D&D 5E Not Much Ado About Bless

[FrogReaver]

People make a lot more about bounded accuracy than they need to.

BA basically means that you baseline success around 66%. By and large. Which means that if you add bonuses to hit, all you are going to do is go from 66% to, say, 80%. Who cares? It doesn't matter.

Think about it this way. If your fighter types never had to roll a hit. They just automatically hit every single attack, do you really think it would make a huge difference to the game? Your fighters are always running second place in total damage behind the casters. They can't possibly be doing more. Not at any significant level anyway.

I always make the same suggestion here. Track the total damages your PC's are doing for the next 20 or 30 rounds of combat. Not individual damage - damage total. So a fireball that hits four targets for 25 points each is a 100 point attack. Your fighter types (including ranger and paladin) are so far behind that it's not even close. Things like feats and magic items bring the fighter types up to par with the casters.

But, make no mistake, your fighter types are not even remotely competing with the casters. Which is okay. They don't have to. Casters are artillery. Dealing lots of damage is what they're supposed to do. It's baked right into the game. But worrying about the non-casters damage output is pretty pointless when the casters are so far ahead.

Multi target damage for a fireball hitting 4 targets at 25 damage a piece is better estimated at 62.5 Damage. Multi target damage in most situations needs discounted to compare to single target damage (the whole reason we all agree focus fire is generally bettter).

 

[Cruentus]

I find most spellcasting, particularly compared to older editions (can't speak to 3.5/4th) is focused on doing damage. With the short length of combats, why waste an action casting a spell to help you shorten the combat? Use an offensive spell or attack, do damage, and... shorten the combat.

While I DM'd, anytime I spent any time trying to buff NPCs with defensive spells, it was 'wasted' action.

I remember in combats in 1e and 2e always rolling out Bless, Shield, Protection from Evil, etc. when facing enemies to mitigate some of the damage, or, you know, have a better chance to hit. With 5e's @65% chance to hit all the time, and advantage easy to come by without spells, why buff to hit chances. Just attack. I have found almost all of our combats to be mostly one dimensional as a result.

 

[Jer]

My issues with bounded accuracy come when it feels like they wanted to carefully balance how well you can accrue bonuses, then make things like Archery Fighting Style, Reckless Attack, and yeah, Bless, that effectively give large accuracy boosts.

I think many of the discussions on Bounded Accuracy miss that there are two parts to Bounded Accuracy - it isn't just that the difficulty to hit remains roughly the same while bonuses to hit increase, it's also that the hit points and attack damage that opponents do escalate.

The reason why in combat extra bonuses don't really matter for Bounded Accuracy purposes is that the game already assumes you're going to be hitting roughly 2 out of 3 times you make an attack roll and attempts to scale the hit points and damage output accordingly. Essentially in 5e once you hit about level 5 (and again - the game is quite different in levels 1-4 in a lot of ways) you're probably going to be hitting more often than not (unless your dice are borked or you just have really bad personal luck), so it doesn't matter as much if you have a large or small bonus to hit. (That's also why about the only place the DMG Encounter Building guidelines emphasizes using the CR of monsters is to point out that if a monster's CR is higher than the average party level their damage output might be too deadly and can potentially kill characters even in encounters that wouldn't be considered "deadly" according to the XP guidelines they give.)

That's how they can both get rid of fiddly little bonuses and also give big bonuses like the ones from Bless or granting advantage on rolls. It's because the dirty secret is that the bonuses to hit just don't matter as much to "game balance" in 5e as they did - where there is balance in the combat it's in hit points and damage output and in having saving throws for spells that are divorced from the defense of the creatures that do tend more often to scale with the CR of the creatur.

 

[Umbran]

Yeah but then I'm calling people out, which isn't really what I want to do. I abhor drama, I just want to talk about the game in a constructive way.

Well, then you might want to at least consider maintaining the context. You are likely to note some patterns - that the argument about popularity is being raised in response to some particular kinds of assertions that are even less constructive.

