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

[Crimson Longinus]

. You just take umbrage with the notion that the numbers differ from one situation to another, in order to produce the intended experience.

Because you don't need the escalating numbers to produce that experience! They do not contribute to that.

 

[Horwath]

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.

true,

but if you remove +1/2 per level bonus, you really do get that bounded accuracy effect.
you then only get +8 to primary ability(+4 better bonus), +2 from expertise(I expect everyone to take expertise at 1st level for +1 attack bonus) and +6 from item bonuses.

that is only +12 over 30 levels.

at 15th level you mentioned that would be +6 better bonus than at 1st level.

 

[tetrasodium]

I was presuming it from the discussions on 4E I've seen in this and other threads, which is why I brought it up--because I never played it and wanted to see if it fell into the same trap other editions have. 5E does it as well.

I understand something like orc, orc warrior, orc marauder, orc chief, orc war chief, orc warlord would all be different "escalating" creatures. Which is fine, the stronger ones are the champions (as others have said). What I see repeatedly and have seen in every edition is that as PCs rise in levels, encounters suddenly only involve the champions.

For example, at low levels, you might encounter orcs and orc warriors led by an orc chief or marauder. Then, at higher levels, it becomes only orc marauders led by an orc war chief. The weaker orcs and orc warriors are no where to be found...


It is not a matter of an error, it is a matter of how encounter design is set up. So, answer me this: are random encounter tables in 4E differentiated by character level tiers? Or are they set up solely by region/terrain?


It mostly is, and I never claimed it wasn't, but it is also increased by how the edition is designed. Which, again from posts here and in other threads regarding 4E, it seemed to me 4E also did this. I've seen responses on both sides even in this thread.

But as I mentioned before, this has nothing to do with bounded accuracy. So, thanks for your input and I hope this clears up my position. I'm not claiming 4E did this, but it seems to, just as 5E has.

I'm not sure that your knowledge of past editions is as solid as you are implying You said "every edition" a few times. There was an edition where those otcs could have templates monster feats and/or class levels with a fairly low level of effort from the GM. That was also an edition that had a fairly wide range of humanoid statblocks for various flavors of bandit cultist soldier and so on

 

[Bagpuss]

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.

Yeah but a 15th level Hobgoblin Phalanx isn't the same thing as a normal hobgoblin they encountered over 10 levels ago. Bounded Accuracy lets you use the same stat block for longer.

I can't recall how making medium creatures into swarms in 4th Ed works but I know from experience if was a stupid mess when they did it in Pathfinder.

They had them in Hell's Rebels I remember and gave them the stupid rule,

A troop is immune to any spell or effect that targets a specific number of creatures (including single-target spells such as disintegrate and multiple target spells such as haste), though it is affected by spells or effects that target an area or a nonspecific number of creatures (such
as fireball or mass hold monster).

So a fighter could use his single attacks to reduce the hit points of the Troop, but suddenly the Wizard/Sorcerer that had spells like Scouring Ray, Magic Missile or a host of other spells could do nothing to reduce the hit points of the troop.

Also

Troop Attack: Creatures with the troop subtype don’t make standard melee attacks. Instead, they deal automatic damage to any creature within reach or whose space they occupy at the end of their move, with no attack roll needed.

So it doesn't matter if you are a paladin heavily invested in sword and shield with barely a chink in your defences, or wizard in robe and little else.

Such a daft execution.

 

[Horwath]

Because you don't need the escalating numbers to produce that experience! They do not contribute to that.

that is why I am preferring a homebrew variant for 5E with no ASI's.
You just gain feats.
No racial ASI's also,
everyone starts with 18,16,14,14,12,10 array and outside magic items or some class features, stay with those abilities.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

In the latest session of my 5e game the ninth level characters returned to the site of their very first adventure. The area was as they left it in the first level, I used my old notes. They encountered a leftover dire tapir (giant boar,) which would have been a tough opponent to first level characters, but this time was fought by one lone character. The character won pretty comfortably, but the tapir actually did some serious damage which mattered later. They also encountered kobols (kobolds) like in the first time, this time in bigger numbers and led by their shaman (kobold scale sorcerer). There was not a fight though, as the characters managed to resolve the situation peacefully, but had it been, it would have worked fine albeit being pretty easy. Later they encountered the same will-o-wisps at the swamp they had to flee from at the first time, and progressed deeper in the swamp to the location of an abandoned eldri village to encounter banshees and animated trees. There they found a gnarled ancient tree and determined that some powerful evil was trapped in it. They decided against opening the tree. Perhaps at even higher level they will return here once more, to fully uncover the secrets of the tree and face what lies inside.

