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

[Maxperson]

I'm not talking about the full bonus but the rate of growth.

2e's rate of accuracy growth was not slow. It was faster than 5e's. You feel your accuracy growth a lot more too.

Rate of growth isn't really relevant when talking about accuracy and where accuracy is bounded. It also isn't relevant to ballooning, which requires a very high full bonus/amount.

 

[ezo]

Except that he sucks at stealth checks against level 1 enemies. He sucked at them even when the characters were first level. Now that they're 20th, he's effectively getting guaranteed failures--and has learned absolute bupkis if he were to go back and deal with weaker threats.

And why wouldn't he still suck at stealth checks against level 1 enemeies? He wears heavy armor, has a DEX penalty, and no proficiency in stealth. He literally has no chance to get better. He sucks to begin with and willl continue to suck unless he dedicates something to stealth, such as gaining proficiency.

That was not true in 4e, and the universality of the half-level bonus is precisely why. When the party is going out and doing things that are within or just beyond their comfort zone, his Stealth will be not great. (I would know, I have played such a paladin, though his name was Seth.) But if at, say, level 15 (analogous to 5e level 10), he were to need to go sneaking through areas populated with the kinds of threats he'd faced at level 1? He would be better at stealth than before. He would, in fact, have actually learned a thing or two. It wouldn't be enough to really make him all that good at it, a total bonus of +7 at level one is okay but not great, meaning he'd have solid chances to sneak past such things. (This, I must admit, I have not seen, but that only because my 4e games have been curtailed more than once by DMs having IRL issues that pulled them away from TTRPGing for the foreseeable future.)

Yeah, I get the desire for "half improvement" in such things, but to me it just isn't worth the nick-picking of keep track of which skills get it and which don't, etc. FWIW, for a while we played where you had "proficient skills", "class skills", an other skills. Whatever skills you didn't choose for proficiency from your class choices you got proficiency - 2. So, at 5th level you got a +1, etc.

Anyway, back to Peter Paladin. So, even with half-level or half-proficiency, he's improving but not a lot. He goes from disadvantage with a -1 penalty, to at best disadvantage with a +2 or 3. Considering the swinginess of the d20, it hardly seems worth it to me to bother with.

I could see it being an optional Variant rule in 5E, for those who want something of that nature, however.

The explicit aim was to reduce the size and amount of bonuses characters could receive, so that the numbers would be lower (and thus easier to do math with) and progression more tightly controlled.

Hmm... I saw this more as a side effect, but since I was never involved in 5E development or play testing, sure, I guess.

But if that was the case, it seems a bit odd to begin proficiency at +2... if you wanted more constrained numbers, make non-proficiency disadvantage and then have proficiency remove disadvantage, begin at +0, and progress from there.

A PC getting more than +25 by level 18 in 5e is equivalent to a 4e character having +50 by level 27, something even ultra-experts hyper-specialized in one and only one skill would struggle to achieve. A much more typical skill bonus for many characters would be...well, about equal to their character level (half from half-level bonus, the other half from training, ability score, items, etc.), so around 27. Meaning, for a 5e character, roughly Expertise with a +0 modifier or Proficiency with a +5 modifier, and nothing more.

Sorry, I'm not following this. How is a 5E character getting +25... ever? I mean, +17 certainly with expertise, maybe a bit more with guidance, and I suppose you could throw in bardic inspiration or something for a bit more. But IMO then you're really piling it on, and that would be for a single check. You can't do that every time.

Otherwise, I'm not really following your point, here. Sorry.

Hence, despite explicitly trying to curtail extreme bonuses and keep numbers within a neat, tidy, narrow range...bounded accuracy has actually not done all that much to bound accuracy. Instead, what it bound was off-label stuff. That stuff barely moves, and may even stay essentially flat across a character's career. Your weaknesses never get less weak, unless you radically refocus your character to address them, paying a steep price to do so. Meanwhile, your enemies get stronger; hence, instead of a treadmill, we have people straight-up losing a Red Queen's race.

Not so much IMO. The extreme examples, are just that: extreme. They aren't common. At 20th level, most PCs will have skills in the +8 to +11 range, which makes those DC 30 checks very hard, if not impossible. Anyway, your weakness never get less weak, is true. But that is true of everything. You either shore up those weaknesses, or you don't. It just depends on how important that is to you.

