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

[EzekielRaiden]

I just work through any of my issues during play as I attempt using house rules that just never stick.

I fear this is simply not something I'm able to do. Any effort to "work through" such things would simply make me more angry about the gap. Like being driven mad by a word you can't remember or the name of a piece of classical music where you don't know who composed it. It drives you crazy, and every time you're reminded of it, it drives you crazy all over again.

Part of this, of course, is that I would never willingly DM 5e. The only system I know how to run that I would be less willing to actually do so is 3.X/PF1e, and the gap between them isn't very big. (Naturally, I'd also never run MYFAROG or FATAL, but that's because they're horrendously offensive and garbage rulesets, whereas no edition of D&D or PF has ever been even remotely that offensive.)

So since I'd never run it myself, I'm stuck choosing between playing and not playing. Thankfully, I have a friendly and supportive 5e DM at present who has, if anything, been more accommodating than he really needed to be.

 

[ezo]

The problem is, progress-feels do not stack linearly. Even if you could somehow prove mathematically that two moderate-impact things provide exactly half as much progression as one single high-impact thing, people will feel more progression from the latter, even though they "should" feel the same. Sort of like how two lights, each at exactly half the luminosity of one single big light, will appear dimmer than the single light unless you're very far away relative to the spacing between them. The more you divide, the smaller the impact will feel.

And feel--presentation, execution, demonstration--has proven to be a very important thing.

Thanks for the well-written and thought-out reply, and I can see where people might feel that way. I just know, for myself, it has never been an issue. I would actually prefer two dimmer lights, since I don't like bright light.

I have played in a game where the DM used houserules to lower 5e HP, gold, slots, magic bonuses, etc to make it more "old school".

Campaign died. Because we only have story incentives to progress. So when the narrative wasn't hitting, people stopped getting hyped to play those characters and started missing sessions or rescheduling. And we hung out to do other stuff instead of D&D.

And I felt it. I wasn't excited to have my wizard delve into a dungeon to get practically nothing again and level up to get practically nothing again and replace dead party members... again.

This isn't to say that you can't play a flatter game. I've played in fantasy games with lesser progression. But they were almost all lower combat with other themes like intrigue, mystery, war, or horror.

I would think it more died because he lowered too much, and what he lowered perhaps lowered too much?

I'll admit it is very much an issue of balance, we've made lots of changes just to reverse or lessen the change to find what works for us when we want that type of game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

FWIW, we've run multiple campaigns without ballooning hit points, and it felt very much still like D&D (more like AD&D, honestly).

You can, literally, cut hit points in half and the game still plays great IMO. It might not "feel" like D&D to you, but it certainly does to me and the people I play with.

Yeah, to me the issue is ballooning hit points. I feel the balance was much more comfortable during the TSR era.

 

[TwoSix]

As for becoming more susceptible to danger at higher levels. I don't think WotC got caught with their pants down. What I think is that they account for it in the hit points math. High level PCs have so many hit points and resources that they need to be hit with effects more often to compensate. I don't think it's good design, but I think that's why we see saves get worse over time.

Agreed. Not having saves always increase as a function of level just creates a certain narrative. That some magic (magic that isn't impacting hit points) is relatively egalitarian and democratic. Magic is the great leveler. It doesn't care who you are and what level you are. It simply works, and the only thing that impacts its working is the skill of the caster of the spell (by raising the spell DC).

You can certainly poke holes in that narrative, or disagree about that being the right narrative for D&D fantasy, but it's not an incoherent narrative.

 

[Maxperson]

I didn't say you have to balloon something.

I said if you overbound one aspect, in order to maintain the D&D feel you must balloon another aspect.

You can flatten or slow everything but it won't feel like any edition of D&D nor idealized versions of them.. The backlash would make 4e look like 5e.

You can't overbound something like hit points. It's bounded ACCURACY. Hit points has nothing to do with how accurate you are.

You are claiming that because accuracy is bounded, that they had to increase hit points and damage. That's incorrect. They could have left them lower, say cutting the damage and hit point increase in half. The number of goblins needed to challenge the 20th level party would remain the same. It would still feel like D&D, but would be balanced differently.

Hit points and damage are so high because of their choice to balance the game around resource attrition, not because of bounded accuracy.

 

[ezo]

Yeah, to me the issue is ballooning hit points. I feel the balance was much more comfortable during the TSR era.

