB based AC? At some point someone decided that stats would increase (probably because they needed various ways to make up that 15 points that monsters have and stat increases gives you a way). That fed into the AC system and created the need for Masterwork Armor. Pretty typical for a game design process to have this sort of stuff happening. Even an infinite amount of playtesting and design time doesn't help because at some point the system gets to where you're pretty well locked into all the different decisions you made along the way because changing things causes bigger and bigger ripples of other changes to everything else. So at some point you have a system where things are as good as they're going to get without starting over again from scratch and if you DO start over you don't know if doing things a new way will actually be better or not. Pretty soon its best to just release the thing, knowing its good enough, and with the understanding that when its out there in the world you'll see where some decision or other wasn't perfect and you may want to adjust with items or feats, etc.</blockquote>

Verification