That makes sense, and for me fills in some blanks.
D&D 4E Changing the Combat Parameters of 4th Edition
I thought I posted a reply to this already but it might have been eaten. (EDIT: apparently it did post, just above this, but I missed the page-break when reviewing it.)
So a second go: this make sense, and makes some of your goals clearer.
Part of what makes a 5th level monster twice the difficult of a 1st level one is the gap in AC and attack bonuses. Reduce that gap and the 5th level one is not twice as difficult anymore.
On the issue of encounters between long rests, here's one adventuring day for the PCs in my game (started the "day" at 14th level, finished it at 15th level):
That's 9 combats within L-1 to L+2/3; even if you put the last two together as "really" one, it's 8.
Plus a 7th level combat; plus a skill challenge's worth of encounter.
That was maybe the hardest I've pushed the players in the campaign; but it's not wildly out of character for our game.
Another example, where the PCs start the day at 26th level:
That's 7 combats, plus the skill challenges, and three of those combats are level +4 or above.
I don't have such good records for Heroic tier, and my memory isn't that reliable, but I suspect it tended not to push as hard as this.
*Comp 2 L14 skill challenge (as a result of which each PC lost one encounter power until their next extended rest);
*L17 combat;
*L15 combat;
*L7 combat;
*L13 combat;
*L15 combat;
*Comp 1 L14 skill challenge;
*L16 combat;
*L14 combat;
*L13 combat;
*Comp 1 L15 skill challenge;
*L16 combat (the L15 solo was defeated by being pushed over a bridge down a waterfall);
*L15 combat (the solo returned later in the night, having survived the fall and climbed back up).
*L17 combat;
*L15 combat;
*L7 combat;
*L13 combat;
*L15 combat;
*Comp 1 L14 skill challenge;
*L16 combat;
*L14 combat;
*L13 combat;
*Comp 1 L15 skill challenge;
*L16 combat (the L15 solo was defeated by being pushed over a bridge down a waterfall);
*L15 combat (the solo returned later in the night, having survived the fall and climbed back up).
That's 9 combats within L-1 to L+2/3; even if you put the last two together as "really" one, it's 8.
Plus a 7th level combat; plus a skill challenge's worth of encounter.
That was maybe the hardest I've pushed the players in the campaign; but it's not wildly out of character for our game.
Another example, where the PCs start the day at 26th level:
* Comp 3 L26 skill challenge;
* A L 32 encounter in stages but with no short rest and with the PCs splitting up, starting with a level 26 element, then a couple of PCs falling down a cliff and having to deal with a level 22 element, and then a third front of a 26th level element which initially was one PC, but then ivnolved the other PCs arriving to help him out, plus some other odds and sods;
* A level 27 encounter that, in play, was very hard for party level +1;
* The PCs reach 27th;
* A level 31 combat, surprisingly easy compared to the level 27 one;
* A level 29 combat;
* A level 26 solo combat, involving a couple of significant crits, including one with a fighter daily that limits the target to basic attack, which is terrible against a solo;
* A level 27 combat encounter;
* A level 27 complexity 3 skill challenge;
* A level 33 combat encounter (for only 4 PCs).
* A L 32 encounter in stages but with no short rest and with the PCs splitting up, starting with a level 26 element, then a couple of PCs falling down a cliff and having to deal with a level 22 element, and then a third front of a 26th level element which initially was one PC, but then ivnolved the other PCs arriving to help him out, plus some other odds and sods;
* A level 27 encounter that, in play, was very hard for party level +1;
* The PCs reach 27th;
* A level 31 combat, surprisingly easy compared to the level 27 one;
* A level 29 combat;
* A level 26 solo combat, involving a couple of significant crits, including one with a fighter daily that limits the target to basic attack, which is terrible against a solo;
* A level 27 combat encounter;
* A level 27 complexity 3 skill challenge;
* A level 33 combat encounter (for only 4 PCs).
That's 7 combats, plus the skill challenges, and three of those combats are level +4 or above.
I don't have such good records for Heroic tier, and my memory isn't that reliable, but I suspect it tended not to push as hard as this.
Myrhdraak
Explorer
The reason is that likelihood to hit is increased/reduced with +/-5% per level in 4th Edition, that why a 5 level difference have quite and impact. For a monster with an average 55% to hit a character of equal level in 4th Edition, if it is 5 levels lower than the character his chance to hit has been reduced to 30% (almost half). As average damage per round is calculated as (Chance to Hit) x (Damage), it has a major impact on the danger of low level monsters, and the XP table reflects this. 10 th level monster = 500 XP, 15th level monster = 1200 XP (500/1200 = 42%, but then the damage goes down as well to explain why it is not 50%).
