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

[Mage of Spellford]

Our campaign is still relatively low level so I can't really contribute except speculatively, but I'm wondering if they should have set 18 as the maximum.

I know that back when I DM'd 1st & 2nd Ed one of our houserules was that magic weapons had a maximum +1 to hit but the damage could still be higher. Example: A powerful sword might be +1 to hit/+3 on damage. This idea might work for 5e being as how hit points are the balancing factor.

MK

 

[Prism]

Not really lucky. I take resilient Wisdom on all my Fighters, and there are so many ways to remove fear in game.

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.

My math is the same as yours, I just didn't add the bless directly . My point really is though with less than 50% chance to hit, even with advantage you are still likely to miss a few of those shots. If you don't take the sharpshooter penalty you hit more often and might well do as much damage. All against a high AC dragon of course. Against something softer I'm in total agreement how useful it is, but then the easy stuff shouldn't be that important at these levels anyway

I took resilient too - its pretty rubbish to be honest. I have a +7 wis save vs typical DCs of over 20. Better than nothing but not reliable. I'm often out of the fight for a round or two due to hold monster or something similar.

And you don't need to worry about advantage because of foresight It actually can be quite tricky to get at high levels when so much stuff has truesight or in the dragons case enough breath weapon damage to disrupt every concentration spell in play. I know our rogue finds it almost impossible to hide within a combat situation.

And if our wizard took foresight instead of gate or wish we would struggle

 

[DaveDash]

My math is the same as yours, I just didn't add the bless directly . My point really is though with less than 50% chance to hit, even with advantage you are still likely to miss a few of those shots. If you don't take the sharpshooter penalty you hit more often and might well do as much damage. All against a high AC dragon of course. Against something softer I'm in total agreement how useful it is, but then the easy stuff shouldn't be that important at these levels anyway

I took resilient too - its pretty rubbish to be honest. I have a +7 wis save vs typical DCs of over 20. Better than nothing but not reliable. I'm often out of the fight for a round or two due to hold monster or something similar.

And you don't need to worry about advantage because of foresight It actually can be quite tricky to get at high levels when so much stuff has truesight or in the dragons case enough breath weapon damage to disrupt every concentration spell in play. I know our rogue finds it almost impossible to hide within a combat situation.

And if our wizard took foresight instead of gate or wish we would struggle

I've actually done the maths, and up to about 5 attacks the chances are pretty good. That's still +50 and makes it worth while using it all the time.

My Fighter had +8 wisdom save, plus advantage on all saves, plus bless, which made it reasonably easy to resist fear and other effects. Since by far he was the main damage dealer (we added his damage up and he exceeded all other group members combined, including a melee GMW polearm master) it made sense for him to have foresight. Not only that, because he could shoot from range, he could hide behind cover and couldn't be targeted by many spells. Over the course of an adventuring day the damage output he could do aided by Foresight far exceeded the gains from any other 9th level spell, plus the effect on his survivability.

Melee Fighters really struggle in the late game. It's no wonder you don't think GMW isn't that powerful. The damage-per-encounter of our GMW polearm master fighter was very low compared to mine because he wasted so many rounds running around, huffing and puffing, trying to get within striking distance. The rub salt on the wounds if I did get engaged in melee I could tank awesomely, thanks to the brokeness of crossbow expert, and spells like shield.

We use roll20 and went and added up the damage I'd do per round over the course of the day, and it was about 85 DPR over an entire adventuring day. The melee Fighter was about 30 DPR. Don't forget this is per round, not per attack, so there are rounds when you're not attacking. Over ~10-15 rounds per day this adds up to a huge difference in numbers, a huge difference in effectiveness, and puts strains on bounded accuracy and the combat pillar of the game.

 

[Prism]

We use roll20 and went and added up the damage I'd do per round over the course of the day, and it was about 85 DPR over an entire adventuring day. The melee Fighter was about 30 DPR. Don't forget this is per round, not per attack, so there are rounds when you're not attacking. Over ~10-15 rounds per day this adds up to a huge difference in numbers, a huge difference in effectiveness, and puts strains on bounded accuracy and the combat pillar of the game.

