D&D General Explain Bounded Accuracy to Me (As if I Was Five)

[ezo]

The whole "standard ogre to ogre minion" problem only exists because when bounded accuracy halted AC growth, HP and damage growth exploded to make up the difference to display progression.

If D&D enforced Material Plane -> Echo Panes - > Inner Planes -> Outer Plane adventuring, you wouldn't need that. No backtracking. But that is telling DMs what to do.

I agree--it would be telling DMs what to do.

I've never, in any edition, followed such a prescribed adventure path. I prefer my paths to be more organic, personally, but I see how this is a perfectly valid process which works for many games.

For example, I've sent players into Hell at 3rd level, where they adventured until about 6th or so before finally escaping. Other campaigns have never left the Prime Material plane, despite going into levels in the 20's.

To be clear, I'm not saying one is better or worse than the other, just different paths.

 

[Minigiant]

I agree--it would be telling DMs what to do.

I've never, in any edition, followed such a prescribed adventure path. I prefer my paths to be more organic, personally, but I see how this is a perfectly valid process which works for many games.

For example, I've sent players into Hell at 3rd level, where they adventured until about 6th or so before finally escaping. Other campaigns have never left the Prime Material plane, despite going into levels in the 20's.

To be clear, I'm not saying one is better or worse than the other, just different paths.

Well then not forcing the DM would require

20 levels of Material Plane monsters
20 levels of Echo Plane monsters
20 levels of Inner Plane monsters
20 levels of Outer Plane monsters

With each subcategories. Dragons and Giants and Humaniods for Material .Feywild and Shadowfell for Echo. 4 elements for Inner. Good and Evil for Outer.

 

[Bagpuss]

All this keep the math easy to do...

Not sure that's the main reason, it is more so by gaming the bonuses you get you don't make things impossible.

For example in 3rd Ed you could by combining various bonuses to AC for example (High Armour AC, natural armor bonus, Deflection bonus, dodge bonus, sacred bonus, moral bonus, dexterity bonus, shield bonus, enchantment bonus, etc) design characters that were virtually impossible for some monsters to hit, particular if you had say a group of lower CR monsters. Sure all those modifiers make the math look like you are adding a load of stuff, but most of them would be permanent bonuses so you only needed to calculate it once the maths wasn't hard. What was hard was the system mastery needed to build an optimised character, and balancing the encounter if some characters are optimised and others aren't.

So you had limited encounter design options, you had to put in a High CR monster to hit that one character, but then action economy would screw that one large monster over, or the un-optimized characters would get flattened by it, because their AC was 10 or more points lower. Basically encounter designs often became boring, because the maths forced them to be that way.

With flatter progression and less ways to boost the base values, lower level monsters remain a threat for characters for longer so you can build more interesting encounters. It also means players don't have to know how best to exploit the system to get every bonus possible in order to still be effective, because the optimal character will only be a few of points different at most, rather than a 10 or more points swing.

 

[Bagpuss]

What I see is at higher levels hobgoblins disappearing entirely, even in places where they were before and reasonable should be still, for example.

Anyway, this doesn't have really anything to do with bounded accuracy. Thanks for the replies.

It does in a way. With bounded accuracy, and a flatter progression, hobgoblins can remain a threat for longer. So can still appear at higher levels because they still have some chance to hit. Without it they quickly move to a point in the maths where they need a 20 to hit and so don't really represent a threat at all.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The fiction is the master. The rules are there to reflect said fiction and, where necessary, abstract it as closely as is practical.

Which means the abstraction can, and should, change if doing so gets closer to the actual state of affairs.

Given that in theory the fiction is supposed to be consistent with itself, it naturally follows that the rules should reflect that self-consistency.

