Bounded Accuracy L&L

[Frostmarrow]

Obviously, a character can try again once the situation has improved. Better informed, better prepared, better equipped or whatever can constitute an improvement (if the DM approves).

 

[Splurch]

I also like characters that show increase in skill as well as hp's and damage. I will hold any judgement until the final game comes out and I like a lot of what is being done with 5E. But if you cannot make a skilled fighter for example who's skill makes him hit more for less damage it will not be a system I go with. I think feats and themes will handle this so I have hope!

 

[mlund]

The pile of Goblins at higher levels is a non-issue for me. Just like when I know I'll have wave upon wave of minions in 4E I'll use a simple script or web service and pre-generate a stack of d20 rolls for the mooks and just cross them off one at a time as I use them. It's way better than having to toss and read handfuls upon handfuls of d20s every round - eliminating the entire time-crunch / logistical nightmare or rolling.

- Marty Lund

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Well, colour me skeptical. The way I see it, the bounded accuracy system simply means one or more of the following:

1. The PCs never improve, apart from getting more hit points and damage bonuses. You're no longer on a treadmill, but it doesn't matter because you aren't even moving in the first place.

he explicitely stated, that there are bonuses to hit. But if the fighter is getting a bonus it would bring him ahead of the curve, not just allowing to keep up. (What i said in other posts!)
If you go back to ADnD, the fighter thac0 improvement of 1/level allowed him to pull ahead. The cleric was next with 2/3 levels. And if you look at AC improvements of monsters, those were real bonuses. Only special monsters, that had an in game justification, had very high (actually low) AC. In those fight´s the fighter was the only one getting real hits in. But those monsters were usually also resistant to magic. So a dragon, even though it had very low hp, was nearly unkillable, as it was hit only on very lucky hits.

2. The PCs improve, the monsters (or some monsters) don't, apart from getting more hit points and damage bonuses. The monsters almost never hit the PCs when they attack, and the PCs almost always hit the monsters when they attack (and some people say Reaper is broken). The more levels you gain, the easier the game gets.

With relative low scaling, you can balance hitting more often with HP. This also was used in ADnD. And it was quite useful, that PCs were usually not hit by many monsters, but if they were hit, a good part of the hp were gone. Swingy, but quite interesting.

3. The PCs improve, so do the monsters (or some monsters). You're still on a treadmill, but if you squint, you can almost believe that you're not (if only some people put so much effort into suspending their disbelief in other parts of the game). The difference is quantitative, not qualitative.

4e like. When I read: 4e will only have +1/2 level bonuses, i was quite happy. When I found out, that actually +1/level was expected, i got nervous. When you also scale hp and AC, attack and damage on every level, you have a function that is power(level) = level^4 which will make the game scale very badly.

2 and 3 aren't mutually exclusive, and there is a continuum between 1 and 2. Somewhere between 1 and 2, the PCs are maybe hitting the monsters 85% of the time, and the monsters are maybe missing the PCs 85% of the time.

Seems about right for fighters. They are fighting their whole life. If they miss half of their swings and if they are hit on every second swing, their life would be very very hard.
If they enconter a fighter monster, it would be 50-50 again. But against most of the rubble, a fighter should fight along that line.

A wizard, who would not gain bonuses to hit and to AC, will - without magical protection - be hit 85% of the time and miss 85% of his hits.

There just needs to be some mechanic, to protect the weaker member.

Oh well, it's not a deal-breaker for me, and I can always house-rule in level-dependent attack and defense bonuses for the PCs and the monsters if I want.

Well, do so if you want. But if you add them on both sides, for every non fighting class, you really do yourself no favour as you break versimilitude:

level 20 Sage: Never hit by the fighter... and hitting the fighter all day? Really?

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

By that logic a house cat is a challenge for a level 20 party if they don't have handle animal to calm her down, only speaking to dealing with a cat through handle animal.

If the players have chosen to deal with a house cat through no other means than trying to calm it down through a skill they haven't devoted any attention to, then under Bounded Accuracy the task is relatively no more or less challenging based on the characters' levels. This makes sense to me. If they choose to use other abilities they've gained over those levels to calm the cat (devoting future and/or multiple skill choices to dealing with natural animals, spells, general class abilities, etc.), then the chances of success change. This also makes sense to me.

