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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ZombieRoboNinja" data-source="post: 6018056" data-attributes="member: 54843">A few test cases to think about:1. A feeble but powerful wizard (Wiz20, 8 Str) arm-wrestles a low-level bar tough (Commoner 1, 16 Str). Who should win?2. A fighter with mediocre dexterity and absolutely no training in acrobatics tries to cross a wobbly rope bridge. Should he be better at it at level 20 than he is at level 1, if he NEVER improves his dexterity or trains a skill?3. A high-level wizard (Wiz20) gets caught in an anti-magic zone by a few street thugs and has to tussle with his trusty dagger. Should he be able to easily hit them? Should they be able to easily hit him?For <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=1" target="_blank">#1</a> , a 3e or 5e wizard would lose but a 4e wizard would win.For <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=2" target="_blank">#2</a> , a 5e fighter would NOT get better, but a 4e fighter would. A 3e fighter would depend whether the DM used a Reflex save or a Climb or Use Rope check.For <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=3" target="_blank">#3</a> , in any edition the wizard would have a bunch of HP (compared to low-level mooks). A 5e wizard would have mediocre attack bonuses and AC, almost unchanged from first level. (He might well lose.) A 4e wizard would have a bunch of HP, +10 AC, and +10 to hit - he would almost certainly win, probably without taking a scratch. And a 3e wizard would have the same +10 to hit but no AC bonus - he could hit every round, but he might still get beaten down.Personally, I think the 4e approach gets silly with stuff like Strength checks. If you're honestly getting better at every single thing you use all your ability scores for, then those ability scores should improve. There are some cases where you can fudge things ("years of dungeon-traipsing have taught the wizard the best technique for kicking down doors") but it gets a bit silly. But at the same time, a high-level character should be a bit of a badass all around. A level 20 character has survived hundreds of epic battles with demons and demigods - should he really have trouble with a locked wooden door?Overall I guess I'd side with the "bounded accuracy" approach, because when in doubt, go with less bookkeeping. The onus is then on the designers to make sure that high-level characters have badass ways to deal with a wide range of situations. (For example, a fighter shouldn't lose 90% of his effectiveness when the enemy is hovering 10 feet in the air, and the world shouldn't be full of monsters immune to Sneak Attack.) As others mentioned with the first door thread, a level 20 character doesn't have to make a Pick Lock check to open a wooden door - he can blast it apart with hardly a thought, or phase step through it, or rewrite the fabric of the universe so that the guy who installed it was never born, or whatever.</blockquote>

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