Not at all. It follows that the rules should prioritize efficacy and functionality. "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Consistency is not an unalloyed good. It has many benefits, and thus we should not dismiss a wise consistency. I myself am an advocate for a wide variety of particular kinds of consistency, e.g. unified resolution mechanics, not on the brute fact that they are consistent, but rather because their consistency leads to something else that is valuable in itself, such as making it easier, simpler, and more natural to adjudicate, or to speed up the learning process (which is, was, and always will be the single greatest hurdle to getting people into the hobby.) Requiring that the rules rigidly produce only and exactly one description of something, when that thing's value is necessarily relative to the context in which it appears, is a foolish consistency, pulling us away from efficacy and functionality.

Given that the crowd here skews rather conservative when it comes to D&D, I'd say a 54% intend-to-adopt rate is pretty damn good.

But that was exactly my point...?

Thing is, whether you're showing it on a small globe or on a 1:16 ordnance survey map the data itself doesn't change. <snip> There's the difference: in my view, in-fiction consistency demands that the mechanics be absolute. Context has nothing to do with it.

But it does change. By definition! You don't get street view data when you're looking at the whole Earth. It isn't just too small to see, it is in fact not there. And once you zoom in to see the street view, geographic data like contour lines isn't there. It's genuinely not displayed. Because that's not what is useful or relevant in that context.

The globe itself remains what it is. Main Street is always there, in terms of the territory. But when we look at states and continents, we do not render Main Street. When we look at Main Street, we do not render states and continents. The data isn't simply "currently out of view." It is genuinely not present on the map until it is called up--and other data is necessarily put away when one does this. That's the whole point.

The map is not the territory--and different maps actually do have different information on them. The territory always remains whatever it is (I assume you grant that we're looking at the territory only in one particular moment.) But which parts of the territory are in fact on the map, and which ones are intentionally left off the map, varies by context. It is precisely the same with the level 2 solo ogre and the level 14 (or whatever) minion ogre. Different data has been represented in the abstraction, because we have proverbially "zoomed out."

If the ogre had 88 hit points yesterday when chasing away 1st-level rookies, and nothing's hurt it in the meantime, it has 88 hit points today when the 17th-level curb-stompers come calling.

You have simply made the argument circular. It is consistent because it must be; it must be consistent because it is.

I'm saying that it is useful to allow non-consistency in this context, because the thing we wish to represent--the danger posed by this threat--IS different today than it was six months ago. The creature is the same, but the context is different, and the context is always what matters.

And that already happens: the PCs gain levels and power and wealth etc. and as they do, that ogre becomes less and less of a real threat to them. There's no need to also change the ogre itself; and doing so only serves to steepen the power curve.

Except that there is a reason. The 88-HP ogre cannot produce the kind of experience you intend with this. It just can't. That's the whole point. You are hoping and praying that coincidence will fall in your favor. We can do better; we can design better.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't see the "actively tries to negate their impact" thing. At all. So I can't really respond to this.

By doing this:

Correction: A minion ogre is the same creature, but its mechanics have changed, because mechanics are contextual. In the context of "we have had one adventure together rescuing the miller's daughter," a single ogre is a dangerous and risky opponent which should not be underestimated. In the context of seasoned adventurers who have visited other planes and dealt with the servants of fey ladies and kings of shadow, an ogre is a nuisance, albeit still a danger. In the context of demigods who regularly show the deities themselves that they're not to be trifled with, a single ogre doesn't even rise to the level of nuisance anymore.

In this change to minion the other stats than the HP are also changed. Minion ogre actually has better attack bonus and AC than the earlier version of the ogre the lower level characters faced. Why? Because the escalation of PC stats made it so that those earlier numbers no longer worked; the ogre could not hit the PCs, they would autohit it. That is a logical consequences of escalating stats. But 4e doesn't actually want this to happen, thus the new version of the monster. Whenever the escalating numbers would matter, we actually change the monsters so that they don't. So why the hell have the escalating numbers in the first place? This is just confused design.

 

[pemerton]

With bounded accuracy, and a flatter progression, hobgoblins can remain a threat for longer. So can still appear at higher levels because they still have some chance to hit. Without it they quickly move to a point in the maths where they need a 20 to hit and so don't really represent a threat at all.

