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

[MGibster]

For quite a while I've seen the term bounded accuracy thrown around but I don't think I ever saw someone explain exactly what that was. Fair enough. I decided I wanted to know, so I put on my big boy pants and Googled the heck out of it. There's even an entry on the D&D Wiki. But then the wiki says BA has nothing to do with skill checks even though other people totally say it has something to do with skill checks. Not sure what that means. What I can gather is that BA has something to do with how difficult it is to hit something in combat. Is that it? Someone explain it to me as if I recently suffered a head injury. What's good about it? What are the drawbacks?

I almost called it Bonded Accuracy in the thread title.

 

[Leatherhead]

Well here is how WotC described it:

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Bounded Accuracy)

web.archive.org

In theory, it means:

• The math of the system is more flat, with less time spent adding dynamic bonuses and penalties.
• Low level monsters can still be some kind of threat to higher level players. And enough low level characters can be a threat to even a high level monster.
• Skill checks are based upon absolute difficulty rather than relative difficulty. Which translates into no treadmilling of stats, so eventually you can be decent at something you started off bad at, and you don't need to be a super-specialist character to help on a skill check

As to if 5e broke any of those design principles, is an entirely different discussion.

 

[Kurotowa]

Bounded Accuracy is a compact to prevent an arms race between bonuses and target numbers. Bonuses are kept few and small, while target numbers are kept low and escalate slow, and a lot of situational merits and penalties are routed into the Advantage/Disadvantage system.

All this keep the math easy to do, it means a small bonus is meaningful instead of just being added to a large stack, and it means encounters don't have to be within a tiny CR range to not be lopsided one way or the other. Of course, not everyone likes it that way. PF2E makes it a deliberate feature that PCs can mow through opponents they have a significant level advantage over.

 

[Reynard]

The Rules Lawyer has a great video on it. Basically, it means that the range at which PCs can interact with monsters is greatly extended, because rather than relying on attack rolls, armor class, saves, etc... it relies on hit points and action economy. Basically, you can continue to use low CR monsters as the PCs gain levels because the PCs don't "graduate" out of those low CR monsters' abilty to hit them. This is unlike, say, 3E where PCs quickly out-leveled monsters and lowly goblins just couldn't hit mid level PCs. It is more complex than that, but that's the gist.

 

[Clint_L]

I'm not saying it's perfect, or perfectly executed, but IMO bounded accuracy is the most important design principle of 5e and a significant factor to its success.

 

[Swanosaurus]

Well here is how WotC described it:

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Bounded Accuracy)

web.archive.org

In theory, it means:

• The math of the system is more flat, with less time spent adding dynamic bonuses and penalties.
• Low level monsters can still be some kind of threat to higher level players. And enough low level characters can be a threat to even a high level monster.
• Skill checks are based upon absolute difficulty rather than relative difficulty. Which translates into no treadmilling of stats, so eventually you can be decent at something you started off bad at, and you don't need to be a super-specialist character to help on a skill check

Sounds like "Bounded Accuracy" is nothing more than a term for D&D coming around to doing things like the majority of other RPG systems out there.

 

[Reynard]

Sounds like "Bounded Accuracy" is nothing more than a term for D&D coming around to doing things like the majority of other RPG systems out there.

The majority of RPGs don't actually worry as much about "balance" as D&D does, because they recognize that RPGs are a game where balance is actually kind of unimportant.

 

[Rabulias]

I am not sure what edition(s) of D&D the OP is familiar with, but when anyone asks about why BA is good, I point back to mid-to high level 3.x D&D where attack bonuses, saving throw bonuses, skill bonuses, armor classes, and DCs would be in the 20s, 30s, or even 40s or higher. When you have a bonus to a d20 roll that is greater than the rolling range of the die itself, the die roll seems superfluous.

 

[Swanosaurus]

The majority of RPGs don't actually worry as much about "balance" as D&D does, because they recognize that RPGs are a game where balance is actually kind of unimportant.

Mainly, I was thinking that BA sounds like a lot of words around the idea of keeping effective scores and results within a certain range. Which probably really was a good measure to take for 5e, but it's not really that revolutionary idea if you look at RPGs in general.

 

[Yaarel]

5e now keeps its bounded accuracy but a bit looser.

Probably the Student Tier (1 thru 4) is unable to hit Epic Tier (21+) or achieve Epic ability checks. Probably not even the Legend Tier (17−20).

The current math might be ideal? It avoids the craziness of 3e, but there is still a sense that things that used to be impossible, have become possible with advancement.