However, if we introduct bounded accuracy in a similar way as 5th Edition then your chance to hit only increases with +2.5% per level on average. So a 5 level difference reduced the monster chance to hit from 55% to 42.5%. The monster average damage has now been reduced to only 42.5/55 = 77% rather than half as in traditional 4th Edition. Thereby is a low level threat a much bigger threat than in 4th Edition, so you cannot any longer use the Encounter per XP and Monster table to design a balanced encounter anymore. It need to be reworked in order to fit this kind of gameplay. Benefit is of course that you as a DM can mix a much wider variety of monster rather than be restricted to the +-4 level from the character level to be balanced. It reintroduce the threat of many lower level monsters, that do not really exist in 4th Edition. A dragon has to be cautious if the city have mounted all its defenders with bows on the walls of the city.
However, the imortality/epic feeling of 4th Edition gameplay might be lost in such a transformation, so if you would like to introduce bounded accuracy is very dependent on what kind of game you want to run.
Tony Vargas
Legend
IF you're still 1st level, sure, if you're 5th, it's exactly the same, right?
I get that bounding accuracy is going to make numbers tell and lower level monsters stick around longer, but at- level, nothing chsnges...
The whole point of bounded accuracy, though, is to facilitate combat in which the PCs and their enemies arenot of the same level, isn't it?
This is where, within the system tolerances (say, +/-4 levels between PCs and opponents), 4e's encounter building guidelines work pretty well. But changing the level bonus will change this.
EDIT: I just saw that [MENTION=6694190]Myrhdraak[/MENTION] posted more-or-less the same thing not far upthread.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
This is right. Of course, oddly enough, 5e simply creates a steeper increase in monster hit points to overcome this. I think the curve is still flatter, but the fact is that a higher level monster may not have much higher defenses, but each hit will count for less (though because of the lack of explicit solo and elite designations and a lot of variance in 5e monster hit points the whole situation isn't quite this clear cut in practice).
Myrhdraak
Explorer
Yes, they increase hit points and damage exponentially rather than linear (as done in 4th Edition). So the game feeling would be different in a bounded accuracy version of 4th Edition, vs. 5th Edition. Question is if this is bad or good? Have not really decided yet. It allows the party to actually face some high level monsters and if lucky defeat them. However, 4th Edition is quite tilted to the player side already, so you might want to add mechanisms to make the life a little more dangerous if you also add bounded accuracy. I have been playing with the idea to increase the damage output of monsters beyond the current Average Dmg = 8 + monster level. Maybe an extra +3-5 dmg divided during the paragon levels, and another +5-10 damage divided over the epic levels. Need to do some calculations though to see the impact.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I'm just still having trouble absorbing this. I consider it to be a misunderstanding of the function of combat in D&D (generally, not even 4e). Combat can ALWAYS be arranged so as to be arbitrarily dangerous in any edition of the game. 4e is built around interesting tactical combat scenes where the characters and monsters use a lot of tactics and do interesting things. In this sort of game fights will obviously be assumed to be frequent and engaging in them is the most common situation. This mandates that they be pretty consistent in their difficulty, otherwise random tosses of the dice (as would be the case in say low-level 1e combat) will simply end each character quickly by chance. DIFFICULTY in the more general sense of how much tactical acumen, rules knowledge, clever inventiveness, or story-telling ability is required to insure victory is a bit different. Its reasonable to believe that most players can overcome most encounters, otherwise most games would be short and brutal, but its not inherent to the rules that this always be the case (and it shouldn't always be the case I would think). In 1e survival was probably not much less likely, but it was a lot more random, and that fed into the skilled play narrative of avoiding hazards that could be avoided. So your 1e average encounter (one with an encounter of a dungeon level equal to your PC level, roughly) can be pretty difficult, but survivable. Just how difficult, and if it engaged a lot of skilled play (say to avoid something like a basilisk vs risking death) or not depends on the encounter.
I think that the way people play 4e, they expect less characters to die, but they don't expect less challenge in play. Certainly I made my games pretty challenging. Often parties were thwarted in their aims, though this always led to some further development that created even more interesting situations, of course.
Now, if you create a port of some 5e module into 4e, then the question might be more like how much is it reliant on skilled play and how much is a story-based adventure? I'd guess that most of the 5e adventures are pretty close to 4e in that sense, and not so much like 1e. I base this on the number of character options you get at start in 5e and the way 5e's rules generally work. Its not a game where you'd want to die from a stray arrow and roll a new character.
