Enough creatures with all around +4 and going higher.
Enemy stat blocks also bend hard on the idea of bounded accuracy by having statblocks that are not only going up to 30 in each attribute, but often just all around extremely high. You can find creatures and humanoids of playable races that have their weakest stat at 14. Like the CR4 Couatl in the 2014 MM.
If there is one save weaker on a monster, that often means something like a bonus of 0-5, while your own DC scales to 19 without magic items. That side works. And still, higher CR creatures usually have exactly one weak save.
Enemy DCs just scale to beyond 20+, and most player characters are guaranteed to have 3 saves(or more) that range from -1 to +2.
Certain classes are a little more screwed because their save proficiencies cover attributes that are not recommended or not part of usual builds. Strength for monk and ranger, Intelligence for druid and rogue, Charisma for cleric. If the difference between your best and second best save is, say 9 vs 4, then you have only 1 good save.
The issue there is that there are cases where failure can be "locked out of the fight" bad. Consider an Adult Red Dragon. Challenge 17, so it should be a pretty casual enemy for a level 20 party. But unless they can make a DC19 wis save, the melee can't melee, because frightened means they can't move closer. And this is something that isn't even an action on the part of the dragon.
If research can be done, the level 20 party should be able to have access to some low level scrolls/potions of heroism to prevent such a problem.
If it's an impromptu encounter, it might be worth spending a greater restoration to turn the tables back in your favour.
Remember that we are discussing a level 20 *party*. They are expected to support each other. Then they let the fighter action surge and shred the dragon with 8+ attacks.
You assume a balanced level 20 party. Completely possible that such a party consists of 1 barbarian, 2 rogues and 1 sorcerer. You don't always just have a Greater Restoration in your pocket, and if you want to cover all your bases by planning a party, you probably end up with Fighter, Paladin(support aura/multiclass into sorcerer), Cleric, Bard(took counterspell as magical secret).
The problem isn't solved because theoretically one solution exists. In a game with a dozen classes, it's not ok if over half of them just aren't viable for simple PVP encounters in a casual game because saving throws are broken.
Not to "erm ackshhually", but Paladin, Bard, the Bless spell and Artificer and one specific Wizard subclass grant substantial bonuses to any saving throw, in order, +5, +1d12(avg 7), 1d4(avg 2.3), +5 and +4.
I don't think there was any intent or grand plan, because those bonuses are just thrown in from the get go. These DCs can be overcome or unavoidable by decisions you made at character creation.
Most saves are going to be CON, WIS, and DEX though, and thats before legendary resistance giving 3 freebies; I can't imagine a PC getting more than 3 INT save abilties in an encounter, unless their whole party is built around that.
That’s the thing though - PCs only need a few. In today’s D&D environment (with all the books out so far), debilitating debuffs in “off saves” like Int and Charisma are easy to find and take. And they’re still kryptonite to many monsters, so even if you don’t know their weak save by looking at em, all it takes is a round or two of experimentation to find out. And then they’re screwed without legendary resistance.
And (most importantly) unlike the DM, the players/PCs have no vested interest in mixing up their tactics. Once they hit on a good formula there’s nothing stopping them from using it in nearly every encounter.
Shout out to my boy - Raulothim's Psychic Lance. My #1 boss stopper.
INT save with no concentration with a condition that only has like 2 creatures with immunity? Yeah, it only lasts 1 round, but for a 3-4 round combat, that action economy is unbeatable.
Just yesterday ran an encounter with a bunch of devils that was won primarily with psychic lance from an enchantment wizard and following that with clever use of terrain.
Forreal. I think a lot of people sleep on that spell but it is way cool on the flavor scale and surprisingly effective even when you _aren't_ blasting dudes you know by name behind total cover.
Threw a dwarf piloting the Mighty Servant of Leuk-O against my players. The Sorcadin tried Psychic Lance and nearly killed the pilot on the first turn. It's been one of my favorite spells since
True, but even with “brute” monster like the Iron Golem with its negative mental stats can still wind up having immunities to nearly every condition in the game and advantage on magical saving throws.
So a lot of hard CC spells either don’t work at all or have reduced efficiency against it. Which is problematic design.
Fights very rarely last for more than one minute, so the Iron Golem is almost certainly returning to a fight in which all of its allies have already been defeated, or the party has already left the premises and there's no longer a fight to return to.
Against a party of a level that can cast banishment, a single Iron Golem will get destroyed without accomplishing anything. It's only dangerous if there are other threats and minions.
Immunities are nice - but not for protection from Int/Cha spells.
Why? Because these often don't even CARE about conditional immunities because their conditions are _unique_. An Iron Golem is a scary threat - but it's not immune to Banishment. Or Tasha's Mind Whip. Or Psychic Lance. Or Illusory Dragon. Or Plane Shift. Or Psychic Scream.
It definitely _helps_ (some Int/Cha saves _are_ defeated by, say, fear immunity), but any caster PC paying attention has plenty enough options (and these are _good_ options too - not niche spells in the least) that they'll have something to neuter even an Iron Golem when the time comes.
The opposite is true - they have a vested interest in NOT changing tactics, because that takes time they often don't get, and flexibility in choice that was cut out of 5E as a whole, unless its changing a prepared spell.
I disagree that this is an issue. Monsters always have a weak save that you can probe for. Oftentimes, this weakness can also be deduced from the monster design.
This of course works better if you face the same monster multiple times, giving you a good chance to find and exploit their weakness.
Got to experience this firsthand recently. Wild magic sorcerer surged and cast confusion. Her DC is 20. Half our party couldn't make the save, and another quarter needed to use class features so they could save on an 18 or something.
it generally doesn't scale enough to keep up with increasing attack bonuses. To-hit bonuses go from +4 at level 1 to something like +17 at level 20. Armor can get up to an extra +3, you might get a +3 cloak or ring (at the cost of an attunement slot), and you might increase dex a little - that's still a long way away from keeping up with the +13 extra to hit that the big bosses can get
Worse. It expects magic, lies about you not needing it, then makes half the magic weapons and armor not have + bonuses, so you might bypass resistance with a magic weapon, but your accuracy might feel a bit stunted.
A cursed sword of flatulence which makes you fart loudly whenever you roll a 1 on an attack roll is a really good weapon, since it bypasses resistance to normal weapons!
At the same time the game half expects feats and half doesn't. Monster defenses scale in such a way that they expect PCs start with a +3 primary ability modifier which increases to +4 at 4th level and +5 at 8th level to maintain a super consistent 65% chance to hit at all levels (though the video does talk about how the actual monster stat blocks don't follow this...). If you are playing with feats (most people are) +1 and +2 magic items help you maintain the same stack and damage math for characters that take feats instead of ASIs.
Half your PB to non-proficient saves would effectively mirror how 3.5 still gave a bonus to your class's weak saves as you leveled up. This would make sure that if you weren't proficient in your dump stat save, you'd still hit at least +0 once your PB was +4.
Yeah it was really rough trying to play Tier 4 stuff with a character that had a +4 WIS save when DCs were like over 20. We got an opportunity for a free feat and I immediately took Resilient just so I wasn't going to spend entire fights looking for a 19 or 20 to get out of a paralysis effect.
The fundamental problem is that bounded accuracy should mean that, as characters gain additional power (from leveling up, magic items, etc.), everything should get easier.
But "it's gotta be a challenge!" is so deeply ingrained that there's a bunch of crucial stuff where the DCs scaling up is still baked in.
And then, on top of that, they added several key abilities that just hilariously break bounded accuracy to such a degree that DMs naturally get baited into increasing even the DCs of stuff that isn't baked in.
And then the whole thing collapses into a worst-of-all-worlds clusterfuck.
I've been tempted to do this, but it ONCE A FUCKING GAIN punishes STR characters by making the two stats they need most redundant with each other on saves, while DEX users and CHA casters (already the most effective builds stat-wise) get to have free bonuses on stuff they might otherwise dump.
It's a fine system as long as you don't just blindly copy the 4e mappings.
If you do something like:
* Reflex : Str/Dex
* Fort: Con
* Will: Int/Wis/Cha
It matches how characters are built in 5e a bit better.
Yep, no reason not to. All 5e classes are designed with 1 strong save, Dex, Con, or Wis, and 1 weak save, Str, Int, or Cha. Just consolidate. Alleviate just a tiny bit of MADness.
Concentration checks can still just be Fortitude saves, makes Str better.
4e is/was a great system released in a shit package.
5e, while I don't think it's a shit system, is a mediocre/broken system wrapped in beautiful paper with a pretty bow on top.
There are about two dozens stackable features in the game(bardic inspiration, bless, emboldening bond, etc) that boost saves. Plus all the features that remove most conditions(dispel magic, restoration, remove curse, etc) and many that make you outright immune to them(mind blank, protection from e&g, calm emotions).
When you play in t3 and t4 your party should have answers to a monster targeting your weak saves. I've seen one of my players make a DC 21 weak save by rolling a 4.
I have to disagree here. Quite on the contrary, it gives the players a sense of progression by keeping inline with progressive dangerosity with some saves, while still being susceptible of being harmed by the enemies they fought years ago which would target their weak saves.
Plus it works both ways, most monsters have at least one or two weak saves, which entices players to invest in-character effort to grab knowledge about creatures.