Well, 4e D&D doesn't use bounded accuracy, but I can report from experience that a 15th level Hobgoblin phalanx (a swarm, whose members - in the fiction - are individual Hobgoblin soldiers) can pose a meaningful threat to mid-paragon PCs.

 

[pemerton]

Minion ogre actually has better attack bonus and AC than the earlier version of the ogre the lower level characters faced. Why? Because the escalation of PC stats made it so that those earlier numbers no longer worked; the ogre could not hit the PCs, they would autohit it. That is a logical consequences of escalating stats. But 4e doesn't actually want this to happen, thus the new version of the monster. Whenever the escalating numbers would matter, we actually change the monsters so that they don't. So why the hell have the escalating numbers in the first place? This is just confused design.

But it's not confused. It's very deliberate.

A 4e standard creature is the mechanical equivalent (in general) of four minions. So the PC who fought one standard Ogre at upper Heroic tier can expect to face four of those Ogres, statted as minions, at mid Paragon tier.

If, mechanically, the intention is to represent this without changing Ogre stat blocks, then you need some other device to make the PC about four times more effective vs the Ogre than they were 8 levels ago. The approach taken in 5e is increased to hit bonus (vs the Ogre's constant AC) and increased damage (via higher level spells, or multiple attacks, plus a bit of stat and feat-based growth).

I don't know of any a priori argument that this will produce better game play. And given what I read about 5e combats, my impression is that 4e does a better job of producing compelling game play in the combat sphere than does 5e.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

By doing this:



In this change to minion the other stats than the HP are also changed. Minion ogre actually has better attack bonus and AC than the earlier version of the ogre the lower level characters faced. Why? Because the escalation of PC stats made it so that those earlier numbers no longer worked; the ogre could not hit the PCs, they would autohit it. That is a logical consequences of escalating stats. But 4e doesn't actually want this to happen, thus the new version of the monster. Whenever the escalating numbers would matter, we actually change the monsters so that they don't. So why the hell have the escalating numbers in the first place? This is just confused design.

Which is part of the abstraction.

Are you also going to complain about every other possible abstraction? The fact that it is an abstraction cannot be a relevant issue--so it must be what is abstracted, but that is not confused, it is very intentional. You just take umbrage with the notion that the numbers differ from one situation to another, in order to produce the intended experience.

In this case, the monster dying in a single hit is precisely where your "confused" design is not confused at all: to deal any damage is to eliminate the threat, but the threat still has a chance of coming to bear, albeit briefly.

You may as well complain about the fact that high CR monsters deal more damage than low CR monsters, because the only reason they need to do more damage is the fact that player characters have more health. Confused design! Just eliminate higher CRs and normalize damage numbers!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But it's not confused. It's very deliberate.

A 4e standard creature is the mechanical equivalent (in general) of four minions. So the PC who fought one standard Ogre at upper Heroic tier can expect to face four of those Ogres, statted as minions, at mid Paragon tier.

If, mechanically, the intention is to represent this without changing Ogre stat blocks, then you need some other device to make the PC about four times more effective vs the Ogre than they were 8 levels ago. The approach taken in 5e is increased to hit bonus (vs the Ogre's constant AC) and increased damage (via higher level spells, or multiple attacks, plus a bit of stat and feat-based growth).

I don't know of any a priori argument that this will produce better game play. And given what I read about 5e combats, my impression is that 4e does a better job of producing compelling game play in the combat sphere than does 5e.

This is really not even whether you have things such as minions or not. You could have them with bounded accuracy too, if you wanted. The point is about the uselessness of the rapidly escalating numbers in 4e. You don't actually use them! When they would matter, the enemy stats are changed so that they don't! That is just silly. If you don't want the impact of the escalation, just don't have it. Whether you have easily killable mook versions of the monsters on top of that is another matter entirely.