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

[Crimson Longinus]

Restatting a standard creature as a minion changes the combination of AC and hit points, so its durability is re-expressed in a way that better interacts with the general expectations of the combat rules. (Such as typical % chance to hit.) The restatting also changes the combination of to hit chance and damage spread, also in a way that better interacts with the general expectations of the combat rules, including (in this case) not only average damage done via % chance to hit, but also expectations around condition infliction.

Yes! And this is the kludge to avoid the effect of escalating AC and attack bonus. But if you don't want the effects of that escalation, it is far easier to just not have it in the first place!

 

[ezo]

I'll elaborate on an actual play example I've already mentioned in this thread: at low-to-mid Heroic tier, the PCs fight small Goblin and Hobgoblin raiding parties, saving a homestead and rescuing some villagers. At upper Heroic tier, they enter a fortress where they defeat its guards and inhabitants handily. At the beginning of Paragon tier, they are able to defeat a force of Hobgoblins and some magic-using hangers-on, including a behemoth (a triceratops, from memory), who have set fire to a village and are on their way to assault the town. The Tiefling PC is able to break through the wall of a burning building to rescue people trapped inside. At mid-Paragon tier, the PCs infiltrate and assault the Hobgoblin army encampment, defeating Hobgoblin phalanxes, although one PC is killed by an angel sent by Bane to support the Hobgoblins.

But this isn't what I'm talking about. This is what more should happen IMO. In this example you are still encountering hobgoblins, simply more of them and/or with greater support to fight against you. You have raiding parties, to storming a fortress/force of hobgoblins, to an army of them. Still hobgoblins.

What I see is at higher levels hobgoblins disappearing entirely, even in places where they were before and reasonable should be still, for example.

Anyway, this doesn't have really anything to do with bounded accuracy. Thanks for the replies.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Do you know a way to do what you're asking without resorting to hard restrictions on what the GM is and isn't allowed to do, beyond what is already on the books?

Considering I don't actually believe 4e did the thing you describe, yes, I certainly do believe there are ways to do that. You'll have to be much more specific about what you mean in order for me to meaningfully answer the question, since I doubt this answer is all that productive.

What I am saying that 4e design doesn't really need wildly escalating numbers and actively tries to negate their impact. So that being the case, it is silly to put such escalating numbers in the game to begin with.

I don't see the "actively tries to negate their impact" thing. At all. So I can't really respond to this.

No, no, you misunderstand. I think the rules, as written, are mostly quite good. They express, pretty explicitly, how they are intended to be used, and when I use them that way, the results are very good. I don’t think that changing the rules to make them harder for DMs who aren’t me to misuse would improve them. It’s not “if I can’t fix the problem completely there’s no point,” it’s “I think the treatment would do more harm than the illness.” I’m certainly open to discussing ways we might better advise DMs on how to utilize the system well, but I am not open to changing the design to make it harder to use poorly, as I think doing so carries too much risk of making it worse when used appropriately.

The "One D&D" playtest demonstrates that it does not--and Crawford, very early on in that playtest process, explicitly said how the rules don't do that. For example, the fact that players simply do not take short rests nearly as often as the game's design expects them to, which shafts any characters dependent on short rests or numerous combats (e.g. Warlocks/Battle Masters or Champions, respectively) and supercharges the classes that depend on long rests and were already somewhat above the curve (mostly full casters and especially Wizard).

Given I do not share your opinion, and in fact have highlighted various ways in which the text both actually does fail to tell people what they're supposed to do, or does tell them but somehow gets ignored, I just don't agree with your absolute hardline "there cannot be mechanical changes, sorry" position.

Certainly, you can design a system to be harder to use wrong by accident. However, doing so will necessarily have an impact on the system‘s potential when used well. Lowering the floor is well and good in theory, but not if the ceiling gets lowered in the process.

Bolded: No, it won't necessarily have that impact. That's exactly the assertion I refute. Doing so poorly has such effects, specifically as a result of being a poor implementation. This is not a trade-off; we can in fact have both things.