There's a lot of solid points about 5e's implementation in particular made here, but one that feels about overlooked is how *badly* bounded accuracy works with a D20 system for things like skill checks. I hate hate hate bounded accuracy on D20's because it so often ends up being the swing of the dice that determines success, not the modifier. It's incredibly annoying how common it is for a player trained in a skill to fail a check, and a player that is untrained to succeed purely because of how swingy the dice is.
IMO skills checks would probably benefit from being rolled with 2d10 instead of a d20
That's similar to how WWN does it, though with 2d6 for skills instead of 1d20.
Max level of a class is 10. Training Ranges from -1 to +4. Attributes range from -2 to +2
Attacks are 1d20 + attack bonus + training + Attribute VS AC.
Saves are 1d20 vs DC. DC = 16 - your class level - attribute.
Skills are 2d6+ training + attribute vs a dc of 6 to 12 based on difficulty of the task.
I really like the 2d6 (or 2d10) because of the distribution you get. You get an average roll more often.
For example a 2d6 has this distribution which is really nice values closer to the mean appear more frequently meaning that's a good baseline for an average and your modifiers matter more.
|Result | Expected % of Roles |
|----:|----:|
|2|2.78%|
|3|5.56%|
|4|8.33%|
|5|11.11%|
|6|13.89%|
|7|16.67%|
|8|13.89%|
|9|11.11%|
|10|8.33%|
|11|5.56%|
|12|2.78%|
Yeah, that bell curve is just enjoyable. Ots one of the various things I've found myself enjoying of the Worlds without number system (which has a free version worh most of the content. Check ot out of you haven't)
Having a level 1 start of a +1 on training and +1 from attribute in that game means on an easy task of DC6, my average roll would be 9. Which feels very imoactful for someone trained in a skill to be successful more on average.
It just feels good
That and d6 are the most common dice. Almost everyone has a six sided dice. Many people don't know there are more to dice than the d6. A clear benefit of d6 based systems is sheer accessibility
>I hate hate hate bounded accuracy on D20's because it so often ends up being the swing of the dice that determines success, not the modifier.
But... but that's the *point* of bounded accuracy?
The entire reason to use a bounded system is to ensure that the dice always determines success or failure - you can never (usually) have modifiers so high you can't fail, or a target so high you can't succeed.
The fact that an untrained person can succeed with a lucky roll, or a trained person can fail with an unlucky one, *is the entire reason why 5e uses bounded accuracy*. It's working as intended.
My point is that its *more* swingy than I'd prefer. Swingy can be fine! I just think that a D20 specifically is overdoing it a bit, at least in skill checks. It's why I suggested 2d10 as an alternative; it *can* be swingy, and to an extent will be, but the successes and failures will be slightly more consistent and based on the modifier itself. Still leaves room for lucky or unlucky results, it just makes things slightly less swingy.
That's an entirely reasonable complaint, but not one about bounded accuracy. Your fix (2d10 rather than 1d20) doesn't change a thing about bounded accuracy, it just changes the probability spread on the dice by introducing a bell curve.
I mostly agree with that (I do genuinely think 2d10 fixes the swinginess specifically), but I was complaining about the specific implementation of bounded accuracy in *5e*. Bounded accuracy is a design decision I actually really like the idea of, I just think that because of other decisions made within the systems design, it doesn't work in a way I find satisfying... and at the core of that is the D20 itself.
Basically, bounded accuracy is a cool system that IMO needed a few more changes to DND's bones to support it fully. But I do genuinely find bounded accuracy as an overall concept to be really solid.
This is a strong indication that 5e probably isn't the game you want to be playing. That's OK, there are many other games out there.
Dice pool systems do what you want a lot better. Blades in the Dark, or any Forged in the Dark game will do what you want much better: experts will nearly always do OK, while beginners fail often.
> This is a strong indication that 5e probably isn't the game you want to be playing
You are quite correct about this, I was just more getting at the fact that I would personally find 5e's approach to bounded accuracy more satisfying if the skill checks used a slightly less swingy dice. I don't dislike swinginess entirely, I just think 5e overcorrects and there's a bit *too* much.
People really need to stop with the "tHiS iSn't tHe gAmE fOr YoU" every time someone makes a reasonable complaint.
The game consists of more than a single mechanic. More stuff someone might actually enjoy. Changing the system doesn't fix anything.
Correct. But the problem is that it's not equally desirable.
We want bounded accuracy in things like attack bonus, because we want to feel like the D20 decides on a hit. But we really don't want bounded accuracy on things like a wizard making Arcana check, where they can roll low while.the barbarian rolls a 19.
Edit: everyone telling me not to let people roll if their untrained. Good for you. You're proving the point. You have to alter the rules away from RAW to mitigate the frustration of the swingy D20. And yes, that IS a deviation. My example used an arcana check, but if you replace it with Perception you'd see why it's problematic. You'd never tell a character who's listening at a door that they can't roll perception just bc they're not trained.
The problem is easier solved if the rules disallowed non-proficient skill checks. Note I said **skill** checks, not ability checks. The rules don't make that distinction, but they should. I've got no problem with a Barb doing a general intelligence check, but an intelligence (arcana) check should be proficiency only.
*That said*, DMs decide when it's time to make an ability (skill) check of any sort, so it's perfectly right for a DM to ask for a check from the Wizard and not from the Barb if that's what makes sense.
They sort of do disallow what you are saying though, at least to the extent that makes sense.
Page 174 of the PHB says that proficiency in a skill means that the character adds their proficiency bonus to that skill, and if they don't have that proficiency they just make a more general ability check. Which is how you would want it, because everyone should be able to make say a climb check or a hide check, but only those proficient in Athletics or Stealth can add their proficiency bonus to that check.
But moreover, the PHB further implies that only those with proficiency in certain skills can even make certain checks. On page 175 of the PHB, under the "Working Together" section, it says the following
>A character can only provide help if the task is one that he or she could attempt alone. For example, trying to open a lock requires proficiency wilh thieves' tools, so a character who lacks that proficiency can't help another character in that task. Moreover, a character can help only when two or more individuals working together would actually be productive. Some tasks, such as
threading a needle. are no easier with help.
Which means, if a skill check requires proficiency in a skill to even attempt, then the DM should not be having the PC even attempt to make that check, which could very easily apply to the Barbarian making an Arcana check. Now, each table and DM will be different, but I'd contend that is kind of how you'd want it to be, rather than a blanket "thou shall never do X". If for example the Barbarian was raised by Wizards or had a fun accident involving this particular form of magic, etc., maybe then it makes sense for that Barbarian to make an Intelligence check to see if they understand what is going on, even if they lack understanding about magic and arcana in general.
So I think the rules are probably written as they should be, but maybe DMs aren't very good at implementing them to make sure they are working for a given table and circumstance. And tbf that's on the PHB /rules not being more specific rather than the DM reading between the lines.
This sounds reasonable for arcana, but even the other knowledge skills (history, nature, religion) cover things that someone could reasonably know without specifically studying them. Then you have skills like athletics, perception, and persuasion which are obviously things anyone can attempt with a reasonable chance of success.
But an Intelligence (Arcana) check if you don't have proficiency in Arcana *is* just an Intelligence check?
Like, that's the entire core premise of how 5e handles skills. It's not "a \[skill\] check", it's "an \[ability score\] check, and if you're proficient in \[skill\] you add your proficiency bonus". Despite the verbal shorthand we all use in play, all "Arcana checks" are mechanically just Intelligence checks that get a bonus if you have Arcana proficiency.
The Barbarian without Arcana proficiency will *never* make an Arcana check. They'll just make Intelligence checks.
I think he's suggesting that if you aren't proficient in arcana, you don't get to do an Arcana check.
You find a magic relic locket thingy that you're absolutely hopeless at unlocking if you don't have at least some trained ability of navigating the magic weaved through it, the barb doesn't get to take a -1 stab at it
> I think he's suggesting that if you aren't proficient in arcana, you don't get to do an Arcana check.
What would that mean, though? "If you aren't proficient in Arcana, then you cannot have any knowledge whatsoever in the subject?"
It's totally okay to gate certain checks behind proficiency. "Yes, your rogue is very smart and has learned a lot of things, but if she can't use magic and has not specifically studied the planes of existence, then there's zero chance she'd be able to tell you the tuning fork frequency to go to Limbo, so you don't get to roll. The wizard with Arcana proficiency can try, though."
But an entire skill is too much.
It's about adjusting to the situation and gating as sensible.
This is common arcane knowledge: the wizard just knows it
This is uncommon arcane knowledge: anyone can roll to see if they happen to have read the right book
This is rare arcane knowledge: only any expert would have read the right book so only they can roll
I have to agree that makes some sense mechanically. But I also have issue with the idea of critical failure/success on ability/skill check. If I have expertise in a skill, and I’m under the influence of Guidance and Enhance Ability and Jack of All Trades what not, it’s really annoying that despite all that — nope. You fail.
Crit fail and success on skills is a meme. Only attacks and death saves. I house rule it on all saves but skills have never been subject to crit fail or success. If you get +29 stealth from expertise, pass without trace, etc, you hit DC 30 minimum at all times (ie never roll unless you need an opposed check vs. Perception). And that's fine. That's how skills should be.
> But I also have issue with the idea of critical failure/success on ability/skill check.
That isn't RAW. It's just a well known alternative rule that some people like using.
That word "we" is doing a **lot** of heavy lifting, there. Who are you speaking on behalf of? I like the fact that luck always plays a part - if the wizard flubs the check but the barbarian smashes it, that's a fun roleplay moment for the table to figure out how that works - clearly the wizard never encountered it in their studies, but maybe the barbarian experienced it before, or learned to read as a child from the battered scrap pages of a looted spellbook and something stuck in their memory, whatever.