Under 4E, if the players have chosen to deal with a house cat through no other means than trying to calm it down through a skill they haven't devoted any attention to, the house cat is less challenging for 20th-level characters because they gain +10 to their checks automatically over their 1st-level counterparts. As a 4E fan I have no problem with the +1/2 level bonus, though I don't find it integral to the game to figth for it over the concept of Bounded Accuracy.

Under 3E, if the players have chosen to deal with a house cat through no other means than trying to calm it down through a skill they haven't devoted any attention to, they will fail no matter what level they are because Handle Animal is Trained Only. But that's another matter. Let's say it's a skill that isn't Trained only. They will most likely find the task less challenging due to 5 stat increases and a +6 item in the relavant stat by 20th-level.

Under AD&D, if the players have chosen to deal with a house cat through no other means than trying to calm it down through a skill they haven't devoted any attention to in a stat that all of the party is weak in, then the task is relatively no more or less challenging based on the characters' levels. When the stats are higher the chance of success is moderated more. An 18 stat is (without modifier) a 90% success rate in AD&D, while an 18 stat vs. DC 11 is 70%.

That a dev would even mention a wooden door as presenting a challenge to a level 20 party means he either has not thought at all about his example (I hope that's it), honestly didn't think that people would not force open a door if they can simply smash it in one blow, or actually doesn't think smashing doors through doing damage should be possible.

More likely he was trying to use an example of a skill and unfortunately chose one that also had a link to hit points so he could be nit-picked. The point he was making seems to be understood by most.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

2) The d20 will tend to be a bigger determinant in EVERY combat than in previous editions, not just the ones against level-appropriate challenges. That's a potential issue with everything going on in 5e with reduced bonuses. The game may be swingier for important checks and combat.

The game will be no more or less swingy than before unless you change the dice you are rolling. A d20+1 is just as swingy in outcome as a d20+999. A change in dice, or the number of dice would be required to affect swinginess.

 

[billd91]

The game will be no more or less swingy than before unless you change the dice you are rolling. A d20+1 is just as swingy in outcome as a d20+999. A change in dice, or the number of dice would be required to affect swinginess.

You may still have a 20 point range, but the swinginess depends on the target number. If the bonus and the target number increase at the same rate, then, yes, the game retains the exact same swinginess level. If the growth of your bonus outstrips the growth of the target number, however, the results become less dependent on the random variable. That's one nice feature of previous editions of D&D. Orcs and other relatively weak humanoid opponents become a lot easier to hit for characters advancing in level. Fights against them are less swingy.

If the attack bonus stays about the same but damage increases, you could end up with results that lurch between feast (a high-damage hit) and famine (a miss). That's pretty swingy in my book.

 

[Wulfgar76]

The more I think about it, 'Bounded Accuracy' has the potential to make D&D Next far and away the best edition ever published.

For me, of the concepts presented so far for 5e, have ranged from average to pretty good – but this is brilliant.

 

[Tortoise]

Great post. It really confirms everything we need to know about their design philosophy for accuracy bonuses, the flat math, etc.

It does leave me with one question I've been wondering though, and I ask this in all honesty: If we assume that 5 goblins are a challenge to a party of 1st-level characters, how many of you DMs are going to have the patience to manage, let's say, 25 goblins fighting a party of 10th-level adventurers?

While larger numbers of critters means a longer combat, the hoard of rats encounter (18 cave rats and 1 dire rat, coming on the tail-end of a 6 kobold encounter) from this weekends playtest wasn't that bad or that long. I don't foresee any major problem handling that many critters.

 

[Mercutio01]

I'm not convinced this will do anything to improve my enjoyment of the game. The last thing I want to be doing is rolling 20d6 damage at level 10 because the monster has 987 hp.

While I seriously doubt this will be the case, it is sort of my concern as well. I think, on the balance, I really like the idea of bounded accuracy. But the HP inflation can't be astronomical to make up for the flattened accuracy. I know there are people who love games like Final Fantasy, but one of the reasons I'm not one of them is hit points numbering in the thousands. To a large extent, this is also why I don't like a lot of MMOs.

In short, I think bounded accuracy with HP increases is great, so long as it's controlled and doesn't go too far out of whack either.