The point of the escalating numbers is to generate play that unfolds through the three tiers so as to yield "the story of D&D">

You could take out all the half-level bonuses to attack and defences and the game would, mechanically, play the same but it wouldn't yield the same story. And elements of the fiction would stop making sense - eg why is my demigod still finding a single giant a threat?

Exactly. It is a story of growth, of exceeding one's limits (or, indeed, transcending mortal limits entirely), which is a pretty friggin' big part of fantasy narratives in general. There's a reason fiction of all kinds, not just novels but games and film and TV shows etc. almost always feature epiphany and training, where opponents who used to be a terrible danger (sometimes even to the point of "nope, can't fight those, just run away") become absolute chump change over time. Avatar: the Last Airbender, for example, presents ordinary firebenders as a pretty serious threat during the first season. By the middle of the third, even without the Day of Black Sun, Team Avatar can easily defeat ordinary firebenders and really only fear folks like Combustion Man, Azula, or Ozai.

The approach that WotC used in their publications, when they wanted to change how the fiction of the tiers relates to the mechanics of the tiers, was to change the fiction rather than the mechanics. In Neverwinter, new monsters are presented that provide the fiction of paragon tier in mechanically heroic tier terms. In Dark Sun, new opponents (the Sorcerer-Kings) are presented that provide the fiction of paragon tier in mechanically epic terms.

I'm not sure I entirely understand what you mean by "the fiction of paragon tier in mechanically heroic tier terms." Do you mean that, in a sense, the fiction sweet-spot gets expanded to cover a different level range? Or do you mean something else? If that is what you mean, I personally would say that it's really a difference of setting the "scaling factor" of a game. Heroic is small-time, Paragon is big leagues, and Epic is world-shaking, but choice of campaign setting and focus can change what those things mean. Neverwinter, being an FR game, is heavily trafficking in otherworldly stuff (much as Planescape does), and thus its scale has only a very brief period in early heroic for totally mundane challenges, and tops out in high epic with the theoretical potential to not just slay gods but fundamentally rewrite the rules of existence--effectively shifting everything up by around half a tier. DS, meanwhile, shifts everything in the other direction by half a tier or a bit more--early on it really is the case that fighting random (relatively) mundane desert creatures is a risky move, like how random sewer rats in an RPG can be a terrifying early threat, and you top out fighting beings who are attempting to ascend to the level of something like a demigod and maybe, maybe finding a way to heal the wounds of the world...or at least make the region you live in suck less.

That's not really about the numbers. Also, if it is, then why use altering monster stats to undermine those numbers?

Again, not seeing that, so I can't answer the question.

But the fiction is not tied to the numbers, as the numbers get changed arbitrarily anyway. There is no fixed giant stats, as it could be solo giant with low AC and attack bonus or a minion giant with high AC and attack bonus. You don't have a static benchmark to compare the numbers to.

They aren't changed arbitrarily. They are changed for very specific reasons. There isn't a static benchmark because the benchmark is the player experience, which is dynamic. Mechanical representation is not the master, driving player experience before it and callously indifferent to how those mechanics will be experienced through play. If you choose to do this (and you do not have to! You can quite easily use monsters even within a +/- 8 level range if you feel like it, the rules even say so!), the mechanical representation changes specifically because mechanics are there to encode and represent the player experience, not to be some imperious objective reality and hope that that reality actually produces the experience so intended.

For someone who so thoroughly espouses the "the rules are not the master, I am" philosophy as far as I can tell, your desire for this static benchmark to be your master, to which you must adhere no matter what, is genuinely baffling.

Designing a 4e monster is thus a matter of genuinely thinking about what the creature is, and what the experience of fighting it should be. At level 1, a frost giant isn't even a solo--it's a force of nature, something the party has no hope whatsoever of defeating in battle, and must either flee from it, entrap it, or outsmart it, aka, a skill challenge.