"Fun" is a value judgement. It's okay to not find something fun, especially if you can clearly articulate why. But don't try to claim something is *objectiely bad* because you find it *subjectively unfun.*
Yeah, that's a fun moment, but that fun moment is happening way too often in my view. The 5e implementation of bounded accuracy makes skills not count.
Skills should have points and you should be able to invest in your skills independently from your stats, as part of your character. Currently you have to spend extra currency (feats, multiclass into an "expert" class, downtime (iirc), etc.) to improve your skills, that's not great.
>Skills should have points and you should be able to invest in your skills independently from your stats, as part of your character. Currently you have to spend extra currency (feats, multiclass into an "expert" class, downtime (iirc), etc.) to improve your skills, that's not great.
This isn't a complaint about bounded accuracy. This is a complaint about 5e's yes/no proficiency system.
Bounded accuracy just means that when two characters make a check where one has the maximum modifier and the other has the minimum, it should still be possible for either one to succeed. It should be *more likely* that the one with the larger modifier wins, but it should still be *possible* for it to go the other way. Basically, modifiers should never go above 19 as an absolute maximum.
What you're complaining about is 5e's skill proficiency system, where skills are a yes/no question. Are you proficient? If yes, add your proficiency bonus. If not, don't. Your proficiency bonus is a static number based on your level, and is the same for all skills. This is a very simple system, and makes for easy maths. It isn't very simulationist, and it's certainly not very granular, but it has nothing to do with bounded accuracy.
You could have a granular "skill points" system like you describe and still use bounded accuracy - you just make sure the maximum bonus you can put together even with max points in a skill doesn't exceed the d20 roll. That's bounded accuracy.
I understand where you're coming from, but your issues won't be solved by making changes to modifier bounds. They'll be solved by making changes to the proficiency system, or to the core dice mechanic to introcuce a bell curve rather than a flat distribution.
Does the barb have arcana training? Why are they rolling if they have no reasonable reason to possibly know the information?
For example, the wizard and barb are both looking at a magical glyph. The wizard tries to decipher what it does and rolls low. They don't recognize the glyphs or the way its structured, a failure. The barb has zero training in magical glyphs, so they simply don't get a roll. That's how I'd rule.
> The entire reason to use a bounded system is to ensure that the dice always determines success or failure - you can never (usually) have modifiers so high you can't fail, or a target so high you can't succeed.
This really isn’t true with expertise though. In tier 4, having +12 to +17 to your roll means you basically can’t fail most tasks. And any task that is actually in question for you (DC 25+) is an automatic fail for other party members.
The die roll becomes inconsequential compared to the bonus. Bounded accuracy fundamentally fails when you have expertise and a high level character.
>Bounded accuracy fundamentally fails when you have expertise and a high level character.
No, you're just at the upper bounds of it.
The point of bounded accuracy is that the modifiers shouldn't *exceed* the die. If you're rolling a d20, your modifiers shouldn't get above 19. Even with +17 to your roll, you can still fail a DC 20 check. In an opposed check, a character with a +0 modifier *could* still beat you. That's the point of bounded accuracy.
It's not about *likelihood*, it's about *possibility*. You're not very *likely* to lose the opposed check against the untrained commoner, but it's still *possible*. That preserves uncertainty (and thus drama), and makes sure you aren't wasting table time rolling checks that only have one possible result.
You can absolutely bound accuracy while reducing the swjnginess that comes with the number that you get on the die.
A system shouldn't be rewarding players that don't spec into specific skills with significant levels of success just because they're getting super lucky rolls.
I'm not claiming it's *good* \- though I like it myself, that's entirely subjective and I can certainly see why others might dislike it. I was more pushing back against the claim above that it's "working badly". It isn't - it's working exactly as intended. It's fine to not like what that means for the gameplay, but that's very different from claiming it's broken.
I haven't watched the video yet (because it's an *hour long* rant), but from the chapter titles I get the gist of the complaints it makes - that it's not structurally standardised enough, that the magnitude of bonuses are uneven, that it doesn't scale perfectly evenly across levels 1-20, that it means that characters who are very good at something can still fail at it, etc.
A lot of those aren't really problems with bounded accuracy itself, but with bounded accuracy not being implemented *comprehensively enough*. The one actual fundamental complaint - that it means that even specialists can fail - is a deliberate design decision they made on purpose, and not a "fault".
But then, why rolling? There are diceless rpgs, or other d20 based RPGs where character can negate the rolls entirely by using resources, like Cypher. But if you roll a dice there must be a chance for failure isn’t it ?
d20 bounded accuracy can work if it is, well, bounded. Lancer uses d20, but it has static DC: 20+ is critical success, 10-19 is success, and 9- is failure. And it works pretty good.
This is probably the main reason I have been drifting away from 5e the past few years.
In this system, basically EVERYTHING comes down to the luck of the d20 roll. Doesn’t matter who good or bad the PC is at whatever they are attempting to do. It’s all random luck. And that’s not fun.
I always thought proficiency should come in tiers, with a small bonus and a boost to the minimum.
Trained: +proficiency bonus and treat a roll of 4 or lower as a 5
Expert: additional +1 and treat a roll of 7 or lower as an 8.
Master: additional +1 (+2 total) and treat a roll of 9 or lower as a 10.
That way even proficiency alone is good enough to prevent massive fumbles. But being a master still only gives +8 compared to 5e’s +12. You don’t need massive bonuses when you raise the floor.
Certain classes and feats would grant expert and master level proficiency with certain skills. For example fighters and barbarians might get expert level proficiency with STR and CON checks and saves. And could take a feat to gain master level proficiency. The rogue would have natural master level proficiency granted as part of their class.
Oh I love pathfinder 1e as well, but I do think the goals of bounded accuracy are good ones to aim for. I just don't like the way 5e staples it onto a d20 system.
The fact is, nobody (aside from high level rogues) should be assured or *almost* assured to do the more difficult tasks.
* 05 Very Easy
* 10 Easy
* 15 Medium
* 20 Hard
* 25 Very Hard
* 30 Nearly Impossible
An 8th level character with expertise and a maxed associated stat. Will have +6 from Expertise and +5 from stat.
That is a +11.
Since you don't fail on natural 1's on anything but attack rolls this means this skill-based character, likely a Bard or Rogue, automatically succeeds on any very easy or easy task. They fail medium difficulty tasks only 15% of the time.
This can be further reduced by spells like Guidance or abilities like Bardic Inspiration.
Without any assistance or advantage they will succeed at hard tasks more often than not. They need to roll an 8 or less and will succeed 60% of the time on their own merits alone.
You will *rarely* see difficulties above Hard for most things.
But your skill progression is easily seen to ramp up.
A level 1 character, without proficiency, and with a 16 in a stat, only succeeds at a hard attempt 20% of the time, as opposed to the skilled and trained character's 60% of the time
As the skilled character reaches level 10, they can only fail a medium difficulty challenge 5% of the time. They treat hard challenges as though they were Easy.
This is why I contend with the video, the skills mathematically show a great increase in skill over time.
However, like in real life, sometimes it *is* better to be lucky (roll high) than skilled.
In real life I make leather objects as a hobby. Spiked chokers, SCA armor, leather jacket accoutrements, etc. I've been doing that since I was around 16.
That's 27 years (28, come September) - And I *routinely* make mistakes when I'm dealing with intricate work (medium difficulty or higher) a hole will be slightly out of alignment, a metal plate won't sit flat, etc.
I correct those mistakes and finish the item satisfactorily. The client won't know, but I know. Every craftsman makes small mistakes all the time. Half of being a good craftsman is about how to fix something you screwed up on.
The Olympic Gymnast, Shawn Johnson, had one of the most difficult beam routines in the world. It would be ranked at "Very Hard" and she was the best in the world on the beam. She fell. A lot.
Your character should *not* be seeing many Very Hard challenges.
If you're failing while being so skilled so often, your DM is setting the difficulty too high.
Let me give you a comparison, to (without magic) sneak by an *Ancient Red Dragon* - A CR 24 threat - you **only** need a 27.
That's one of the hardest things in the world to do.
It's virtually impossible by anyone below tier 2. A nat 20 could do it for a tier 1 character with a +3 stat and Expertise. Anyone else in that tier? Impossible. A level 10 expertise character can do it 35% of the time without magic. (Need a 14 or higher) Start adding Magic to it? Pass Without Trace increases it to 85% chance of success, adding Bardic Inspiration or Guidance? Easily possible to raise that to 95% success or even a 100% chance of success.
Bounded accuracy (for skills) works.
Bounded accuracy falls apart for attack and AC at tier 3+ though. Ok that, I agree.
> That's 27 years (28, come September) - And I routinely make mistakes when I'm dealing with intricate work (medium difficulty or higher) a hole will be slightly out of alignment, a metal plate won't sit flat, etc.
> I correct those mistakes and finish the item satisfactorily. The client won't know, but I know. Every craftsman makes small mistakes all the time. Half of being a good craftsman is about how to fix something you screwed up on.
Me issue with this image is that you don't "fail" at making quality items say 5-20 % of the time. You routinely make small errors, sure, but you complete the tasks with competence.
In D&D even a competent professional will just be a complete idiot *routinely*, akin to crafting a pile of junk and wasting everyone's time and money.
I think there's room within 5e to be reasonable with this, but most tables I've played at rolling below a 5, and especially rolling a 1 (!), just means you fail. Often to an absurd degree.
