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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Falling Icicle" data-source="post: 6122589" data-attributes="member: 17077">I think giving a +1 bonus for each point above 10 is worth considering. So far, the game has felt very swingy to me, with the d20 roll mattering far, far more than a character's ability and skill. Even a 20 ability score, the pinnacle of mortal human(oid) ability, only grants a +5 bonus, which is worth a lot less than the d20 is. Even an average roll of 10.5 is worth twice as much as that modifier. This doesn't feel right to me at all. With the DCs given in the playtest packet, even characters with a 20 ability score are very likely to fail at easy actions. A character with a +5 bonus has a 20% chance to fail at an Easy (DC 10) action. That may not sound that bad at first, but that's one in every five attempts, and that's the lowest DC you'll typically ever have on an action (most DM's aren't going to make you roll if the difficulty is "trivial"). The chance of failure increases to 45% for a "Moderate" difficulty task, to 70% for a "Hard" task, and to 95% for a "Very Hard" task! A "Formidable task" is literally impossible, even if you roll a 20, as is a "Nearly Impossible" task. Think about that for a minute. This is a person with a 20 ability score. For an average person (ability score of 10), add +25% to all of the failure chances I listed above. An average joe has a 45% chance to fail at an Easy action! This is totally ridiculous.Skills help, of course, but those are going to be completely optional, and they even suggest increasing the already too high DCs if you use skills in your game. For the basic game, players are only going to have their ability score bonus and maybe a bonus from magic items or spells. Either characters need to get more bonuses, or the DCs need to be reduced across the board, and by a lot. For the basic game, a 25 should be "nearly impossible", since it is. Only a person with a 20+ ability score can even attempt such an action, and even then they only have a 5% chance of pulling it off!Back to the idea of using +1 per point above 10, this does solve quite a few problems. First, it solves the "odd number ability scores don't do anything" problem. Completely. Second, it increases the difference between average people and those with amazing scores. Should an average person (Str 10), really have such a significant chance to beat a 20 Str character in a contest of strength? Right now, the 20 Str character only has a +25% advantage over the Str 10 guy. That's far too little, IMO. Third, it makes the system much smoother and allows you to use an ability score for a lot of things, like AC, passive checks or static saving throws, since one's ability score is effectively the same thing as taking 10.As for "bounded accuracy", there's nothing about this idea that violates that. There's nothing that says you have to have tiny numbers for the system to be bounded. "Bounded accuracy" is about the numbers not inflating greatly with level, and that's still true here. Besides, even a +10 bonus is far less than the upper ends of the bonuses characters could add to their rolls in 3rd or 4th edition!</blockquote>

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