But you shouldn't be designing a fight, or a combat, or whatever else, from the starting point of "I need to have a level X fight because my players are level X." You should come up with the concept of what the fight actually is, the fiction, and then develop mechanics which suit that fiction. Sometimes, that will mean that the best mechanical representation of a creature is a minion, even though the players have fought a creature like that before and it wasn't a minion. That's fine--because the objective fiction reality is still there, you're just adjusting how that manifests in mechanics in order to accurately portray whatever that thing is now, in this context.

This is not "undermining" anything. It is simply recognizing that mechanics are always an abstraction, and that we can (and, I argue, should) adapt that abstraction so that it invites the desired experience of play, rather than hoping to luck into (or brute-force) an experience of play by throwing utterly unchanged abstractions against a party with slightly different numerical values.

Yes, one could use escalating numbers to show that higher level creatures completely outclass lower level ones, but 4e doesn't do that as enemies are always level appropriate and their stats get changed so that things are hittable.

NO. THEY. ARE. NOT.

This is a pernicious falsehood. The books explicitly reject doing this. Repeatedly. I have dug up the quotes before, I can do it again.

Enemies are NOT "always level appropriate." I'm certain you've read the 4e DMG, so you should know better. And if you haven't, why are you staking such strident claims on the basis of nothing better than hearsay?

Wait a minute, isn’t there a new official revision coming out in a few months that improves upon the base 2014 rules? I think it’s called OD&D or 2024e or some such?

Not to mention Tashas and Xanathars providing new ways of doing things. A slower speed of change doesn’t mean change isn’t happening.

Not sure how you’ve reached the conclusion that 5e culture is against improvement.

That is not the culture of play. That is WotC. WotC is making revisions, yes. And if you hadn't noticed, those revisions are not exactly the most popular thing! We have a poll right now asking whether people will adopt 5.5e, and it's currently 54% yes, 46% no. I wouldn't call that a ringing endorsement of new stuff!

But what I was actually talking about was 3PP and genuinely new mechanics, not just additional options for classes or feats or the like. I stand by what I said with regard to that. The culture of play for 5e--what the actual people running it tend to do--is the most hidebound I've ever seen D&D be. Far moreso than any edition first published during my lifetime (which would be 2e and up.)

Which would be fine. Except why undermine it by altering monster stats then? How 4e instructs to be played is that once monster would no longer be threat to you due the number discrepancy, you replace it a lower they (from solo to elite to normal to minion) version, which represent similar monster, but can hit and damage you. It just feels confused.

Not at all. It is representing the fact that these things do still pose some challenge, but the kind of challenge they pose is different now. It is the same creature. The fictional reality has not changed. The mechanics have. Because mechanics are not fictional reality, and cannot be--the map is not the territory.

You are asking for every globe to have precise-to-the-meter topographical maps and street-view data. That is not productive nor useful for any globe, even a dynamically flexible one like Google Earth. The types and manners of information presented to the viewer should change as the scale and perspective change. The physical reality--the Earth itself--is not changing in any way. But the data furnished to you from a scale of 500 miles to the inch (or 300 km per cm, or whatever you prefer) should be different from the data furnished to you from a scale of 100 feet to the inch, even if in both cases you are centered on the same latitude and longitude. Some details that are essential at the 500 mile scale are utterly meaningless at the 100' scale and vice-versa.

I've never played or even seen 4E in play, but it seems to me to suffer the same problem most D&D games have IMO:

You go through a region at low levels, finding goblins, wolves, etc. Later on you return to the same region only now to find it plagued by giants and lycanthropes and such. Still later on, the region is overrun by dragons, beholders, and liches.

The world should not "change" simply because the PCs become higher levels.

The text of 4e's DMG explicitly says you should not do this, and in fact it adds (again, explicitly) that it is sometimes wise to have players truly face the exact same monster--no mechanical changes at all--so they can see how much their characters have grown.

So, as I understand it, at higher levels in 4E you can fight the same monsters you did at lower levels, but now they are simply "more powerful" versions of the same things? You go from orc, to orc warrior, to orc marauder, to orc war chief, or orc warlord and orc elite rampagers...

Those would in fact be different creatures. Not the same creatures. If you're fighting an actually-more-powerful creature in an area you've been to before, it's because something there has changed and more powerful creatures have shown up.