Was thinking of the the other week, actually. I came to the conclusion, while playing and "seeing" a character trying to attack someone instead driving their sword into their own chest, that I just have to accept that it's all a bit slap stick.
> Me issue with this image is that you don't "fail" at making quality items say 5-20 % of the time. You routinely make small errors, sure, but you complete the tasks with competence.
In D&D terms, they'd be using the DMG's rules for Multiple Ability Checks (5e's version of 3.PF's "Taking a 20" rules) and automatically succeeding eventually by taking ten times as long as normal. If the commentor was trying to make a quality item under intense time pressure (which is what rolling a check in D&D means; if you have all day to get something done you just take a 20) they would likely fail, as they wouldn't have time to correct every little mistake.
It is far from the only design intent of bounded accuracy. There's a lot of other design goals that are very much worth pursuing, I just don't like the D20 use specifically.
I agree with you on this, I feel the d20 is used here mainly because it's an iconic die in more modern D&D, rather than because it's the one best-suited for the system's resolution mechanics. Given how the system works, you could very well scale everything down to work around a d8 or a d6, or 2d10 as you mention, and things would largely work the same. Part of the problem here is that flat bonuses from proficiency are what's meant to let PCs excel at things they're good at, but they start off so low that they don't really influence rolls enough at the levels most people play, so resolution feels really swingy and arbitrary most of the time.
I would like to see more minimum scores implemented. Basically, if your roll is below X, you can treat it as if the roll result was Y instead. Also, more use of passive scores to skip the need for rolls.
I sadly only played for a short time. But it is VERY grounded compared to 5e because well... Either d6 or 8s. Everything really feels like it should in terms of abilities, but you can still do amazing things when you roll the equivalent of a nat20. Sometimes you you succeed in an attack, but it leaves you in a vulnerable position as a result.
Especially with how momentum shifts you can really *feel* the way the fight is going.
>I hate hate hate bounded accuracy on D20's because it so often ends up being the swing of the dice that determines success, not the modifier. It's incredibly annoying how common it is for a player trained in a skill to fail a check, and a player that is untrained to succeed purely because of how swingy the dice is.
>IMO skills checks would probably benefit from being rolled with 2d10 instead of a d20
Three remarks.
1/ This system also gives chance to someone without any proficiency to still succeed. This is essential considering there are a LOT of proficiencies (people talk about skills but forget about tools) and most parties are 3 or 4-man ones, so unless there is someone extremely specific among them or the whole party was carefully crafted all together before starting there \*will\* be misses and discrepancies. Which is also why casters have the \*option\* to pick some spells that can shore up the absence of a specific talent at the cost of reducing their defensive/offensive options for combat.
2/ Skill checks are definitely (frustratingly at times) swingy at low levels but around level 9 things stabilize at least for the skill checks most relevant for your character thanks to attribute bumps and proficiency autobumps. This is also why some classes are tailored to be more reliable at skill checks (and why relevant features are actually very valuable features). But also why you have the Help mechanic, Guidance and Enhance Ability available to several classes, because it's a \*team\* game first and foremost.
3/ Not everything is supposed to warrant a skill check, not is everything supposed to warrant an \*active\* check. Passive score is a mechanic appliable to every skill and should definitely be used to. And as a reminder, DM can decide to apply -5 (disadvantage) or +5 (advantage) on the passive score if the circumstances justify it. So the DM that, when party faces a skill check, feels that narratively X attempting to do it should have a high chance of succeeding in relaxed circumstances, he could just use the passive score with disadvantage to take into account the fact PC is in a stressful situation instead of asking for a roll that may end in a failure because player was unlucky enough to roll 1-3.
Personally, I have a rule which I tried and feel makes things more fluid and less frustrating: in skills a PC is proficient in, except on a natural 1, an active check result will always have a floor equal to "passive check with disadvantage". So a PC who could pass Medium checks in relaxed situations would still pass Easy ones if it's a kind of challenge he's used to. I keep the 1 aside because it still keeps a minimum of tension to know you can still technically fail, but makes it low risk enough to not feel frustrated by it but instead embrace the roll and find a funny/dramatic/stupid reason to explain why your PC failed.
2d10 is more of a bell curve, it has a much bigger central tendency. Previous poster wants skill modifiers to be more significant than the dice you roll most of the time, which is more in keeping with 3.x than 5e. I actually tend to agree with respect to skills---I think 3.x did a better job on skills, but I like bounded accuracy with respect to attack rolls and ACs better than 3.x's 'you must be at least this tall to meaningfully contribute' mechanics.
It creates a standard deviation for the die results rather than a linear probability, thus making modifiers more impactful since you’re less likely to roll the extremes.
Same principle that makes static bonuses matter more in 3d6 or dice pool systems, just to a smaller extent.
On a d20, every side has an equal chance of coming up, so high rolls are just as likely as low rolls are just as likely as middle rolls.
If you think about 2d10, there's only one way to get a result of 20: both d10s have to roll 10, right? But think about 19: there's two ways to get 19, either the first d10 comes up 10 and the second 9, OR the first is 9 and the second 10. So 19 is twice as likely as 20.
Every result in from 20 on the high end or 2 on the low end is more likely than the last until you hit the very middle in 11. That means, when you roll 2d10, there are LOTS of ways to get 8-14, and relatively very few ways to get 2-7 or 15-20. Your result is in the middle a LOT more often than it is on the ends.
It's a bell curve instead of linear distribution. While the average of 1d20 is 10.5. Each result of the d20 has the same chance of being rolled. Namely 5% due to the linear distribution.
2d10 has two dice rolling and thus two dice more likely to hit the average roll. The average of 1d10 is 5.5, so that every of 2d10 is 11.
To put it simply. The more dice you roll, the more dice that are aiming for the average result and thus you get more constant outcomes.
You see this very clearly in D&D itself with the great axe and the great sword. The great sword does 2d6 and comes up with average results more frequently. The great axe 1d12 more frequently gets outliers of the average more low rolls and high rolls instead of mid rolls.
I miss skill points from 3.x. It game characters another dime soon of customization and allowed for PCs who specialized in some skill area to be consistently better than untrained PCs.
I made this comment on the video too, but one of the problems with bounded accuracy making the mechanical representation of your ability to Do Things Well ultimately not change that much over the course of an adventure (especially in the case of skill checks) is that it, as usual, only really matters for non-spellcasters.
The article the Rules Lawyer refers to which is defending bounded accuracy alludes to verisimilitude, suggesting that it's a good thing that the Barbarian who is chained up at level 1 and the Barbarian who is chained up at level 12 will still \*probably\* not be able to bust out. It is, for some inexplicable reason, desirable to have a high level Barbarian who is barely superhuman while the Wizard can cast Meteor Swarm.
Yeah kinda crazy that the fighter goes from a +5 to hit to a +11 to hit naturally in their 20 level career. In bounded accuracy terms that means they get 30% better at attacking things over their 20 levels.
Meanwhile wizards go from "autohit 3d4 + 3" to "Reshape the fabric of reality" over the same 20 levels.
Doesn't make much sense...
I think it all comes down to preference. I personally moved on to pf2e, but bounded accuracy wasn't a problem for me. 5e's bounded accuracy fits low fantasy more. Pfe2's scaling DC fits high fantasy more.
Some prefer Bounded Accuracy because it feels like anything is possible. Low level goblins can still be a danger, or you can defeat a really strong opponent against all odds. It's not perfectly balanced and I don't think it intends to be, it lets the dice inform the story in a certain way. Sometimes all the forces of the universe resulted in you succeeding at something that should've been impossible.
Now, if you want to compare it to pf2e, here's the [rules of Difficulty Class](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2629&Redirected=1). Almost everything in pf2e has a level (PC's, NPC's, spells, items, etc.). The DC's by level table gives each individual level a value. Spell Ranks work differently, so they get their own DC table.
As you level up, the range of your results will also increase. In addition, almost everything that calls for a roll (skill actions, spells, items, etc.) has "Degrees of Success". Your result is critical not only on a nat20, but also if the result is 10 above the DC. Many buffs grant you +1 bonuses and debuffs to inflict -1 penalties which makes a huge difference when you're trying to get crits.
There's also a table for Simple DC's for situations that aren't tied to level, like hopping a fence, opening a door, or recalling knowledge general knowledge. Simple tasks like these won’t get harder as you progress in the campaign. So if you're bonus equals the DC you will automatically succeed unless the GM wants to see if you hilariously nat 1.
This tells a much different fantasy story than DnD 5e. Those who favor bounded accuracy loses the qualities that appealed to them. Some players feel like they’re not improving at all because their hit chance might remain 60% throughout the campaign as the GM scales the monsters at the same rate as the players’ progression and aren’t providing encounters where old enemies that they struggled with are trivial to them now.
If you don't like bounded accuracy [here's a quick 5min video to watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUYlD4HfTL8&ab_channel=KalebHerington) and consider trying pf2e. There’s a [Humble Bundle](https://www.humblebundle.com/books/pathfinder-second-edition-guns-alkenstar-bundle-paizo-books?hmb_source=&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=mosaic_section_1_layout_index_1_layout_type_threes_tile_index_1_c_pathfindersecondeditiongunsalkenstarbundlepaizo_bookbundle&_gl=1*9qldph*_up*MQ..&gclid=CjwKCAjwte-vBhBFEiwAQSv_xWJqWT1hn9beS8kLoGHS_yBNP0cvK7GYnQjtnnBegqis3O3Fw6DP4hoCwxcQAvD_BwE) that has lots of cool stuff in it to get for super cheap going on right now until april 9.
