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

[Eric V]

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.

Not a hundred, but around 30-40. Tried to use gnolls against my high-level PCs. They needed 17+ to hit the heroes, and did negligible damage when they did. I can definitely see how theoretically they are a threat, but in reality they were just somewhat annoying; really the whole fight was a waste of (a lot of!) time. No PC had GWM, so they weren't quite dropping them with one hit either.

Tried it again with bugbears, same kind of result.

I like the idea of BA meaning monsters stay as a threat but that ends up being white-room theory; it feels very different when actually played out.

 

[Ondath]

Not a hundred, but around 30-40. Tried to use gnolls against my high-level PCs. They needed 17+ to hit the heroes, and did negligible damage when they did. I can definitely see how theoretically they are a threat, but in reality they were just somewhat annoying; really the whole fight was a waste of (a lot of!) time. No PC had GWM, so they weren't quite dropping them with one hit either.

Tried it again with bugbears, same kind of result.

I like the idea of BA meaning monsters stay as a threat but that ends up being white-room theory; it feels very different when actually played out.

I think the mass monster attack rules from the DMG can be useful in those cases. You say that a certain number of them automatically hit depending on their attack bonus, target AC and the number of attackers. It's a bit less elegant, but it can at least make it so that the lower-CR monsters continuously chip at the party's HP.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Not a hundred, but around 30-40. Tried to use gnolls against my high-level PCs. They needed 17+ to hit the heroes, and did negligible damage when they did. I can definitely see how theoretically they are a threat, but in reality they were just somewhat annoying; really the whole fight was a waste of (a lot of!) time. No PC had GWM, so they weren't quite dropping them with one hit either.

Tried it again with bugbears, same kind of result.

I like the idea of BA meaning monsters stay as a threat but that ends up being white-room theory; it feels very different when actually played out.

Like others have mentioned before, D&D has a hit point problem (too little at lower levels and too high at higher levels).
But hey, good news is, we can expect more of the same (of things that don't work).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

None of this matters.

My point was the increase.

AD&D bounds HP and AC, "to hit" grows like crazy with level.
4e bounds damage, "to hit", AC, and HP grow a lot.
5e bounds "to hit" and AC, damage and HP grows like crazy with level

3e is the anomaly. Everything grew like crazy in 3e.

It is 4e in which everything grew like crazy. Sure, in 3e too, but all of attack bonus, AC (and NADs,) damage and HP grew in 4e more than in 5e.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think you are boh missing what the conversation is about.

This is a discussion about making orcs and ogres into interesting threats to mid level parties
WHILE
making prgression interesting
WHILE
not increasing the PCs stats greatly
WHILE
not having orcs and ogres not having different stat blocks for different level PCs.


And my response is "It is impossible". You MUST compromise on something.

Why? You can do it in 5e just fine. Granted, there is usually various more elite and boss type versions of many (especially humanoid) monsters, which you can add to the mix at later levels to spice things up. But that seems pretty natural. At higher levels you need high number of orcs to challenge the characters, so it makes sense that such a group would have all sort of champions and leaders. But the basic orc still remains a viable component for encounters.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Then show your data.

For it being your opinion? Or a lot of people finding the most popular RPG ever satisfying?

Except that--as many have said, even former WotC employees--it DID NOT tank. It just didn't reach the sky-high expectations set for it.

And, as usual, we get the "because 5e sold, absolutely everything in it must be the best thing ever" argument, which is a load of bull.

We cannot have iron clad evidence about preferences, but we can indeed infer things from popularity. It is more fraught with fringe aspects of the game, but way more solid with core design aspects which the players have to deal with constantly. It is you who make extraordinary claims, so it is you who needs to have extraordinary evidence. 4e failed, 5e succeeded, and BG3 is one of the most popular computer games ever. Now you are making claim that people in general (and not just some, there are always some) find 5e and BG3 unsatisfying, and imply that they would prefer 4e. That is a wild claim with not even circumstantial evidence to back it up.

 

[pemerton]

Indeed. So you don't actually need to have four different statblocks to represent one monster!

But - as I've already posted - you lose the 4e gameplay. The way a 11th level solo runs, against a party of 5 10th level PCs, is completely different from how a combat against a 20th level standard would go.

Bounded accuracy essentially moves to expected damage (DPR) as all that really matters. This would be a big change from 4e.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's not a kludge. It's actually an extremely elegant design.

First having wildly escalating stats, then having to build four different versions of a same monster so that the game does not break due those stats is exact opposite of elegant.

You just demand that absolutely everything always have one, and only one, mechanical representation no matter what, 100% of the time. A demand that has serious deleterious effects on the entirety of the system.

It doesn't though. Furthermore, even though I indeed prefer that, having different version of monster does not require escalating stats. i already told that 5e uses swamps, and one could easily utilise them more, you could easily minionise 5e monsters if you wanted. The escalating numbers are not needed for this, all the escalating numbers do is make it so that you must have different versions of same monsters or the game breaks, instead of that just being an option you could use if you wanted.

How is it not relevant? It's literally what one would do if one were applying your enforced, problematic "things ABSOLUTELY MUST have ONE AND ONLY ONE mechanical representation, no matter what!" rule. This is showing how that rule causes problems, and why not using that rule is in fact much more efficacious, and produces better, more useful results.

But it is not a problem.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But - as I've already posted - you lose the 4e gameplay. The way a 11th level solo runs, against a party of 5 10th level PCs, is completely different from how a combat against a 20th level standard would go.

Which means it was always silly to pretend that they were the same thing, escalating stats or not. You can still have "solo monsters" with wide array of moves that come along with it, we just drop the pretence that they are supposed to be the same thing than a creature with completely different stats (or just pretend that anyway, if we don't care about such rule consistency.) It is like how there are legendary monsters in 5e.

 

[pemerton]

I think the mass monster attack rules from the DMG can be useful in those cases. You say that a certain number of them automatically hit depending on their attack bonus, target AC and the number of attackers. It's a bit less elegant, but it can at least make it so that the lower-CR monsters continuously chip at the party's HP.

I didn't know about these rules. Upthread @Crimson Longinus was saying that 5e uses the same stat block and resolution process for a given creature in all cases, but from what you're saying here that's not the case!