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

[W'rkncacnter]

To be fair, when the best person in the world at a skill contributes a smaller bonus than a d20, your character choices can feel very muted.

Of course, the nature of compromise often leaves both sides feeling uneasy.

yeah, 2d10 as opposed to d20 probably would throw everyone off, huh?

 

[billd91]

External factors absolutely matter. But I certainly don’t think 5e would have had as much broad appeal without bounded accuracy. The constantly-inflating bonuses of 3e and 4e turned off a significant number of dedicated RPG fans. The game was never going to win over a more casual crowd with that kind of math.

Never underestimate the average person’s aversion to math above a 3rd grade level.

My math degree would indicate I have no aversion to math, but DAMN is 5e’s approach a breath of fresh air compared to its predecessors.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

My math degree would indicate I have no aversion to math, but DAMN is 5e’s approach a breath of fresh air compared to its predecessors.

The problem to me was never really large numbers. The problem is you have billions of tiny modifiers that add up, and some of them are conditional. You have to track whether or not a particular bonus is a bonus to hit or if it actually a penalty to the AC of the target.

One of the nice things they've done in PF2 is that they don't care about keeping numbers small, but they care about keeping fewer things to track. So you end up with pretty big numbers, but they're much less annoying to manage than they were in 3.5 or PF1

Edit: And the absolute worst is that not all modifiers stack so you need to remember the type of every modifier! And then someone decides to cast a buff spell on you mid combat that increases your strength by 4 and now you need to figure out what your new attack and damage modifiers are (remember to multiply that 1.5 for wielding two handed!) (don't forget that you only get +2 from the buff because you already have a belt that gives +2 and they don't stack!)

 

[billd91]

To make a long story short, it isn't actually bounded due to stacking modifiers that are easy to get. Peace Cleric + Bless + Bardic Inspiration + PB + Ability Score at level 1 can allow an attack to hit AC 30 almost 40% of the time, more so with advantage. This is an extreme example of the argument; the fact that you can pretty easily get several bonuses just makes it so that the accuracy isn't bounded.

The existence of this bonuses doesn’t disprove bounded accuracy. They aren’t assumed as present just to keep up with the challenges. They represent opportunities to really do better with the odds.

 

[Jahydin]

It means that people can meaningfully attempt a task and not just be shut down by the GM if it isn’t part of their build. The bard is still going to be better at persuading people than the barbarian, but the barbarian isn’t told to stand in the back and not open their mouth because they have no chance of contributing to social encounters.

Very true, and completely what they were going for. Also works really well for light-hearted, whimsical sort of games.

It's one of the reasons I stopped playing 5E though because I can't stand it. I can't help but be a math nerd and want a strong system that actually rewards proficiency.

 

[tetrasodium]

When was this "once"? AD&D, or perhaps before? Because it wasn't 4e. In non-bounded system the wizard's defences will scale, so that the skeletons are no longer a threat at higher levels and in any case in 4e the PCs had even more HP. However, with bounded the skeletons remain a threat, it merely takes more of them to be a serious one at higher levels.

Really? I'm not sure about 4e, but... did you play any editions prior to 5e? I'll stick with the skeleton I mentioned: Take 3.5 where the basic human warrior skeleton from the MM & SRD is proficient in all weapons. The rules were pretty clear about how easy it was to just give a monster different weapons they were proficient in back then & I won't go into detail on that because several published modules have basic human warrior skeletons wielding longbows, such as Siege of the Spider Eaters from Dungeon #137. Libris mortis162 had a few skeleton variants including a soldier skeleton with various bonuses to hit & such. Continuing with the skeleton though... BoVD had a bone creature template that could be applied to other monsters, Spell compendium had awaken undead, Eberron Campaign Setting had Karrnathi skeletons that even had a text blurb about making them into an archer with composite longbows, There was even dragon 317 with a CR13 eldritch archer.... The Monster manual pg225 even said "Skeleton" is an acquired template that can be added to any corporeal creature (other than undead) that has a skeletal system (referred to hereafter as the base creature). All of this without trivially adding class levels & such to improve them.

Shield was precast not reaction & as a result a robe wearing wizard was probably going to have 14-16 ac with mage armor (if that) but would be likely to quickly realize that such a low AC lasting 1hr/CL wasn't useful enough to waste even a first level slot on causing it to drop back down towards an equally useless 10-12 or less. Tack on the presence of things like d4 hit dice & it didn't take much of a plink to be scary enough for the guy normally throwing out web to insist on waiting for all those held action bow wielders to be ganked before rushing out or later decide it's best to give up something like their move action light crossbow reload in order to put someone or something between the squishy and the bow wielding monster.

 

[ezo]

I can't help but be a math nerd and want a strong system that actually rewards proficiency.

My friend's one set of houserules works on a +8 proficiency scale, +4 ability max, and a d12 instead of a d20.

I like it, personally, but wouldn't mind just bumping it to +10 proficiency, +5 ability, and d20. Expertise would be a +50% on proficiency. IMO the best "bounds" are when "maximum skill" equals the maximum of the die rolled.

Now, 5E is pretty close to that anyway, +17 "max" with expertise and +5 ability, but I agree I don't like that max proficiency at +6 is only one better than "max" ability at +5.

 

[Clint_L]

I wish I could argue against this... but we are operating in a hobby where even people who are deeply invested, have been playing for a long time, and play in multiple widely divergent systems can say with a straight face "subtraction is significantly more difficult than addition" and everyone around will nod along, not only taking it seriously, but as gospel. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if making a new version of D&D where you don't need to take off your shoes to do the math took the gaming world by storm.

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

 

[Maxperson]

Why is it that the popularity of 5e can justify literally every design choice and no exterior factors ever matter?

Because people like to use it to prove 5e is great, even though correlation does not equal causation. There are several reasons other than the rules that 5e is so popular. That's not to say that the rules for sure aren't a major reason, but you can't point to them for sure as a major reason. They might be or might not be, and any specific rule could be disliked while having 5e still be immensely popular.

 

[Eric V]

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