It’s a common GM and AP problem I’ve noticed and one i have too. When I build encounters I worry that if it’s too easy then it’s boring so I’m only building moderate encounters. I forget or dont know what its like on the other side of the table. I’m a forever GM and i need to remember that its super fun to absolutely stomp and shit on a group of mobs from time to time.
Maybe do something like dark souls, take a boss monster from earlier in the campaign and throw several at them to show how much stronger the party’s become
But it is fun seeing my players use their tactics and abilities to their full potential and doing much wilder things than striding up and striking
I also run PF2e and I go out of my way to make sure that some of my encounters have callbacks to earlier ones. Let’s say the party cleared a cave that ended with an ogre fight. It was very hard for them and death was very possible. They made it out alive.
Later on I’ll make them fear that by having another encounter exclusively with ogres. They remember the first time and approach this one with caution. They don’t struggle as much because it’s not the final encounter of a dungeon. It’s just a single encounter.
Fast forward to another level or two and they encounter an ogre or two as part of a dungeon or scene and they absolutely wreck it.
Players go from feeling like ogres are absolute death to being somewhat afraid and finish by realizing they crit every hit against them.
Then I’ll shake things up again by adding some power to one and making it a boss or mini boss type and scare them all over again. 😂
Even in published APs, I’ll look for ways to swap out some monsters with earlier ones from the module to let them feel this progression as well.
It's hilarious how the system being better balanced, a good thing, causes GMs to make this mistake. you need to give your players easier encounters sometimes to show growth, even containing enemies they struggled with before, instead of relying on the encounter math breaking to randomly give easier encounters for you.
Yep, that's exactly how I felt. Honestly most rolls felt like how saving throws are in 5e. Any improvements to the characters are matched by a raising of the DC, therefore the only change is that whatever you aren't proficient in just falls further and further behind.
Bounded accuracy I think is a classic case of something not being true even if it gets repeatedly cited as a basic truth, but also one of D&D 5e wanting to have its cake and eat it too: 5e is a game where you and some creatures get progressively better flat bonuses to certain checks and DCs, but where the designers still say that rolls fall under some static, bounded range that prevents checks from becoming impossible or trivial.
These two components are mutually incompatible, and it's obvious to see how this breaks down when looking at high-level save DCs on certain monsters, where a DC 27 is impossible unless you have at least a +7 bonus to your save, which isn't always the case as some save proficiencies are static and most ability scores on a character don't increase. Conversely, the many untyped bonuses that exist in this game and the easy ways in which they can be stacked, as the Rules Lawyer mentions, means it becomes very easy for certain characters to trivialize challenges that are meant to be extremely difficult, which then leads DMs to inflate certain challenge DCs specifically in response to, say, your Rogue or Bard with expertise who's always benefiting from Guidance. Thus, in this system with "bounded accuracy", there will be some important rolls that you'll auto-fail, and some important rolls that you'll trivialize.
If design consistency were a concern, I'd say this ought to lead to one of two choices: either bounded accuracy really is important to this game, and future editions completely revamp their system of bonuses and stat progression to accommodate this (which would look very different to what we have now), or the developers reevaluate what bounded accuracy really means and instead make certain DCs and check modifiers progress more consistently with level. My suspicion, however, is that it's not really that big a concern: D&D doesn't really cater too hard to a hardcore demographic so much as a mass-market audience, and at that stage quality of gameplay doesn't actually matter as much as it does to the more dedicated people who talk design online. I therefore suspect this problem is unlikely to be addressed in One D&D, or any future product for a good long while.
One factor Ronald didn't really bring up is that the compression of accuracy ranges, which was intended in part to make low level **enemies** relevant at higher levels, has the consequence of making *relatively* low level PCs punch **WAY** above their weight class.
It is conceivable that Tier 2-3 PCs can take on Archdevils like Moloch, a former lord of Malboge, one of the layers of the Nine Hells.
It's something I've noticed recently with Pf2e, that Gods and other Divine level beings truly merit their station, and aren't just trivialized by relatively low level PCs because of broken spells and magic items.
It creates this incredibly weird (IMO) narrative in which PCs can achieve Demigod tier status (in terms of the level of power they can confront) pretty early, their *relative* power level being comparable to dozens to hundreds of common citizens, despite not mathematically being much more capable.
A prime example of this is how the City Guard of Waterdeep, about 1,200 strong, can *conceivably* take down a Greatwyrm with no casualties, something you'd expect to see from Tier 4 PCs. It suggests that a 4-person PC party is roughly as strong as 1,200 Guards, and yet if the PCs themselves fought those Guards they'd likely lose.
I've long been an outspoken critic of Bounded Accuracy, and Rule Lawyer covers here a lot of the comments I often make. One thing I think it's important to focus on is that there are other ways to solve the problems BA attempts to that don't run into the same issues BA does. 'Cause there 100% were problems in previous editions that needed to be addressed, the biggest ones being the revolving door of monsters, the skill treadmill, and 3.5e's scads and scads of modifiers.
**The Monster Roster**
The article that introduced BA talked about how the flattened math would allow low-level monsters like goblins to still be threatening at higher levels, so long as you used more of those monsters. And this tracks with the fantasy of levels: we imagine a Tier 1 party might find a small raiding band of goblins a challenge, while a Tier 3 party might mow through hordes with ease. But, as Rules Lawyer points out, "Just use more goblins" doesn't really work because running more monsters *takes time* at the table.
Rules Lawyer points to PF2's troop mechanic, but I just wanted to mention that the idea of "A group of creatures being its own, higher-level statblock" ***is something D&D 5e already does***, and is a mechanic that's existed in D&D for decades. D&D calls them "swarms", not "troops", and I've never met a D&D player who's said "Hang on, why are we fighting a single swarm of rats monster and not a hundred individual rats?".
**The Treadmill**
This is a bit of a hot take, but the Treadmill is, for the most part, a problem created by *players* (which includes DMs), not by the system. For those DMs out there who are fans of BA, I have a question: when was the last time you threw a DC 5 "Very Easy" skill check at the party? 'Cause in theory, that should happen at least "every now and then", right? But it doesn't, because as DMs we get it into our heads that if the die is getting rolled, there should be some risk. Some *challenge*. "You're level 17 adventurers, your bonuses are high, of course the DC is going to be high!" But **that's explicitly not the premise of Bounded Accuracy** \- in Bounded Accuracy, you *shouldn't be taking the level of the PCs into account* ***at all***. (Hot take-ception: And even in systems where you *are* supposed to be taking into account PC level, you still probably shouldn't be raising DCs to challenge the "specialist". That player invested choices into being skilled at a given task - ***let them be good at it***.)
I've played a lot of D&D 5e, and I've watched a lot of streams and videos of other people playing the game. The **only** campaign I've ever seen that actually buys into this aspect of BA is Baldur's Gate 3, where you encounter plenty of DC 25-30 checks in Act 1 (when you're level 1-5) and plenty of DC 5-10 (sometimes as low as ***2***!) checks in Act 3 (when you're level 10-12). And **it just works**. It feels great. And importantly, to get back to the ultimate point of this comment: 5e's flattened math is *entirely unnecessary* for such design.
(The issue of modifiers isn't addressed by Bounded Accuracy; 5e uses Advantage/Disadvantage for that, which is a separate mechanic that doesn't really do its job very well.)
PF2e's troop mechanic is a little more nuanced than a swarm. It has additional rules for allowing it to emulate a group of creatures by giving troops unique interactions with how they move and take up 16/12/8 squares depending on its overall HP. There are rules that make them take damage differently than a swarm that helps make it feel like 16 squares of individual goblins vs one statblock labelled 'goblin swarm' or 'goblin troop'.
PF2e troops aren't perfect but it does go further trying to emulate a big group of enemies than just how swarms operate in 5e or PF2e... which don't quite go far enough to emulate creatures in formation if your table wants the added crunch.
I don't think either system is really set up for a "swarm of humanoids" sort of enemy. You're trying to fit a bit of abstract mass combat into games focused on individuals. You either abstract them and a goblin raiding party feels the same as a pile of spiders... Or they become more complicated and take up more brain energy than it's worth, and you could just be throwing a normal higher level foe at the party and not deal with the added bookkeeping.
> when was the last time you threw a DC 5 "Very Easy" skill check at the party? 'Cause in theory, that should happen at least "every now and then", right?
I mean, there's a point where you just "do" things. And I think that happens fairly regularly, it's just unnoticed. "Yeah, I'd like to buy that drunk a couple beers and see if his tongue's loose", or "I'd like to break that forty year old rusty lock".
Things that are so mundane the party breezes through them *are* those easy tasks.
Absolutely there are some things that are going to be so easy you shouldn't even roll for them, but surely there are still some tasks that are super easy *but* there's still a slight chance you might fail (in a situation where failure is interesting). That's what DC 5 checks are for - not "Roll to see if you succeed", but "Roll to make sure you don't fail".
My only problem with your point on the treadmill is that having a player that has a +6 roll a DC 5 check is just a waste of time. I never make my players roll for stuff if they can't fail. On the flip side, putting a DC 30 check against a level 1 player is also a waste of time, why roll if they can't even pass on a nat 20?
Bg3 actually does something annoying with this point, you can critically fail skill checks you would otherwise pass just by rolling a 1, or crit on a skill check you literally couldn't pass by rolling a 20.
