How many monsters does a D&D edition need to start with?

[Sashi]

So there's a concept on display here that I've been mulling over. And that's the part where benefits have to be bought off with handicaps.

The PC generation system has to produce characters who can at least nominally pass the SGT, but I don't see why monsters need to do the same. Closet trolls are the bad, but I think there is a mindspace for monsters with extremely simple (ogre) or display hilarious anti-synergy of abilities (dire bat) sitting alongside extremely built up and complicated monsters (dragon, planetar).

The problem with the 3E system is that CR is trying to be a reasonably objective measure of monster power, but that ignores synergy or intended use. Kobolds should really be CRed as packs of four, and Dragons should have a CR higher than what they do with a "And totally use them to spank lower level parties" tag.

Like a lot of things 4E had a good idea implemented idiotically. But I think you could do something with the concept of monsters coming in different challenge flavors so that you can have a giant (warrior), mindflayer (caster), and dragon (gestalt warrior+caster) statted out as the same level monster, but the dragon is actually marked with the [awesome] tag.

[deaddmwalking]

[quote="PhoneLobster']Sharks are actually an exceptionally good example of a monster probably better handled as a trap or a hazardous environment.

Lets face it precisely what encounter involving sharks that you've EVER seen in play do the sharks perform any other role aside from the source of damage that effectively turns a the sea surrounding your pirate ship fight into "surprise acid pool" (teeth variety), or else amounts to walking through a dungeon and suspicious body of water obstacle "surprise acid pool" (teeth variety), or "No, Mr Bond, I expect you to fall into a, Surprise Acid Pool!" (teeth variety). When are D&D sharks EVER something other than "Surprise acid pool!".[/quote]

This is still the point that I haven't been able to wrap my head around.

If this is treated as a trap that either has an attack/damage line and/or does auto-damage each round it can be disabled by mudering the component sharks. If you stab it like any other monster and it dies, what advantage do you have for treating it as a trap?

Ultimately, what is the difference between a trap and a monster if you can kill them both?

[RobbyPants]

Yeah, I don't get that either. It seems like you could then do the same thing, and call a horde of zombies a trap instead of a bunch of creatures, once you're sufficiently high-level.

I'd prefer the game just have a stream-lined way have having X monsters be able to surround a PC and resolve their attack in a single attack, and to give PCs abilities to wipe the floor with large numbers of mooks with minimal dice-rolling. They'd still be statted as monsters, but you could at least cut down on resolution time for both the player and the DM.

[fbmf]

Can Disable Device be used on these ani-traps?

What happens?


Game On,
fbmf

[DSMatticus]

Lets face it precisely what encounter involving sharks that you've EVER seen in play do the sharks perform any other role aside from the source of damage that effectively turns a the sea surrounding your pirate ship fight into "surprise acid pool" (teeth variety), or else amounts to walking through a dungeon and suspicious body of water obstacle "surprise acid pool" (teeth variety), or "No, Mr Bond, I expect you to fall into a, Surprise Acid Pool!" (teeth variety). When are D&D sharks EVER something other than "Surprise acid pool!".

If players are able to use their attacks to empty the water obstacle of sharks (and they are), then the sharks have defenses and hitpoints. If players are able to use their defenses to protect themself from shark attacks as though they were being bitten by creatures, then the sharks have attacks and damages. You have a trap that is in every way like a statblock for a monster, except it says Level 3 Shark [Trap] at the top of its statline instead of Level 3 Shark [Beast].

You have made zero progress, except you get to claim you didn't make a shark monster and instead made a shark trap, and if people don't like the shark you can say your monster generation system is perfect but need to work on the traps, and if people do like the shark you can say "see, it was better as a trap (even though it's really still a monster all I did was replace one word)." It's a shell game.

You do not pull a "there are a selection of kick ass super powers ONLY sharks can have because only they have the limitations that make it acceptable to shoot the party with those powas!".

Monsters have to be level appropriate under the conditions you are expected to fight them; no more, no less. If your argument is that trading mobility for autowin against everything within X meters would be bad design, no shit. Thank you, Captain Obvious. I wouldn't even dare to dream of so much as being the Holmes to your Sherlock.

