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

[billd91]

Why is it so important that even high level characters should be hittable?

A few reasons:
1. So that lower level monsters are still relevant, if minor, threats without having to use the 4e minions kludge.
2. So that mixed level parties’ lower level characters (or henchmen) aren’t left behind in ability to contribute to a fight.
3. So that PCs don’t have to be always at the leading edge of optimization to contribute to a fight.
4. Limited AC ranges also fit better with AD&D edition sensibilities, something 5e does a much better job of than either 3e or 4e.

 

[ezo]

That's a solvable problem. The more dice you add the more stable the result and the less random the outcome is.

I don't think you are quite getting it? The problem is to cluster towards the middle, but not so much that the extremes are virtually unattainable. Adding more dice just increases the issue, not helping it.

It's frankly baffling to me that people are arguing that there shouldn't be any ACs too hard to hit for a low level character. Why? Consider something like, say, flight. The system does not at all care about creatures like dragons having flight, even though given the right circumstances flight is equivalent to infinite AC.

Some people feel there should not be unhittable foes, others are fine with it. Personally, it doesn't bother me if something has an AC so high a guard or kobold or something can't hit it.

The issue (as I see it) is more that people conflate "hitting" (rolling high enough to score a success against an AC) to actually hitting (i.e. making contact) a target. Narratively, I imagine the guard or kobold or whatever possible making contact, but the attack fails to affect the target (actually getting to score damage).

As far as something like flight is concerned, if it is giving you an infinite AC, you aren't a threat really. Any situation where you are a threat and have infinite AC via flight, then the DM basically set-up a kobayashi maru.

It's not like a character is just passively standing there letting their AC soak attacks either. AC is an active defence that involves dodging incoming attacks and moving around. Why is it so important that even high level characters should be hittable?

No, it isn't passive at all, and any attack against a passive target should (at the very least) gain advantage.

AC is a composite score that, yes, includes dodging and moving around (DEX) and the effectiveness of armor. That is really it unless you include magic. Things such as "skill, luck, favor, etc." are regulated to hit points, not AC. This is why your level has no impact, in and of itself, on your AC, but does increase your hit points.

Bounded Accuracy (as I mentioned upthread) shifted the goal posts in combat. Now, you can hit pretty much anything, but the disparity in power between adversaries means the amount of damage compared to hit points is less impactful. Before, you didn't hit as much in general, but each hit carried more impact because hit points were fewer.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

A few reasons:
1. So that lower level monsters are still relevant, if minor, threats without having to use the 4e minions kludge.
2. So that mixed level parties’ lower level characters (or henchmen) aren’t left behind in ability to contribute to a fight.
3. So that PCs don’t have to be always at the leading edge of optimization to contribute to a fight.
4. Limited AC ranges also fit better with AD&D edition sensibilities, something 5e does a much better job of than either 3e or 4e.

1. Minions were excellent, though. This seems like too much of a question of taste.

2. I sure hope people aren't playing with mixed-level parties... And in case henchmen are being used, and now admittedly I don't think 5e actually has rules for henchmen in the first place, you can just decide their to hit bonus arbitrarily.

3. This is a good point in a way, except 5e doesn't care about this. 5E limits the extent of modifiers in general but has no fixed ceiling or floor. PF2 is much better at this, by lifting the competence floor to an equal level. This is why they got rid of rolling your ability scores. It prevents someone from having a markedly less competent character because of bad luck.

4. I'm not sure I agree. I haven't personally played 1E D&D, but isn't that game full of you-must-be-this-tall-to-enter stuff? I think golems are essentially immortal unless stuck with +X weapons, for example.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Surprising. It's quite rare for a 5e fan to actually take any issue at all with how swingy it is. Most either deny that it is swingy in the first place, or defend it (often the former becomes the latter, I find.)

My main problem is, I genuinely don't think everyone should have a chance, on the one hand, and yet on the other hand I very much think an expert should truly outgrow some challenges, becoming not merely quite likely but guaranteed to succeed. That is, in many ways, how we judge degrees of competence at a task, after all--how much a person's success depends on making the right choices/taking the right actions, rather than on luck or happenstance. A climber who fails 20% of perfectly ordinary climbing attempts is someone I would consider not very good at climbing, especially if he's supposed to be an "expert."


For you. (A message you've been quite keen to make to me in the past, I'll note.)