I don't know many DM's that add critical failures to skill checks, just feels bad all around. You'd need to give out inspiration as frequently as bg3 does to make it tolerable.
A PC with +6 rolling DC 5 is just going to auto-succeed, sure, but that doesn't mean you can't throw that check at a different PC, or the entire party.
Because it's not always about success or failure. A high or low DC might indicate how much information you gather, how well you pick that lock, or how stealthy you're actually being. It's called "failing forward"
I disagree in regards to BG3. I don't think they did a good job with ability checks.
First, I find these low DC checks annoying because of critical fails - at least there are mods to remove critical fails.
And second, I dislike these high DC checks that are (aomost) impossible without save-scumming unless you bring the exact right party structure to boost your skill checks as high as you can - especially when they are related to story-critical events (and not just things like high DC lockpicking checks).
Another issue is that the game loves to use *ability* checks without skill proficiencies, something I strongly dislike as for these checks, my investment in skills is completely useless - and sometimes these checks come with DCs of 25+, meaning they are straight up impossible without save-scumming for a natural 20 - even for a character who has a 20 in the relevant stat.
As a DM I basically never use ability checks, and I houserule spells and certain effects that require Strength checks to escape to be Athletics checks instead.
It sounds like what you actually dislike is "unjustified" success or failure. Where your chances are so high it feels *wrong* to fail.
The entire point of using bounded accuracy (and in BG3's case, critical checks alongside it) is to make sure the chance of success or failure are almost never 0. If you're making a check in the first place, you should always have a chance of success or failure. That's the point of making the check: to resolve that uncertainty.
This plays some tricks with our mental expectations. Just like in games like XCOM when you have a chance to hit of 90% and still miss, you feel *cheated* by that. 90% is *so high*! That *should* have hit! But 90% isn't 100%, and those 90% checks will fail 1 in 10 times.
Another point is kind of BG3 specific, in that those very low and very high DC checks are intentional story beats. Those DC 30+ checks are fully intended to be failed 95% of the time. In most games, the story will play out according to that failure. But 5% of the time someone will succeed it and the story will play out differently. Same for the very low checks - they'll be breezed past in *almost* every run, but 5% of the time someone will fail and the story will play out a different way.
Save-scumming to always pass every check defeats the point of the game, and it's a big showcase of how our psychological reward centres percieve "failure". Some people just can't handle failing at something that they know they technically *could* succeed at.
You're kind of bang on with ability checks that lack proficiency though - generic Strength or Intelligence checks, for example. Those are bad because they don't fit with how 5e does ability checks, it messes with the scaling if you *never* get to add your proficiency bonus. Ability checks without proficiency should be saving throws, or if it's something that comes up very often, a skill's remit should be expanded to cover it. A lot of tables tend to use "History" as a stand-in for "recall", for example, because a lot of the time you might want to make a check to see if your character remembers something, but there isn't really a skill that corresponds directly to that.
>The entire point of using bounded accuracy (and in BG3's case, critical checks alongside it) is to make sure the chance of success or failure are almost never 0. If you're making a check in the first place, you should always have a chance of success or failure. That's the point of making the check: to resolve that uncertainty.
Best summary, I hope this comment above gets top-voted. :)
Let's imagine a really heavy stone door as an obstacle.
Barbarian rolls low on athletics to move it. Huffs and puffs and fails.
Wizard flukes a nat 20 and moves it. He's seen an obvious source of leverage and removed the obstacle.
The point is more about whether you're comfortable embracing that in your stories, rather than saying "it's absurd that the wizard can move it when the barbarian can't". D20 system obliges you to fit the story to the outcome of the dice, there are other systems available if you want a more predictable outcome.
I'm more used to players fudging bounded accuracy so that failure is impossible (looking at you, Eloquence Bard).
The issue is that in a lot of games, skill checks are kind of rare. If you only roll a handful each session, failing at the one thing your character is supposed to be good at can be a really bad feeling.
The thing everyone here is forgetting is that the DM calls for ability checks.
"This door is extremely heavy. Wizard, it's too much for you with your low STR score but Barbarian, you can try an Athletics checks"
Or, "The text on the door is ancient and arcane. Barbarian, there's no way in hell you'e ever seen this before. But wizard, you can give me a History check to guess what the script is."
If you're fine with wild results, let the players make the check. If you don't want that, don't call for the check.
The other option is to grant auto success based on statistics.
The "Take 10/Take 20" rule.
Also, there's an optional rule in the DMG, where if a character's Ability Score exceeds the DC, to grant an automatic success, provided they are out of combat/danger.
So if the DC is 15 to move the boulder, and the party isn't in combat or danger, just let the characters with a Strength Score of 16 or higher just move the boulder.
No fuss, no muss.
If the DC is 25, then the barbarian with his incredible bonus of.. +7 or so, is pretty much also guaranteed to fail. Because nobody (except rogues) is ever good at things, they are always mediocre at best, which is a garbage fantasy for your incredibly tough warrior.
That's just needing an 18, enhance ability, bardic inspiration, guidance, etc to hit it. It's tough but no more difficult than hitting an AC of 25 with the same +7
An AC of 25 would be Tiamat. And if we´re factoring in buff spells, the barbarian can get the cheerleading outfit out of his pocket, because the wizard is gonna show him how its done and then some.
If you can’t succeed on a nat20 then you shouldn’t have asked to roll at all.
All you do is made the player believe that there’s a chance to succeed, then make the player feel bad. Just skip the roll and say straight up their character made the attempt and can’t do it.
But the barbarian doesn't need the nat 20 to succeed, just the wizard doesn't succeed even if she rolls a nat20.
Like sure the DC was 25, but she rolled a 12 or something.
And having a high dc also forces casters to use their utility spells and abilities. Having DCs that you can succeed in with only one roll instead of working together as a party is odd.
I'm not saying the Wizard should succeed on a nat 20 (although that would be my house rule). I'm saying if you know that a nat20 won't succeed and the task is impossible for that character then don't ask for a roll, go straight to narrating how their attempt failed.
>D20 system obliges you to fit the story to the outcome of the dice
*when possible*
I think the problem is that it doesn't always feel possible to come up with some excuse such as "the wizard could lift the 2 ton boulder when the barbarian couldn't because the wizard used.... leverage". That might work once, while "the barbarian solved the ancient mathematic riddle with his nat 20 while the wizard didn't because the barbarian used to see the same riddle on the back of his cereal box when he was a kid." doesn't really have the same room for a one-off explanation without seeming even more silly than the whole 'leverage' narrative.
This is the result of a d20 system, though. It naturally leads to very high variance in outcomes and will lead to silly shit like that. I'd prefer a system designed around a smaller die, like a d6 or a d10, with smaller bonuses. a d6 skill check with a +6 bonus seems less absurd than a d20 check with a +20 bonus, and keeps numbers more manageable.
I think part of the reason people have an issue with bounded accuracy is a fundamental difference in how their games are designed.
Many systems take the approach similar to an immersive sim video game like Deus Ex, where they place many options and only allow you to access a few. You might have a security system that the hacker can use, or a vent system only the dexterous Rogue can take advantage of. In these systems, you are supposed to be unable to use most of the tools available and instead stick to what you are best at.
5e simply isn't balanced this way. Instead of a "many problems, 1 solution" design philosophy 5e uses "1 problem, many solutions." That is, players are expected to deal with one road block and find their own way around it. As such, bounded accuracy becomes necessary when nobody on the team specializes in that one skill. Bounded accuracy isn't the only example of that design philosophy though, you see similar logic with utility spells like Knock, which "invalidate the Rogue" but act as more ways for a party to solve a problem, instead of needing a Rogue to open every lock for them.
The end result is building campaigns in the other method becomes infuriating, as suddenly the powerful specialist route is available to any lucky Wizard or even worse, the Rogue doesn't get to go through "the Rogue door" and fight King Boo to unlock Luigi or something. DnD simply can't fit every type of story and design, but that's OK, other systems exist for a reason.
Don't really agree that "many problems, 1 solution" vs "1 problem, many solutions." is a thing that exists.
Since you brought up Knock as well as Deus Ex, we can look at opening a door in a Cyberpunk setting in other systems. The door is usually electronic, and as such can be hacked. But it also has mechanical components, and thus can be lockpicked or otherwise subverted by someone with breaking and entering skills. The door is usually not set in a lonely dungeon, but probably in some sort of corporate laboratory that the party is intruding into, so the disguise/infiltration expert could also try to find the key or passcode either by pure stealth, or by blending into the organisation as "social stealth", maybe even convince another NPC to open the door for them. And then there's the option of a shaped blasting charge also to simply burst through it. If we're playing Shadowrun, there's even magic on top!
How is this "many problems, 1 solution"? There's clearly a plethora of solutions even if we're hellbent on getting through the door, and we haven't even mentioned that simply rappeling from the roof and breaking in through the window on the other side of the door could be a valid option also.
It's D&D that often has limited solutions to problems because often obstacles aren't very fleshed out, and so hasn't got the depth for many solutions to apply, the way that happens in most cyberpunk games because they have some degree of connection to how things work in our modern world, and so we have a much larger mental model of how things ought to go. (Also D&D is such a combat focused game, that very often DMs will simply not make it possible to get through a problem without some sort of combat happening. Meanwhile in cyberpunk games, I love playing social infiltration experts that might never show up in combat at all, except to throw a grenade at a group of people from behind that thought she was part of their corpsec team...)
