D&D 5E Bounded Accuracy: does it deliver as promised?

Chocolategravy said:

It's very easy to temporarily get a bonus that will hit anything in the game on a 2+ and not hard to get a 90% hit rate the majority of the time on the majority of the monsters. And that is with only a handful of magic items and no splat books out yet! As more spells, abilities and magic items come out this problem will only get worse.


On the other side of the equation the magic items we've gotten just from HotDQ you can easily have a 27AC CHR class character running around. An AC that can be even higher with some work.


One of the benefits we were supposed to get out of bounded accuracy was low level creatures remaining viable, but as other threads have shown, the monsters are built with an attack bonus that tends to climb as their CR climbs. So the game itself isn't even built around bounded accuracy to begin with.


Anyone that thinks 5E has bounded accuracy is kidding themselves or don't know what it even is.

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Boarstorm said:

There is. It's essentially an artifact, though.

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Eejit said:

That would still really strain bounded accuracy though, up to +5 to AC from a single item definitely needs a rework imo. Even artifact weapons would only be +3 to hit, right?

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SilverfireSage said:

I would rather have a sweet magic item that slightly breaks the economy than magic items that don't mean anything (4e).

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SilverfireSage said:

I call hogwash on all of this. Give us specific examples and the math because this seems impossible.

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Eejit said:

That would still really strain bounded accuracy though, up to +5 to AC from a single item definitely needs a rework imo. Even artifact weapons would only be +3 to hit, right? And you can't stack weapons on top of each other, like you could with that magical mask and magical armor/shield/Ring of Protection.

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Iosue said:

The mask only provides the CHA bonus to AC when the wearer is unarmored.

And it's not just an artifact, it's the artifact for the adventure. It's not guaranteed that the PCs can even hold on to it (if they even get it, which is not easy). If there's anything that bends the game (without breaking it), it's something like that.

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Eejit said:

I guess I would too, but those aren't our only choices. Bit of a false dichotomy there, bro.

It'd allow a Paladin truly sick AC, more than the freaking Tarrasque or an Ancient Dragon - even assuming no other magical defensive items.

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Beleriphon said:

So to get crazy AC the character has to be a monk or barbarian and probably have their brain taken over by Mask? Yeah, that sounds awesome.

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plutocracy said:

I don't have that module, but you CAN get pretty damn good AC with Fighter 1/Sorc X.

21 from fullplate/shield/defense mastery, 23 with +2 from haste, 28 with +5 from shield spell (worth casting every round you get hit for sure). All of this is without any items, and I think the Staff of Defense makes it even easier.

Using Defensive Duelist feat, the AC gets even crazier, but only for one attack/round. And all of this is a heavily specialized AC mechanic build.

I'm very pro-bounded accuracy BTW, and think it does work, even in extreme cases like this. Love it.

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