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

[Prism]

So you'll have a basic bonus of around +14 so hitting AC 15-16 on a roll of 2 95% of the time. At 9th level I'm seeing characters with +11 so AC 15 is getting hit 80% of the time. What I'm thinking is it's a lot of levels from 9th to 20th level and hitting AC 15 is almost automatic. The one saving grace is GWM and Sharpshooter are so tempting a player will always take them with the odds so good.

Hmm, against AC 15 I guess that's true. I haven't seen much with AC 15 though at these levels. We fought a ton of horned devils AC 18, a pit fiend AC 19 and an arch devil (custom - AC 21 I think). Looking at some of the other high level monsters anything up to AC 22 seems to be standard.

 

[Prism]

FWIW, because ACs never get too high, you are always better using the -5/+10 part of the feat vs. not using it at 20th level. It's a phenomenally good feat. Just the possible bonus action attack alone makes the feat worthwhile, let alone the -5/+10 part.

Yeah I like the feat, especially the bonus attack. Its just that me character does about 20 damage per hit as it stands. So if I miss an attack it wipes out two of the +10's anyway. And -5 is pretty much going to miss on attack on average. The AC's are high enough at 18-22

 

[Dausuul]

I could also attack 9 times a round with haste...

Unless you're counting Action Surge, I don't see how this is possible.

...In fact, even if you are counting AS, I don't see how it's possible at less than 20th level. Three attacks, plus three from AS, plus one from haste, is seven. Where are you getting the other two?

 

[DaveDash]

Unless you're counting Action Surge, I don't see how this is possible.

...In fact, even if you are counting AS, I don't see how it's possible at less than 20th level. Three attacks, plus three from AS, plus one from haste, is seven. Where are you getting the other two?

Bonus action from Crossbow Expert, and 20th level Fighters get 4 attacks per round. 8 (AS) + 1 (Haste) + 1 (Crossbow Expert).

17th level Fighter (which I played) was 6 (AS) +1 (Haste) + 1 (Crossbow Expert) so 8, which if you hit all the time (Not hard with Bless + Foresight, which is available almost every combat) you're getting +80 damage from SS alone, twice every short rest due to AS.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I played a high level Fighter EK.

With bless on me and foresight from the Wizard, I never missed with Sharpshooter. I could also attack 9 times a round with haste, and that would be even more at level 20 (10 I think?), which would equate to +100 damage from SS and an action surge.

I also could do all this up close AND from 120ft away equally, and I had such a high AC (haste plus shield plus foresight) I was un-killable.

It totally broke the combat pillar of the game. I single handily forced an Ancient Red Dragon to retreat after 2 rounds (with no magic items).

Given that you and your party were at least 17th level, you were playing a top tier combat class to begin with, the mage used his only 9th level spell to buff you, and both mage and priest were using their concentration to buff you, I should hope you would be a force to be reckoned with! Synergy ftw! Of course, a single casting of Dispel Magic could have put a damper on that encounter...

 

[DaveDash]

Given that you and your party were at least 17th level, you were playing a top tier combat class to begin with, the mage used his only 9th level spell to buff you, and both mage and priest were using their concentration to buff you, I should hope you would be a force to be reckoned with! Synergy ftw! Of course, a single casting of Dispel Magic could have put a damper on that encounter...

I hear this argument a lot.

I'm running another game (16th level, soon to be 17th) without this very strong combination, and the combat pillar is no where near as broken. When they hit level 17 they won't be able to break the combat pillar as much, since there is no Fighter in the group. Fighters + the SS mechanic (and to a lesser extent GMW) are in a different league.

Maybe it's by design, since Fighters are meant to be the pinnacle of combat power. However without a decent buff to monster HP it trivializes a lot of combat encounters directly from the MM.

(Casting a 9th level dispel magic to remove Foresight is a bit of a waste, and otherwise its DC19 - and subject to being counter-spelled).

 

[Prism]

I played a high level Fighter EK.

With bless on me and foresight from the Wizard, I never missed with Sharpshooter. I could also attack 9 times a round with haste, and that would be even more at level 20 (10 I think?), which would equate to +100 damage from SS and an action surge.