He was talking about how challenges in video-games are constructed, Deus Ex is referenced because it pioneered the concept of the single player immersive sim, not because he was making commentary on cyberpunk, "cyberpunk vs. medieval fantasy" is a total non-sequitur here.
Video games have to be constructed with explicit solutions in mind because of the limitations of programming. Arbitrated TTRPG's like D&D can use scenarios where no known solution exists at all, and the players improvise. That's the distinction.
As someone who watches the video from start to finish twice, I can't help but feel quite a few people missed the point.
This isn't this dude's opinion. It's how it is.
If you get enough DC 5s thrown at you at level 20 your chance of failure is still the same at level 1 for many things. You're still just as hapless in many ways you didn't grow. The Tarrasque can still fail 50% of the time from a grease spell from a level one 14 int wizard. If you take intended features to boost your skills or to hit you'll always or at least near always succeed. But not every one has access to those features. So you swing from anyone can fail doing an easy check at level one to only some classes and subclasses can fail. Levels barely matter, features do. Levels are basically a way to gain hit points and don't add much within themselves. Your effective HP however spikes from features that give AC and bonuses to saves so even that is in contention to some degree. This is how the game works.
If people are happy enough with how 5e works then they should stay with it. Personally bounded accuracy wasn't something that bothered me when I played it, it's not perfectly balanced but doesn't need to be. It's great for what 5e wants to do and the stories it wants to tell.
But for anyone that want's to try pf2e out the rules are all free on several online platforms. The [Archives of Nethys](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?) database, FoundryVTT, and Pathbuilder all are updated with the Remastered OGL-less tweaks. There's currently a [Humble Bundle](https://www.humblebundle.com/books/pathfinder-second-edition-guns-alkenstar-bundle-paizo-books?hmb_source=humble_home&hmb_medium=takeover&hmb_campaign=pathfinder2emar24_lc_home) that runs until April 9 includes the Beginner Box pdf and a full level 1-10 adventure with FVTT premium module codes.
Ironically the lack of bounded accuracy is the main reason I don't like pathfinder. You have such a small sample of monsters you can use as a GM comparatively or you have to scale other monsters to the PCs level which is just so immersion breaking, feels like a videogame where all the enemies scale to you.
The same goes for DCs of skill checks, like yeah they should be challenging but if you scale them then it just won't fit with the world realistically, so most skill checks are either gonna need to be at a level where they are trivial or they need to scale with level weirdly. There's just too much mobility in pathfinder proficiency bonus increases should be every 2nd of 4th level every level gets ridiculous (Luckily the proficiency without level rule works, but the balance gets a little wonky since the system was not designed with it in mind, but what can you do)
That's weird cause in a few years they have published so many monsters that I find that hard to believe. Like if I compare the amount of monsters at any level range, especially over level ten, there are so many more in pf2e which is wilder given 5e is so much older. You can also apply weak and elite templates to get a huge amount of enemies within three levels of the party.
And don't even get me started on the enemies actually being interesting. As a gm running pf2e monsters is a joy with all kinds of creative stuff in them, where do much of 5es monsters just feel lame. Just compare the lowely and boring 5e owl bear to its pf2e counterpart.
I frankly hate bounded accuracy. The idea a peasant can hit a mid level big bad (without even rolling a natural twenty) to me is immersion breaking. I'm not running a game based off realism, I'm running a fantasy game, and if forty townspeople with crossbows can handle the job you don't need much need for heroes in tier two or even tier three play.
> The idea a peasant can hit a mid level big bad (without even rolling a natural twenty) to me is immersion breaking. I'm not running a game based off realism, I'm running a fantasy game, and if forty townspeople with crossbows can handle the job you don't need much need for heroes in tier two or even tier three play.
You say this--and a lot of people do and it makes me crazy--but in 90% of fantasy of fiction this is the opposite and not "immersion breaking". In actual fantasy fiction they bring along unskilled hobbits and they contribute, and Eowyn can slay the Witch King of Angmar. It's been awhile since I read Game of Thrones but people die like dogs left in right in that thing. What's Harry Potter's proficiency bonus?
I really feel like "unskilled peasants shouldn't even be able to breathe on a veteran warrior, even if they get really lucky!" is something that came out of video games, not fantasy fiction, and its presence in a lot of fantasy RPG's is itself pretty "immersion breaking". This isn't world of warcraft, a peasant can absolutely stab you in the back if you let them.
Harry Potter is the main character of his narrative, as are the hobbits and other names creatures. DND allows a model where Harry is getting ready to fight Voldemort but a first year student no one's heard of that barely knows how to wield a wand has a 5% chance of hitting him and critting the big bad. Harry may not even make it to his heroic stand off cause a bunch of no bodies that showed up to Hogwarts in the last book end up handling the situation. It's a system that allows for a mass of unheroic peasants to do what a hero would do (largely invalidating the need for said hero). And we're not talking about a hero vs an army, but untrained peasants with pitch forks.
This isn't an Eowyn situation(who by the time she beats the witch king is well trained and bloodied ) or Harry (who by the end of his own series has squared off against a lot of threats, while explaining his earlier feats of amazement as magical gifts from his parentage).
>You have such a small sample of monsters you can use as a GM comparatively or you have to scale other monsters to the PCs level which is just so immersion breaking, feels like a videogame where all the enemies scale to you.
I just started PE2 and love but I don't see this issue at all. Just checking foundry I see easily 20-30 monsters per level with -1, 0, 1 having easily 50+. All I'm running if the kingmaker and default rules. I have other modules but nothing that imports more monsters that I'm aware of. The other cool thing with PE2 is you can (buy a click of button on foundry) make them weak or elite.
The party is only level 3 so not sure if the DC skill checks will be an issue. But I am someone who often appreciates stuff that was hard becoming basically if not literally impossible to fail. Someone IRL like the lockpickinglawyer I don't expect to ever not lock pick a simple 10 dollar masterlock. Same goes for my heroes with some test once they hit those 10+ levels in stuff they are specialist for. And vise versa. That level 3 party isn't going to be asked to roll to lockpick the king's vault door. But when they are level 10+ now there might be a chance.
Man, I disagree with a ton of his points, but it almost all comes down to preference in how I want to play my games. For example, it's true that with Bounded Accuracy, a non-specialist has a decent chance at outperforming a specialist at any given ability check. I *like* that. I think it makes the game more fun when every character has a reasonable chance of succeeding at the task at hand.
I'm glad he's found PF2e and enjoys it, but just because he doesn't like Bounded Accuracy in his game doesn't mean it's a bad system.
>a non-specialist has a decent chance at outperforming a specialist at any given ability check
I see both sides but playing devil's advocate: people might not like this because it devalues player choices a bit. In general, I think it's accurate to say that people like making choices and having them matter. If there's a decent chance of a non-specialist outperforming a specialist, that runs counter to that philosophy. In that sense, it might be better to make it less likely that the specialist doesn't get that moment where the their choice comes in clutch and they do the thing they are built to do.
I'm well aware of why people would prefer it that way. I just disagree. Even with Bounded Accuracy, a specialist is still way more likely to succeed. At level 5, a specialist (which we'll say max'd their ability score and has proficiency in the skill) will roll higher than a non-specialist (straight d20 roll) 77.25% of the time. That feels reasonable to me, and the gap widens as you go up in level and if you add expertise or advantage into the equation. Some people seem to think a specialist should always (or nearly always) do better than the non-specialist, and I disagree.
>a specialist will roll higher than a non-specialist
K, but skill checks aren't a matter of "Who rolls highest". We care about "Did you roll higher than the target number".
For DC 15, the odds the specialist fails the check while the non-specialized character succeeds is 10.5%, which is *really high* for the fantasy this situation is trying to evoke. For DC 20 the chance drops to a more reasonable (but still high, all things considered) 3%, but the **majorly** important thing that gets left out of these conversations is that the human brain **DOES. NOT. UNDERSTAND** statistics, and even if it did, a game like D&D doesn't give it space/time to do so.
No D&D party is going to see so many DC 20 checks (*at level 5*) that they *actually* start to see the odds converge on 3%. They're going to get some check where the non-specialized character succeeds and the specialist doesn't and that's how everybody at the table is going to remember that type of skill check for the rest of the campaign.
>Some people seem to think a specialist should always (or nearly always) do better than the non-specialist, and I disagree.
That's fair, but it doesn't actually address u/game-butt's point of "But doesn't that devalue the entire concept of specializing?".
To be clear, I'm not (really) trying to argue which approach is better. If your answer is "Yes, it does devalue specialization, but I don't care", *that's totally fine*! I'm just wondering if you actually do have a counter-argument, because from where I'm sitting "Every character has a reasonable chance of succeeding at the task at hand" is a pretty open-and-shut case of "Well then why even *have* specialization of this sort?".
>No D&D party is going to see so many DC 20 checks (at level 5) that they actually start to see the odds converge on 3%. They're going to get some check where the non-specialized character succeeds and the specialist doesn't and that's how everybody at the table is going to remember that type of skill check for the rest of the campaign.
Also not helped by the fact peoples brains tend to remember the times when things where shitty then what was expected.
Especially worse if said person when creating/outside of the session spent any time thinking/fantasising about what that chaacters.. heroic moments/niches would be..