Over here in the discussion that is actually happening, we are talking about monsters that have abilities to compensate for their lack of mobility (a better range, stealth, mobility denial, and so on), but take level appropriate actions against the PC's while they are in range. I.e., in exchange for their mobility they get abilities that help them keep the PC's in range. Not abilities that let them win at D&D for X meters.

This is a bullshit strawman I already called you on at the first hint you would go down that path. The correct response when being caught with your hand in the cookie jar of intellectual dishonesty is not to eat the fucking cookie, and if you aren't going to raise your standards of conversation to address the things people are actually saying you will just fucking go on ignore. I will deal with your stupidity and your terrible ideas because those we can at least get productive discussion out of knocking those down, but if you aren't even going to pretend to respond to the people you are arguing with then there is no fucking point and I will not waste my time.

The whole point of the closet monster argument, and the stupid NPCs nailed to stupid shit argument was that it was supposed to define a series of abilities paid for with disabilities that could not be broken up discretely and given out to the likes of non-unique ass pulled monsters for fear of breaking the universe.

Okay, it turns out you do go on ignore. I'm not going to fucking sit here and listen to you try and rewrite the thread and hope people won't flip back to page 16-17, ctrl+f immobile, and find that immobile creatures were actually brought up as examples of monsters that could be level appropriate if and only if they have abilities that compensated for their lack of mobility (as opposed to your claims I/we said "monsters are allowed to be level inappropriate if they are situational") and as such made a perfectly systematic monster generation system either more complicated or less balanced.

Both plant monsters and spiders get picks from the stealth ability set and the mobility denial ability set. There's no unique bonus or ability the plant monster gets for giving up its legs over the spider, but giving up its legs requires that it have picks from those sets in order to stay level appropriate while the spider, being mobile, can give up mobility denial via webs in favor of, say, mobility via jumping. That has been the argument from square one. And your efforts to lie about that six pages later earn you an ignore because it's really fucking scummy.

[Kaelik]

And your efforts to lie about that six pages later earn you an ignore because it's really fucking scummy.

Welcome to TGD, this is PL. He has a thing he does. This is it.

[PhoneLobster]

Ultimately, what is the difference between a trap and a monster if you can kill them both?

A less complex write up.

[PhoneLobster]

Can Disable Device be used on these ani-traps?

Can you in fact disable device any "Surprise Acid Pool!" or "Oooh Lava!" type area hazard?

[Parthenon]

Can you in fact disable device any "Surprise Acid Pool!" or "Oooh Lava!" type area hazard?

Lava is a trap now? And here I thought it was an environmental hazard.

---

There are some animals I would suggest are better treated the same way as environmental hazards. Namely swarms.

So, a pit of snakes has the hazard of if you are in the bottom of the pit then you automatically receive some minor damage, are entangled and have to make saves against poison.

Or if you are in a square currently being occupied by a swarm of bees then you have to save against distraction, require concentration checks and receive a penalty to sensory checks.

Conventional attacks don't really do anything, but you can use skills, abilities or equipment to change the hazard.

Just like you can chuck a vial of alchemist's frost at lava to get a temporary stepping stone or burn a section of fight to get past it, you can chuck some fire at a pile of snakes to kill some and make the rest slither away to remove the hazard.

[K]

]So there's a concept on display here that I've been mulling over. And that's the part where benefits have to be bought off with handicaps.
The PC generation system has to produce characters who can at least nominally pass the SGT, but I don't see why monsters need to do the same.

You don't do that for two reasons:

1. It makes it impossible to playtest the power levels of monsters.

2. PC's want to play monsters super bad. They also want to shapechange into them.

[K]

Can Disable Device be used on these ani-traps?

What happens?


Game On,
fbmf

Yes and no.

Throwing a piece of meat to get guard dogs to not attack is pretty classic and that's not fundamentally different from putting a piton into a pressure plate to jam it. Tossing a stone to get a zombie to walk the other direction because it's a dumb zombie, covering yourself in spoor to get a stupid monster to ignore you, and simply tossing rocks at animals to scare them off is also classic.

That being said, you don't need to do anything after the badger pops up out of the bushes and takes a swipe because its a dumb animal who is going to run away. It's a one-shot trap that has been expended.

[OgreBattle]

Can Disable Device be used on these ani-traps?

What happens?

Game On,
fbmf

Animal Empathy and nature skills are the equivalent to using a "good with mechanical stuff" skill to disable mechanical hazards.