They usually don't. Minion ogre is just the same ogre than normal one, but for higher level characters.

Correction: A minion ogre is the same creature, but its mechanics have changed, because mechanics are contextual. In the context of "we have had one adventure together rescuing the miller's daughter," a single ogre is a dangerous and risky opponent which should not be underestimated. In the context of seasoned adventurers who have visited other planes and dealt with the servants of fey ladies and kings of shadow, an ogre is a nuisance, albeit still a danger. In the context of demigods who regularly show the deities themselves that they're not to be trifled with, a single ogre doesn't even rise to the level of nuisance anymore.

That shift from "terrifying" to "nuisance" to "non-entity (in isolation)" is represented with mechanics. Because mechanics are an abstraction, and that abstraction should serve us, not command us.

That's one way to look at them, sure. The game mechanically represents the equivalent creature in a mechanically different way in order to make it an encounter that is fun and dynamic to play (when done well).

They're not the same individual ogre, though - I mean, the game is already "weird" in that every "normal" ogre is exactly the same. I'm not sure why representing the same-ish creature mechanically differently should be all that more "weird".

I mean, potentially it could be the same ogre. That could even be good fun; you fight literally the same ogre (say) six times from level 1-ish to level 18ish, initially as a skill challenge, then progressively a solo, an elite, a standard, a minion, and finally as a single soldier amongst a squad. A direct and palpable representation of how far the characters have come--literally a threat they couldn't threaten at the start of the campaign is now a puny nothing before them.

Well, I'm not saying you always stay in the same region, but often times campaigns return to the beginning (so to say) occasionally during the story. And at those times, I've seen many DMs change to higher CR creatures, which simply weren't there before...

As stated: the 4e DMG explicitly, repeatedly, instructs the DM to not do things like this. It could not possibly be more clear that this is a thing you shouldn't do, without writing in large, friendly letters "DO NOT DO THIS THING."

But you never, or just rarely perhaps, encounter those "champion monsters" when you are lower levels. Why don't you? They are there, right? So, there should be a chance. Obviously if you do you need to run or find some other way to deal with them--direct fighting would likely lead to a TPK. However, DM's ignore those champion versions for monsters typically until you are ready to handle them--despite the fact that in the world design they should be there.

4e's encounter design sections (there's a few of them, looking at encounter design from different perspectives) consistently state that you should use a variety, not just in flavor terms but in mechanical terms as well. What one might call "typical" fights are usually in the level +/- 2 range, but it explicitly suggests including at minimum some fights +/- 4, potentially up to +/- 8 on occasion as spice, with the +8 side giving the players a real nasty problem, and the -8 side giving them a cakewalk that highlights their strengths. The use of these things is, as stated, always focused on what kind of player-experience they're designed to produce.

IME not really. Consider a classic module like Against the Giants. Sure, you go from Hill to Frost to Fire giants, but at each location you still have orcs (as servants), ogres, even fire beetles IIRC! Several low level creatures are present to be encountered as well.

It isn't like all those weaker monsters aren't in the game world any more. They might be less common or more common in the more "dangerous" locations as PCs get higher levels. Even in something like LotR, the heroes are fighting more dangerous creatures, but the orcs and goblins are still around.

And they aren't "not in the world anymore" in 4e either. "Weak" creatures would become one of the following, depending on context:

• Minions (creatures that can still do damage and are still non-trivial to hit, but which die as soon as they take any amount of damage; some homebrew ideas added the idea of "mooks," which are effectively two-hit minions, they must take damage from two different sources to fall)
• Swarms (a collection of creatures that are not dangerous alone, but are dangerous collectively, e.g. a swarm of insects or vampire bats or the like)
• A skill challenge (fighting them isn't productive. you want to get rid of the problem for good; e.g. if you have an ant problem, squishing a thousand ants isn't going to make the problem go away, even though the ants might be genuinely incapable of harming you)
• A "trap"/obstacle/feature/etc. rather than a creature proper (because, again, for particularly weak creatures, killing them isn't productive, you must eliminate the underlying problem)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yes! And this is the kludge to avoid the effect of escalating AC and attack bonus. But if you don't want the effects of that escalation, it is far easier to just not have it in the first place!

