D&D 5E 5th Edition has broken Bounded Accuracy

As an aside to my thread http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?455266-What-to-do-with-players-that-always-roll-well I've been looking into why some characters always seem to hit monsters when I thought Bounded Accuracy should make things more balanced for a lot longer through the campaign.

To give you some background the characters have reached mid level and their Proficiency Bonus is now +4, not unreasonable you may think however when you roll stat bonuses and then magic items into it things quickly seem to come undone.

A typical monster may have an AC of say 15, so with the Prof Bonus the player would need to roll an 11 to hit. Great, he should be hitting half the time. Once you roll in other bonuses however things, in my opinion, go south. It's very easy for a player to max out a characters prime attacking ability to +5, add in anticipated magical bonuses of +2 by 9th-14th level and the character suddenly has a total bonus of +11 so he now only needs to roll a 4 to hit the typical AC of 15.

This isn't what I was really expecting from 5th edition so I've started think of ways to fix it.

What do others think, should monsters become this easy to hit by mid levels? A creature with an AC of 12 can only be missed on a natural 1 so is hit 95% of the time. This makes taking feats that give -5/+10 damage a no brainer as you'll still hit most of the time. I was hoping for more!

What somewhat concerns me more is the ease of adding +1d4 to such rolls from a first level Bless spell. If the maximum "to hit" is +3 for an epic weapon, adding Bless just seems to skew the numbers far too much, and yes, I realize it is concentration and can be broken.

Hit points not AC is the scaling challenge mechanism. They are supposed to hit frequently.

My only problem with Bounded Accuracy is the way it interacts with Great Weapon Mastery and Sharpshooter making both of them premium feats better than anything else in the game.

I recommend not letting 1st level characters start with an ability score above 15 (before racial bonus), and limiting magic weapons to +1.

I don't do magic items with a bonus of +2 or higher.

All magic weapons, armor, and shields have a +1 bonus that is the limit and they have other fun things to spice them up.

Don't roll for ability scores, it skews things worse, just use point buy or the array.

Give opponents greater than average hit points, I always boost the monster's hit points when setting up the encounter and if I feel the need to adjust on the fly I adjust down to speed combat up.

jodyjohnson said:

Hit points not AC is the scaling challenge mechanism. They are supposed to hit frequently.

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This. Also, in actual play, it's not really that much of a problem.

Please don't take this personally Lord V, but it seems you're making a very common error a lot of people make: looking at numbers and making assumptions. 5e, moreso than any other edition, can not be predicted on how the game actually plays by doing theory analysis only. How it plays out on the game table is almost always different than if you just do white room analysis.

Also, looking at your other thread, before I'd worry about bounded accuracy, I'd make sure your players stop cheating. That would fix most of your issues right there.

And lastly, if you still have a problem, there is no reason why an intelligent monster wouldn't use things to help its AC. Put a shield on a humanoid--of course they would use one if they had one. Usage of cover cannot be underestimated.

Paraxis said:

Don't roll for ability scores, it skews things worse, just use point buy or the array. .

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No it doesn't. We have a six-month long running thread on this that I know you've seen. The math shows it really isn't that much different. Only a +1/-1 difference in the vast majority of cases, +/-2 at best/worst. And with the variance already there in how a player chooses to allocate, what race they choice, and if they use feats or not, it's an insignificant difference.

There are valid reasons why someone doesn't like to use random ability scores, but don't make up reasons that aren't true because you don't.

Yes, this is how Bounded Accuracy is meant to be. Monsters are able to still be hit for a wide range of character levels-- low to high. Whether or not you hit is not the scaling mechanism, a creature's Hit Points and the amount of damage you do to it is.

The game is built such that a 2nd level character can hit a huge, high level creature because it only has an AC of 15... but the creature has so many hit points and the attack does so little damage that the high level creature will decimate the 2nd level character before that character gets any real chance to come close to hurting it. That's the way the game is built. Conversely, a high level character that attacks an high level creature has a fairly easy chance to hit it, because that game is built expecting you to hit your opponent. That's why there are some monsters that have ACs of 8 or 10, and thus even 1st level characters only need 3s or 5s to hit them (+5 to hit via +3 mod / +2 prof bonus).

So really, if you want to "fix" things while still maintaining the concepts of Bounded Accuracy that the game is designed with... it's not raising monsters AC that is the primary direction you should be taking, but rather raising the monster's Hit Points. The game wants you to hit each other. How long the combat lasts is dependent on how much damage results when you do, and how many hit points the creature has to withstand it. Give the monster more HP and it'll survive longer like you want it to.

Lord Vangarel said:

As an aside to my thread http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?455266-What-to-do-with-players-that-always-roll-well I've been looking into why some characters always seem to hit monsters when I thought Bounded Accuracy should make things more balanced for a lot longer through the campaign.

To give you some background the characters have reached mid level and their Proficiency Bonus is now +4, not unreasonable you may think however when you roll stat bonuses and then magic items into it things quickly seem to come undone.

A typical monster may have an AC of say 15, so with the Prof Bonus the player would need to roll an 11 to hit. Great, he should be hitting half the time. Once you roll in other bonuses however things, in my opinion, go south. It's very easy for a player to max out a characters prime attacking ability to +5, add in anticipated magical bonuses of +2 by 9th-14th level and the character suddenly has a total bonus of +11 so he now only needs to roll a 4 to hit the typical AC of 15.

This isn't what I was really expecting from 5th edition so I've started think of ways to fix it.

What do others think, should monsters become this easy to hit by mid levels? A creature with an AC of 12 can only be missed on a natural 1 so is hit 95% of the time. This makes taking feats that give -5/+10 damage a no brainer as you'll still hit most of the time. I was hoping for more!

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Yes, this is part of the "bounded" part. Everything is not supposed to scale. THAT was the problem of prior editions, where ever number got silly to keep up with every other number. An AC 15 at level 1 is still an AC 15 at level 10. It's like a DC in that respect now. Other things can scale, like hit points, but plate armor is still plate armor at a large range of levels, just as a hard DC is essentially the same at all levels.

As for the two feats in question, yeah there may be an issue with them. As they are optional, you can easily ban them, or change them, if you find a problem in actual play. I do have to question how you are "easily" getting prime attack ability to +5. It starts at no better than +3. You would need TWO stat increases to get it to 20. Which means you didn't spend those on feats. So it should be taking a long time to get to that point.