How do we help this new user formulate a question about their homebrew Toadstool that can be properly answered?

Question

A new user has posed this homebrew review question, which has gone through a ton of edits and is seemingly in a rollback war between users:

How would a major buffing ability effect challenge rating?

There is currently 1 answer to this question and it's premise stems substantially upon flawed information (hit points and full impacts of the Sporeshrooms being on the field) that was provided by the querent in an early revision, sort of codified by another user in a later revision, and contradicted several times by the original user as they workshop through the question. As a quasi-expert, I think it may have been appropriate to have inquired in greater detail about the information before posting an answer, however, that didn't happen.

I have asked several additional comments requesting the user to clarify the question. Personally, I feel these questions needed to be answered before any answer can be provided, but that's neither here nor there.

Regardless, the querent seeks to implement edits to address my comments and keeps getting rolled back to a version that preserves the validity of the existing answer.

In addition, they have attempted to open a new question to incorporate the revisions, but have been blocked there as well.

How would a major buff ability effect challenge rating (stat block modified)

How do we deal with this? I'm not sure our standard practices are appropriate nor fair here to the querent.

Answer 1

Go to Chat

I was thinking about this on the drive home and I think this question needs to go to chat to be fully workshopped. The OP is making responsive edits to the question because they're trying to address concerns as they're raised as opposed to thinking about the creature in a comprehensive manner when they post the question.

Typically we would direct them to GitP or another forum for that kind of workshopping, but I think we also do the same thing in chat rooms.

The original question should be rolled back to the revision that does not invalidate the existing question. The second question should remain closed as needing additional information; it can be re-opened once everything gets sorted in chat.

I expect the question may shift away from the impact of the specific feature on CR and towards figuring out an appropriate CR for the creature as a whole.

Answer 2

I think your description is mistaken.

OP wrote that his sporecaps had 5hp, and received an answer which was predicated on this information. OP then changed his sporecaps to have 30hp and posted a comment on the answer asking: "Did i fix it? What is the CR now?"

You've written about this answer: "it's premise stems substantially upon flawed information", suggesting you think the answerer did not fully understand the question.

The answerer did fully understand the question. What is happening here is that OP modified the question in response to receiving an answer.

OP's question should be reverted to the form that received the answer. OP should be allowed to ask a new question.

I also sort of think that OP's edit rights should be revoked to prevent them from edit-warring. I recognize that's not likely to happen.

Answer 3

I think that these questions are fundamentally mis-specified, and are not properly stackable. This should never have been one question.

There is a serious mismatch between what the question is seeking, and the context in which it is sought. No amount of editing can fix that without fundamentally changing the question, which edits generally aren't supposed to do.

The "main" question regarding how specific buffs would affect challenge rating is pretty easy to answer, as CR calculations leave little room for guesswork. To be maximally stackable, this question could be applied to an existing entry in the Monster Manual. That entry could be granted the potential buff, and then people could describe how that buff would impact CR. Easy! Well, perhaps not easy, but clear.

The greater problem is that this question is simultaneously a homebrew review question. Questions about the specific features of this homebrew creation simply don't mesh with what the posted question purports to be: an examination of how a specific buff should affect CR.

As people try to balance those incongruent aims, we end up with clarifications to the text of the question that have no relevance to the "canonical" question being posed. It's fundamentally difficult to define how feature Y would impact creature X when X itself is so malleable. We also have issues of people making incontrovertible fixes, like correcting typos, while also introducing other, less clear changes, and then having edits rolled back, re-introducing elements which are unarguably errors.

The fix: Ask two questions.

This question should be split. One question about a standard MM entry with this special homebrew buff added. We'll all have a stable, agreed-upon starting point and so would be able to analyze and discuss what sort of relationship this summon-buffing should have with CR.

A second question about this homebrewed Toadstool monster would allow for the standard homebrew review approach to work. Indeed, the homebrew review might even be more answerable with the summon-buffing mechanic better defined in a linked question.

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tl;dr: Both of these questions should be deleted, and replaced with at least two questions properly formulated for this stack.