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

[ECMO3]

Best of luck. Any time you touch the overwhelming power and versatility of Wizards, you get vocal, nasty condemnation.

I would not play a game that "rebalanced" Wizards. I wouldn't be "nasty" about it, but I certainly would not play that version or buy any products when 5E is around, available and widely supported by 3rd party creators. I would argue it is not just "Wizards" though it is spell casters and the entire spell casting mechanic as defined in 5E. Even martials like Paladins and Rangers and several subclasses of Monks, Rogues and Fighters rely heavily on magic.

I have been playing since the very early days of 1E AD&D and 5E is my favorite rule set by far and for mulitple reasons. Bounded accuracy is one of those reasons, and the way they highlighted spells and casters is another. In terms of fun for most players I think was a major improvement.

 

[Lanefan]

That's actually a fairly broad range in 5e. I can reliably hit things with a 12 strength as a strength fighter. Bounded accuracy after all.

Yes. I suggested that several pages ago and got told that something had to be ballooned due to bounded accuracy.

That's much less fun. I've yet to see a fight where the sides are flailing at each other hoping to be the ones to get lucky. It's happened a few times over the years when casters have gone down and there are heavily armored fighting types on both sides. The combat drags on and nobody is happy.

For us, when that happens it drags on and everyone just laughs about it.

I've even seen a few times where players ended up cheering misses, as they wanted to see just how many rounds the combat would ultimately last.

Longest combats I've ever run were:

38 rounds - a character fighting her own clone (including cloned items etc.); the character - a Fighter - had been built entirely defense-first and thus had stupendous AC, but her offense was, let's just say, a bit lacking by comparison. End result was they each needed something like a natural 19 to hit the other. Fortunately, as it was a true one-on-one those rounds went by lightning-fast; we did the whole combat in maybe 15-20 minutes.

32 rounds - a low-level melee at a choke point. Both sides had a) available healing and b) more front-liners than could fit in the choke point (a doorway); so the front-liners on both sides would step up, take a few swings and take a few hits, then cycle out and be replaced by the next front-liners while the first ones went back and got cured up; lather-rinse-repeat until the healers ran out of spells. The other casters on both sides ran themselves out of spells to little effect, and ended up throwing furniture at each other through the door above - and occasionally into - the front line, as it was all they could do. This one took all session to play out, and after the first five rounds or so I'm not sure anyone stopped laughing the entire time.

 

[MichaelSomething]

If you want a return of super short high level combat, there's always 3E.

Wizard: I cast a spell that instantly solves this.
DM: okay...

 

[Lanefan]

There are other methods that may be implemented

• DoaM (which is a form of Degree of Success)
• Fail Forward
• Escalation Die

So a whiff might be bad enough to miss a clean shot

• But may be good enough to wind the opponent (STR mod damage)
• But may be good enough to give an ally positioning (shift 5 feet) or a bonus on their next attack or some other benefit
• But desperation and exhaustion begin to kick in as the combat progresses (every whiff increases the escalation die)

I'm one of those to whom a miss is a miss and a fail is a fail, end of story. For me, in order to get into success-at-a-cost or degree-of-success territory you first have to meet the success threshold.

- You hit, but you over-extend yourself, thus giving your opponent the ability to riposte (free attack by opponent)

Change the word "hit" to "swing" in the above and it's already in my game, as one of many possible outcomes of a fumble.

 

[Maxperson]

No, I said it ballooned because they turned down all the other knobs

1. They bounded "to hit"
2. They bounded AC
3. They made magic items optional
4. They made feats optional
5. They made multiclassing optional
6. They decide to limit additionof new classes
7. They made gold needed optional past level 1
8. They removed powers lists for martials
9. They nerfed Healing Surges to Hit Die
10. They took away cool active monster abilities
11. They mandated that 3 of the core classes be simple and not touch advanced mechanics

So with all those cranked down to 1, 2, or OFF; what were the only knobs that were left to play with?
And guess what we got a lot of

1. HP
2. Damage
3. Races
4. Subclasses

So all of the bolded are things that they could boost in the next book if they wanted. They were not forced through bounded accuracy, which is only two things on that list, to inflate hit points and damage. Something being optional doesn't equate to not being boosted in the books, and in fact we have seen many feats and magic items.