I'd add to this and say there are many rounds when a melee fighter does get to attack but not against their desired opponent. Can be difficult to break combat from a mass of lesser enemies and get over to where the action really is. Having said that they are doing the job of keeping those enemies busy because otherwise they would be swarming the ranged guys I suppose. This is the time for GWM though since those lesser enemies usually have a lower AC (or maybe not since the devils we were fighting all had AC 18 which is still hard to hit without being buffed - which you aren't going to be if your job is crowd control)

Having said all that our DM for that campaign is pretty good at challenging the party and a high damage output ranged attacker is likely to get hammered on if they are hiding out at the back

 

[DaveDash]

I'd add to this and say there are many rounds when a melee fighter does get to attack but not against their desired opponent. Can be difficult to break combat from a mass of lesser enemies and get over to where the action really is. Having said that they are doing the job of keeping those enemies busy because otherwise they would be swarming the ranged guys I suppose. This is the time for GWM though since those lesser enemies usually have a lower AC (or maybe not since the devils we were fighting all had AC 18 which is still hard to hit without being buffed - which you aren't going to be if your job is crowd control)

Having said all that our DM for that campaign is pretty good at challenging the party and a high damage output ranged attacker is likely to get hammered on if they are hiding out at the back

As a Crossbow Expert Sharpshooter with Bless and Foresight, I am happy for them to swarm me. Not that this is likely, since I have +5 on initiative and advantage on my initiative checks. But even if they did, I still have the best AC out of everyone in my party, great hit points, and I can still attack from melee with no penalty.

Besides, I can always drop a fireball or lightning bolt, since I am an EK as well.

I can do everything the melee Fighter can do equally or better, and I can do it all at range as well. My only weakness really is Strength saving throws, so it's always handy to have Misty Step as one of my allowed spells to get out of those situations.

 

[Fanaelialae]

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).

As I said, synergy for the win. Nonetheless, while your character may have been the one directly facing the dragon, he actually had 2 other high level characters expending significant resources (a 9th level spell slot, and both concentrating) so it was effectively 3 high level characters facing that dragon. The others were simply funneling their resources through you.

I wouldn't waste a 9th level slot on Dispel either. Casting it at 3rd is plenty. That strips Haste automatically (which effectively stuns the fighter for a round), strips Bless, and if that dragon is the caster also has a 40% chance to strip Foresight. The casters can get Haste and Bless back up next round, but that's a round where dragon can just have its way with the party. And Counterspell is itself vulnerable to Counterspell, so not much risk there.

Plus there are plenty of other countermeasures. That dragon could just hit you with a Maze spell, kill the mage and the priest, and deal with you later (sans Haste or Bless). It sounds like your party has a winning strategy, but there's a serious risk in being over-specialized.

The other party no doubt has more difficulty with the typical encounter, but unless they're simply less skilled overall I suspect they'd handle a strategy killer (Dispel Magic / Maze) more easily.

 

[Prism]

I can do everything the melee Fighter can do equally or better, and I can do it all at range as well. My only weakness really is Strength saving throws, so it's always handy to have Misty Step as one of my allowed spells to get out of those situations.

All in all sound about right then. The melee fighter is doing damage and protecting the party so some degree. Your character is built for pure damage and is nicely buffed with a 9th level spell. Would you be anywhere near that good without the spell - probably not - its certainly a good combat spell. But for us, I can't imagine going to some of the places we adventure in without a backup gate spell for a quick exit or emergency help. Our DM has no bones about a TPK if we can't extract ourself

 

[DaveDash]

All in all sound about right then. The melee fighter is doing damage and protecting the party so some degree. Your character is built for pure damage and is nicely buffed with a 9th level spell. Would you be anywhere near that good without the spell - probably not - its certainly a good combat spell. But for us, I can't imagine going to some of the places we adventure in without a backup gate spell for a quick exit or emergency help. Our DM has no bones about a TPK if we can't extract ourself

Our backup spell to get out of sh*t is either plane shift or Etherealness.

As for "anywhere near as good", still VERY good without foresight. It lasts 8 hours a day, so there have been times where we haven't had it running. Foresight just makes things silly.