[K]

Lets face it precisely what encounter involving sharks that you've EVER seen in play do the sharks perform any other role aside from the source of damage that effectively turns a the sea surrounding your pirate ship fight into "surprise acid pool" (teeth variety), or else amounts to walking through a dungeon and suspicious body of water obstacle "surprise acid pool" (teeth variety), or "No, Mr Bond, I expect you to fall into a, Surprise Acid Pool!" (teeth variety). When are D&D sharks EVER something other than "Surprise acid pool!".

If players are able to use their attacks to empty the water obstacle of sharks (and they are), then the sharks have defenses and hitpoints. If players are able to use their defenses to protect themself from shark attacks as though they were being bitten by creatures, then the sharks have attacks and damages. You have a trap that is in every way like a statblock for a monster, except it says Level 3 Shark [Trap] at the top of its statline instead of Level 3 Shark [Beast].

I'd be curious to hear why you think a pool of sharks need monster stats.

Trap stats are obvious. It needs AC, HPs, attack bonus or DC, and damage, and so that's four stats right there. Maybe Hardness for a fifth stat and it's a object.

As for monster stats, I don't see the point. It doesn't need skill ratings, it won't be statted with abilities, it doesn't make sensory checks, doesn't need initiative bonuses because it won't participate in combat rounds, it doesn't need ability scores because you won't be doing anything like Grappling it, and it's vastly simplified if it just fails all saves because objects and object-like things getting saves always slowed the game down too much and often didn't make sense.

The only reason to give it monster stats is because someone thinks that fighting a pool of 30+ sharks is worth the giant pain in the ass it would be to do that combat. I can't say that people would go that way considering how easily they recognized the vast utility of the swarm rules and this is a similar situation.

[Cyberzombie]

When are D&D sharks EVER something other than "Surprise acid pool!".

Anytime you're running any kind of underwater adventure for one where the PCs are exploring a sunken structure or ship. Sharks then behave like any other monster, capable of moving around the map, possibly in response to something the PCs do, like release blood in the water. When they attack, they are not simply a One-and-Done style monster, they continually attack until killed. They are also capable of retreat (and a rather fast retreat too).

I could understand some logic in using trap guidelines for ambush predators like green slime, piercers, ropers or alligators. These things make one attack and then are largely harmless, so long as you stay out of range. And if you spot their ambush, they're likely to be no threat at all. Personally I still don't think it's worth stating them up fully as traps, but as far as damage guidelines, you'd probably want to balance them as though they were a trap attack.

However, I have no idea why you would think a shark would be anything other than a monster. A pit with sharks should be no different than a pit with a troll in it.

[K]

First, demanding examples from published work involving either of two creatures who are not the creature we're talking about is a seriously goofy demand. And since you don't even acknowledge that you'd actually relent on any of your positions if I met your demands, I'm not inclined to put in the effort. I just assume you'd declare it an invalid example for special pleading reasons and demand another one, repeat.

To make your examples work, you need to write up rules that don't exist. That's my point.

There is no "beehive attack" statted up anywhere and so you've already decided to design rules for the game where it's a functional and good thing and not a shitty and lame thing. That's you rewriting the whole game just to make your MTP work.

The same goes for setting fires so fast and dangerous with non-magic means that it's a danger to a small party of 4-6 highly mobile people. You decided that a mass battle tactic that is effective against hundreds of men with low mobility is going to be a working tactic and then written rules to make that happen.

How would feel if I did the same thing? I could just declare that bee hives don't do damage or have any other effect and plains take 3-6 minutes to catch fire and so aren't a danger to parties of 4-6 people who can slowly walk away.

I won't even address the problem where you've decided that finding and setting up a beehive is an easy thing for an animal-shaped thing with no hands in a vast forest OR that plains just happen to be dry enough on that particular day and time to even catch fire because those things can be fudged for the sake of designing a good encounter despite being highly unlikely.

[K]

However, I have no idea why you would think a shark would be anything other than a monster. A pit with sharks should be no different than a pit with a troll in it.

It's the same reason for the swarm rules. Running fights with lots of weak things is a giant pain the ass and running a fight with a few things is not.

It also makes less sense in terms of verisimilitude to do them the same because being attacked by a mob of things is tactically not the same as being attacked by a few. It just makes a lot less sense to say that you can crowd-surf through a horde of zombies/sharks/orcs without getting hurt than it does to say that even awesome people take some low amount of aggregate damage from all the things trying to tear them apart.

