Bounded Accuracy L&L

[Tortoise]

In order for an Iron-banded wooden door to be tough to break down for a 20th level party it would need hitpoints on a level equal to a 20th level monster. But that would mean it's near-impossible to break down or damage at low levels (whioch breaks verisimilitude for anyone who ever used an axe)

Or wooden doors are somehow impossible to be damaged by weapons such as Axes (which destroys verisimilitude, period.)

Or wood is the ultimate armor material, able to withstand level 20 damage better than anything else (which again destroys verisimilitude).

Or You can cut an iron golem down with your sword, but cannot cut down a door since it has to be "broken down" according to the rules, which means a strength test, no weapons allowed. Which would be silly.

That's almost funny, but no, not how it works.

 

[Viking Bastard]

I like dividing this up based on "tiers," which might be conceived of as big, flat, bonuses. Say, everything in Epic Tier gets a flat +20 bonus to everything. Now, no one below that has a chance, and anyone above that can maybe do stuff to each other.

Yeah, or switch checks to d20 + Ability Scores; the fulfillment of PCs' true potential.

 

[B.T.]

The AC I can get, as when it is sky high, lower level things don't even stand a chance of hitting it or to hit it requires magic and magic gained at an expected level.

But HP? Why don't attacks matter as HP get high? The way I am reading it, the HP goes up for "higher level critters" and the heroes have their attack damage go up as they gain higher level. So their attacks are doing more damage and still bringing the HP total of the creature down in a timely fashion.

What this makes possible is for a band of town citizens to go tackle something otherwise out of their league. They can hit, because the AC isn't all that great. But it has tons of hit points. So individually their attacks are rather pointless. But band together 30 villagers and suddenly the big giant harassing the town has a legitimate concern as even through individually their damage is low, together they can make up for that.

Or am I completely missing the point?

My point is that once hit point bloat sets in, there is little difference between a monster with super-high AC and a monster with low AC but many hit points. For instance, take a dragon with 50 HP that can only be hit on a natural 20. If twenty people attack him, each person doing 10 HP on a hit, then it will take an average of five rounds to kill him. On the other hand, if the dragon can be hit on a 1 but has 1,000 HP, it will still take those twenty villagers ten rounds to kill him.

The goal should be to find a middle ground between the two.

 

[mlund]

My point is that once hit point bloat sets in, there is little difference between a monster with super-high AC and a monster with low AC but many hit points.

I disagree. There's a ton of difference between "you can't hit me" and "your DPS is pitiful." For one thing, any rider effects on hitting are completely negated by the former but have full effect on the latter.

Also, Armor Class only applies to melee and projectile attacks. High AC won't save you from a Fireball, and high HP can at least give you a Charisma check against getting Dominated.

The two are not interchangeable in terms of what they do. If nothing else, AC is binary while HP is far more granular.

- Marty Lund

 

[Incenjucar]

Mental snicker at the people who argue this idea is bad because, "The PCs never improve."

Here's a dirty little secret: PCs never improved. By the time you got that nice double-digit bonus to attack and defenses, the monsters you ran across got it too. So while you end up throwing 45s on your attacks and sport a 25 AC, those goblins have turned into mindflayers that have an equally higher attack bonus and defenses so your chance to hit is still 45-55% just like it was at level 1.

So all Bounded Accuracy does is remove false improvement and the addition of large numbers from the game.

Also, really, this is the most 4e thing they've shown us so far. Strip away the 4e scaling bonus of 1/2 level for PCs and 1/level for monsters and you're left with ability mods of +3 - +9 to attack and defense and attacks that deal progressively more damage dice.

Slap some tactical terrain modifiers and forced movement onto the system and you've got a streamlined 4e with the classic D&D fluff put back on it. And to think a few months ago people were worried DDN was going to be a 3.x clone with none of the trappings of 4e.

This is a gross misstatement of how the game is expected to be played in 4E. While most encounters, in order to be a challenge, are composed of monsters of your level, DMs are actively encouraged to give PCs a chance at things well below their own ability on occasion, to make it clear to them exactly how much they've improved - you should see the glee on the players' faces when they fight 10 level 2 cultists at level 4, which are identical to the ones they face at level 1 in packs of 5. Move far enough along, and you convert these into minions so that they can still do SOMETHING in the fight, but can now be 20 in number.

Similarly, DCs in 4E are only expected to scale IF YOU WANT A CHALLENGE. Climbing a normal rope in normal conditions never gets any harder. A level 20 fighter in 4E is going to be kicking down that solid oak door without being impeded while that the level 20 5E fighter has to hack away at it. A 4E character might have to hack away at that rune-covered door, but the 5E fighter will probably need a work crew. That's a very different flavor and range of ability, and both are fine in their own way.

Please don't misrepresent past editions. It doesn't help us learn from them.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

You may still have a 20 point range, but the swinginess depends on the target number. If the bonus and the target number increase at the same rate, then, yes, the game retains the exact same swinginess level. If the growth of your bonus outstrips the growth of the target number, however, the results become less dependent on the random variable. That's one nice feature of previous editions of D&D. Orcs and other relatively weak humanoid opponents become a lot easier to hit for characters advancing in level. Fights against them are less swingy.

If the attack bonus stays about the same but damage increases, you could end up with results that lurch between feast (a high-damage hit) and famine (a miss). That's pretty swingy in my book.

