Because those 3, 12, and 5280 increments are more useful for measuring things humans actually want to measure than those units divisible by 10.Stuff.Your system is based on the length of a corn of barley and goes in increments of 3, 12, and 5280. Why and how is that superior to a clear cut decimal system?How? I've been measuring things in metric all my life just fine without issue.
From a game design point of view, meters allow for more variety in weapon ranges and movement ranges. In 1e these can only go in 5 ft. increments, but if you used meters you could have 0m range (adjacent) attacks for unarmed strikes, daggers, handaxes, and other close range weapons, 1m range attacks for swords, rapiers, and most hafted two handed weapons, and 2m range attacks for greatswords and most polearms, and 3m+ range attacks for very long polearms like pikes and sarissas.
It also also allows you to better make use of space to block enemy movement, since medium creatures would take up a 2x2 space and small creatures a 1x1 space.
If the game won't be in metric (which let's face it it's not), they could have at least an official ruling on how to use metric measurements for the grid. I know in 1e they use 1 square = 1.5 meters in the Spanish version. Maybe have all the distances measured in SQUARES in the rules text and then simply have a small section that says "So how big's a square? Well, different cultures use different systems, so instead of using one over another, we went with a neutral square based system, but the game is written under the assumption that 1 square is roughly 3 square feet or 1 square meter." or something like that.
There absolutely no reason you couldn’t have adjacent, one yard, etcetera in imperial. Switching to metric has literally no effect on the proposed categories you mentioned. Perfectly available in imperial.
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"Thanks, that's helpful" is exactly my response when I see a temperature in Fahrenheit, but I don't recall anyone suggesting that it be stricken from the rules forever more. Good grief, guys.
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How far away are those mountains?
65000 squares.
Thanks, that's helpful.
Kind of a disingenuous argument. Obviously squares would only be used in the tactical scale. In the very very rare instances where a spell has a range in miles, or when talking about overland travel and such, you would just present range or speed in miles next to range or speed in kilometers. It doesn't come up often, so the word count addition is trivial.
It really doesn't take a lot of work to support the whole world here. I say this as an American, albeit one who works in the sciences and uses metric in my everyday life as a result.
I use metric for science imperial for everyday life.
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This thread is still going? OK, how about this: Alignment should be metric. Discuss.
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where we use inches feet yards and miles.
you should consider using commas too
There absolutely no reason you couldn’t have adjacent, one yard, etcetera in imperial. Switching to metric has literally no effect on the proposed categories you mentioned. Perfectly available in imperial.
A yard is basically a meter. If you haven't noticed, I'm basically saying the game should use yard/meter squares because they're not only interchangeable, they allow for greater range of movement and reach values.
But the game isn't in yards or meters, it's in 5 ft increments, which doesn't allow for the kind of categories I've mentioned.
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This thread is still going? OK, how about this: Alignment should be metric. Discuss.
The fundamental unit of evil is the Jerk, J. 0 J is pure good without the least hint of evil. Neutral characters tend to be in the 33-66 megajerk (MJ) range. Anything over a 66 MJ is full on evil. There is no upper limit, most demon lords are somewhere in the gigajerk range.
The fundamental unit of chaos is of course the Chao, C (pronounced cow). Similarly anything under 33 megachaos (MC) is in the lawful band while the neutral goes up to 66 MC. Chaos is of course also limitless. Anything over a gigachao is pretty much incomprehensible to a human mind.
So now evil acts can be described in their Jerk value. A routine bad act might be worth something like 10 kilojerks, a worse one might be in the megajerks, while truly heinous acts can be hundreds of megajerks or even into gigajerk territory depending on severity.
Batman is undefinable in these scales, and instead will simply punch you in the face for suggesting such a thing. But he does totally make use of the Bat-Alinometer to determine the alignment of criminals. The Joker makes both needles go crazy.
Poking a puppy is in the microjerk range?
I like it but I'm pretty sure OJ is not pure good. I mean even if he didn't kill his wife.
Poking a puppy is in the microjerk range?
Sounds about right, if it's just a mild annoyance and not really that evil. It takes a lot of puppy poking to really change your alignment much. Puppy punting is much more serious, at least into the kilojerks.
Perhaps the Jerk and Chao scales should be reserved for individual actions, while a person might be more rated in their average value for a unit of time. So maybe jerks per hour or kilojerks per day is a better description of a person's evil.