I also could do all this up close AND from 120ft away equally, and I had such a high AC (haste plus shield plus foresight) I was un-killable.

It totally broke the combat pillar of the game. I single handily forced an Ancient Red Dragon to retreat after 2 rounds (with no magic items).

Single handedly? You had the wizards only 9th level spell cast on you and the cleric must have been casting bless and you casting haste. Unless you are pretty lucky with your wisdom save you are probably frightened and I'd be surprised if the two concentration spells could both survive the breath weapon reliably. Assuming all that stuff is still going or is cast again you are attacking at +8 including the -5 penalty to hit against the dragons AC 22. Even with advantage from Foresight and Bless that's still pretty hard to hit.

My fighter in general tends to hit 3 times and do about 60 damage. Using GWM he hits twice and does about 60 damage. Against easy stuff and if I get advantage then sure the damage goes up a little but that's rarely the stuff I'm attacking. Our wizard doesn't take Foresight though - too many other interesting spells to cast it seems

 

[Psikerlord#]

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!

The -5/+10 mechanic is a bad one and partly for this reason. I suggest substituting +1 stat for that aspect of those two feats. As for magic weapons, they are not really needed in 5e in my experience. If the DM awards them, the PCs will definitely hit better. I also do not allow the optional flanking with adv rule for the same reason - AC becomes too devalued, and HP and damage become even more important than they already are.

Overall however I dont mind the idea of 10th level PCs hitting on 5+ for AC 15. Seems ok to me. More fearsome enemies, with AC 20 for example, will still be hit about half the time.

 

[DaveDash]

Single handedly? You had the wizards only 9th level spell cast on you and the cleric must have been casting bless and you casting haste. Unless you are pretty lucky with your wisdom save you are probably frightened and I'd be surprised if the two concentration spells could both survive the breath weapon reliably. Assuming all that stuff is still going or is cast again you are attacking at +8 including the -5 penalty to hit against the dragons AC 22. Even with advantage from Foresight and Bless that's still pretty hard to hit.

My fighter in general tends to hit 3 times and do about 60 damage. Using GWM he hits twice and does about 60 damage. Against easy stuff and if I get advantage then sure the damage goes up a little but that's rarely the stuff I'm attacking. Our wizard doesn't take Foresight though - too many other interesting spells to cast it seems

Not really lucky. I take resilient Wisdom on all my Fighters, and there are so many ways to remove fear in game. I'm was never a good target for breath weapon because I could hang back behind full cover, blocking LOS, and attack from range. The Dragon DID go for me, but by the time it got close (and yes, it was using Legendary Actions to move) I had done so much damage to it, it's best course of action was to retreat.

Your maths is also wrong. +13 + 2.5 = 15.5 - 5 + 10.5 with advantage. To hit with every single attack the chances are low, but to hit a lot they're very high.

Also you guys make out like advantage is hard to get, it's not. Bless is a cheap resource once you get higher levels. Throw in magic items like most campaigns have as well and it becomes more silly.

The reason you're Wizard hasn't cast Foresight on you is because you're a melee combatant, which suffer dramatically at the end game IMO. I wouldn't waste foresight on a melee fighter either.

 

[Tony Vargas]

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.

Bounded Accuracy is not meant to be 'more balanced' in any sense, just to keep a lower level monster able to hit higher level PCs a bit longer than was traditionally the case. It also means PCs hit much higher level monsters once in a while. The math does seem to be slanted towards hitting - presumably because missing is boring/frustrating/slow. So, yes, a somewhat lower level monster gets hit very easily. That's not bounded accuracy breaking down, if that monster needed a nat 20 to hit the PC in return, /that/ would be BA breaking down.

What do others think, should monsters become this easy to hit by mid levels?

Sure.

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

Well, you could avoid giving out magic weapons. You could give lower-level monsters various buffs, better armor, or situational advantages of some sort to boost their AC.

You could just re-tune the math by ratchetting up all monster ACs across the board, but reducing their hps so they don't take any longer to kill, there's just more missing in the process.