I understand your definition now. I think we'll find that the PCs will gain some bonuses with level such that earlier opponents are easier to hit, and indeed, a hit will be sufficient to kill. For the toughest monsters (ancient red dragons, storm giants, etc) the bonuses will bring the PCs into the likelihood to hit range that they had at 1st level against Orcs. Growth in character abilities (breadth) will probably make everything less swingy overall anyway (buffs, ways to gain advantage, more attacks etc).

It's worth noting also that by increasing damage and hitpoints (depth), swinginess is also reduced. Either more dice or static bonuses, random factors are reduced.

 

[DDogwood]

I am going to give an answer to this, without having read the thread beyond this post.
I would take a leaf from wargaming and 4e. Make the goblins large swarms of goblins . The to hit number is the same as per regular goblins but the hit points and damage output is the total of the goblins in the swarm(unit).
Hit point damage to the swarm takes out a number of goblins = total damage/goblin hp round up.
If the swarm suffers 25% losses it makes a morale check (probalely a medium difficulty check), 50% losses it automatically breaks. Each swarm that breaks forces a morale check on each neighbouring unit (probably an easy check).
This is my first thought on the matter. It could be refined when one has a better knolwdge of the system.

I agree, treating a large number of goblins as a swarm would probably be the best solution. In fact, good swarm rules could be the basis for a mass combat system as well. Morale rules are probably not necessary, as hit points can represent morale easily enough.

When a swarm runs out of hit points, the surviving creatures disperse and flee. If it contains any fearless members, like a horde of orcs with a few berserkers mixed in, that could be a special effect - e.g. when the swarm is defeated, 2d4 orc berserkers remain while the rest of the orcs flee.

 

[Tortoise]

I'm not convinced this will do anything to improve my enjoyment of the game. The last thing I want to be doing is rolling 20d6 damage at level 10 because the monster has 987 hp. Or fighting 84 goblins who die without me needing to roll. And I certainly don't want to be DMing that game. I want less dice not more. If you can't fit the dice in one hand, it's too many dice!

That said, I look forward to seeing how it shapes up.

Not a Champions player I see!

I suspect there will be methods suggested in the rules at some point for how to get around the over-flowing cups of dice to roll.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

My point is that once hit point bloat sets in, there is little difference between a monster with super-high AC and a monster with low AC but many hit points. For instance, take a dragon with 50 HP that can only be hit on a natural 20. If twenty people attack him, each person doing 10 HP on a hit, then it will take an average of five rounds to kill him. On the other hand, if the dragon can be hit on a 1 but has 1,000 HP, it will still take those twenty villagers ten rounds to kill him.

Actually, there's a huge difference.

The main difference is that it is possible, however unlikely, that the villagers can kill the first dragon in the first round.

They are completely incapable of doing that to Dragon #2.

Also, the other benefit to low-AC, high-HP combat vs. the reverse is that you can more easily track the "flow" of the combat. One of the problems with high-AC, low-HP combat is that it's very hard to look at the current status of the participants and determine how things are going - and how much longer things will take.

Ferinstance, three rounds of high-AC, low-HP combat might very well look like "Miss, miss, miss." Are you winning? Are you losing? How much longer until you're defeated? You don't know and, really, have no way to even estimate, because you have no real information to base your estimate on.

On the other hand, with low-AC, high-HP combat, you're more likely to see something like "Miss, hit, hit," and you can compare the damage from those two hits to your current HP totals and say, "You know, I think this monster will kill me in about 3 more rounds; I should probably run away," or "Hah! Those two hits did a tiny fraction of my hit points; I can stand up to these creatures all day!" You might be wrong - things like critical hits could make the combat more swingy than you're anticipating - but at least you have an idea.

 

[howandwhy99]

"Bounded Accuracy" sounds like a target number metric with definite top and bottom quantities. Ability scores are bounded at 20 for characters, 30 for monsters. DC numbers are bounded at "10 & less" as trivial (though you could require a roll) and 27 as only possible for mortal *groups* and never mortal individuals. (Though +3 skill & +5 ability score = 28 TN max)

What I don't read this as is: No increases in roll modifiers by class levels for attacks or skill checks. It doesn't mean there must be numerical advancement, but it may be optional and the Target Number Range / "Bounded Accuracy" would be taken into account so it isn't advanced out of. This sounds like early D&D combat matrix tables and their design, which did something a little bit similar though not linearly.

I agree with all the points he highlights and view them as improvements too.

• Increased odds is actual increased ability in the game world.
• Every PC has a fighting chance within the bounds.
• Challenges can be met early, if desired, and older ones can never be ignored.
• Converting new material becomes easier for DMs the more they run their game.
• Creatures en masse increase their challenge level more than the sum of each apart.
• A consistent DM enables player comprehension of the traits of his or her world, the creature's powers, the difficulty of an area, etc. (one of the most important aspects of the game and definitely adventure design).
• And lastly, it's good for verisimilitude (whatever that means for you).

Another selling point: This also means different level characters can play together in the same adventure. Equipment and the environment improves a characters odds separately from class level, but it still depends to be seen whether magic items and other possible resources do too. Either way it would be a lot easier to kit bash now.

"If players have the means of breaking down the super difficult adamantine door, it's because they pursued player options that make that so, and it is not simply a side effect of continuing to adventure."

To me this is only part of the story. It's also every decision made in game changing who the characters are in relation to the world too. And that they all can go beyond that door no matter their current player options, it will simply be more or less difficult to do.