Ranger Beast Master: errata will add new features to your animal companion!

Ristamar said:

Bounded Accuracy, as far as I can recall, has always been largely used to describe the relative flattening of the "Bonus To Hit vs AC" curve with scaling damage as PCs level. It also flattened out some of the math for ability checks and saves. However, I've never seen any mention of hard barriers in regard to the numbers, and I don't recall the above (e.g "You'll NEVER automatically fail a Saving Throw because it's too difficult") ever being an expressed goal of the designers.

If you have a source that I may have missed, please share.

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I remember it in regards to picking locks, and how the +2 bonus from proficiency was enough to matter, because you would never need a specialist in order to have a chance of succeeding. I thought there was a general statement about everyone having a chance at any task, which would have been applicable to saving throws, but the website is apparently down right now.

In any case, there are rules in the game which are contradictory because of this. You are supposed to make a saving throw whenever you are the subject of certain effects, but you also aren't supposed to roll when the outcome is guaranteed, so it's clear (to me, at least) that they didn't really anticipate the commonality of many high-level characters auto-failing a lot of saves against enemies who can choose to target their weak points. And on a more general note, it's simply poor game design to stage checks where there's no chance of success.

Saelorn said:

I remember it in regards to picking locks, and how the +2 bonus from proficiency was enough to matter, because you would never need a specialist in order to have a chance of succeeding. I thought there was a general statement about everyone having a chance at any task, which would have been applicable to saving throws, but the website is apparently down right now.

In any case, there are rules in the game which are contradictory because of this. You are supposed to make a saving throw whenever you are the subject of certain effects, but you also aren't supposed to roll when the outcome is guaranteed, so it's clear (to me, at least) that they didn't really anticipate the commonality of many high-level characters auto-failing a lot of saves against enemies who can choose to target their weak points. And on a more general note, it's simply poor game design to stage checks where there's no chance of success.

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A natural 20 auto succeeds. Save failures are not as deadly as in many previous editions. You can spend feats or improve stats to improve saves. You can obtain class features, magic items, or spells to gain resistance or avoid damage.

I'm not saying that there is no issue but rather that if you find it to be unacceptable, there are options that you personally can take to help fix it.

Pauln6 said:

A natural 20 auto succeeds.

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Not on saving throws, which is one of the main reasons why I believe they didn't anticipate the situation. I don't know that there's ever been an edition where saving throws were literally unmake-able, let alone on as-consistent a basis as they are in 5E.

Saelorn said:

Not on saving throws, which is one of the main reasons why I believe they didn't anticipate the situation. I don't know that there's ever been an edition where saving throws were literally unmake-able, let alone on as-consistent a basis as they are in 5E.

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Your words are strange to me. A natural 20 succeeds. If it says any different in the books I obviously chose to ignore it and will continue to do so with a clear conscience.

Pauln6 said:

Your words are strange to me. A natural 20 succeeds. If it says any different in the books I obviously chose to ignore it and will continue to do so with a clear conscience.

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The fact that you can house-rule a bad rule away does not make it less of a bad rule.

Dausuul said:

The fact that you can house-rule a bad rule away does not make it less of a bad rule.

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I'll be honest, I didn't even know it was a thing. But the fact that I house ruled it without trying or even noticing and it didn't break our game means the game can survive this tweak. House ruling it was a lot less effort than complaining about it. It was no effort at all!

And yes, removing natural 20 success was a bad rule.

Saelorn said:

I remember it in regards to picking locks, and how the +2 bonus from proficiency was enough to matter, because you would never need a specialist in order to have a chance of succeeding. I thought there was a general statement about everyone having a chance at any task, which would have been applicable to saving throws, but the website is apparently down right now.

In any case, there are rules in the game which are contradictory because of this. You are supposed to make a saving throw whenever you are the subject of certain effects, but you also aren't supposed to roll when the outcome is guaranteed, so it's clear (to me, at least) that they didn't really anticipate the commonality of many high-level characters auto-failing a lot of saves against enemies who can choose to target their weak points. And on a more general note, it's simply poor game design to stage checks where there's no chance of success.

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I dont see a contradiction as you do.

The guidelines on when to call for rolls and not calling for rolls of the outcome is certain are fine as far as they go.

So are the rules where effects and sprlls provide info on what a made or failed save means.

There is no contradiction there. The lists of what happens when saves fo one way or the other or that the spell requires a save is the general statement of how the effect works. The fact that a given target might not be able to fail or succeed is not accounted for in that, just like it doesn't account for immunity or invalid tsrgets.

Saelorn said:

Not on saving throws, which is one of the main reasons why I believe they didn't anticipate the situation. I don't know that there's ever been an edition where saving throws were literally unmake-able, let alone on as-consistent a basis as they are in 5E.

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[MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION], let me start by saying that I understand that this is a pet peeve of yours, but it really got me thinking about the reality of the situation and I just wanted to bring some hard data to it. I get the fact that you don't like that a PC can encounter threats that they may not be able to overcome on their own, but for me, it's an incredible feature of 5e, not a bug. But beyond that, the actual issue of impossible saves isn't as large as you seem to imply.

