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

[Clint_L]

I get a bit tired of arguments that basically amount to "I can think of one exception so the whole system is BROKEN and TERRIBLE." There's not such thing as a perfect TTRPG system, unless it's the one you made for yourself. And even then, your players might not agree.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

I'm curious: do you actually want D&D without magic? What would that look like?

Nah I don't want to get rid of magic. I want, specifically, to make spell casting more limited. I would also like there to be more classes that use magic without actually casting spells. More classes like Echo Knight. I'm not against magic. I'm against spell casting

 

[ezo]

And even then, your players might not agree.

I'll guarantee they won't, LOL!

 

[tetrasodium]

I am more interested in your opinion, rather than some youtuber's that is not part of this conversation. It is hard to have a discussions if if one side refuses to discuss.



I listened the first ten minutes. It merely explains the goals of bounded accuracy. Based on my experience of running 5e, these goals have mostly been fulfilled. I don't need to ramp up DCs, and I can use wide variety of monsters. I have used monsters whose CR is seven more than the party level (of four characters) and it has been fine. I have used monsters whose CR is way below the party level and it has been fine.

I am sure improvements could always be made. But the general concept as implemented seems to work pretty well in my experience.

The trouble with this engagement is that bounded accuracy makes a lot of promises and fails hard in ways that are often against the very purposes it was intended. Because a lot of opinions in this thread are impossible to divorce from the complicated ways bounded accuracy fails it's critical for to understand what the video wonderfully demonstrates before meaningful discourse can really occur

What?

Casters were to blast tanks and disable glass cannons. Bruisers/brutes (ogre/troll/giant/etc) were a bit flexible. Mooos made for mobile difficult terrain that could be bitey if ignored. Ranged monsters were to harass Squishies in ways the group couldn't ileasily ignore even if their were casters brutes or mooks. 5e broke that through bounded accuracy and fixing it would restore usefulness to ranged enemies.

And it works fine. There is no issue.

No. It does not. Unfortunately spock once told McCoy something that creates an impasse for why a complicated multilayered set of interlinked subsystems do not work well when it comes to ranged attacking enemies in 5e.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Nah I don't want to get rid of magic. I want, specifically, to make spell casting more limited. I would also like there to be more classes that use magic without actually casting spells. More classes like Echo Knight. I'm not against magic. I'm against spell casting

How do you think players of spellcasters would react to your, "spell-casting should be actively less effective" philosophy? I think you'd need a new game for that, or at least a new edition. According to WotC, the upcoming products are neither.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The trouble with this engagement is that bounded accuracy makes a lot of promises and fails hard in ways that are often against the very purposes it was intended. Because a lot of opinions in this thread are impossible to divorce from the complicated ways bounded accuracy fails it's critical for to understand what the video wonderfully demonstrates before meaningful discourse can really occur

I mean if you think that information is critical, you could try typing it. I think it is unreasonable to expect people to watch an hour long video to learn your opinion.

That being said, I have now actually watched half of it. And issue he raises, with which I agree is the stacking bonuses from magic items and from abilities that provide dice bonuses. I think it would be more in keeping with the idea of bounded accuracy if magic bonuses for same thing wouldn't stack like it (IIRC) was in 4e, and if the dice bonuses worked so that you could roll them all but only add the best roll. I think these sort of things are reasonable improvements that could be made.

Casters were to blast tanks and disable glass cannons. Bruisers/brutes (ogre/troll/giant/etc) were a bit flexible. Mooos made for mobile difficult terrain that could be bitey if ignored. Ranged monsters were to harass Squishies in ways the group couldn't ileasily ignore even if their were casters brutes or mooks. 5e broke that through bounded accuracy and fixing it would restore usefulness to ranged enemies.

How did it break it?

No. It does not. Unfortunately spock once told McCoy something that creates an impasse for why a complicated multilayered set of interlinked subsystems do not work well when it comes to ranged attacking enemies in 5e.

Do you have an actual explanation or argument?

 

[DEFCON 1]

That is still 5e's issue though because ensuring that swarms of 20 goblins could remain a threat by twisting the system into a pretzel around the idea of keeping low cr monsters viable was explicitly a design goal for bounded accuracy

But it's not an issue that needs fixing, just because you don't like the so-called pretzels.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

How do you think players of spellcasters would react to your, "spell-casting should be actively less effective" philosophy? I think you'd need a new game for that, or at least a new edition. According to WotC, the upcoming products are neither.

I'm hoping they will some day correct course back to something better designed, like 4E. Until then, I prefer other systems.

 

[Charlaquin]

Only the dedicated fans care about 'flat math'.

As evidenced by the fact that 5e still has math everywhere, just on in a way that makes your character feel like they've improved.

Gotta disagree strongly there. I’ve played with plenty of 5e first-timers who are comfortable adding between 5 and 12 to a d20 roll but would be very put-off by adding 20 or more to it. Even if the math isn’t actually meaningfully more difficult, people are more intimidated by bigger numbers.

Praising BA for being something the average person would care about is like saying getting rid of the six ability scores and switching to 2d10 would make it the most popular game ever because those are the hot button issue keeping people from playing D&D.

Not remotely. Especially since switching to 2d10 would mean you have to add three numbers together instead of two, which would put more people off.

 

[Shardstone]

I am more interested in your opinion, rather than some youtuber's that is not part of this conversation. It is hard to have a discussions if if one side refuses to discuss.



I listened the first ten minutes. It merely explains the goals of bounded accuracy. Based on my experience of running 5e, these goals have mostly been fulfilled. I don't need to ramp up DCs, and I can use wide variety of monsters. I have used monsters whose CR is seven more than the party level (of four characters) and it has been fine. I have used monsters whose CR is way below the party level and it has been fine.

I am sure improvements could always be made. But the general concept as implemented seems to work pretty well in my experience.

To make a long story short, it isn't actually bounded due to stacking modifiers that are easy to get. Peace Cleric + Bless + Bardic Inspiration + PB + Ability Score at level 1 can allow an attack to hit AC 30 almost 40% of the time, more so with advantage. This is an extreme example of the argument; the fact that you can pretty easily get several bonuses just makes it so that the accuracy isn't bounded.

Furthermore, because characters only get prof in 2 saving throws, and because there are 6 saving throw categories, the math isn't bounded at higher levels either.

There's a lot more, such as how being able to use more monsters of a lower level instead of higher CR monsters isn't actually a benefit with the rules as written (due to the simplicity of vanilla 5E monsters), and because the monsters themselves don't obey the math given in the DMG, and because attack bonuses and defenses increase for both monsters and PCs at drastically different rates that means that accuracy is no longer bounded.

There were many practical, real world, data-driven examples given in the video that convinced me that 5E is just not a bounded accuracy system as originally pitched, especially post-Tasha's.