If you are discussing rules for your own table, the preferences of the people at that table are all that matter. When discussing rules for commercial offerings, the overall popularity is quite material to the discussion.

 

[James Gasik]

Well, then you might want to at least consider maintaining the context. You are likely to note some patterns - that the argument about popularity is being raised in response to some particular kinds of assertions that are even less constructive.

If you are discussing rules for your own table, the preferences of the people at that table are all that matter. When discussing rules for commercial offerings, the overall popularity is quite material to the discussion.

That's a fair point, and it's also possible that I can be missing context as well. Mostly I just reiterate my position, and if I'm still being misconstrued, shrug and try to move on. Although I'm sure everyone has, at one time or another, felt the urge to spend way more effort than is necessary on a topic than necessary (I know I have).

It's like this classic comic: Duty Calls

 

[Mort]

I guess it just comes down to a possibly faulty assumption. If accuracy bonuses are limited as a part of bounded accuracy's implementation, then any significant bonus to attack rolls must be good. I certainly found Archery Fighting Style to be amazing when I used it up until 11th level.

I mean, I've heard others claim that, as an example, magic weapons warp bounded accuracy in a significant way. I don't know if that's true, I'm not a math guy, but it is a complaint I've heard others make. Which is one of those things that leads me to wonder why X is bad and Y is good.

One is a blanket bonus, the other has costs and conditions - simple as that. This kind of context matters - A LOT.

Consider the the Oath of Devotion Paladin's Channel Divinity vs. the Oath of Vengeance Channel Divinity:

Sacred Weapon: Pick a weapon, add your CHA bonus (effectively +2-+5) to hit with that weapon for 1 minute.

Vow of Vengeance: Pick a creature, you get advantage on attack rolls against that creature for 1 minute (or it drops to 0 or unconscious).

Seems pretty similar initially, Sacred Weapon is better against multiple targets and gives you a magic weapon but Vow of Vengeance allows ALL of the Paladin's attacks advantage, not just one weapon.

Yet oath of vengeance is considered at or near the top while Sacred Weapon is considered in the middle or so. Why?

Because Oath of Vengeance is a bonus action, meaning the Paladin can use it and still attack (and smite) the same round, little damage potential is wasted (sure some possibly is because it still takes a bonus action but still).

Sacred Weapon is an Action - meaning the paladin (barring stuff like Haste) will not be attacking for the round (barring a possible bonus action for some builds) and sacrifices significant damage potential. Also Sacred weapon, if disarmed, is lost.

So the context around the ability matters.

 

[James Gasik]

I have seen a Devotion Paladin struggle with that ability, to the point he multiclassed to get Action Surge.

 

[Mort]

I have seen a Devotion Paladin struggle with that ability, to the point he multiclassed to get Action Surge.

Right?

But even here, a vengeance paladin with action surge is a terror - 2-4 attacks against a baddie, all with advantage (5 if he cast haste the prior round, which he CAN do himself at mid-high level).

The Devotion paladin with action surge and sacred weapon can... regularly attack that round.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I'm going to ignore the discussion around popularity, as I don't find it germane to the part of the discussion in which I took part already, and it is a lot of posts to go through.

I guess it comes down to not understanding why and when it's ok to break the limits. Which is what this thread is about. I like bless. I like casting bless. I've never cast spirit guardians, not because I don't see it's value- it's a very good spell, and I've seen it destroy encounters. But more that I want to see if there's merit in other spells.
But, when I see arguments about "this or that thing being out of bounds/too powerful", I scratch my head because there are already examples of effects that warp the game's parameters that people don't seem to care about.
The purpose of this thread is not to bash bless, but for me to understand why it's perfectly fine and acceptable when other game elements are not.

