Forum:Edition-Specific Challenge Rating Categories

Forums: Helping Hand > Edition-Specific Challenge Rating Categories

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I have been adding a lot of code over several months to standardize {{Creature}} infoboxes and make them auto-categorize. Today, I made them auto-categorize challenge ratings.

However, I would like to propose that we make the categories for challenge ratings edition-specific. That is, we no longer have Category:Creatures with a 32 challenge rating; instead we have Category:Creatures with a 32 challenge rating (3e) and Category:Creatures with a 32 challenge rating (5e).

I cannot see any reason not to do this; 3e and 5e challenge ratings are wildly different most of the time, and no one is going to be mixing editions.

The good news is—with a minor, 15-second change in {{ChallengeCats}}—I can make the new categories appear automatically for anything using the challenge3e and challenge5e fields. (Anything using the deprecated challenge field is ignored. There are currently 62 of them across the wiki, and they will all be removed once I get to it.) If a bot could delete any of the old categories from articles, the entire process could be automated, with one exception: Creature articles that use {{Plain table}} or another means to list several challenge ratings will need to be revisited to add the new ratings manually. Again, I have a DPL-generated list of all of these pages (mostly dragons).

Thoughts?

~ Lhynard (talk) 22:19, April 2, 2017 (UTC)

I've never used the challenge ratings for much of anything, so I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other. If the numeric values are not close to interchangeable, then it makes sense (to me) to editionify them.

—Moviesign (talk) 00:05, April 3, 2017 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of having CRs on the wiki. They're very much a crunch thing, and existing category system is a relic of the wiki's 3.5 edition days. Sure, like class levels and spell levels, they're useful for comparison purposes, so I don't mind them in the infobox. But if a GM is looking for a threat for a battle, they're more likely to look up the tables in their Monster Manual than click through nested categories here. Besides, every edition has a different way of rating creature challenge, so there's nothing standardisable across different editions. Even in 3.x edition, CR can scale with HD, size, and age, so some creatures (dragons, elementals, giant insects) will have a half-dozen CRs. It seems like a lot of effort and a step too far.

— BadCatMan (talk) 01:45, April 4, 2017 (UTC)

I am in agreement that they are like class levels and spell levels. I never want to see them in body text. (I don't even think +2 longswords should exist anywhere in body text.)

Yes, I think most DMs will look things up in tables, but I envision a time when our wiki is good enough to create such online tables. For example, I envision being able to click some checkboxes—Chaotic, CR 10, Cold, Mountains—and get a list of FR-specific monsters for my campaign. (I have one working as a demo, but I cannot upload the HTML elements to a wiki.)

In any case, I don't like adding extra effort either, which is exactly why I am in strong favor of autocatting as much as possible. What I've done so far did not remove anything, it simply automatically added categories where people may have forgotten to have done so. My proposal is to split CR cats into 3e and 5e groups, since they make even less sense than they should otherwise. The only extra work would be for the CRs that scale with age, such as dragons, and I'll happily do that work, which is no more work than we already had.

As far as scaling, these are meant to be base CRS. (All CRs are intended to be scaleable beyond that. That's the DM's job.)

~ Lhynard (talk) 12:50, April 4, 2017 (UTC)

I thought we had a "No Crunch" Rule around somewhere - I remember us discussing this in the first couple of years of the Wiki

We do - see what happens when some old codger pipes up - Forgotten Realms Wiki:No crunch - Hurtzbad (talk) 11:37, April 5, 2017 (UTC)

Hurtzbad (talk) 11:06, April 5, 2017 (UTC)

We certainly do, and I am strongly in favor of the rule. But our rule allows for crunch in infoboxes for comparison and categorization purposes, such as spell level, etc. Strangely, (in my opinion,) we also allow "+n-" designations of weapons and armor in the body text of articles.

~ Lhynard (talk) 15:08, April 5, 2017 (UTC)

I share Lhynard's opinion. The "No Crunch" rule is great in general, but, like character levels, I personally find challenge ratings just so interesting to have here. I think we can keep the spirit of the "No Crunch" rule by strictly keeping them within infoboxes and categories. (And as a detail, no author has to fill that column if they are not interested, and it can be agreed that CRs are not relevant for good article status.)

As the question has been raised here, the magical plusses usually go from +1 to +5. Should we decide on five fitting descriptive phrases to generally replace the plusses in the text?

~ Daranios (talk) 20:11, April 5, 2017 (UTC)

I completely agree with the "No crunch" rule... but I have been adding CR ratings to monsters since 2011... after converting to 5e, I have noticed some of the challenge ratings have changed for different monsters... For example, a ogre is 3 CR in third edition and 2 CR in 5e. Of course, this information should only be included into the infoboxes. Thank you Lhyn for sending me a message... teaching takes a lot of work and I have not been as prolific on the Wiki as when I was in school :)

- Darkwynters (talk) 17:46, April 6, 2017 (UTC)

I personally like this idea... Category:Creatures with a 2 challenge rating (5e) could be linked to Category:Creatures by challenge rating which are organized by CR... so we would have an ogre in Category:Creatures with a 3 challenge rating (3e) and Category:Creatures with a 2 challenge rating (5e)... now, I am guessing someone needs to mess with the auto organizer in the Template:Creature template so the categories are created...

- Darkwynters (talk) 23:24, April 20, 2017 (UTC)

“

As the question has been raised here, the magical plusses usually go from +1 to +5. Should we decide on five fitting descriptive phrases to generally replace the plusses in the text?

”

— Daranios

1. one-derful
2. deux-licious
3. wacka-thrice
4. four-tuitious
5. penta-ssential

:^)

—Moviesign (talk) 01:47, April 21, 2017 (UTC)

:-) Shouldn't that be "quint-essential"?

—Daranios (talk) 08:00, April 21, 2017 (UTC)

No, because that is a real word :D

—Moviesign (talk) 13:22, April 21, 2017 (UTC)

@Darkwynters, Ok, the deed is done.

What still remains is to remove all of the old cats. I have a list in my Sandbox that I can begin going through. (It updates automatically, so it doesn't hurt anything if anyone else starts knocking them off without telling me. :)

@Moviesign, :P

~ Lhynard (talk) 02:12, April 21, 2017 (UTC)

The old cats should be gone now. There were 448 creatures with the non-edition-specific categories. Actually there were slightly more since I restarted the bot once after a few pages had been processed.

—Moviesign (talk) 01:36, April 22, 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Movie.

Another question to the group, before DarkW or I go and add all the new cat. pages: How do we want to sort them?

I see two options:

1. As currently, with a sort key of NN, where NN is the CR to two digits.

   This results in headings of 0, 1, 2, and 3, but what it really means is 00s, 10s, 20s, and 30s.

   This also means that the "(3e)"s and the "(5e)"s will alternate through the list.

2. With a sort key of Me, NN, where M is the edition and NN is the CR to two digits.

   This results in headings of 3 and 5, but what it really means is 3e and 5e.

~ Lhynard (talk) 03:01, April 22, 2017 (UTC)

Following the convention of other categories, I think we should make Category:3rd edition challenge ratings (or maybe Category:3rd edition creature challenge ratings if you want to keep "creature" in the name, or perhaps Category:Challenge ratings (3e)) and Category:5th edition challenge ratings and put those two categories in Category:Challenge ratings by edition (or maybe Category:Creature challenge ratings by edition). Make the sortkey NN, and then decide if you want to keep Category:Creatures by challenge rating as the combined 3e/5e list, or just delete it. Note that the combined list could be generated by {{Category union}} I believe.

—Moviesign (talk) 04:20, April 22, 2017 (UTC)