the.com/stat block
a monster's entire personality reduced to numbers, so a dragon can be beaten by arithmetic.
means a compact set of statistics (like strength, hit points, and attacks) that defines how a game character or creature behaves and fights.
from born in tabletop wargaming, then codified by dungeons & dragons in 1974, where designers needed a shorthand to make a goblin fight fair without simulating its entire soul.
ac obsessionarmor class alone spawned decades of math arguments
chaos wranglingexists purely to make imagination arbitratable by dice
digital afterlifevideogames hide stat blocks behind health bars and menus
for instance
tarrasque — d&d's apocalypse-tier stat block, 33 hit dice of nope