Fundamentally there aren't going to be hard and fast rules. General trends are going to be things along the lines of:

• Anything that takes an expendable resource (including actions, with a regular actions trending more of an opportunity cost than bonus more than reactions) is more permissible.
• Anything that is a spell is slightly more permissible than other things (if only because AMFs and that you can't cast a bonus action spell and a regular action spell in the same round, so standard action bless and healing word don't play ball, while standard action something else and healing word do).
• Anything that takes up concentration is more permissible.
• Spell permissibility is going to be influenced by who the (native) casters of the spell are (whether said class has lots of other uses of their concentration, whether they have non-spellcasting actions this competes with, whether they are going to be in the front line a lot).
• Anything that requires a feat is likely more permissible (feats are optional and rare, important resources. Also, if you are spending a feat on <boost> you aren't spending it on maxing your stats, so breaking any accuracy bounds is going to be slower if it is a self-resource).
• Anything that requires you to choose a specific build, setup, weapon choice, or similar is going to be be more permissible (and this will cause issues based on table-culture. If your DM regularly hands out magic weapons that match the preferred weapon choice of the PCs, it is going to change the opportunity cost of, say, a dedicated archery build or the like).

What I'm getting at is, I have a hard time seeing why one thing is fine, and another thing is the worst ever. Like silvery barbs a couple months ago. Everyone was up in arms about it and I was like "disadvantage on a single roll for a spell slot and a reaction. The monsters you really want to fail saves have legendary resistance, and shield is already a thing, what gives?"
Also, can liver flavored soda be worse than what they drink in Japan? Or New Coke?

Okay, I was a tween when New Coke came out, I remember it. It was a perfectly fine cola ('Coke trying to be Pepsi' is how I remember us terming it). It was simply 'we changed this thing you know and love and in which we've spent the better part of a century trying to get you to feel some personal stakes,' along with an early cultural meme of 'they ruined it' that people latched onto whether they would have liked the taste or not if it had been a different brand. Probably not a bad comparator to Silvery Barbs, though, as it too had some aspects of memetic outrage ('it's Shield, but even better, why is this a thing?'). I think, in the end, that it can be used against saves as well and that it gives a benefit to an ally as well as hinder an enemy makes it vaguely better than what came before, but they both have pros and cons.

I guess it just comes down to a possibly faulty assumption. If accuracy bonuses are limited as a part of bounded accuracy's implementation, then any significant bonus to attack rolls must be good. I certainly found Archery Fighting Style to be amazing when I used it up until 11th level.

I mean, I've heard others claim that, as an example, magic weapons warp bounded accuracy in a significant way. I don't know if that's true, I'm not a math guy, but it is a complaint I've heard others make. Which is one of those things that leads me to wonder why X is bad and Y is good.

I feel that archery fighting style is an outlier. It is a little 'too good' (it certainly makes Sharpshooter more popular than GWM, although 5e's making Dex usually-better than Str has part of the blame for that as well). That the +2 is the same as the penalty for cover makes me wonder if it was originally going to be '+2(only to mitigate penalties),' but got last-minute changed. Regardless, I think the idea was that people weren't going to be dedicated archers -- feats are optional (and taking XBE for a bow-archer is 'wasting' part of an ASI), so being able to shoot reliably while an enemy is in your face is not a guarantee. Playstyles haven't seemed to conform to that logic -- archers just find ways to get back out of melee and keep shooting (admittedly, the effort to do so is still an opportunity costs).

 

[Umbran]

But, make no mistake, your fighter types are not even remotely competing with the casters. Which is okay. They don't have to. Casters are artillery. Dealing lots of damage is what they're supposed to do. It's baked right into the game. But worrying about the non-casters damage output is pretty pointless when the casters are so far ahead.

I would amend that to say that worrying about it in a broad, general way, just in "how much damage do they do overall" is pointless, as the total amount of damage done isn't the only determiner of value to the adventuring endeavor.

This becomes clear when we note that amount of damage done is taken out of context. What has made it so the wizard is safe enough to use that fireball? What is keeping that artillery from being overrun by infantry, or whacked by other artillery? Generally, that's the fighter types. How much absolute damage they do is less important than whether they fulfill their role in the fight.