I can't even explain how much I am enjoying the metric system for alignment right now.
Poking a puppy is in the microjerk range?Sounds about right, if it's just a mild annoyance and not really that evil. It takes a lot of puppy poking to really change your alignment much. Puppy punting is much more serious, at least into the kilojerks.
Perhaps the Jerk and Chao scales should be reserved for individual actions, while a person might be more rated in their average value for a unit of time. So maybe jerks per hour or kilojerks per day is a better description of a person's evil.
Is there a place for jerk acceleration? Kilojerks per second per second?
Is there a place for jerk acceleration? Kilojerks per second per second?Poking a puppy is in the microjerk range?Sounds about right, if it's just a mild annoyance and not really that evil. It takes a lot of puppy poking to really change your alignment much. Puppy punting is much more serious, at least into the kilojerks.
Perhaps the Jerk and Chao scales should be reserved for individual actions, while a person might be more rated in their average value for a unit of time. So maybe jerks per hour or kilojerks per day is a better description of a person's evil.
sounds like that would correlate to how many beers drunk.
Is there a place for jerk acceleration? Kilojerks per second per second?Poking a puppy is in the microjerk range?Sounds about right, if it's just a mild annoyance and not really that evil. It takes a lot of puppy poking to really change your alignment much. Puppy punting is much more serious, at least into the kilojerks.
Perhaps the Jerk and Chao scales should be reserved for individual actions, while a person might be more rated in their average value for a unit of time. So maybe jerks per hour or kilojerks per day is a better description of a person's evil.
Sure. A measurement for how quickly your alignment is changing. Having a negative KJ per second^2 shows someone becoming less evil and on their way to redemption if maintained.
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This thread is still going? OK, how about this: Alignment should be metric. Discuss.The fundamental unit of evil is the Jerk, J. 0 J is pure good without the least hint of evil. Neutral characters tend to be in the 33-66 megajerk (MJ) range. Anything over a 66 MJ is full on evil. There is no upper limit, most demon lords are somewhere in the gigajerk range.
The fundamental unit of chaos is of course the Chao, C (pronounced cow). Similarly anything under 33 megachaos (MC) is in the lawful band while the neutral goes up to 66 MC. Chaos is of course also limitless. Anything over a gigachao is pretty much incomprehensible to a human mind.
So now evil acts can be described in their Jerk value. A routine bad act might be worth something like 10 kilojerks, a worse one might be in the megajerks, while truly heinous acts can be hundreds of megajerks or even into gigajerk territory depending on severity.
Batman is undefinable in these scales, and instead will simply punch you in the face for suggesting such a thing. But he does totally make use of the Bat-Alinometer to determine the alignment of criminals. The Joker makes both needles go crazy.
See, I would place Neutral at 0 on both axes, such that good becomes negative Jerks, and evil positive Jerks, while lawful would be negative Chaos and choatic positive Chaos, thereby allowing for both ends of the spectrum to be limitless.
Negakilojerks?
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Come on everyone, this has gotten far away from the actual topic and just degenerated into an argument.
The reality is a) Paizo is an American company and the majority of its sales are to Americans, so the chance that the new edition switches to the metric system is pretty much zero, and b) all this bickering back and forth is pointless, off topic and isn’t appropriate here
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The only problem with including both seems to be one of word count, which is a pretty valid reason to not include metric as even a small number of characters can add up to quite a bit of page space over the course of a book. It's possible that the simplified stat blocks might allow for more space in which to add metric units, but that space might also be used to add entirely new content. I can see pretty good arguments for either one.
Other than measurement given in feet (which would be cumbersome to convert on the fly each and every time), how often is an explicit measurement actually given?
See, I would place Neutral at 0 on both axes, such that good becomes negative Jerks, and evil positive Jerks, while lawful would be negative Chaos and choatic positive Chaos, thereby allowing for both ends of the spectrum to be limitless.
I can see that. I was going more for an absolute scale like Kelvin, which makes it usable in equations and such. Clearly there are other valid ways of handling things. We need to convene a meeting of the ISO to work out the best.
... Maybe put metric as an option for PDF purchases?
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The only problem with including both seems to be one of word count, which is a pretty valid reason to not include metric as even a small number of characters can add up to quite a bit of page space over the course of a book. It's possible that the simplified stat blocks might allow for more space in which to add metric units, but that space might also be used to add entirely new content. I can see pretty good arguments for either one.
