D&D 5E I have the DMG!

[Pensquiggle]

What's AC?

I just toss Sacred Flame Cantrips at anything in Plate because obviously they have low Dex and will fail the Save...

 

[DEFCON 1]

However that raises the Death Knight's CR making it "too powerful" for the party or otherwise reducing the number of enemies in the fight per the encounter guidelines.

Guidelines? Methinks that if you are raising the Death's Knight's CR because it is holding and using a +3 magic sword... you're treating them as encounter design "rules" rather than "guidelines".

The guidelines tell me what I could throw at the party and have an approximate idea of how powerful or not powerful it could be. But I would never deign to treat them as had-and-fast rules because every encounter will have differences based on thousands of different factors that I will always have to improv around. Including a death knight that was holding a +3 magic sword (and thus gaining an extra 15% chance of hitting someone.)

If the game hasn't been designed to take that 15% into account... then I can't imagine what would happen with all these NPCs that have the Bless spell on their lists (and thus the bad guys all potentially gaining an additional 5 to 20% chance to hit in every combat.)

 

[Savage Wombat]

What's AC?

I just toss Sacred Flame Cantrips at anything in Plate because obviously they have low Dex and will fail the Save...

My wife went through about eight sessions before something finally failed the save vs. her Sacred Flame.

 

[Tormyr]

I know what it means. If you're disagreeing it means you don't.



+3 plate and +2 shield on a fighter = 26 AC. Assuming no other easier to get bonuses like ring of protection, shield of faith, haste etc.

Now, clearly if you think needing a 20 to hit is "well within range" then you indeed don't know what bounded accuracy means.

Creatures whose hit rate is that bad are not threatening and are nothing more than an XP pinata, which means the encounter guidelines, which rely on bounded accuracy working, don't work with ACs that high.

???? I must be missing something 18 for plate + 2 for shield + another 5 for magic bonuses is 25 AC. This allows anything with a +6 to roll a 19. This includes lots of CR2 creatures and even some CR1/4 and CR1/8 creatures. Bounded accuracy doesn't mean something is easy, it means it is attainable. By the time someone has +3 gear, they are mostly fighting things with +8 +12 or higher to hit bonuses.

That a CR1/8 creature still has a chance of hitting a heavily armored foe without needing a 20 and a CR30 foe still has a chance of missing a heavily armored (AC22 and higher) foe without needing a 1 shows that bounded accuracy works. It should be hard to hit a heavily armored foe, but it is not impossible almost regardless of who you are. It should be difficult to avoid being hit by a foe with a +19 to hit, but not impossible. That these scenarios work shows that bounded accuracy works even with the magical shinies.

EDIT: As an exercise in the absurd, say maybe a level 15 fighter gets this gear. Using PEL calculation for encounter building, the skies darken with 70 flying snakes coming in to attack (regular encounter building allows for a lot more). There are going to be a lot of hits on the fighter and its buddies before the battle is over. Sure, lots of the snakes will be wiped out, but lots more will be waiting to hit, and 10% of them are going to hit each round. That is only for a Easy to Medium encounter depending on which encounter building guidelines are used.

 

[Nebulous]

Niko..........is there an alternative skill system?

 

[EcnoTheNeato]

Hey, thanks for doing this! I'm SUPER surprised that NO ONE has asked this mega important question:

What does the disclaimer say?

 

[EcnoTheNeato]

(also, FFSAA...is that you?)

 

[Boarstorm]

???? I must be missing something 18 for plate + 2 for shield + another 5 for magic bonuses is 25 AC.

Maybe he's including the +1 AC from Defensive fighting style?

I dunno. The ways of the Chocolategravy are inscrutable.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Let's not forget that a +2 shield or a +3 suit of plate armor will definitely require attunement, so using both means that 26ac fighter gets to decide whether he wants to use a decent magic weapon, a ring of resistance, a belt of giant strength, or one of numerous other important items for his last slot.

 

[ghaerdon]

Any "direction" to using Inspiration?