Help talk:Precedent

Addition

I would like to add something to this page (not in conflict to the great material your putting down here). Something roughly:

"In contrast to precedent, there is another governing force when creating new content: synthesis. A trademark of synthesis is that it generates new content that was previously in conflict. In other words, a synthesis is a greater level of order formed between two previously conflicting views (called the "thesis" and "anti-thesis").

Contrast this to the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. That is, where the fallacy speaks of a negation of input, a synthesis is a merging and integration of inputs." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Cedric (talk • contribs) 22:02, 16 May 2017‎. Please sign your posts.

This is already brought into focus in the second part of this page. --Green Dragon (talk) 10:23, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Regarding Deviation Justifications

I think there should be some clarity in whether a page has to fulfill all, a majority, or some of the requirements listed in the second section. At the moment, it seems to be uncertain, but I'm assuming it indicates that all should be fulfilled. I think it'd be better served to interpret these as suggestions on how to properly use the template, rather than as a list of strictly necessary items, as some cases may not lead to desirable results.

For example, as mentioned in recent discussions on Template Talk:Design Disclaimer, if a user creates a class for a high-power campaign, a strict reading of the requirements seems to indicate, or has caused others to believe, that the user must define a high-power campaign in a separate page, post that they're using that definition, and then link to it.

The problem arises in this case because a high-power campaign is an ultimately nebulous, but colloquially common concept. As such, while individuals may generally understand the usage of the term as justification for a difference in balance, asking each user to define high-power campaign when individuals may have different definitions of the concept, and those different definitions apply to content in separate ways, will result in large amounts of redundant pages and arguments. The former being generally undesirable and the latter being what the template seems to try and avoid.

Also, I'm partially of the opinion that fulfilling some of these might preclude others; If your page is part of a supplement or campaign setting that has similarly balanced material, and is designating that balance as the standard, then requiring a wholly separate page just to further justify that seems unnecessary. --Jwguy (talk) 15:24, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Uh, Yeah, the widespread misuse of the template is due to people preferring my vague overview here to the clear purpose on the template page. That list was never intended to be comprehensive or anything. It was just examples of the most likely reasons such a template might be necessary. "High power" isn't good enough because it is neither an explanation nor a justification. Even the original page said you must JUSTIFY the deviation. I have updated the page to have much clearer wording. How does that look to you? --Kydo (talk) 22:18, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

I'd say the amorphous head of subjectivity rears its head on this one, myself, as justification is ultimately a subjective matter. Designing a page for a non-standard campaign designated as high-power easily fulfills a requirement of justification for some. That said, I'm not going to pursue that argument.

Instead, I'd mention that I think the issue is more complicated than that, as at least one individual had seemingly taken that list to be an explicit set of requirements for using the template on pages, and that's partially what the debate on Template Talk:Design Disclaimer progressed on. I'm referring to GamerAim's statements indicating that the use of the template absolutely requires concocting a full page of variant rules to support deviant material, no matter how singular, even if the argument made is self-evident or self-sufficient (i.e., 3.5e Paladins aren't even good at performing actions suited to them, this has rebalanced them to be on par with a Duskblade. See SGT/Talk Page.) or similar. Personally, I don't think that's how it should be.

I don't have a whole lot of problem with the wording of the examples themselves, but I never have a problem with clearer wording, so it looks good. --Jwguy (talk) 13:36, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Exceptions for High-Powered Content

The astromancer class is overpowered, but otherwise seems rule-compliant. I think that rule-compliant but high-powered content should be allowed to exist if flagged with the overpowered campaign template. It's based off the design disclaimer, but would be easy to slap on such articles. It would then allow players of high-powered campaigns to find content that might be of a more appropriate power level, while making it clear to other users that it is high-powered. Many editors want to disregard that content, flag it as unbalanced and say it's not usable at "every table." But that isn't really dealing with the issue of high-powered content on D&D Wiki. It's clear that many people want content like this and I think it's better to control it than try to get rid of it all. And nothing in the template would prevent the content from being nerfed either. So why not curate it?--GamerAim (talk) 14:33, 5 June 2018 (MDT)

How are you thinking to define content as high-powered? At first glance I would seem to disagree with this, since it seems to just be a way of designing content outside of Dungeons and Dragons designs. Secondly, I wonder, why not just use {{Design Note}}? --Green Dragon (talk) 23:42, 5 June 2018 (MDT)

