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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6653972" data-attributes="member: 996">It was a design trade-off, not just a mess, IMHO.  Bounded Accuracy lets one low-level monster write-up serve as both standard monster to low-level character, and minion to higher-level ones.  Higher level monsters might as well be 'elites' to lower level characters.  Apart from Legendary (Solo) monsters, 5e completely avoided the design challenge - and page count requirements - of secondary monster roles.  The - ok, an - unintended(?) consequence that efficiency gain was that numbers had an effect on encounter difficulty out of proportion with just adding up exp values.  A 3000 exp monster and 10 300 exp monsters just don't present the same challenge.  The former might be beat down before it could do much to the party, the later might annihilate the party just as quickly by sheer volume of attacks.  So the encounter design system became more baroque in consequence of monster design becoming more elegant. That's a matter of the DM's style and campaign tone.  The players are always going to matter, obviously, but their characters might not.  They might be little more than avatars through which to experience the DMs world.  Or the theme of the campaign could be one of futility in the face of vastly greater forces.   :shrug: Not true.  When characters advance only a little in what they can do, pointing up the fact that they have advanced, at all, is helpful. Presenting tasks with some everyman measure of difficulty highlights that the PCs are, in fact, advancing, even if they players don't notice it much outside their hps totals and spell slots. So when your high level character succeeds on a task by rolling a 2, you'll RP it with "wow, that was hard?" Hard relative to a hypothetical everyman or 'hard' relative to the character doing the task?  It's really a trivial distinction.  The kind of things folks blow out of proportion when they have nothing worthwhile to talk about. I can't agree.  4e may have designed to certain goals and tenets, and done well.  But, so did 5e.  The difference, perhaps, was that 4e looked at professed or formal goals & tenets (D&D tries to emulate genre, it tries to provide class balance, it needs a wider sweet spot, etc...), while 5e looked at more at de facto ones (no one plays past level 10; magic needs to be magical, which means mechanically superior; magic items should make you just better; 1st level characters are supposed to die, it's a right of passage).  To put it another way, WotC realized that D&D has built a product identity on how it had been, not how it should have been, tried to be but failed, or could become better.  The reality of D&D, not it's potential, is what 5e strives for - and captures successfully.  And, along with greatly lowered investment & cost-cutting, that's making it successful in the business sense, as well. Just for the first 2 years, really, and even then, only after an update cycle or two.   Put on your nostalgia cap and try running an old module like Village of Hommlet or In Search of the Unknown or even Temple of the Frog or Expedition to the Barrier Peaks with 5e.  And, don't be shy about turning on the 'GM force.'  Some of those reasons might become evident.Or not.  You might be past your nostalgia phase.  ;( Again, that's an intentional trade-off.  Bounded Accuracy tries to keep everyone participating in the skill arena, just as it tries to keep lesser monsters participating in combat, by keeping targets - whether AC or DC - in reach.  The threshold is a DC that an 'everyman' can't hope to touch - like 21+, but which the skilled specialist can manage around that magic 60% or so.  5e's odd affection for 5-DC chunks makes 25 the obvious candidate, and +17 is (max stat, proficiency, & expertise at level 20), indeed, that threshold.  Using 21, though (there's no reason you can't), it drops to +12.  Expertise gets you there faster, and even non-expertise gets to +11 eventually. Hmm... to be honest, I thought it'd look a little better for 5e before I started typing that.... ;( There /are/ sandbox style, 'status quo' campaigns, though.  The DM places (probably doesn't bother creating) challenges where he feels they 'belong,' and the PCs investigate, pick one, and live or die by that choice. That's the difference between a technically good game - designed to be a game - and a good game product - designed to be well-received by its target audience.  4e tackled severe problems D&D had had for over 30 years - but, anyone still playing D&D at that point had learned to deal with (if not exploit) those problems, even though they made it technically inferior, when judged only as a game.  That's like taking nicotine out of cigarettes.  Good idea, bad for business.</blockquote>

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