You are also flat out wrong about the need for gold. Need or not isn't determined by them, but by the DM and players.

 

[Lanefan]

If you want a return of super short high level combat, there's always 3E.

Wizard: I cast a spell that instantly solves this.
DM: okay...

DM: okay; but your initiative had better be higher than the foe's, 'cause it's doing the same to you...

 

[Minigiant]

So all of the bolded are things that they could boost in the next book if they wanted. They were not forced through bounded accuracy, which is only two things on that list, to inflate hit points and damage. Something being optional doesn't equate to not being boosted in the books, and in fact we have seen many feats and magic items.

You are also flat out wrong about the need for gold. Need or not isn't determined by them, but by the DM and players.

All the bolded were design goals of DND Next and early 5e. When most of the "Me Smash" HP sponges were designed.

 

[Gammadoodler]

What ol' Petey hasn't yet learned (typical Paladin) is that in order to be stealthy he needs to take his damn armour off.

Unless the armour is enchanted to help with such (and it's a cool effect to put on heavy armour), sneaking up on someone while wearing plate is about the same as sneaking up on someone while driving a Sherman tank: good luck with that.

Is it though?

By high level, ol' Petey has been wearing this armor forever, they know it like the back of their hand, treat it like a second skin. They know it's tics and foibles. They have moved in it, every way it is possible to move. They are, one might say, "proficient", in this armor's use.

And that's before considering all the oath juice they've been drinking that allows them to strike down their enemies with holy fire.

And besides all that, while the armor is certainly 'a problem', it is not 'the problem' from a system perspective. And even so far as it a problem, the system has equipment upgrades (often with no downside) that make it an easy problem to address.

The system problem is the combination of a paucity of opportunities to address the skill and/or attribute deficiencies (once every 4 levels, 5 total chances over a career), the significance of the sacrifice using those opportunities represent (the skills/attributes are in direct competition with combat stats and feats), and the lack of impact most skills have on gameplay generally (stealth is a notable exception, but you may go whole campaigns without using some of the skills in the skill list)

 

[ECMO3]

And you can't meaningfully introduce mechanics that interfere with or modify Advantage, because they'd be massively OP (consider Elven Accuracy, inarguably one of the most powerful combat feats in all of 5e, and arguably the second-best general feat, after Lucky...which is cut from effectively the same cloth!)

Elven Accuracy is not a very strong feat in play. It is strong for a Paladin or a Rogue or something else that is designed around a lot of dice and crit fishing, but when you hit most of the time when you don't even have advantage, having a 3rd die when you do have advantage is not very powerful.

I think for most martial builds a once-a day free casting of hex from Fey Touched is going to boost damage more than Elven accuracy will.

I also don't see the scrambling for advantage like you mention. Players take it if they can easily, but I don't see them going out of their way to get it unless they are a Rogue that needs it for sneak attack or they have disadvantage and want to cancel that.

But 5e has absolutely swung too far in the other direction, flattening any possibility of depth or interesting mechanical interactions and discouraging players from actually thinking about, and engaging with, their environment beyond a token effort.

I think 5E is MUCH better than 3E or 4E in this respect. 1E and 2E were pretty good too (with less bounded accuracy than 5E), but I absolutely hate the 3E and 4E mechanics.

5E is just more fun IMO, and I think that is the biggest reason it is more popular IMO.

 

[ezo]

Are you a legendary warrior in a fantasy story though?

I'm not saying you aren't. I don't know you after all.

No, I'm not.

But I bet I can stealth better than Peter Paladin when he's wearing heavy armor, has DEX 8, and no proficiency in stealth.

I might not be much better, but still, better.