[deaddmwalking]

Ultimately, what is the difference between a trap and a monster if you can kill them both?

A less complex write up.

Since K is adamant that we're not talking about 3.x, there is no requirement that monster stat blocks be as complicated as 3.x stat blocks. If monster stat blocks are simple, it doesn't save a lot of labor to reduce them further.

I'd be curious to hear why you think a pool of sharks need monster stats.

Trap stats are obvious. It needs AC, HPs, attack bonus or DC, and damage, and so that's four stats right there. Maybe Hardness for a fifth stat and it's a object.

As for monster stats, I don't see the point. It doesn't need skill ratings, it won't be statted with abilities, it doesn't make sensory checks, doesn't need initiative bonuses because it won't participate in combat rounds, it doesn't need ability scores because you won't be doing anything like Grappling it, and it's vastly simplified if it just fails all saves because objects and object-like things getting saves always slowed the game down too much and often didn't make sense.

The only reason to give it monster stats is because someone thinks that fighting a pool of 30+ sharks is worth the giant pain in the ass it would be to do that combat. I can't say that people would go that way considering how easily they recognized the vast utility of the swarm rules and this is a similar situation.

If you have an ability to drain a living creature of it's vitality (because you're a vampire or something) you may have attacks that do not deal hit point damage. Even if ability damage isn't a thing in your hypothetical system, you are going to have some effects that cause stunning/paralysis. I'm having trouble understanding how such abilities would interact with sharks if they don't have attributes... If you 'thicken water' that requires strength checks to swim through the affected area, sharks are going to need the ability to make strength checks.

While they may not be as complex as PCs, trying to pretend that they're not creatures seems to inhibit their ability to perform otherwise normal creature actions, which damages verisimilitude.

Creating situations where they auto-fail checks and/or saves creates unexpected results. If your sleep spell works on orcs with only rare success, but always works perfectly on sharks, that would be a surprising result.

Finally, I don't see the benefit of the line being drawn at 'sharks'. We already know that sharks can be very large. If we include prehistoric sharks, they can be very, very large indeed. If we include fantastic shark-like creatures from the demon-seas there's no telling where we might end up.

Why exclude 'base sharks' as monsters when you're going to have multiple levels of similar creatures? I mean I can see excluding creatures that can never pose a threat to PCs. I don't really care if you leave out goldfish stats, but even '1 hit point' threats like a lionfish probably deserve attributes - if for no other reason because the PCs might try to use them against their opponents.

[K]

If you have an ability to drain a living creature of it's vitality (because you're a vampire or something) you may have attacks that do not deal hit point damage. Even if ability damage isn't a thing in your hypothetical system, you are going to have some effects that cause stunning/paralysis. I'm having trouble understanding how such abilities would interact with sharks if they don't have attributes... If you 'thicken water' that requires strength checks to swim through the affected area, sharks are going to need the ability to make strength checks.

While they may not be as complex as PCs, trying to pretend that they're not creatures seems to inhibit their ability to perform otherwise normal creature actions, which damages verisimilitude.

The abstraction actually reinforces verisimilitude while minimizing dumb rule interactions.

Why would your vampire vitality-draining attack be useful when you'd need to actually hit all 30 sharks? Why would you want to roll 30 separate Str checks when you are still going to be next to the same number of sharks if you fall into the pit?

The 3e swarm-type rules have similar abstractions for the sake of playability. Rather than recording damage numbers on 100 small spiders, you just assume that AoE damage kills some. Rather than rolling 100 attacks, you assume that some damage gets through. Rather than track individual status effects, you assume that they are immune.

That being said, the swarm rules could easily be collapsed further for added playability because recording the Str of a swarm is fucking dumb.

[DSMatticus]

The only reason to give it monster stats is because someone thinks that fighting a pool of 30+ sharks is worth the giant pain in the ass it would be to do that combat.

Okay, 1st: it became a pool of sharks when PL declared sharks did not come in singles. The original point was about a shark, or a giant squid, or a kraken, or any single monster whose effectiveness is severely hindered when you fight it outside the environment you are intended to fight it (i.e. any aquatic creature), because that is an identical complaint to the one PL made with just a different given environment.

