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Message: <blockquote data-quote="thecasualoblivion" data-source="post: 6879842" data-attributes="member: 59096">That randomness I'm coming to discover is a result of Bounded Accuracy endeavoring to keep the probability of success around 50% combined with fewer rolls to resolve a given activity and few or expensive means to mitigate randomness. In your example of being hit in 4E, while 4E effectively used a sort of Bounded Accuracy(level appropriate challenge), there were a lot of things in 4E that would mitigate that. First off, 4E combats were designed to average 5 rounds, while 5E seems to aim more for 2-3 rounds. The greater number of combat rounds by itself mitigates the impact of 1 or a few rolls. You give the example of utility powers in reaction to the attack roll, but there was also 4E's powerful healing after the fact. If you got unlucky and the monsters got a few lucky hits, the Leader role character would just heal you. I'm finding this to be an even bigger problem than the combat randomness. You really don't feel good at anything, and it doesn't help that at my table the DM generally uses DC 15 as the default difficulty, which on any given character means that about 90% of the time for any randomly selected skill the chance of success is 50% or less. It also doesn't help that most tasks that involve skills tend to involve only a single roll.I first felt the randomness when I played a couple of games at level 5 a couple of months ago, but I'm coming to realize that it is Bounded Accuracy and the speed of the game that are really what's behind the randomness.Two things here. First is that because 5E combat is designed to go fast, PCs don't have the staying power they did in 4E and non-rocket-tag 3E, or even higher level AD&D. Monsters need to be able to threaten the PCs somewhat in a 2-3 round fight. The second is that party composition varies wildly. A party that has a Wizard with Fireball ready to go is far better able to handle a mob of Orcs than one that lacks any AoE. 5E kind of forces you to tailor encounters specifically to the party if you want any sort of climatic end battle, and that's assuming the party gets there in one piece.This sort of thing isn't exactly unique to 5E, with the exception of PCs feeling flimsy. PCs felt less flimsy in AD&D and 3E within the sweet spot, but at the same time there was more insta-death.This kind of goes back to having to tailor encounters to the party, which you really didn't have to do at all in 4E and I think 4E was better for it.</blockquote>

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