While perhaps not quite the same issue as to this particular transistor base resistor case, but, this reminded me of another, old case, where sometimes seemingly "silly" things can after all be required. Beginners (or even somewhat more experienced persons) might not immediately realize it. Testing in practice is then the only way to make sure / to find out. Or asking someone else for opinion/facts.
As an example, an old MCU project. I had put small series resistors on all main "bus" digital I/O pins, connected to another MCU about 10cm away directly (no pull-ups or anything). I.e. 5V AVRs talking to each other, easy stuff. Even usual simulations would not have revealed why I did so... and seemingly they are totally useless resistors, right? The person converting the schematics to a PCB and assembling the units thought so, too, and decided to leave the resistors out.
The end result was that the MCUs couldn't talk with each other properly. After plenty of poking around, the other person looked at the schematic again, glued the resistors (or were they array chips, don't remember), hand-tweaked the circuits on PCB etc. And the MCUs finally talked.
In that particular case, those "totally useless resistors" were to handle heavy noise levels... crude, but worked wonders.
(No, it wasn't really any smart idea on my part; I just had read about such possibility and solution some time before, and decided to put them in, just in case, thinking the resistors aren't that expensive, considering that all the other parts were already going over 30€ or something.)
(EDIT: sorry, so off-topic... nothing about LCR meter...)