2nd: fighting giant mobs of anything is annoying. That's not a shark-related problem. Pick any monster and throw 30 of them on the grid and you have a cluster fuck unless you have mass combat rules. You're not saying anything here; you're pointing out a problem that is completely unrelated to the topic, and the problem itself only occurs as a result of PL shifting the topic to one which he felt was more favorable to him (shark swarms in confined spaces). At the point where "swarms of 30+ sharks" are level appropriate encounters and you're planning to use them, you need a separate system for them, but it's going to be mass combat rules and they should work for things like 30+ wolves and 30+ manticores and so on.

Now, if you think a shark should be a creature that does not act, cannot be grappled, cannot make/fail sensory checks, and isn't good at anything (like water stealth or leaping or whatever), then... what the hell?

[Sashi]

1. It makes it impossible to playtest the power levels of monsters.

I don't see it. You can still playtest, it would just be official that a level 7 Dragon is a more interesting and powerful monster than a level 7 Dire Bear. And there's no amount of strength or dex that you can give the Dire Bear to make it as interesting or complicated as a Dragon.

This already exists at the lower levels with CR 1/2 zombies and baboons. It just means you can stat up Level 5 Sahugin warriors and explicitly state that they're meant to show up in packs of 4, often supported by a Sahugin Cleric.

2. PC's want to play monsters super bad. They also want to shapechange into them.

Nothing about tagging monster entries with relative strengths changes this. A Kobold Warrior is CR 1/4, but a Kobold Sorcerer is CR 1. Which Kobold you actually has listed stats in the Monster manual won't change that. I'm just saying we should do the same thing by statting up a monster manual Hill Giant (warrior 7) with a mundane greatclub and hide armor that's explicitly marked as meant to fight level 7 parties in groups of 4, because a Hill Giant PC would be a Hill Giant (Paladin 7) in full plate riding on a celestial grizzly bear.

People want to play monsters, but the gamut of what "monsters" people want to play run the gamut from Half-Dragon War Troll Barbarians to Enlightened Badger Rogues. Half the fun of "monsters as PCs"s is playing things that struggle with "standard" PC challenges, the other half is picking exploits off of the "monsters only" platter.

And anything wrong with how Shapechange interacts with this kind of thing is on Shapechange and other polymorph rules, not on a Grey Render zombie having more hit dice than a Planetar.

[K]

...

2nd: fighting giant mobs of anything is annoying. That's not a shark-related problem. Pick any monster and throw 30 of them on the grid and you have a cluster fuck unless you have mass combat rules. You're not saying anything here; you're pointing out a problem that is completely unrelated to the topic...

Oh no, it's completely related.

This argument started many moons ago because I mentioned that a number of things needed to stop being statted monsters because it gummed up combat to an indecent degree.

I mean, a five-person party with five horses, two animal companions, one familiar, two pet skeletons, and a Pokemon griffin from a Figurine is 16 units before you even get to the potential summons you might need to keep track of. That's a clusterfuck before even meeting the first enemy and none of the PCs is even trying to push any limits by walking around with followers, constructs, henchmen, hirelings, Awakened trained animal-friends, planar allies, crap bound by planar binding, and any random NPCs that might be in that adventure.

Demoting non-adventurers and bullshit "monsters" to some simplified mechanic seems in order to keep the gaming running smoothly, but even the suggestion sent the villagers racing for pitchforks and torches. Queue flamewar.

...
Now, if you think a shark should be a creature that does not act, cannot be grappled, cannot make/fail sensory checks, and isn't good at anything (like water stealth or leaping or whatever), then... what the hell?

Some things:

1. One shark is bullshit. All animals are bullshit. This is supposed to be a game where a threat for level 1 heroes might be the walking dead or minor demons, and a single shark is low-budget 1970s action movie stuff.

Why not just let a very low-level threat be a pool of 30+ sharks and a bear in a cave a 2d6-damage trap? Set the scale at point where you can just roll a single die to figure out if you killed a bear while hunting and now are feasting on bearmeat for lunch.

Why not do a DnD shark story about a demon shark that fires lightning bolts and summons storms that has a pact with the local sahuagin? Let's get a little metal here!

Read up on low-level Dungeon adventures. They almost universally suck because lowball threats like a pack of wolves is unthematic and sucks.