And yes, your enemies get stronger---in some ways, but they also still have weaknesses, just like PCs. Most enemies are not universally better at everything, after all.

You probably wouldn't be surprised to know that I feel that 5e bonuses and effects suck to begin with (seriously, "competence" is now apparently succeeding about 15 percentage points more often!) So if AD&D is supposed to suck when treating 5e as one's baseline...

No, not surprised at all.

And I agree competence should be more, but that is also because 5E starts at no penalty, and only adds to your chances. It depends I suppose on how you view the numbers. Since ability scores now can potentially include some "training" as well as natural ability, proficiency isn't just competence, it is some level of additional dedication. I know that sort of goes against the definition of proficiency, but that really is what it is.

I know this is a bit side-tracked, but consider the example of Athletics. How can a +2 be competence when a STR 18 is +4. So, a lot of people look at this as someone with "no training" (i.e. non-proficient) has a better chance with STR 18 at making the check to swim than another who's had "training" (i.e. proficiency) in Athletics? IMO, the PC who actually is proficient in Athletics should have the better chance.

This is why non-proficiency as disadvantage is better. The STR 18 PC without proficiency would succeed on DC 15 25%, while the STR 10 with proficiency +2 succeeds 40%. In fact, the proficient STR 10 does better than the non-proficient STR 18 on all DC's 8 or higher.

Anyway, otherwise I'm not quite certain when you get the 15% more often from...

 

[Micah Sweet]

Except that he sucks at stealth checks against level 1 enemies. He sucked at them even when the characters were first level. Now that they're 20th, he's effectively getting guaranteed failures--and has learned absolute bupkis if he were to go back and deal with weaker threats.

That was not true in 4e, and the universality of the half-level bonus is precisely why. When the party is going out and doing things that are within or just beyond their comfort zone, his Stealth will be not great. (I would know, I have played such a paladin, though his name was Seth.) But if at, say, level 15 (analogous to 5e level 10), he were to need to go sneaking through areas populated with the kinds of threats he'd faced at level 1? He would be better at stealth than before. He would, in fact, have actually learned a thing or two. It wouldn't be enough to really make him all that good at it, a total bonus of +7 at level one is okay but not great, meaning he'd have solid chances to sneak past such things. (This, I must admit, I have not seen, but that only because my 4e games have been curtailed more than once by DMs having IRL issues that pulled them away from TTRPGing for the foreseeable future.)


The explicit aim was to reduce the size and amount of bonuses characters could receive, so that the numbers would be lower (and thus easier to do math with) and progression more tightly controlled. A PC getting more than +25 by level 18 in 5e is equivalent to a 4e character having +50 by level 27, something even ultra-experts hyper-specialized in one and only one skill would struggle to achieve. A much more typical skill bonus for many characters would be...well, about equal to their character level (half from half-level bonus, the other half from training, ability score, items, etc.), so around 27. Meaning, for a 5e character, roughly Expertise with a +0 modifier or Proficiency with a +5 modifier, and nothing more.

Hence, despite explicitly trying to curtail extreme bonuses and keep numbers within a neat, tidy, narrow range...bounded accuracy has actually not done all that much to bound accuracy. Instead, what it bound was off-label stuff. That stuff barely moves, and may even stay essentially flat across a character's career. Your weaknesses never get less weak, unless you radically refocus your character to address them, paying a steep price to do so. Meanwhile, your enemies get stronger; hence, instead of a treadmill, we have people straight-up losing a Red Queen's race.


You probably wouldn't be surprised to know that I feel that 5e bonuses and effects suck to begin with (seriously, "competence" is now apparently succeeding about 15 percentage points more often!) So if AD&D is supposed to suck when treating 5e as one's baseline...


Popularity isn't a design goal any more than sales are a design goal.

You cannot point to a part of the design and say, "This is what causes popularity." Popularity necessarily is much later down the chain of cause and effect than the goals phase of game design. Designers certainly hope that their designs will be popular. They will, in all likelihood, ask players about how they liked various things. But popularity itself is not and cannot be a design goal.

Sure it can. They try stuff, and if it turns out to be popular, they keep doing that stuff. They run big polls to see if people like their ideas, and if 70% or more of the respondents approve, they go forward with them. Their decisions are based on what they think people will like, and therefore pay them for.

