Quote:
Originally Posted by rob
We determined that statblocks really didn't offer anything of substantive value and had some drawbacks. As mentioned above, they require the user to make extra clicks to view them, and we found that less technical users would simply click on them instead of loading them into a separate tab, which forced the user to switch back and forth and incur the loading time for changing the contents of the tab. The additional drawback is that no linking can be performed from within statblocks. By putting the statblocks in a snippet that is auto-collapsed in the topic, the information is readily accessible, doesn't require navigating away, and can be fully linked.
Based on the above, the statblock snippet type is something that is available for anyone who wants to use it, but it's not something we'll be using in official content.
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I get this. I've always been a little confused by the need to have a character topic and then a separate statblock screen for the same character. I ALSO get that sometimes you just have a one-time NPC that only shows up in one place and so they need to just show up in the topic where they "reside."
Having said that, there are a couple of other situations that I'm curious about in terms of the suggested best practices. They are...
(1) Major NPCs (which the diary and CSGs partially address), and
(2) Generic NPCs ("Monsters")
The Generic NPC category includes anything that is not unique in its identity, but ubiquitous as a category within the gaming system, in which all elements share the same statblock. Goblins in D&D, Stormtroopers in Star Wars, etc.
Two questions about these categories:
(1) Do these these types of NPCs show up as a stat block in every encounter where they appear? This seems very redundant to me - probably better to just the encounter off multiple tabs instead.
(2) Should the statblocks in the individual topics for these NPCs also appear in the Additional Details section? Or should they show up somewhere closer to the top?