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

DEFCON 1 said:

I'll just throw in here that I find it funny that some people think it's some big issue when the ogres you find in an area have 88 hit points the first time you arrive, but then they drop down to 1 hit point (and become minions) when you come back... and yet don't seem at all concerned when the PCs had like 8-12 hit points when they first arrived in the area, but now have 50-- 75-- over 100 hit points as they've returned.

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OK, that's fair.

DEFCON 1 said:

Seems to me that if we are willing to accept such a wide disparity in player character hit point changes over the intervening weeks/months/years before returning to the area without batting an eye... there's absolutely no reason why the monsters they face couldn't/wouldn't/shouldn't have the same thing.

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And yet how do you explain that in the fiction?

Sure, one ogre might have become ill and weak over the intervening time, and seen its vitality (as measured by hit points) drop from 88 to 1 as it hovers on the point of natural death; but all ogres the PCs meet, everywhere? That's a bit much.

That those original 88 hit points might have been too much to handle at low level and yet have become a relative triviality at very high level is IMO more than enough to reflect the characters' growth. Shrinking the monsters as well is overkill.

FitzTheRuke said:

I'm not sure that I'd quantify it being a "DM flaw" if you use the monsters as written in the MM without homebrewing them (although, like you, I absolutely WOULD alter those things, I just don't see it as a flaw - it's the game as written).

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OK, so it's the game as written that's flawed. Either way, still a flaw.

Maxperson said:

No. You simply progress in smaller increments is all. It's not balloon or no increase at all.

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No. Something has to ballon.

D&D at its heart is a Zero to Hero game. Its draw is that you become heros and feel that you are getting better.

So some statistic has to increase noticeably over levels.

There are many slow progression RPGs. None feel like D&D because of that. You quest for XP and Gold and you have to be getting it for a reason

If You lessen or remove ability mods from rolls, Stretch spells over 5 levels instead of 9, don't give multiple attacks, and only hand out 1 HP a level... players will drop out D&D.

Lanefan said:

And yet how do you explain that in the fiction?

Sure, one ogre might have become ill and weak over the intervening time, and seen its vitality (as measured by hit points) drop from 88 to 1 as it hovers on the point of natural death; but all ogres the PCs meet, everywhere? That's a bit much.

That those original 88 hit points might have been too much to handle at low level and yet have become a relative triviality at very high level is IMO more than enough to reflect the characters' growth. Shrinking the monsters as well is overkill

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The question is if there is no in-universe explanations and we can bend the rules around the player characters experience...

Would it be okay that a level 12 fighter deals 88 damage per hit to match the ogre's static 88 HP in order to replicate the fiction of the Tier 3 warrior cleaving through foes while keeping the ogre as a threat with their greatclub that deals 16% of the fighters HP each hit.

Minigiant said:

No. Something has to ballon.

D&D at its heart is a Zero to Hero game. Its draw is that you become heros and feel that you are getting better.

So some statistic has to increase noticeably over levels.

There are many slow progression RPGs. None feel like D&D because of that. You quest for XP and Gold and you have to be getting it for a reason

If You lessen or remove ability mods from rolls, Stretch spells over 5 levels instead of 9, don't give multiple attacks, and only hand out 1 HP a level... players will drop out D&D.

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There are whole swaths of middle ground in-between what you describe and ballooning. Ballooning is overinflation, not mere increase. You can increase things just fine without ballooning anything and people will feel the progression. Maybe that's the issue here and you're conflating increasing with ballooning.

Crimson Longinus said:

None of this makes sense to me. Nothing about this requires the numbers to scale so rapidly. Nothing.

All it does, is necessitate changing the attack bonuses and defences of the monsters, to keep up with the treadmill, in the process obscuring what the numbers actually represent.

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In 4e, a 10th level PC has around +14 to hit (+5 stat, +2 prof, +2 enhancement, +5 level).

A 1st level creature has around AC 15, and restatted as a 9th level minion has around AC 23.

A 20th level creature has around AC 34 (14 + level). Restatted as (say) an 11th level solo, the creature has around AC 25.

If the half-level bonus comes out, the 10th level PC has +9 to hit. The 1st level creature still has around AC 15, while the 9th level minion has AC around 19. The 20th level creature has AC 24, and the 11th level solo has AC 21.

As expected, with the half-level bonus out, the chance-to-hit relationship between the 10th level PC, the 9th level minion (10+ rather than 9+ to hit) and the 11th level solo (12+ rather than 11+ to hit) are not changed much.

But in the modified version, the chance for the 10th level PC to hit a 1st level standard (6+) is the same as, in actual 4e, the chance for a 10th level PC to hit a 6th level standard (AC 20). And the chance for the 10th level PC to hit a 20th level standard (15+) is the same as, in actual 4e, the chance for a 10th level PC to hit a 15th level standard. The maths have been compressed.