I really like that I can just stat things objectively and let the characters do what they want. And this also gives the players feeling of genuine progress. When they encounter foes that were previously dangerous yet can now beat them with relative ease it is because they genuinely got more powerful, not because I nerfed the monsters to be more easily killable.

 

[pemerton]

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.

My experience with 4e doesn't bear out your claim.

The 4e stat system makes it possible to have a low-level PC be useful against one, or perhaps low single digits, Hobgoblins; to have an 8th (or thereabouts) level PC be useful against a single typical Ogre and against half-a-dozen to a dozen Hobgoblins (now statted as minions); and to have a mid-Paragon PC be useful against four of those Ogres (statted as minions) and against a phalanx of Hobgoblins (20 to 50 of them, now statted as a swarm).

What is the actual, technical solution within bounded accuracy that will produce this result, and have it produce compelling gameplay?

Because you don't need the escalating numbers to produce that experience! They do not contribute to that.

if you remove +1/2 per level bonus, you really do get that bounded accuracy effect.
you then only get +8 to primary ability(+4 better bonus), +2 from expertise(I expect everyone to take expertise at 1st level for +1 attack bonus) and +6 from item bonuses.

that is only +12 over 30 levels.

at 15th level you mentioned that would be +6 better bonus than at 1st level.

I already posted upthread that you could take out the half-level bonus and the maths would all stay the same:

You could take out all the half-level bonuses to attack and defences and the game would, mechanically, play the same but it wouldn't yield the same story. And elements of the fiction would stop making sense - eg why is my demigod still finding a single giant a threat?

As I said in that post, the resulting fiction will comes under pressure. It won't produce fiction in which an 8th level standard Ogre and a 16th level Ogre minion are plausibly the same creature.

 

[pemerton]

I really like that I can just stat things objectively and let the characters do what they want. And this also gives the players feeling of genuine progress. When they encounter foes that were previously dangerous yet can now beat them with relative ease it is because they genuinely got more powerful, not because I nerfed the monsters to be more easily killable.

The notion of "genuinely more powerful" is, as I posted upthread, obscurantist. It's just numbers vs numbers. In 4e, a 15th level PC is genuinely about eight times as powerful as a 15th level minion, whereas an 8th level PC is only about twice as powerful as an 8th level standard creature. That's numbers vs numbers too, and the minion rules don't make it any less so.

As I posted upthread, you preferred approach is not a priori more fun for play. 5e D&D relies much less on conditions, and much more on sheer hp damage, as the main element in combat. So relatively consistent to hit chances aren't as significant to its game play.

But I could make 5e even simpler by replacing fighter's multiple attacks with a damage multiplier, and then applying spill-over damage to neighbouring creatures (inspired, say, by T&T). Would this make the game better? Or is choice of targets, and caring about (likely relatively minor, given bounded accuracy) differences between their ACs, a meaningful part of play?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

My experience with 4e doesn't bear out your claim.

The 4e stat system makes it possible to have a low-level PC be useful against one, or perhaps low single digits, Hobgoblins; to have an 8th (or thereabouts) level PC be useful against a single typical Ogre and against half-a-dozen to a dozen Hobgoblins (now statted as minions); and to have a mid-Paragon PC be useful against four of those Ogres (statted as minions) and against a phalanx of Hobgoblins (20 to 50 of them, now statted as a swarm).

What is the actual, technical solution within bounded accuracy that will produce this result, and have it produce compelling gameplay?

Nothing what you said here has to do with bounded or unbounded accuracy. It is just that with bounded you don't need to such different versions of the monsters for the fame to function, but you still could. (Not a fan, as I want objective stats, but that is another matter.)

I already posted upthread that you could take out the half-level bonus and the maths would all stay the same:

Which is basically my point.

As I said in that post, the resulting fiction will comes under pressure. It won't produce fiction in which an 8th level standard Ogre and a 16th level Ogre minion are plausibly the same creature.

It is not really plausible in any case. And why does it matter? 16th level characters would never fight a 8th level normal ogre in 4e anyway. And if they for some reason would, perhaps even side by side with a 16th level minion ogre, the any illusion that these are somehow the same thing would be instantly broken.

 

[pemerton]

I can't recall how making medium creatures into swarms in 4th Ed works

You stat it up like any other swarm of that level. 4e creature/monster statting doesn't (generally) use a "template" approach.