My character also isn't built for pure damage (otherwise I wouldn't have taken resilient (WIS)). He's also very hard to kill. He can't really prevent monsters attacking other party members but he can kill them so quickly it becomes irrelevant.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

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.

I agree.

Bounded Accuracy is not trying to solve the problem of some PCs hitting all the time. It is trying to solve the problem of unoptimized PCs missing all the time because the DM/designers tweaked up the monster's AC sky high in a vain hope of challenging the optimized specialists. It is trying to solve the problem that lower level monsters degrading to hopelessly boring too soon in the campaign, unless the DM resorted to cheesy gimmicks like flasks of super acid.

But most of all it is trying to solve the problem of DM feeling like they have to tweak four different dials (HP, AC, AB, damage) simultaneously so that the published encounter is not stupidly unfun when set against his/her PCs. As long as Bounded Accuracy sort of works, tweaking just the HP dial is going to give okayish results. Obviously, there are benefits to playing with those other three dials, but the DM should no longer feel obliged.

The other thing I think worth pointing out is that any game that is really High Fantasy should provide enough fodder that the system feels some strain at its upper levels. To outright disallow such "problems" would be a sterile feeling system, which, BTW, is one reason 4e never captured my imagination even though I really liked some of the new mechanics at a technical level. The OP is bemoaning the equivalent of a "First World Problem" that is really only likely to be an issue circa the 'teen levels, when 20 stat plus powerful magic weapon plus a powerful feat all three combine.

 

[DaveDash]

As I said, synergy for the win. Nonetheless, while your character may have been the one directly facing the dragon, he actually had 2 other high level characters expending significant resources (a 9th level spell slot, and both concentrating) so it was effectively 3 high level characters facing that dragon. The others were simply funneling their resources through you.

I wouldn't waste a 9th level slot on Dispel either. Casting it at 3rd is plenty. That strips Haste automatically (which effectively stuns the fighter for a round), strips Bless, and if that dragon is the caster also has a 40% chance to strip Foresight. The casters can get Haste and Bless back up next round, but that's a round where dragon can just have its way with the party. And Counterspell is itself vulnerable to Counterspell, so not much risk there.

Plus there are plenty of other countermeasures. That dragon could just hit you with a Maze spell, kill the mage and the priest, and deal with you later (sans Haste or Bless). It sounds like your party has a winning strategy, but there's a serious risk in being over-specialized.

The other party no doubt has more difficulty with the typical encounter, but unless they're simply less skilled overall I suspect they'd handle a strategy killer (Dispel Magic / Maze) more easily.

This wasn't a spell casting Dragon. I happen to agree with you that spell casting Dragons are much more effective, but they're also an optional rule.

You need to remember though that I can move 70ft and attack (Wood Elf) and I'm very likely to win initiative. I'm not a melee Fighter who's stuck plodding slowly along towards the Dragon. I can switch out to a longbow if I really have to and attack from 600ft away, sacrificing one bonus action attack. Not the end of the world really, and the Dragons never going to get close to me. A smart Dragon probably wouldn't even bother unless its protection its hoard, and that's a win for us.

Let's assume I didn't have foresight, Bless is a very expendable resource at high levels, and an EK can haste themselves (they get to pick a couple of extra spells outside their school, remember?). I'm still +10 to hit with Sharpshooter against AC22, so I'm still doing extremely good damage. If the Dragon wants to focus on me, then all the better, since I have great hit points, great AC, and can move around behind full cover. I also took Misty Step if it wants to try and grapple me and fly off. I'd probably draw a longbow and start shooting at it from very far, assuming it's going for me. If not I will crossbow expert and machine gun it to death (or at least, till it retreats).
Meanwhile I'd hope other party members are spamming faery fire at it, burning through its legendary resistance, or at least landing one, giving me the advantage to make the encounter "game over".

It's still an easy fight thanks to in LARGE part this class and feat combination. Foresight just makes it a faceroll.

You are correct that I did not "single handily" kill it, that was the wrong and an exaggeration on my part. But more like "did the vast majority of damage to it and made the encounter way easier than it should have been" would be more correct.

Now arguably again, this might be by design, given the name of the class I played.