 

[ezo]

Yes and no.

Mechanically it makes sense.

Experientially, it suggests that, despite all his time adventuring, Peter Paladin has somehow learned nothing about stealth, like he has made a conscious effort to glean no insights from his life experience outside of a very narrow scope.

Well, knowing how much Peter Paladin sucks at stealth, is he really trying that often, and how much is he really learning on the limited attempts he makes while adventuring? Since he doesn't dedicate anything to improving his stealth (either through proficiency or raising DEX), why should he really get better to any significant level?

During D&D Next (before 5e officially came out) - we used a house rule where your Size category determined your maximum HD.

Tiny = 1 HD
Small = 3 HD (Halflings, they'd get other benefits)
Medium = 6 HD (The rest of the standard playable races)
Large = 10 HD
Huge = 15 HD
Gargantuan 21+ HD

Creatures may have had some prevention depending on the monster.
i.e. You could give dragons a version of Heavy Armour Mastery for their scales...etc

Sure, this type of a system works better for the hit-points-as-meat crowd.

Since HD represents a bunch more stuff (skill, luck, favor, etc.) for me the number of hit dice represents the power or threat of a PC/creature, while the size represents both meat and the other stuff.

 

[Maxperson]

Sure, but this is (more or less) just chucking Advantage altogether. And as much as I may dislike the way 5e uses it, I don't think it's a bad mechanic. E.g., I thought it was quite nice back when 4e "invented" it...as the Avenger "damage" bonus via accuracy.

I don't agree. I still use advantage whenever appropriate, but now I have a tool that I can use when advantage will be too much.

The problem is, finding a way to integrate a more diverse bonus structure without totally binning what Ad/Dis actually bring to the table. Doing that is damn near impossible without ripping up the rules by their roots and rewriting a lot of small rules across the entire player-facing surface of the game. A frankly Herculean task.

Hence why I said that it's easier to remove something in this case ("just treat all bonuses as sources of Advantage, and they don't stack") than it is to try to add something that isn't there. Because the key addition isn't that something other than Advantage appears in one place or another; the key addition is the depth, which is a property that necessarily supervenes on the whole of the system, not on any individual rule. (Much as "texture" is something that individual atoms and molecules don't have, but which frex table surfaces do have, even though atoms and molecules are what comprise the things we call "table surfaces.")

You can polish a textured surface to a mirror shine. It's much harder to add a textured surface to something already polished to a mirror shine.

Rebuilding it would make it more robust, but my method is a decent band-aid.

 

[Minigiant]

I think it was a bit weird how in 4e the characters just got better at everything, whether it had anything to do with their character concept or not. It was just impossible to be bad at things.

Not really. You needed training to be good at stuff. It required actually spend feats to be good at everything. PCs did have a lot of feats though.

 

[Maxperson]

Hmm... I saw this more as a side effect, but since I was never involved in 5E development or play testing, sure, I guess.

But if that was the case, it seems a bit odd to begin proficiency at +2... if you wanted more constrained numbers, make non-proficiency disadvantage and then have proficiency remove disadvantage, begin at +0, and progress from there.

This is the design intent, which includes skills.

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Bounded Accuracy)

web.archive.org

 

[Minigiant]

Rate of growth isn't really relevant when talking about accuracy and where accuracy is bounded. It also isn't relevant to ballooning, which requires a very high full bonus/amount.

The entire subdiscussion of flattening stats was about progression which is the rate of growth.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Not really. You needed training to be good at stuff. It required actually spend feats to be good at everything. PCs did have a lot of feats though.

I didn't say they're good at everything, I said they're bad at nothing. And already by tenth level the level bonus catches up with the training bonus. A tenth level character is as good at everything than a first level character at their trained skills. A 30th level character is as good at everything than a 20th level character at their trained skills. By standards of normalish people the high or even medium level characters are insanely skilled, overwhelmingly better at literally any skill than mundane people who have trained that skill. That is just bizarre to me.

 

[ezo]

This is the design intent, which includes skills.

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Bounded Accuracy)

web.archive.org

Oh, that? Yeah I have the saved as a pdf actually. I'll have to review it as I haven't read it in a few years.