Oh, certainly, degrees of success would be lovely. If only we had some kind of system that could judge group-level degrees of success, say, by succeeding or failing at various checks along the route toward a final goal. Or if we had, say, a page or two in the DMG going over what typical tasks are like, so we could get a sense for what near-success or near-failure is, and thus graduate from e.g. costly failure to general failure to almost-successful to barely-passing to passing comfortably to passing with flying colors. Those tools would be incredibly useful, but alas, they're definitely totally impossible and no edition of D&D has ever even attempted such an unachievable dream.

You actually had me with this argument (I also think the game is too swingy sometimes, and like the idea that not everyone should have a chance of success at every task) right up until you suggested that 4e's Grand Unified DC Table (tm) is the best solution. I prefer that different activities be looked at with different subsystems, as appropriate, to maintain verisimilitude.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's a solvable problem. The more dice you add the more stable the result and the less random the outcome is.

It's frankly baffling to me that people are arguing that there shouldn't be any ACs too hard to hit for a low level character. Why? Consider something like, say, flight. The system does not at all care about creatures like dragons having flight, even though given the right circumstances flight is equivalent to infinite AC.

It's not like a character is just passively standing there letting their AC soak attacks either. AC is an active defence that involves dodging incoming attacks and moving around. Why is it so important that even high level characters should be hittable?

Or high level monsters?

 

[Micah Sweet]

But not because it's fine in novels. That is precisely the point. Your reasoning does not defend the point made.


The claim was that it is never a problem, no matter what, to add an option; that doing so could not ever be an issue. This claim is false. The hyperbolic examples simply demonstrate a situation that no one could possibly accept.

Hence: Simply arguing "we're just adding an option, it's not like that could possibly hurt you" is false. You must further demonstrate that it is an appropriate, fitting option amongst the ones already in play. Which is precisely the thing others are complaining about. That this option drives out other alternatives.


Except that they, too, have been subjected to the mathematical flattening! You can't have it both ways. You can't have flattened math and not-flattened math. It must be one or the other--by definition. If you have un-flattened the math for some options, then by definition the math in general is not flattened!


Just no. You can only fight flattened-math opponents. Those are the only ones allowed to exist in 5e. Yes, some of them will be at the upper end of what little numeric progression is permitted.

The highest possible AC for a creature in 5e is 25. The lowest is, naturally, 0. Even accounting for the difference in maximum level, reducing it to ~34, that's 9 points lower than the maximal 4e equivalent (which, perhaps ironically, is Tiamat vs Bahamut.) Even if we look at a more typical top end, it's still ~32 vs ~22. Meaning the absolute strongest, toughest opponents a player would typically face...have approximately the same defenses as a highly-defensively-built PC. (Plate + shield + defense fighting style = AC 21. Something a character can achieve at, roughly, level 6, depending on how quickly they get the money required to buy a suit of plate.)


But "some chance to succeed" is mostly pointless if...well, "60% of the time, it fails every time," to twist a popular meme.


Group checks do not even slightly do what I described.


Well, other than an active and pervasive effort to avoid their inclusion and a culture of play actively hostile to the concept of statistical testing of mechanics.

Yeah, group checks and degrees of success are very different things.

 

[Umbran]

3. This is a good point in a way, except 5e doesn't care about this.

More accurately, 5e uses bounded accuracy so that players don't have to care about this. That is, in fact, the major point of the design approach.

 

[Umbran]

How many people play in games where no PC gets magic items, just out of curiosity?

I have in the past.

Right now, in my Wild Beyond the Witchlight campaign, the 5th level PCs have only one magic item that adds to their to-hit or damage rolls. And it is a single dagger.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Bounded Accuracy (as I mentioned upthread) shifted the goal posts in combat. Now, you can hit pretty much anything, but the disparity in power between adversaries means the amount of damage compared to hit points is less impactful. Before, you didn't hit as much in general, but each hit carried more impact because hit points were fewer.

I miss before.

 

[Rystefn]

Fluency in subtraction compared with addition

Two studies were conducted to understand why subtraction with fluency is harder than addition. In Study I, 33 kindergartners were individually asked t…

www.sciencedirect.com

This is a study of literal children. If your assertion is that you never get better at basic arithmetic after the age of nine... well, you're the reason I made the comment you responded to, and I sincerely hope you get the version of D&D that doesn't require you to take off your shoes that you so desperately need.