It's not a kludge. It's the choice to say, "The abstraction of the rules serves me. I am not in service to it."

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But this isn't what I'm talking about. This is what more should happen IMO. In this example you are still encountering hobgoblins, simply more of them and/or with greater support to fight against you. You have raiding parties, to storming a fortress/force of hobgoblins, to an army of them. Still hobgoblins.

What I see is at higher levels hobgoblins disappearing entirely, even in places where they were before and reasonable should be still, for example.

Anyway, this doesn't have really anything to do with bounded accuracy. Thanks for the replies.

Just so we're clear... This is a thing you actually do see, so presumably it's something you've seen in 5e, given that's the current edition. You have, by your own admission, never played 4e and know nothing about how it is run or played. But you are presuming that it must be doing this thing.

Do you not see how there's just a bit of irony here, to have claimed that you can see how 4e must have erred...when this is something you actually do see with 5e right now?

It sounds much more like this is simply an error DMs make in general, regardless of edition.

 

[Lanefan]

That's one way to look at them, sure. The game mechanically represents the equivalent creature in a mechanically different way in order to make it an encounter that is fun and dynamic to play (when done well).

And that's where it loses me, in that IMO the mechanical representation of any individual creature should be locked in.

They're not the same individual ogre, though -

Except, it is; or can be.

The same ogre you ran away from today at 1st level, who had 88 hit points and was statted out as an elite solo when you met it, is a 1-point minion when a much higher - let's say 17th - level party meets it the next day.

And yet when looked at by anyone else in the fiction the ogre itself hasn't changed a whit during the night. The only thing that's changed is the capabilities of PCs facing it; and those changes should already be more than enough to make the fictional difference you're after as a storyteller without having to mechanically change the ogre as well.

I mean, the game is already "weird" in that every "normal" ogre is exactly the same.

If that's the case it's a DM flaw, IMO; in that the DM should ideally be throwing some variability in there as per their strength, starting hit points, weaponry, etc.

I'm not sure why representing the same-ish creature mechanically differently should be all that more "weird".

It's weird if, like me, you see a creature's mechanics as an agnostic and locked-in definition of how that creature relates to everyone in the rest of the setting, regardless who "everyone" might be at the time.

 

[Lanefan]

For someone who so thoroughly espouses the "the rules are not the master, I am" philosophy as far as I can tell, your desire for this static benchmark to be your master, to which you must adhere no matter what, is genuinely baffling.

The fiction is the master. The rules are there to reflect said fiction and, where necessary, abstract it as closely as is practical.

Given that in theory the fiction is supposed to be consistent with itself, it naturally follows that the rules should reflect that self-consistency.

That is not the culture of play. That is WotC. WotC is making revisions, yes. And if you hadn't noticed, those revisions are not exactly the most popular thing! We have a poll right now asking whether people will adopt 5.5e, and it's currently 54% yes, 46% no. I wouldn't call that a ringing endorsement of new stuff!

Given that the crowd here skews rather conservative when it comes to D&D, I'd say a 54% intend-to-adopt rate is pretty damn good.

You are asking for every globe to have precise-to-the-meter topographical maps and street-view data. That is not productive nor useful for any globe, even a dynamically flexible one like Google Earth. The types and manners of information presented to the viewer should change as the scale and perspective change. The physical reality--the Earth itself--is not changing in any way. But the data furnished to you from a scale of 500 miles to the inch (or 300 km per cm, or whatever you prefer) should be different from the data furnished to you from a scale of 100 feet to the inch, even if in both cases you are centered on the same latitude and longitude. Some details that are essential at the 500 mile scale are utterly meaningless at the 100' scale and vice-versa.

Thing is, whether you're showing it on a small globe or on a 1:16 ordnance survey map the data itself doesn't change. For example, it's 5 miles from my old high school to the place I live now no matter what scale of map you try to show it on, and that some maps are too high-level to show a distance that small is irrelevant to the actual existence of those two locations or the distance between.