Well, as I wrote, you can cut hit points in half (or make people roll and apply CON to level 1 only), etc. to reduce the bloat and it plays great IMO.

Now, there are caveats, of course. The biggest being you have to be acceptable to spells and other damage being much more lethal. However, since it applies equally to PCs and opponents, it works both ways.

A perfect example is the sleep spell. At 5d8 hit points worth of creatures, it is impossible RAW in 5E to put an ogre to sleep unless you upcast, to 5th level!!! before you have a 50-50 chance to put an ogre to sleep! Compare that to AD&D where sleep carried a 50-50 chance to put the ogre to sleep.

So, cut the hit points in half for the ogre, and you get 29 (round down as the default in 5E). Now, a 1st-level sleep has about a 1 in 8 chance to put the (29 hp) ogre to sleep. Not 50-50, but much better! And a 2nd-level sleep spell has better than 50-50.

Fireball is another great example. In AD&D, your base 5d6 fireball has about a 30% chance (after factoring in saving throw) of taking out a 19 hp ogre. But, in 5E the base 8d6 fireball has no chance to take out a 59 hp ogre, but a reduced 29 hp ogre has about a 35% (after saving throw) of being taken out. Much closer to the AD&D days. FWIW, in 5E you'd have to upcast fireball at about 7th level (!) to have that 30ish % chance to take out the 59 hp ogre.

Combat goes faster as well, obviously, so you never really feel bogged down in a slog (if you ever did...). An orc with 7 hp instead of 15 hp can easily be taken down with one hit, but since damage remains unchanged, is still a very dangerous opponent. Healing, is, of course, more effective as well since hit points are reduced.

Overall, it has a much better "feel" IMO.

 

[Maxperson]

That's straight-up contrary to what the designers actually said--the literal words they used.

Okay. I found it. Wizards of the Coast

"The DM's monster roster expands, never contracts. Although low-level characters probably don't stack up well against higher-level monsters, thanks to the high hit points and high damage numbers of those monsters, as the characters gain levels, the lower-level monsters continue to be useful to the DM, just in greater numbers. While we might fight only four goblins at a time at 1st level, we might take on twelve of them at 5th level without breaking a sweat. Since the monsters don't lose the ability to hit the player characters—instead they take out a smaller percentage chunk of the characters' hit points—the DM can continue to increase the number of monsters instead of needing to design or find whole new monsters. Thus, the repertoire of monsters available for DMs to use in an adventure only increases over time, as new monsters become acceptable challenges and old monsters simply need to have their quantity increased."

It's a stupid design strategy. A 20th level group isn't 20 times more powerful than a 1st level group. If you need 5 goblins to challenge a 1st level group, 100 won't be enough to challenge a 20th level group. Who wants to slog through 500 or 1000 goblins at 20th level.

 

[Maxperson]

FWIW, we've run multiple campaigns without ballooning hit points, and it felt very much still like D&D (more like AD&D, honestly).

You can, literally, cut hit points in half and the game still plays great IMO. It might not "feel" like D&D to you, but it certainly does to me and the people I play with.

Yep. I almost pointed out to him that 1e and 2e were exactly what he was describing as not D&D.

 

[Maxperson]

I have played in a game where the DM used houserules to lower 5e HP, gold, slots, magic bonuses, etc to make it more "old school".

Campaign died. Because we only have story incentives to progress. So when the narrative wasn't hitting, people stopped getting hyped to play those characters and started missing sessions or rescheduling. And we hung out to do other stuff instead of D&D.

If they were trying to make it old school, they failed.

Magical bonuses in AD&D went to +5 unless the DM used an artifact, where 5e goes to +3 unless the DM uses an artifact. He should have increased the magical bonuses, not decreased them. Then raised the AC of mid and higher level creatures to compensate if he wanted to make it more old school.

Similarly, spell slots in 2e were, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 5, 4, 4, 3, for a specialist wizard like a conjurer. In 5e they are 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1. He should have increased the number of spell slots, not lowered them.

That campaign didn't die because he made it old school. It died because he made mistakes in his house rules.

 

[Minigiant]

Yeah, to me the issue is ballooning hit points. I feel the balance was much more comfortable during the TSR era.

The TSR era HP worked for the TSR era rules and expectations.

The Entire WOTC era of handling D&D has been repeated instances of "I like this. Let's add it" and "I don't think this is fun to deal with. Let's remove it" without discussing and playtesting the consequences outside of your home table.