Breaking Bounded Accuracy: Proposed Fix

dave2008

Legend
RE the bold - again a sign of where experience matters.

Assume a fighter has +2 to hit due to a sword - net bonus say +7
I give him bardic inspiration under the current rules at d8 then the possible results are +8 to +15
I give him the same dice in your system and the net bonus is +7 to +13.

So the net result difference between the two is:
normal + 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8
Yours +0-0-1-2-3-4-5-6

Which is almost exactly the same result as a d6-2

The key is your system makes 1/4 of the d8 rolls meaningless and the rest not as good as the basic system does (all due to the loss of the +2 that was already present.)

Its obvious to those after a certain bit of experience, i would suppose.

The result is the same as if there were no + magic items. Since magic items are not required in 5e, this falls within the design intent of the class. I am all good here. This particular complaint of yours is without merit IMO. That being said, if he proposal steps on some other part of the Bard ability, I would be interested in hearing it.

As for making major changes without considering the scope - yup that is common enough an error of lack of experience, so go for it.

Me, after a lot of experience, i prefer narrow scope changes and campaigns where the rule remain consistent from one session to another. So do my players so we are a good fit.

i wish you all the luck in the world.

I am not sure how much experience with D&D you have, but my group has been playing D&D for 30 years and 5e since the beginning. My players don't branch outside of their comfort zone much so I don't have a much experience with some classes, but then again I don't need to either. However, I have vastly more experience with my group than you do. We are mature adults that can handle quite a bit. Heck we played a 4e adventure without any powers - just improv., so I don't think we need any luck - we got it covered ;)
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Sleepy Walker

First Post
Read up to about the end of page 2

Issues with original idea: Not too many. You will see the goldilocks 50% chance to hit zone move by about 6 levels (proficiency changes and magic weapons/armor). It keeps the range something you can more easily manage. It makes simple +x magic items more palatable to put in-game, but makes combining them with spells far less interesting. It could shift your player's prepared spells and use into a more damage oriented configuration.


The DM using this modification would also want to think very carefully about how many +x items are given. At a point, sooner than vanilla 5e, the players will start trying to vend +2 and +3 shields or armor if they already have a similar bonus equipped.

I think the proposed change is solid for game balance and allows the freedom to use +x items without worrying too much, however, the changes also introduce a potential economy balance problem which could exacerbate vanilla 5e's already near useless piles of gold (yes debatable). That is to say, it still behooves the DM to throw out lots of unique and varied magical items, though the proposed changes allow higher end +x items to be apart of that variation.


The solution to the same problem I found and currently use is to find ways to depreciate ability scores. I altered my system to make every character MAD, and applied it to the world. The foundation being making dexterity the attack modifier for all physical weapons and strength the damage modifier, then applying a similar principle to each caster type, finally making sub 11 Con scores non-suicidal. Brings everything into a more perfect alignment, from Giants to Kobolds. Admittedly I chose to put maximum effort into the endeavor and ended up writing out a massive document changing a solid % of 5e, but the results have been very entertaining. Tons of stuff has been fixed, very little has been broken, and the active game overhead has only increased a small amount.

edit: I use "fixed" loosely. There are really only a few things in 5e which are arguably broken when reaching higher levels and a few more which get wonky... then a few more I just don't like how not useful said item/ability/spell is. Biggest issue is that changing some of the broken and wonky things affects 2-5 other areas of the game, so it really just turns into a choice of lackluster Band-Aid or an full system change.
 
Last edited:

dave2008

Legend
i agree... there are so many ways to duck around this "solution" and so many consequences that are likely unintended. Bards add dice but barbarians add advantage so one is whammied but the other not. Bless gives d4 but guiding bolt gives advantage... etc etc etc etc etc etc

That is the kind of perspective I am looking for - thank you.

Its my own experience showing but i always have to look at the scope of a change and that includes all the classes and all the spells and so forth that will be impacted to see if in addressing a "problem" i am not causing a lot of unintended or unwanted shifts at the same time.

We typically are only concerned with how a change affects how we play the game. However, I am personally interested in the impact on a broader scale. The only issue for me is, I don't get any pay off for considering all classes and spells, etc. It is a lot of time spent with no benefit - that is why I opened the concept to the community. To get feedback.

heck, might be wrong but if i recall correctly there are a lot more ways to get advantage than there are to get bonuses to roll in common play so... not sure if this sack full of unintended shifts and slaps even gets at the bounded accuracy lobby's demands if it ignores advantage.

Providing advantage or disadvantage doesn't mess with BA because it doesn't extend the range, just the probability. I don't really have an issue with hit rate.
 

dave2008

Legend
Read up to about the end of page 2

Issues with original idea: Not too many. You will see the goldilocks 50% chance to hit zone move by about 6 levels (proficiency changes and magic weapons/armor). It keeps the range something you can more easily manage. It makes simple +x magic items more palatable to put in-game, but makes combining them with spells far less interesting. It could shift your player's prepared spells and use into a more damage oriented configuration.


The DM using this modification would also want to think very carefully about how many +x items are given. At a point, sooner than vanilla 5e, the players will start trying to vend +2 and +3 shields or armor if they already have a similar bonus equipped.