Correction: A minion ogre is the same creature, but its mechanics have changed, because mechanics are contextual.

There's the difference: in my view, in-fiction consistency demands that the mechanics be absolute. Context has nothing to do with it.

If the ogre had 88 hit points yesterday when chasing away 1st-level rookies, and nothing's hurt it in the meantime, it has 88 hit points today when the 17th-level curb-stompers come calling.

That shift from "terrifying" to "nuisance" to "non-entity (in isolation)" is represented with mechanics. Because mechanics are an abstraction, and that abstraction should serve us, not command us.

And that already happens: the PCs gain levels and power and wealth etc. and as they do, that ogre becomes less and less of a real threat to them. There's no need to also change the ogre itself; and doing so only serves to steepen the power curve.

 

[Minigiant]

The whole "standard ogre to ogre minion" problem only exists because when bounded accuracy halted AC growth, HP and damage growth exploded to make up the difference to display progression.

If D&D enforced Material Plane -> Echo Panes - > Inner Planes -> Outer Plane adventuring, you wouldn't need that. No backtracking. But that is telling DMs what to do.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

And that's where it loses me, in that IMO the mechanical representation of any individual creature should be locked in.

Except, it is; or can be.

The same ogre you ran away from today at 1st level, who had 88 hit points and was statted out as an elite solo when you met it, is a 1-point minion when a much higher - let's say 17th - level party meets it the next day.

And yet when looked at by anyone else in the fiction the ogre itself hasn't changed a whit during the night. The only thing that's changed is the capabilities of PCs facing it; and those changes should already be more than enough to make the fictional difference you're after as a storyteller without having to mechanically change the ogre as well.

If that's the case it's a DM flaw, IMO; in that the DM should ideally be throwing some variability in there as per their strength, starting hit points, weaponry, etc.

It's weird if, like me, you see a creature's mechanics as an agnostic and locked-in definition of how that creature relates to everyone in the rest of the setting, regardless who "everyone" might be at the time.

Actually i wish it were presented that way. That it is the exact same ogre who was elite at level 1 is now a minion in a fight vs lvl 13 characters.

The MM does not paint it that way. Minions and elites have different equippment and stats. At least in the original book. Alsondifferent xp, as the level is nit exactly 12 levels apart (as IIRC needs to be so that a minion and an elite has the same xp budget).

 

[ezo]

Just so we're clear... This is a thing you actually do see, so presumably it's something you've seen in 5e, given that's the current edition. You have, by your own admission, never played 4e and know nothing about how it is run or played. But you are presuming that it must be doing this thing.

I was presuming it from the discussions on 4E I've seen in this and other threads, which is why I brought it up--because I never played it and wanted to see if it fell into the same trap other editions have. 5E does it as well.

I understand something like orc, orc warrior, orc marauder, orc chief, orc war chief, orc warlord would all be different "escalating" creatures. Which is fine, the stronger ones are the champions (as others have said). What I see repeatedly and have seen in every edition is that as PCs rise in levels, encounters suddenly only involve the champions.

For example, at low levels, you might encounter orcs and orc warriors led by an orc chief or marauder. Then, at higher levels, it becomes only orc marauders led by an orc war chief. The weaker orcs and orc warriors are no where to be found...

Do you not see how there's just a bit of irony here, to have claimed that you can see how 4e must have erred...when this is something you actually do see with 5e right now?

It is not a matter of an error, it is a matter of how encounter design is set up. So, answer me this: are random encounter tables in 4E differentiated by character level tiers? Or are they set up solely by region/terrain?

It sounds much more like this is simply an error DMs make in general, regardless of edition.

It mostly is, and I never claimed it wasn't, but it is also increased by how the edition is designed. Which, again from posts here and in other threads regarding 4E, it seemed to me 4E also did this. I've seen responses on both sides even in this thread.

But as I mentioned before, this has nothing to do with bounded accuracy. So, thanks for your input and I hope this clears up my position. I'm not claiming 4E did this, but it seems to, just as 5E has.