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

[FitzTheRuke]

I disagree. I think its helpful and much appreciated if some designer insight was included in the books. In particular, I'd love to know what the intended style of play is, and what the game is doing to facilitate it. Every game should do this.

That's what I said.

Specifically, I said, "They don't need to do it, but they should".

 

[DrJawaPhD]

I don't typically think about it, hence this thread, but I suppose I'd notice it's absence. In a game like World of Warcraft, my 80th level character could walk into a lower level zone, aggro all the enemies, and just sit there while I took a break from my computer to go eat dinner and come back to find my character unharmed.

Ok I'm a little confused here - you asked an important and reasonable question, then in a 5 page thread of people trying to explain answers to your question, you responded with the most clearly articulated explanation to answer your own question.

To explain Bounded Accuracy, the above World of Warcraft example of Unbounded Accuracy really drives the point home. In WoW, there are no bounds on accuracy, it ranges from near-0% to 100% depending on the level disparity, so when you are higher level you can literally go afk against a lower level opponent and be never be harmed even after infinite attacks. In DnD the accuracy in Bounded within a fairly narrow range, so even if you are Level 1 against a Level 20 opponent you are still fairly likely to hit.

Now does Bounded Accuracy actually matter or improve the game? In theory it doesn't make much difference since HP scales linearly, and that Level 1 hitting the Level 20 for <10 damage really isn't doing anything consequential. In reality though it just feels much better as a player to hit and roll damage than to constantly miss. Personally I think it's a great design overall, it still has balanced progression versus character level while not feeling overly punishing if you are lower level.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

To be fair, different classes’ attack bonuses did increase at different rates for the majority of the playtest, only becoming unified when they decided to roll attack bonus and skill/tool proficiency bonus together into a singular proficiency bonus. Initially skill/tool proficiency had just been a flat +3.

Yeah, turns out if you design your system not to expect big accuracy bonuses, big accuracy bonuses end up breaking your system in unexpected ways. It’s just that the early 5e design team was more comfortable with the idea of the system being breakable.

Sure. I've said many times that "D&D Next" couldn't decide what it wanted to be and dithered away almost two full years of playtesting. The vast majority of the game as we know it only came into existence in the last ~10 months before publication--which means most of it had to have happened in about five months of furious design work.

I argue this is a big part of why we eventually had things like the "no conversion document because jury duty" situation.

 

[Horwath]

If bounded accuracy is to be kept really, then abilities should be capped to 18(+4) and removal of
+X magic item bonuses to AC, DC, attack and saves.
+1 can be kept as special kind of bonus(mandatory attunement)
adding more damage, health and damage reduction instead.

expertise can be reworked to be "skill focus", +3 to a single skill or +2 to two skills that you have proficiency.


P.S. replacing d20 with d12+4 can keep things even more bounded and base math stays the same as average die roll is still 10,5.
you just remove low and high extremes of d20.

 

[Jahydin]

Yes, but that's the absolute value. It's the relative value that's the important measure of how good a boost it is. If that +10% doubles your chances of success, that's huge.

Honestly think you have that backwards. It's easy to get lost in relative percentages; that's why dishonest people use them to mislead. What matters is absolute value and what it accomplishes.

With that in mind, I think 5E is mostly smoke and mirrors. For instance, take Initiative. Relatively, there seems to be a difference between Dex scores, but the honest truth is the randomness of the d20 is what's actually determining the order. That +3 bonus means you get to go first 3 more time in 20 battles.

What you get is a game that more or less plays the same no matter what the bonuses are. PC stats that are all around the same range and Classes that get to use their best stat to attack/damage contribute to this too.

Which sounds terrible, but I think this was purposefully done to have a solid foundation to build the other mechanics on top of, such as spell effects, Class abilities, and so forth.

 

[R_J_K75]

Bounded accuracy only applies to the DM side of things. If you look at the monster creation section of the DMG you can see the philosophy at work. When you create a monster everything you need to determine accuracy, damage, abilities, hit points, etc. are contained in that section, and it doesn't look at any other part of the game. It all falls within the established boundaries.

IME with creating encounters in 5E I never had much success using the rules as written to create challenging or balanced encounters. The way the section on encounter creation based on "x" number of encounters of varying difficulty per adventuring day always seemed that its written is in a way that tells you what to do, but not why. To me I believe that a paragraph explaining the design intent regarding creatures of low level still being a threat to higher level characters, the expected effectiveness of attacks and its effect on resource management could've gone a long way. I know myself as my players reached higher levels I fell back on older editions encounter design and just increased the encounter challenge rating.

Specifically, I said, "They don't need to do it, but they should".

I agree and hopefully 5E 2024 at least addresses this even if it's very briefly. Some might say there's no need to as its baked into the rules, but there may be people such as myself that never realized this.

 

[Horwath]

With that in mind, I think 5E is mostly smoke and mirrors. For instance, take Initiative. Relatively, there seems to be a difference between Dex scores, but the honest truth is the randomness of the d20 is what's actually determining the order. That +3 bonus means you get to go first 3 more time in 20 battles.

This is one thing that BG3 did better, initiative roll is d4 instead of d20.

 

[Ondath]

This is one thing that BG3 did better, initiative roll is d4 instead of d20.

I honestly think d4 is too much in that regard. d6 (how B/X used to do it) or d10 would make more sense.

 

[Morrus]

It’s a weird term but it’s basically about keeping numbers in check by using proficiency bonus instead of level. So a high level fighter is getting +5 not +20 to hit. And the target numbers obviously mot needing to explode into the stratosphere to compensate.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

As a GM, I have really come to appreciate the bounded accuracy. You can just easily use really wide variety of enemies. No need of awkward kludges like 4e had of having different versions of same monsters depending on the level of the PCs, nor basically guaranteed whiffing like in 3e.