Bounded Accuracy L&L

[Falling Icicle]

One thing that excites me about this is that I can envision having a house rule removing level entirely and instead letting people buy and train individual traits one at a time with experience, like alot of other games. The whole flat math thing makes something like that easily possible.

 

[Ichneumon]

WotC designers, if you are reading this thread, please stick to your guns on this one issue over the development life of 5e. Being able to trust that an AC or DC of a given number is easy/hard/extreme regardless of party level will make life wonderful for me as a DM. Since the "hardest" numbers are in the mid to late 20s, they're within reach of highly competent 1st level PCs. D&D Next could be a game where any PCs can potentially go anywhere. I'd love to see that happen.

 

[Doug McCrae]

This is a good system, and I can see that it solves a lot of problems.

One difficulty I have, is that I don't think I like worlds where the most powerful BBEGs, such as the Tarrasque or its equivalent, can be defeated by armies. I want only heroes to be able to fight these things. Cuz that's cool.

 

[pemerton]

I can't imagine they'd use HP for that. Level, maybe.

Without having any more knowledge than you do, I think I can confidently say, "No." Let's not invent things to worry about until we actually get to playtest the rules that govern non-combat actions.

Of course I fully agree. My comment was intended as a tongue-in-cheek riff on Incenjucar's upthread comment about Charm spells, extending the idea to the "exploration pillar".

My serious point was to agree with Incenjucar, and say that by linking everything to hit points, it makes it hard to expend a sense of "depth" to aspects of the game that don't involve hit points - unless (as with the mind-affecting spells in the playtest) you somewhat artificially introduce hit point threshholds into those aspects.

In general 5E rules seem to suggest a universe that is very shallow in some respects. The easiest things and the hardest things don't have much of a gap between them. An epic lock might come with epic consequences for failure, and might take ten times as much time to pick, but enough level 1 kobold lockpicks could do it in time.

In the case of monsters, what (if anything) will they do with damage reduction? That is a time-honoured mechanism for stopping the 1st level NPC archers having much of an effect even if they can hit the AC in question.

But even if damage reduction is a way of introducing a type of "depth" into combat that doesn't require escalating the DCs, what is the analogue of damage reduction for out of combat activities, given that (as far as we have seen to date) there is no analogue of hit points and damage there, but just the same old "make a check and have the GM adjudicate the result of success/failure".

Given that, in the actual world, there are intellectual problems that no number of first level scholars will solve no matter how long they are given to think about it, and pursuits that no ordinary person can succeed at, no matter how cool their shoes and how much energy drink they are allowed to consume en route, I hope that the non-combat pillars are a bit more robust than is suggested by that image of 1st level kobold lockpicks!

 

[Ahnehnois]

Bounded accuracy? Sounds good.

Unbounded hit points and damage? Not so much.

 

[Minigiant]

It sounds great.

Now for some good old fashion Minigiant pessimism.

1) Pokemon play. Everything hits. Everything hurts. Goblins are lvl 2 pidgeys to your druid's level 20 venusaur. No one is ever an insignifacant speck. It's a good thing but it was never part of d&d before.

2) Can't make a mountain of goblin corpses anymore. They can actually hurt me now.

3) With no increases, you intial rolls for stats matter a lot. No more growing your 14 STR halfling into a warrior by getting +10 to hit over 10 level. That +2 stays forever...maybe.

4) 18 str cleric is about equal to a 18 str fighter in hitting. 18 Dex wizard is as sneak as a 18 Dex rogue. Class feature will mean a lot now. And bad ones equals really bad classes.

 

[Minigiant]

Bounded accuracy? Sounds good.

Unbounded hit points and damage? Not so much.

Something has to go up.
This is D&D after all.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Something has to go up.
This is D&D after all.

In D&D, damage has classically been one of the few things that is not level-based or skill-based. I'd prefer it if everything went up(or could go up, not everything automatically increasing like 4e), just much more slowly.

 

[Fenes]

It's good for verisimilitude. The bounded accuracy system lets us perpetually associate difficulty numbers with certain tasks based on what they are in the world, without the need to constantly escalate the story behind those tasks. For example, we can say that breaking down an iron-banded wooden door is a DC 17 check, and that can live in the game no matter what level the players are. There's no need to constantly escalate the in-world descriptions to match a growing DC; an iron-banded door is just as tough to break down at 20th level as it was at 1st, and it might still be a challenge for a party consisting of heroes without great Strength scores. There's no need to make it a solid adamantine door encrusted with ancient runes just to make it a moderate challenge for the high-level characters. Instead, we let that adamantine door encrusted with ancient runes have its own high DC as a reflection of its difficulty in the world. If players have the means of breaking down the super difficult adamantine door, it's because they pursued player options that make that so, and it is not simply a side effect of continuing to adventure.

In order for an Iron-banded wooden door to be tough to break down for a 20th level party it would need hitpoints on a level equal to a 20th level monster. But that would mean it's near-impossible to break down or damage at low levels (whioch breaks verisimilitude for anyone who ever used an axe)

Or wooden doors are somehow impossible to be damaged by weapons such as Axes (which destroys verisimilitude, period.)

Or wood is the ultimate armor material, able to withstand level 20 damage better than anything else (which again destroys verisimilitude).

Or You can cut an iron golem down with your sword, but cannot cut down a door since it has to be "broken down" according to the rules, which means a strength test, no weapons allowed. Which would be silly.

 

[Minigiant]

In D&D, damage has classically been one of the few things that is not level-based or skill-based. I'd prefer it if everything went up(or could go up, not everything automatically increasing like 4e), just much more slowly.

That is my preference as well. Everything goes up... slowly. I like people who at better than others at something to actually be much better and to continue to make a gap as they level... just slowly.

But some people hate big numbers.