2. Animals gum up the works. Animal companions, trained horses fighting in combat, familiars, etc are just extra units on the field that don't need to be there.

Even as monsters, they spawn a variety of problems as easily fixable as the killer housecat problem and as fundamental as overly crowded and slow combats because PCs are toting around packs of war dogs and falcons they bought at the local Adventure-mart to kill threats instead of doing something heroic, animal fights are boring because they can't have magic powers and die to arrows and kiting, and they never seem to work properly with buffing.

Anything they bring to table can be simulated in some other way that is more simple. Simple trap mechanics are great for the animal that leaps out and attacks before running away. Simple object rules for horses keeps them out of the active part of the combat. Simple environmental rules for bat swarms avoids the entire issue of actually fighting fucking bats instead of anything good.

[Username17]

One shark is bullshit. All animals are bullshit.

This is a dumb position to defend, and you defending it is dumb.

You can make a good case that fighting a shark or a tiger or a bear or a wolf is a low level task, but it's still totally a thing that heroes do. And not just in gladitorial arenas.

By throwing in the towel on being able to represent iconic battles of Conan, Tarzan, Hercules, and Beowulf you're still not actually gaining anything. You're unhinging the lower levels, you're removing all sense of perspective from higher level accomplishments, and you're not getting anything.

The only thing you're doing is muddying the waters. By removing actual baselines and measurable mortal accomplishments from the game, you're giving yourself incredibly moving goalposts that allow you to claim victory no matter what bullshit your system puts out. But that's bullshit and all the players will know it's bullshit. If you can't say whether your character could wrestle a bear, you can't say how good your character is at wrestling. Full fucking stop.

-Username17

[K]

Ultimately, what is the difference between a trap and a monster if you can kill them both?

Traps take thirty seconds to resolve. Monsters take 30 minutes.

[K]

1. It makes it impossible to playtest the power levels of monsters.

I don't see it. You can still playtest, it would just be official that a level 7 Dragon is a more interesting and powerful monster than a level 7 Dire Bear. And there's no amount of strength or dex that you can give the Dire Bear to make it as interesting or complicated as a Dragon.

Letting monsters pick up weaknesses means that you can't ever actually playtest them. The CR 7 Dire Bear is always going to lose to the CR 7 Dragon and the level 7 archer even when it has melee attacks powerful enough to one-shot them.

That's a playtesting failure. There is no way to figure out the general power of something with an easily exploited weakness.

2. PC's want to play monsters super bad. They also want to shapechange into them.

Nothing about tagging monster entries with relative strengths changes this. A Kobold Warrior is CR 1/4, but a Kobold Sorcerer is CR 1. Which Kobold you actually has listed stats in the Monster manual won't change that. I'm just saying we should do the same thing by statting up a monster manual Hill Giant (warrior 7) with a mundane greatclub and hide armor that's explicitly marked as meant to fight level 7 parties in groups of 4, because a Hill Giant PC would be a Hill Giant (Paladin 7) in full plate riding on a celestial grizzly bear.

People want to play monsters, but the gamut of what "monsters" people want to play run the gamut from Half-Dragon War Troll Barbarians to Enlightened Badger Rogues. Half the fun of "monsters as PCs"s is playing things that struggle with "standard" PC challenges, the other half is picking exploits off of the "monsters only" platter.

And anything wrong with how Shapechange interacts with this kind of thing is on Shapechange and other polymorph rules, not on a Grey Render zombie having more hit dice than a Planetar.

I think people want monster powers and flavor far more than weaknesses. That's just an intuition based on how little people want weaknesses on normal PCs.

On the Shapechanging spells issue: they'd actually work if the monster rules where not such shit. The HD limit was supposed to be a power metric to set those spells to, but it obviously wasn't going to work because HD is not power. They'd go one step further if they used CR, but even then the actual power of a monster with a weakness and a monster without it far too swingy to actually base a system on.

[Foxwarrior]

Just because a single melee bruiser makes for a tedious and boring fight (in a game that isn't about the details of parries and ripostes) doesn't mean you have to skip past sharks, bears, and attack dogs entirely, especially if you're not also going to skip past zombies or guys with swords. I'm not sure where you get the idea that a zombie is scarier, smarter, or more interesting to fight than a shark, anyways.


People love weaknesses on normal PCs when they come in the form of Flaws that aren't actually relevant. They just gobble that variant rule right up.