I think the proposed change is solid for game balance and allows the freedom to use +x items without worrying too much, however, the changes also introduce a potential economy balance problem which could exacerbate vanilla 5e's already near useless piles of gold (yes debatable). That is to say, it still behooves the DM to throw out lots of unique and varied magical items, though the proposed changes allow higher end +x items to be apart of that variation.


The solution to the same problem I found and currently use is to find ways to depreciate ability scores. I altered my system to make every character MAD, and applied it to the world. The foundation being making dexterity the attack modifier for all physical weapons and strength the damage modifier, then applying a similar principle to each caster type, finally making sub 11 Con scores non-suicidal. Brings everything into a more perfect alignment, from Giants to Kobolds. Admittedly I chose to put maximum effort into the endeavor and ended up writing out a massive document changing a solid % of 5e, but the results have been very entertaining. Tons of stuff has been fixed, very little has been broken, and the active game overhead has only increased a small amount.

Thank you for the comments, that is helpful.
 


5ekyu

Hero
The result is the same as if there were no + magic items. Since magic items are not required in 5e, this falls within the design intent of the class. I am all good here. This particular complaint of yours is without merit IMO. That being said, if he proposal steps on some other part of the Bard ability, I would be interested in hearing it.



I am not sure how much experience with D&D you have, but my group has been playing D&D for 30 years and 5e since the beginning. My players don't branch outside of their comfort zone much so I don't have a much experience with some classes, but then again I don't need to either. However, I have vastly more experience with my group than you do. We are mature adults that can handle quite a bit. Heck we played a 4e adventure without any powers - just improv., so I don't think we need any luck - we got it covered ;)


Last part first - IDK what you consider experience or relevant experience but not knowing enough about 2 of the 12 classes to know how this affects them belies the value of your claimed years. I did not question your experience until you atarted claiming to not know the 5e classes that get impacted by this change in more significant ways.

First for last - no. Again you have that wrong. You might have known this if you had looked at the bard.

The impact and value of the bard dice when used in a non-item campaign with the same specs and assumptions is:
base +5 (no +2 for items) produces net outcome of +6 to +13 for the d8
Base +5 +1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8

So just like before the result is a gain of up to 8 and an average of 4.5 from the d8.
That matches the same thing when you have the +2 weapon and the normal rule

under your rule the gain of that ability is reduced in this example to a gain of 0 to +6 as shown above and a net gain of 2.62 - you have essentially taken the d8 down to just a smidge more than a d4 average gain of 2.5 and the total breadth of a d6 with some zero gains added in for fun.

That this would lead you to conclude no weight to this is telling.
 

5ekyu

Hero
That is the kind of perspective I am looking for - thank you.



We typically are only concerned with how a change affects how we play the game. However, I am personally interested in the impact on a broader scale. The only issue for me is, I don't get any pay off for considering all classes and spells, etc. It is a lot of time spent with no benefit - that is why I opened the concept to the community. To get feedback.



Providing advantage or disadvantage doesn't mess with BA because it doesn't extend the range, just the probability. I don't really have an issue with hit rate.

In my games, classes that are not the PCs can still come into play as adversaries and temporary allies sometimes sought out by the PCs - so should we take your claim they aren't involved in how you play i supposed thats not true of your games?

Interesting.

best of luck.
 

5ekyu

Hero
Providing advantage or disadvantage doesn't mess with BA because it doesn't extend the range, just the probability. I don't really have an issue with hit rate.

Ok so, hit rate and stuff are not a problem you have encountered in your game but BA is...

"Basically I feel that these two together break bounded accuracy (typically in favor of the PCs)."

So, for us less experienced folks - can you tell us maybe three specific examples where broken BA occured in your game's actual play and caused a problem - preferably ones with magic items and bless and other such spells?
 

This rule would affect stacking AC too - magic doesn't stack. So you can have only one magic buff to AC. You would still have the issue of adding one magic item bonus to AC, but not multiple.
What counts as magic, though? Spells and magic items, sure, but what about class features? Does it depend on how the class feature is described, or is it just a "class" bonus either way?

From a practical, administrative standpoint, I'm not sure how to make sure that everyone is on the same page with what stacks and what doesn't, unless you go back to naming bonuses.
 

dave2008

Legend
I have never really had an issue with bounded accuracy. But I do things a bit differently than the average DM. I have an Excel spreadsheet that compiles a bunch of the numerical mechanics for each player. This includes Hit Points, AC, Attack Bonus, Spell DC, Saving Throws, and Skill Bonuses, just to name a few. I then have the sheet automatically calculate appropriate enemy AC, Attack Bonus, Save / Skill DCs, ect. It's set to churn out easy AC / DC (will succeed 75% of the time), Medium (succeed 50% of the time), and Hard (succeed less than 25% of the time).

Using this not only helps me create encounters that are appropriate challenges, but it lets me throw together encounters very quickly on the fly. The only time this might break is when one player has a an attack bonus or AC that is very high or low compared to the party average, but such players are building their characters in that way. It throws off the numbers a bit, but thus far it has been a pretty successful system.

Encounter building / combat challenges are not something I have any problem with. However, I really like the spreadsheet idea. I have a pretty good intuitive feel for balancing encounters (and I am good at adjusting on the fly), but I would think a spreadsheet like that would be very helpful. i will have to look into making one. Thank you for the input!
 

Remove ads

Top