In actual 4e, the maths reflect the fact that a 20th level foe (say, a powerful slaad or devil) is beyond the ability of an upper Heroic PC to face (hits only on a 20). Even for a whole party (ie statted as a solo), that creature will be a challenge.

But in modified 4e, the stats don't reflect the same fiction. The upper Heroic PC has a 9 in 20 chance to hit the 11th level solo, and a 6 in 20 chance to hit the 20th level standard. It no longer makes sense that the 20th level standard is a foe beyond the ability of that upper Heroic PC, without the support of the whole party.

The compression of the maths changes the fiction, in a way that doesn't really make sense. Whereas the actual 4e maths, by setting the solo/standard/minion "equivalance" at around about L-9/L/L+8, with +1 defence per level, has them roughly spanning the spread of the d20. The actual maths also keeps the to hit chance located around a spread from 7 in 20 (14+, around 4 levels higher than the PCs) to 15 in 20 (6+, around 4 levels lower than the PCs).

@EzekielRaiden, does this post (at least roughly) capture your point upthread too?

Maxperson said:

There are whole swaths of middle ground in-between what you describe and ballooning. Ballooning is overinflation, not mere increase. You can increase things just fine without ballooning anything and people will feel the progression. Maybe that's the issue here and you're conflating increasing with ballooning.

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I am stating overinflation because of what I said.

Many vocal people don't want a lot of stats to increase so lower level monsters and obstacles last longer.

If you turn down one knob, another knob has to be turned up.
If you turn down a bunch of knobs, that same knob that isn't turned down is turned up a bunch of times.

The fewer levers you give yourself to design, the more you must CRANK on the ones you do have.

Lanefan said:

The other IMO ludicrous possibility is that a single creature might present different mechanics to two or more other creatures interacting with it at the same time!

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Suppose I'm playing Chainmail, with my PC being a hero or a wizard mopping up squads of Orcs. And then a NPC anti-hero comes and challenges me. And now, instead of using the Chainmail rules, we break out the alternative combat system from Book 1 Men & Magic.

Not only is this not ludicrous, I suspect it happened more than once in the early days of D&D play.

Lanefan said:

What's the "intended experience", though; and why are we designing toward an intended experience rather than designing agnostically and letting things happen as they may?

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Because we want the game to reliably produce the experience that it is designed towards? I mean, Gygax did this, the 4e and 5e designers did this, other RPG designers do this. It's not some weird thing.

pemerton said:

In 4e, a 10th level PC has around +14 to hit (+5 stat, +2 prof, +2 enhancement, +5 level).

A 1st level creature has around AC 15, and restatted as a 9th level minion has around AC 23.

A 20th level creature has around AC 34 (14 + level). Restatted as (say) an 11th level solo, the creature has around AC 25.

If the half-level bonus comes out, the 10th level PC has +9 to hit. The 1st level creature still has around AC 15, while the 9th level minion has AC around 19. The 20th level creature has AC 24, and the 11th level solo has AC 21.

As expected, with the half-level bonus out, the chance-to-hit relationship between the 10th level PC, the 9th level minion (10+ rather than 9+ to hit) and the 11th level solo (12+ rather than 11+ to hit) are not changed much.

But in the modified version, the chance for the 10th level PC to hit a 1st level standard (6+) is the same as, in actual 4e, the chance for a 10th level PC to hit a 6th level standard (AC 20). And the chance for the 10th level PC to hit a 20th level standard (15+) is the same as, in actual 4e, the chance for a 10th level PC to hit a 15th level standard. The maths have been compressed.

In actual 4e, the maths reflect the fact that a 20th level foe (say, a powerful slaad or devil) is beyond the ability of an upper Heroic PC to face (hits only on a 20). Even for a whole party (ie statted as a solo), that creature will be a challenge.

But in modified 4e, the stats don't reflect the same fiction. The upper Heroic PC has a 9 in 20 chance to hit the 11th level solo, and a 6 in 20 chance to hit the 20th level standard. It no longer makes sense that the 20th level standard is a foe beyond the ability of that upper Heroic PC, without the support of the whole party.

The compression of the maths changes the fiction, in a way that doesn't really make sense. Whereas the actual 4e maths, by setting the solo/standard/minion "equivalance" at around about L-9/L/L+8, with +1 defence per level, has them roughly spanning the spread of the d20. The actual maths also keeps the to hit chance located around the 7 in 20 (14+, around 4 levels higher than the PCs) to 15 in 20 (6+, around 4 levels lower than the PCs).

@EzekielRaiden, does this post (at least roughly) capture your point upthread too?

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And in order to make it sensible again, you have to tweak the damage and HP.
And now we got HP Sponges and Combat Slogs.

Anyone here actually throw a hundred enemies at their PC during 5E? I'm not counting swarms for the purposes of this question. I'm counting running a hundred enemies as a hundred enemies. I don't run 5E so I'll won't get that chance.