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

[Edgar Ironpelt]

There are whole swaths of middle ground in-between what you describe and ballooning. Ballooning is overinflation, not mere increase. You can increase things just fine without ballooning anything and people will feel the progression. Maybe that's the issue here and you're conflating increasing with ballooning.

Except that one GM's 'overinflation' is another GM's 'grudging, miserly increase.' Which is why different people are fans of different systems with different rates of increase.

 

[Maxperson]

Except that one GM's 'overinflation' is another GM's 'grudging, miserly increase.' Which is why different people are fans of different systems with different rates of increase.

Sure, but @Minigiant is arguing that a 20%-75%(one creature at 75%) chance to hit is a 75% accuracy rate, which is absurd. Most of the 1e 10th level creatures can only be hit 20%-40% of the time, and that by a fighter with +10 over 10 levels PLUS a +3 weapon PLUS a 17 strength, and most were not as high as 17. Arguing that the +10 that allows the fighter to miss most of the time is "ballooning" stretches credulity past the limit.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

Anyone here actually throw a hundred enemies at their PC during 5E? I'm not counting swarms for the purposes of this question. I'm counting running a hundred enemies as a hundred enemies. I don't run 5E so I'll won't get that chance.

I once sent (checks notes) 96 enemies at once at the PCs in my 3.5e 'Brotherhood of Rangers' game. One of the PCs charged forward to melee them, and it was glorious. Great fun was had by all present.

It's not something I'd do every encounter, or even ever session - but it is something I'd definitely do again, if the proper occasion arose.

My experience is that it's the sort of thing that gets boring much sooner for GMs than for players, and that GMs tend to shut it down with "this is boring" while the players are still having fun with it.

 

[Maxperson]

Anyone here actually throw a hundred enemies at their PC during 5E? I'm not counting swarms for the purposes of this question. I'm counting running a hundred enemies as a hundred enemies. I don't run 5E so I'll won't get that chance.

In 5e the most I've sent at the PCs at once was something like 50 or 60 enemies in 2 waves, but it was the culminating fight of the campaign and the group was 15th or 16th level at the time. I rarely do long fights with lots of enemies.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

Progression is the main reward for adventure. Most of the rules pertain to character progression and testing it.

IME, in 'classic' (A)D&D games, progression was the main reward during the sucky low levels. Once PCs reached the levels that didn't suck so much, progression both slowed and became less important. (With "the levels that didn't suck so much" being defined differently by different groups.)

Now it certainly happened that games were started at higher, less-sucky levels with slower progression from the get-go, but those games were seen as "atypical" D&D games, even in the circles where they were common.

 

[Gammadoodler]

One problem I see with relying on things like the minion rules to handle this, is it's kind of brittle as far as the conditions where it really works. If the whole party is high level, then minions kind of work. But if there's anything else in the mix, like a high level party protecting the king and a few remaining retainers who might still be in the fight but aren't such a high level that they should be one-hitting ogres, then I've got a lot of complexity to manage. Do I just narrate the retainers fighting without letting them actually cooperate tactically with the PCs? Do I have some ogres be normal and others minions so that my high-level PCs get the minions but the royal retainers fight the regular ogres?

Or would this have been better just sticking to PC-side characteristics and abilities. 5e largely does that because the ogres now remain static but PC damage potential rises. But, if you really want the one-hit of significantly lower targets, give the high level PCs the ability to do so based on the target's CR. We do that for turning undead. There's no reason that martial-oriented characters (fighters, monks, paladins, rangers, rogues) couldn't tap into that a certain degree as well, but have it be triggered by an attack they make. You could even use the same undead turning table or maybe tweak it up just a bit to add variation. No saving throw on the monster's part would be necessary since you've already made a successful to-hit roll to invoke the power.

Could have a monster-side trait..say 'minion 17'. Characters level 17 or greater treat the creature as a minion, otherwise no change to the statblock.

Retainers can gang up on an ogre to kill through hp depletion. PCs can one shot the creature.

You run them like regular monsters at the table, except with the knowledge that the PCs can one shot them.

 

[Minigiant]

I just don't think BA is really the root cause of the issue. The opposite of BA is "Level makes all the modifiers go up really high"; I don't see a way in which that fixes the core issues. It just promotes a different type of fantasy

In order to compensate for accuracy and AC not increases much, they made HP and damage increase a lot.

 

[tetrasodium]

Actually, polls taken here, as well as the content of many threads over the past 10 years, indicates that play above the upper Tier 2 category (levels 8-10 or so) is relatively rare, even among the many experienced DMs that are the core posters here.

What on earth does that have to do with the section of my post quoted immediately above it?

I in no way claim any particular expertise, other than having run a few dozen sessions in the Tier 3 range (11-16) and having some facility with the system math.

I once aghain am not interested in your experience measuring distraction. The rest of this is an opinion lacking any support or detail that would enable discussion so I'll disagree and move on.

If you're arguing that the entire CR system, as well as the system of resource attrition, don't work well to provide a core game play loop of skill/challenge-based play, then I'd agree with you.

I just don't think BA is really the root cause of the issue. The opposite of BA is "Level makes all the modifiers go up really high"; I don't see a way in which that fixes the core issues. It just promotes a different type of fantasy.

BA is very much central to the breakdown because monsters that should be built for late tier 2 & beyond are bounded to work for lower level parties who lack the improved abilities & improved gear that is fairly standard in parties that have progressed beyond those lower levels.

 

[billd91]

Could have a monster-side trait..say 'minion 17'. Characters level 17 or greater treat the creature as a minion, otherwise no change to the statblock.

Retainers can gang up on an ogre to kill through hp depletion. PCs can one shot the creature.

You run them like regular monsters at the table, except with the knowledge that the PCs can one shot them.

But again, why not make that a property of the character alone, not the monster?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm not sure where you are getting that from. I gave no specifics. The point I was making was that you don't have to balloon things like hit points in order for the game to function and progress to be made.

Then where is the growth occurring?

We can't have "ballooning" HP, which is something 5e already has. (Despite the many bitter complaints about 4e having crazy high HP, 5e characters regularly exceed their 4e counterparts, even without accounting for the fact that 4e has 10 additional levels.)

We can't have "ballooning" AC, which means that player character AC never grows more than, roughly, 3-5 points across 20 levels. Light armor characters get that from Dexterity growth. Heavy and medium armor characters get it from buying better armor.

We can't have "ballooning" attack bonuses, so the entirety of a character's growth is going from +5 at first level (+2 prof, +3 stat) to +11 at 17th level (+6 prof, +5 stat). Maybe +14 if the GM is incredibly generous and actually gives out so-called "powerful" magic items. A whopping 9 points, total.

Where is the progression?

None of the parts individually are allowed to express it, and three lackluster and disparate things stacked together don't somehow gel together into a satisfying whole. That's literally what the original comment you replied to was saying. Piecemeal nibbles and bites fall short.