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D&D General Explain Bounded Accuracy to Me (As if I Was Five)
- Thread starter MGibster
- Start date
MuhVerisimilitude
Hero
Nah I don't want to get rid of magic. I want, specifically, to make spell casting more limited. I would also like there to be more classes that use magic without actually casting spells. More classes like Echo Knight. I'm not against magic. I'm against spell casting
ezo
I cast invisibility
I'll guarantee they won't, LOL!
The trouble with this engagement is that bounded accuracy makes a lot of promises and fails hard in ways that are often against the very purposes it was intended. Because a lot of opinions in this thread are impossible to divorce from the complicated ways bounded accuracy fails it's critical for to understand what the video wonderfully demonstrates before meaningful discourse can really occur
Casters were to blast tanks and disable glass cannons. Bruisers/brutes (ogre/troll/giant/etc) were a bit flexible. Mooos made for mobile difficult terrain that could be bitey if ignored. Ranged monsters were to harass Squishies in ways the group couldn't ileasily ignore even if their were casters brutes or mooks. 5e broke that through bounded accuracy and fixing it would restore usefulness to ranged enemies.
No. It does not. Unfortunately spock once told McCoy something that creates an impasse for why a complicated multilayered set of interlinked subsystems do not work well when it comes to ranged attacking enemies in 5e.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
How do you think players of spellcasters would react to your, "spell-casting should be actively less effective" philosophy? I think you'd need a new game for that, or at least a new edition. According to WotC, the upcoming products are neither.Nah I don't want to get rid of magic. I want, specifically, to make spell casting more limited. I would also like there to be more classes that use magic without actually casting spells. More classes like Echo Knight. I'm not against magic. I'm against spell casting
Crimson Longinus
Legend
I mean if you think that information is critical, you could try typing it. I think it is unreasonable to expect people to watch an hour long video to learn your opinion.
That being said, I have now actually watched half of it. And issue he raises, with which I agree is the stacking bonuses from magic items and from abilities that provide dice bonuses. I think it would be more in keeping with the idea of bounded accuracy if magic bonuses for same thing wouldn't stack like it (IIRC) was in 4e, and if the dice bonuses worked so that you could roll them all but only add the best roll. I think these sort of things are reasonable improvements that could be made.
How did it break it?
Do you have an actual explanation or argument?
But it's not an issue that needs fixing, just because you don't like the so-called pretzels.
MuhVerisimilitude
Hero
I'm hoping they will some day correct course back to something better designed, like 4E. Until then, I prefer other systems.
Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
Gotta disagree strongly there. I’ve played with plenty of 5e first-timers who are comfortable adding between 5 and 12 to a d20 roll but would be very put-off by adding 20 or more to it. Even if the math isn’t actually meaningfully more difficult, people are more intimidated by bigger numbers.
Not remotely. Especially since switching to 2d10 would mean you have to add three numbers together instead of two, which would put more people off.
Shardstone
Hero
To make a long story short, it isn't actually bounded due to stacking modifiers that are easy to get. Peace Cleric + Bless + Bardic Inspiration + PB + Ability Score at level 1 can allow an attack to hit AC 30 almost 40% of the time, more so with advantage. This is an extreme example of the argument; the fact that you can pretty easily get several bonuses just makes it so that the accuracy isn't bounded.
Furthermore, because characters only get prof in 2 saving throws, and because there are 6 saving throw categories, the math isn't bounded at higher levels either.
There's a lot more, such as how being able to use more monsters of a lower level instead of higher CR monsters isn't actually a benefit with the rules as written (due to the simplicity of vanilla 5E monsters), and because the monsters themselves don't obey the math given in the DMG, and because attack bonuses and defenses increase for both monsters and PCs at drastically different rates that means that accuracy is no longer bounded.
There were many practical, real world, data-driven examples given in the video that convinced me that 5E is just not a bounded accuracy system as originally pitched, especially post-Tasha's.