It seems that most of the time overpowered pages are made out of ignorance of the game's mechanics and intended balance points. My understanding of this proposal was that the template linked above is for classes made with full knowledge of the game's intended power level and intentionally created at a power level above that of comparable first-party content, typically as a campaign-level consideration, as appeared to be the case with the Astromancer class. Other good examples of this would be the various "Tome" classes, such as Fighter, Tome (3.5e Class), which is very obviously greatly more powerful than the vanilla SRD:Fighter even with my limited 3.x knowledge, and that's intentional. The Tome Fighter would probably be pretty broken in a campaign that otherwise used the vanilla martial classes, but fits in pretty well with similarly "overpowered" classes when those powerful classes are added as a campaign-level consideration. (I don't know how much of this makes sense) — Geodude (talk | contribs | email)‎‎ . . 00:06, 6 June 2018 (MDT)

I think that Geodude gets it. I can't link any specific cases right now, but I've noted a number of users who claimed to be playing in higher-power games. Most of the time overpowered pages are made out of ignorance of the game's mechanics, but that tends to show in other areas of the article besides balance. So I don't think it would be that difficult to discern. "High-powered" would be "unbalanced in such a way that it mechanically follows the core rules but is well above the power level of equivalent first-party content." I'm not interested in getting into another argument about what's balanced or unbalanced or game-breaking or not game-breaking, because that's subjective and never ends with an agreement. If I need to, I can "police" this content by myself if no one else feels comfortable enough with the D&D rules to make the assessment.--GamerAim (talk) 06:35, 6 June 2018 (MDT)

I'd like to say that I'm against having such a template on the wiki and even if it was clearly defined and outlined I don't think it would be used much and would be difficult to police. —ConcealedLight (talk) 00:48, 6 June 2018 (MDT)

I think that it'd be potentially easier to police because we could save time by flagging certain content as overpowered and not both with as many edit wars or needsbalance templates.--GamerAim (talk) 07:04, 6 June 2018 (MDT)

I agree, you have a point. My understanding is that we need to try this out, and only after gathering experience and examples with it, will we be able to assess it. So, lets see what happens. We will just have to discuss it when its been implemented on a few of the trickier pages that deal with concensus. --Green Dragon (talk) 08:15, 6 June 2018 (MDT)

Thank you, I agree. If it doesn't work out, it won't be hard to undo it :) --GamerAim (talk) 10:05, 6 June 2018 (MDT)

I'm in agreement with CL. Like it or not, this will become "my class is superpower" justification sticker. We have a template for overpowered content and it's called Template:needsbalance. Current policy is that if it fits into an overarching, publically available 'campaign', that's fine - And that makes sense to me, seems to be what Geodude is saying too.

TLDR begins: We run a door shop. We sell standard doors, of the size used in most houses. Customers help design standard doors, and we all enjoy the designs. Sometimes people come by wanting custom bigger doors because they have custom big doorways. We say yes and start selling custom big doors with a 'big door' sticker, of all the sizes people want. Soon, the shop is cluttered - you have to heave big doors out the way to find standard doors, and standard doors out the way to find big doors (except big doors will rarely be the size people want because no standards). Now people won't come to our shop for standard doors nor big doors, because the former is much moreso a hassle to find than it was, and the latter will never be the exact size they want because high power doors can mean anything from 1 meter to 99999 meters. We stock standard designs and it's not hard to scale them up if need be. Yes, people want big doors, but their big door designs will be of no use to anyone else, while cluttering out our useful ones, and we are here to share useful designs with each other. We are not peoples' personal door shop.

TL;DR: Standards to make all content usable to basically everyone are important, otherwise your user-generated resource is basically pointless. Door standards are even more important. --SgtLion (talk) 14:54, 7 June 2018 (MDT)

Your correlations are all valid. I am just saying that to truly see how it works, it would need to be implemented. If we can reach concensus on what meaning our standards should uphold, then lets not create this. Without a consensus, then its very difficult to tell someone that, no, we cannot try something without precedent and experiences.

I want to highlight this diff since it adds even another perspective to the discussion. --Green Dragon (talk) 01:50, 8 June 2018 (MDT)

Just thought I'd tell Sgt his door example cracked me up and got me some weird looks from others :^) —ConcealedLight (talk) 00:25, 12 June 2018 (MDT)

For clarification, are you highlighting the comment made if more damage is desired then consult your DM? And if so, the additional perspective is not to template but include notes on the page when features/traits have questionable power? BigShotFancyMan (talk) 13:42, 8 June 2018 (MDT)

Right. I just saw that diff, and it made me think that there are truly many possible solutions for overpowered campaigns. Variant rulesets, based off a balanced norm, came right to my mind. --Green Dragon (talk) 09:29, 11 June 2018 (MDT)