Thing about that argument though is that its like saying "If I had never bought any video games I'd be filthy rich by now" which just isn't true because you would have had spent money on something else instead of saving it.
From what I see of Bestiaries 1-6, none of them are tight enough that you couldn't include (number meter) in them in fear of running out of space. I would assume that shorter statblocks mean more ecology info, so again, you can't complete additional sentence on ecology with just two more words, so including both meters and feets shouldn't take content from anyone.
And even then, Paizo could just decide on not having monster entries include exact heights and lenghts for creature, even if they don't include nice comparison picture for the creature. Technically speaking, including any exact height for creature is completely optional as rule wise it doesn't matter, and not all creatures in bestiaries currently even have their lenghts/heights listed because lack of word space <_<
So yeah, considering that not all Paizo bestiaries actually have lenghts/heights listed, if including both feets and meters is too much, wouldn't it be better for sake of consistency not include any heights and widths for any monster? That would save one sentence worth of text on each bestiary entry so that much word count could be actually used to include other sort of ecology info
The only problem with including both seems to be one of word count, which is a pretty valid reason to not include metric as even a small number of characters can add up to quite a bit of page space over the course of a book. It's possible that the simplified stat blocks might allow for more space in which to add metric units, but that space might also be used to add entirely new content. I can see pretty good arguments for either one.Thing about that argument though is that its like saying "If I had never bought any video games I'd be filthy rich by now" which just isn't true because you would have had spent money on something else instead of saving it.
From what I see of Bestiaries 1-6, none of them are tight enough that you couldn't include (number meter) in them in fear of running out of space. I would assume that shorter statblocks mean more ecology info, so again, you can't complete additional sentence on ecology with just two more words, so including both meters and feets shouldn't take content from anyone.
And even then, Paizo could just decide on not having monster entries include exact heights and lenghts for creature, even if they don't include nice comparison picture for the creature. Technically speaking, including any exact height for creature is completely optional as rule wise it doesn't matter, and not all creatures in bestiaries currently even have their lenghts/heights listed because lack of word space <_<
So yeah, considering that not all Paizo bestiaries actually have...
The more I think about it, the more I agree that the page count issue is probably overblown. The most common instances of lengths I can think of is spell ranges. And they have their own line in the spell listing. Although this does bring up another potential issue, how do you modify the formulas for range to be applicable for both types of units? It'll have to be approximate because it would be awkward to have the precise numbers. Likely something like 5 ft = 1.5 meters would be used. So a 5 foot square is a 1.5 meter square. And since ranges are given in increments of 5 feet, they can easily be done in increments of 1.5 meters.
For example:
Close 25 feet plus 5 feet per two full caster levels. (7.5 Meters plus 1.5 per 2 caster levels)
Of course because these range types are universal, they could simply describe the ranges one time in a table at the beginning of the spell section and just list range type: Personal, touch, close, medium, long, etc. Then unique fixed ranges can just list in both feet and meters.
edit: You will have to get used to counting by 1.5. I /think/ this shouldn't be too hard, especially if done often enough.
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I think to be fair to all, and to be politically correct. Paizo should switch back and forth from Imperial to Metric in the book. Every other entry for a measurement of distance or temperature should alternate between the two.
To save space, round to 1 digit after the decimal.
Seems like if we used 3 foot or 6 foot squares this would be a lot easier, because then we could use yard and meters interchangeably. Doesn't seem likely to happen though.
{. . .}
Finally, I think the feel and verisimilitude that Paizo wants would be undermined by tracking things at the tactical level by "squares" or "hexes" instead of in-game or real-world measurements.
{. . .}
As mentioned in various places above, a pace (two-step definition, 5 feet or really close to 1.5 meters) is a pretty good standin for the length of one side of a 5' square, and since this was a real-world unit, it shouldn't be too hard on the verisimilitude, and it should be approximately equally aggravating to both Metric and Imperial users.
{. . .}
Meanwhile, there's pretty much nothing on your body that is a meter long, but my foot is pretty close to a foot, and I bet you could measure with your non-regulation-sized feet if you put your back into it some.
{. . .}Wait, my leg is too far off from being 1 meter long. {. . .}
Dain bramage! That was supposed to be NOT too far off from being 1 meter long. I got 3 faves on that post . . . and now I can't figure out whether any of them are because people didn't notice that typo, or because people DID notice that typo . . . .