Appreciate the corrections about the undead stats, I did the same thing for the abomination and have no idea how. Too excited to get to the finish line maybe! I'll definitely update those.
Thanks for the detailed review.
It shouls say this somewhere in the info sheet but isnt e plained in depth -- the Calc is giving you the *hardest* possible version of a room, which may be giving you a sense of inaccurate measurements for skirmishes, especially when you add a weak monster and see the number jump really high. To see how this works - and to see exactly why the monsters are sorted - think of your heroes killing the weakest monster in a room full of enemies before their turn ends. The calculator isn't just using the attributes of the monsters but also taking a subjective application of turns into account, and so the strong monsters swamp your heroes. The idea is that any calculation that is able to realistically take into account a room full of monsters should actually give you a range or window rather than a hard number. The hard number that is given here is the "what's the worst case scenario" which to me was better than the alternatives (being "what's the lowest bar of entry for this room but only if you are very lucky?" Or "what's a random number in that window I can give you that won't make sense once you account for the difficulty ceiling with a completely different group of enemies that is much harder but returning the same number?") So that's why I developed this compounding method.
To the point about additive formulas, I historically don't like them, but I realize simple formulas for base game monsters can be much simpler and more eloquent since there are only eight monsters. This sheet is for (not to repeat the info section) adding in more complex entities and for homebrewers, and thus make the stats more weighted for situations where you might have a monster that has 1bp, 1ad, but 6dd, or another with 6ad, 1dd and 1bp. These would have the same danger if their stats are added together, but obviously have very different presences in a room, and the calculator deliberately reflects that.
I think 1 abomination versus eight separate goblins would be a fun playthrough with a pretty close end. I might play this out and see how it runs. :)
This calculator assumes monster will get first strike, which is part of the maximum difficulty :) that chainsaw goblin isn't gonna be tough to take out, but it's gonna suck regardless!
So after two years of iterations and proba ly hundreds of logically extreme examples like the above, it's all accounted for already (even movement really - the user can pin movement into the S columns should they desire, to add an edge, or a fudge number).
No worries either though, liking the formulas isn't required and I highly encourage folks to come up with their own -- make it better, or make something entirely different!
(Just to answer the formula Q and for anyone else wondering about this!)
It assumes the monster first strike in order to ensure the AD attribute is relevant if the monster has no other significant attributes - in practice if a monster has 10 attack, but 1 BP and 0 DD, and we assume the heroes kill it on sight, the tool can't give a fair measurement of that monster. It works against the purpose of the tool to discount it entirely when it's not a guarantee that it'll die upon being encountered.
That's a logical extreme, but the actual formula used would provide the same bell curves if we took away the first strike -- it is left in to make sure the cases like the above can be correctly mathematically accounted for, especially when said monster is encountered in a group.
The numbers mean nothing on their own though -- it is with comparison and frame of reference that any of it will start to make sense for the quest designer.
Also, apologies for not catching this sooner, but I looked again at your 8 goblin / 1 abomination scenario and I assumed that was meant to be compared singularly...but the numbers you have aren't what the calculator should be returning at all.
8 goblins singularly would give a quest difficulty of 32 while the abomination has 24. 8 goblins together in a room have a difficulty of 144. Sounds like there is a calculation bug I may have missed, and if you could reproduce it and show where it's coming up with that, I'd appreciate it!
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Appreciate the corrections about the undead stats, I did the same thing for the abomination and have no idea how. Too excited to get to the finish line maybe! I'll definitely update those.
Thanks for the detailed review.
It shouls say this somewhere in the info sheet but isnt e plained in depth -- the Calc is giving you the *hardest* possible version of a room, which may be giving you a sense of inaccurate measurements for skirmishes, especially when you add a weak monster and see the number jump really high. To see how this works - and to see exactly why the monsters are sorted - think of your heroes killing the weakest monster in a room full of enemies before their turn ends. The calculator isn't just using the attributes of the monsters but also taking a subjective application of turns into account, and so the strong monsters swamp your heroes. The idea is that any calculation that is able to realistically take into account a room full of monsters should actually give you a range or window rather than a hard number. The hard number that is given here is the "what's the worst case scenario" which to me was better than the alternatives (being "what's the lowest bar of entry for this room but only if you are very lucky?" Or "what's a random number in that window I can give you that won't make sense once you account for the difficulty ceiling with a completely different group of enemies that is much harder but returning the same number?") So that's why I developed this compounding method.
To the point about additive formulas, I historically don't like them, but I realize simple formulas for base game monsters can be much simpler and more eloquent since there are only eight monsters. This sheet is for (not to repeat the info section) adding in more complex entities and for homebrewers, and thus make the stats more weighted for situations where you might have a monster that has 1bp, 1ad, but 6dd, or another with 6ad, 1dd and 1bp. These would have the same danger if their stats are added together, but obviously have very different presences in a room, and the calculator deliberately reflects that.
I think 1 abomination versus eight separate goblins would be a fun playthrough with a pretty close end. I might play this out and see how it runs. :)
This calculator assumes monster will get first strike, which is part of the maximum difficulty :) that chainsaw goblin isn't gonna be tough to take out, but it's gonna suck regardless!
So after two years of iterations and proba ly hundreds of logically extreme examples like the above, it's all accounted for already (even movement really - the user can pin movement into the S columns should they desire, to add an edge, or a fudge number).
No worries either though, liking the formulas isn't required and I highly encourage folks to come up with their own -- make it better, or make something entirely different!
Best of luck!
No worries and thank you very much! :)
(Just to answer the formula Q and for anyone else wondering about this!)
It assumes the monster first strike in order to ensure the AD attribute is relevant if the monster has no other significant attributes - in practice if a monster has 10 attack, but 1 BP and 0 DD, and we assume the heroes kill it on sight, the tool can't give a fair measurement of that monster. It works against the purpose of the tool to discount it entirely when it's not a guarantee that it'll die upon being encountered.
That's a logical extreme, but the actual formula used would provide the same bell curves if we took away the first strike -- it is left in to make sure the cases like the above can be correctly mathematically accounted for, especially when said monster is encountered in a group.
The numbers mean nothing on their own though -- it is with comparison and frame of reference that any of it will start to make sense for the quest designer.
Also, apologies for not catching this sooner, but I looked again at your 8 goblin / 1 abomination scenario and I assumed that was meant to be compared singularly...but the numbers you have aren't what the calculator should be returning at all.
8 goblins singularly would give a quest difficulty of 32 while the abomination has 24. 8 goblins together in a room have a difficulty of 144. Sounds like there is a calculation bug I may have missed, and if you could reproduce it and show where it's coming up with that, I'd appreciate it!