First of all, every character, by level 20, can achieve a minimum of +2 in all of their saves via their ASI choices, which means that that any PC can ensure they have a chance to make a saving throw up to DC22. Additionally, any PC may choose to be a fighter, and thereby achieve a minimum of +3 to all of their saves, but for the purposes of this argument, let's use the DC22 baseline, since it doesn't restrict you to a specific class (and since any PC choosing a Paladin can achieve a min of +8 in every save).

The rules state that a CR higher than character level could be deadly to a character as they may not have the ability to harm the creature or defend themselves from it, so creatures above CR20 are purposefully outside of bounded accuracy and meant to be a higher challenge. This also applies to lower level characters facing higher CR threats. The risk of taking those on is that you might not be able to resist their attacks or abilities.

So, looking at the 7 CR20 creatures published so far, we see the following abilities requiring DC23 or above saves.

Creature - Ability - DC - Result
Ogremoch - Stomp - 23 Dex - Fall Prone
Leviathan - Tidal Wave - 24 Str - 27 Damage, Unable to move via swimming

There is also a single CR18 creature with a save DC of 23 or higher
Yan-C-Bin - Thundercrack - 24 Con - 31 Damage, Deafened for 1 minute

And that's it. Hundreds of monsters and only 3 abilities that a PC wouldn't have a chance against, and none of those abilities are so dangerous that an appropriate level PC couldn't absorb the effect without severe consequence. Perhaps you could argue that these three effects are "mistakes", but it's not like they made the mistake with an ability that could instantly kill or permanently disable a PC without a chance save against it. And again, any player can choose to play a Paladin and be able to have a chance against every monster ability published by WOTC.

OB1 said:

First of all, every character, by level 20, can achieve a minimum of +2 in all of their saves via their ASI choices, which means that that any PC can ensure they have a chance to make a saving throw up to DC22.

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First of all, it's pretty unreasonable to ask someone to spend two of their boosts before they can even begin to participate in the game mechanic, when the alternative is investing in things that they might actually want to use. That's just not a good investment, to sacrifice (for example) 40hp and +2 to Con saves, in exchange for having a 5% chance of making the occasional Charisma saving throw.

Second of all, low stats don't start at 10. The default method for generating stats is still rolling 4d6, drop lowest. It's perfectly normal and expected for someone to have a stat below 7. My last fighter had a Dex of 5. A well-designed game should account for characters across the spectrum, rather than collapsing in on itself whenever anyone is slightly below-average.

OB1 said:

The rules state that a CR higher than character level could be deadly to a character as they may not have the ability to harm the creature or defend themselves from it, so creatures above CR20 are purposefully outside of bounded accuracy and meant to be a higher challenge. This also applies to lower level characters facing higher CR threats. The risk of taking those on is that you might not be able to resist their attacks or abilities.

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Bounded Accuracy is supposed to transcend the CR math. That is to say, thanks to Bounded Accuracy, creatures are supposed to be able to inter-mingle between high and low levels. Bounded Accuracy means that, while high-CR monsters should be deadly to lower-level characters, it's supposed to come in the form of damage and hit points rather than un-hittable ACs or un-makeable saving throws.

OB1 said:

And that's it. Hundreds of monsters and only 3 abilities that a PC wouldn't have a chance against, and none of those abilities are so dangerous that an appropriate level PC couldn't absorb the effect without severe consequence. Perhaps you could argue that these three effects are "mistakes", but it's not like they made the mistake with an ability that could instantly kill or permanently disable a PC without a chance save against it.

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In a way, the low cost associated with failure is part of the problem, in that it's related to how monsters are such chumps in general. A group of level 16 characters can easily defeat several CR 23 Empyreans in a day, even though half of the party has no chance of resisting its DC 25 Trembling Strike.

Of course, the game is technically playable even if nobody can pass certain saving throws, because they give you so much margin for error that you can easily recover from anything. The combined effects of power design, hit point totals, and saving throw math are such that you can afford to fail any given test. It doesn't matter that the saving throw math is bad, in the big picture. But the saving throw math is still bad, and the paladin aura fixes that.

OB1 said:

And again, any player can choose to play a Paladin and be able to have a chance against every monster ability published by WOTC.

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It's unreasonable to require someone to play a specific class before they get to interact with the basic saving throw mechanics. It's very slightly less unreasonably if you only require one character to play that class.

Saelorn said:

In a way, the low cost associated with failure is part of the problem, in that it's related to how monsters are such chumps in general. A group of level 16 characters can easily defeat several CR 23 Empyreans in a day, even though half of the party has no chance of resisting its DC 25 Trembling Strike.

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Its an interesting point. I think the point is valid that there are certain monsters that some party members will struggle to save against. But that said, the effects are not so strong that a high level party cannot recover....often recover immediately.

Is that necessarily a "bad thing". I don't necessarily think so. The players take their lumps but still come out triumphant.

All of this though is separate from the paladin argument. I do think the paladin bonus is one of the strongest bonuses in the game, and does feel a bit out of place with other bonuses the game of bounded accuracy provides.