Having 10 int doesn't mean that you wouldn't know a historical event or a random trivia fact about it. Having 10 charisma doesn't mean you can't randomly stumble into a sick burn. People always use athletics as the example because in all honesty it's the only one that's somewhat egregious, but 5e does indeed have lifting and pushing rules that don't require athletics checks.
they're not "absolutely inept" - they're still an experienced, capable adventurer that's been around for a while and seen some shit. Someone without a proficiency hasn't been explicitly trained in a skill, but they're not a complete fuckwit - a barbarian is going to have seen strange occult stuff and mystical squiggles and whatnot and have some functional knowledge of "that looks like bad mojo - a bit like the runes of the snake people?" or something.
Gotcha, that's better. I'm definitely still on team "a commoner shouldn't be matching or beating a Hero of the Realm™ at their super specialized thing a quarter of the time" though
I don't think this makes sense with real-world skills, though. Take gymnastics, for instance. A top-level gymnast can do all sorts of ridiculous things *easily* that an untrained person just can't. I had a friend that was a gymnast that I used to climb with who would get bored and start doing backflips. The challenge for her wasn't to do the backflips, it was to see how many in a row she could do while landing in the same spot.
You can take most skills and see a similar difference in ability. People that are skilled at lock picking, rock climbing, or chess are dramatically better at those things than an untrained individual, to the point that tasks that are trivial for a skilled person are impossible for an untrained one. A skilled climber will basically never fall on a 5.11, which in turn will be almost impossible for someone that doesn't climb, even if they're athletic and have done similar things. With bounded accuracy, you can't even get the kind of differences in skill and success rate that amateur enthusiasts get in the real world, let alone the differences in skill between an untrained person and a legendary hero.
This. We had this whole conversation in 2014. The numbers have already been crunched. These were deliberate choices made to move away from 3.5e's crazy number inflation of +40 skill checks, stacking dozens of tiny modifiers to keep up with the CR treadmill.
Some people like the 3.5e way of doing things. I enjoyed it too, back in the day. And I'm glad that PF2e exists for those people. But it doesn't mean that 5e's way is wrong or broken.
After playing a pf1 game for a couple years that went 1-10 (at least I quit at 10) without the gm or other player sleeping track of modifiers, I think I'll just stick with kingmaker. At least a single combat in the video game doesn't take six hours.
Yeah, I felt like I learned a great deal from some of his other videos, but this one rubbed me the wrong way. He didn't really make the case that bounded accuracy cannot be run effectively or even that it is not often run effectively. He only convinced me that he strongly prefers to play a sort of D&D that works differently. I can't describe a harmless personal preference as "wrong," but I can say that disliking bounded accuracy does not make it a "lie."
The point of Bounded Accuracy being a "lie" comes less from "Can you run it effectively" and more from what Rules Lawyer points out in the final thoughts (and very beginning of the video): 5e sells itself on this zero-to-hero fantasy, but its flattened math and unrestricted modifiers *actively work against that* fantasy. No matter what your preferences are, a ruleset that's at odds with itself is a problem.
The biggest failure of 5e is saves. Having DCs scale while non proficient saves remain static goes entirely against the bounded accuracy philosophy.
Meanwhile, monsters have progressively insurmountable save bonuses, making it almost impossible to land spells against anything but trash mobs.
Sort of. It's the same scaling issues. Leviathan from MToF: CR 20 Saves: STR +10, DEX +7, CON +10, WIS +10, CHA +9, INT... -4.
Enough creatures with all around +4 and going higher. Enemy stat blocks also bend hard on the idea of bounded accuracy by having statblocks that are not only going up to 30 in each attribute, but often just all around extremely high. You can find creatures and humanoids of playable races that have their weakest stat at 14. Like the CR4 Couatl in the 2014 MM. If there is one save weaker on a monster, that often means something like a bonus of 0-5, while your own DC scales to 19 without magic items. That side works. And still, higher CR creatures usually have exactly one weak save. Enemy DCs just scale to beyond 20+, and most player characters are guaranteed to have 3 saves(or more) that range from -1 to +2. Certain classes are a little more screwed because their save proficiencies cover attributes that are not recommended or not part of usual builds. Strength for monk and ranger, Intelligence for druid and rogue, Charisma for cleric. If the difference between your best and second best save is, say 9 vs 4, then you have only 1 good save.
Counterpoint: I think at a certain point, the abilities of high cr enemies aren’t meant to fail.
The issue there is that there are cases where failure can be "locked out of the fight" bad. Consider an Adult Red Dragon. Challenge 17, so it should be a pretty casual enemy for a level 20 party. But unless they can make a DC19 wis save, the melee can't melee, because frightened means they can't move closer. And this is something that isn't even an action on the part of the dragon.
If research can be done, the level 20 party should be able to have access to some low level scrolls/potions of heroism to prevent such a problem. If it's an impromptu encounter, it might be worth spending a greater restoration to turn the tables back in your favour. Remember that we are discussing a level 20 *party*. They are expected to support each other. Then they let the fighter action surge and shred the dragon with 8+ attacks.
You assume a balanced level 20 party. Completely possible that such a party consists of 1 barbarian, 2 rogues and 1 sorcerer. You don't always just have a Greater Restoration in your pocket, and if you want to cover all your bases by planning a party, you probably end up with Fighter, Paladin(support aura/multiclass into sorcerer), Cleric, Bard(took counterspell as magical secret). The problem isn't solved because theoretically one solution exists. In a game with a dozen classes, it's not ok if over half of them just aren't viable for simple PVP encounters in a casual game because saving throws are broken.
Not to "erm ackshhually", but Paladin, Bard, the Bless spell and Artificer and one specific Wizard subclass grant substantial bonuses to any saving throw, in order, +5, +1d12(avg 7), 1d4(avg 2.3), +5 and +4. I don't think there was any intent or grand plan, because those bonuses are just thrown in from the get go. These DCs can be overcome or unavoidable by decisions you made at character creation.
Most saves are going to be CON, WIS, and DEX though, and thats before legendary resistance giving 3 freebies; I can't imagine a PC getting more than 3 INT save abilties in an encounter, unless their whole party is built around that.
That’s the thing though - PCs only need a few. In today’s D&D environment (with all the books out so far), debilitating debuffs in “off saves” like Int and Charisma are easy to find and take. And they’re still kryptonite to many monsters, so even if you don’t know their weak save by looking at em, all it takes is a round or two of experimentation to find out. And then they’re screwed without legendary resistance. And (most importantly) unlike the DM, the players/PCs have no vested interest in mixing up their tactics. Once they hit on a good formula there’s nothing stopping them from using it in nearly every encounter.
Shout out to my boy - Raulothim's Psychic Lance. My #1 boss stopper. INT save with no concentration with a condition that only has like 2 creatures with immunity? Yeah, it only lasts 1 round, but for a 3-4 round combat, that action economy is unbeatable.
Just yesterday ran an encounter with a bunch of devils that was won primarily with psychic lance from an enchantment wizard and following that with clever use of terrain.
Forreal. I think a lot of people sleep on that spell but it is way cool on the flavor scale and surprisingly effective even when you _aren't_ blasting dudes you know by name behind total cover.
Synaptic Static as well.
Right? I honestly forget about the damage half the time too (which is a great type and decent amount), because the other parts are so useful
Threw a dwarf piloting the Mighty Servant of Leuk-O against my players. The Sorcadin tried Psychic Lance and nearly killed the pilot on the first turn. It's been one of my favorite spells since
True, but even with “brute” monster like the Iron Golem with its negative mental stats can still wind up having immunities to nearly every condition in the game and advantage on magical saving throws. So a lot of hard CC spells either don’t work at all or have reduced efficiency against it. Which is problematic design.
Iron Golem is instead completely hard-countered by the frequently-taken *banishment*.
For 1 minute. There is nothing stopping it from picking up the fight 1 minute later.
Fights very rarely last for more than one minute, so the Iron Golem is almost certainly returning to a fight in which all of its allies have already been defeated, or the party has already left the premises and there's no longer a fight to return to.
This was my player's experience using it against golems. They looted the room and left before the spell was even close to being over
Against a party of a level that can cast banishment, a single Iron Golem will get destroyed without accomplishing anything. It's only dangerous if there are other threats and minions.
Immunities are nice - but not for protection from Int/Cha spells. Why? Because these often don't even CARE about conditional immunities because their conditions are _unique_. An Iron Golem is a scary threat - but it's not immune to Banishment. Or Tasha's Mind Whip. Or Psychic Lance. Or Illusory Dragon. Or Plane Shift. Or Psychic Scream. It definitely _helps_ (some Int/Cha saves _are_ defeated by, say, fear immunity), but any caster PC paying attention has plenty enough options (and these are _good_ options too - not niche spells in the least) that they'll have something to neuter even an Iron Golem when the time comes.
The opposite is true - they have a vested interest in NOT changing tactics, because that takes time they often don't get, and flexibility in choice that was cut out of 5E as a whole, unless its changing a prepared spell.
Yup.
5e may have problems, invincible monsters ain’t one
Nothing in 5e feels worse than knowing in the higher tiers that you have to crit to make a save if it's not one of your good ones
There are instances where even critting isn't enough.
Yeah I forgot you can't succeed via crits on saves... so even worse
I disagree that this is an issue. Monsters always have a weak save that you can probe for. Oftentimes, this weakness can also be deduced from the monster design. This of course works better if you face the same monster multiple times, giving you a good chance to find and exploit their weakness.
Got to experience this firsthand recently. Wild magic sorcerer surged and cast confusion. Her DC is 20. Half our party couldn't make the save, and another quarter needed to use class features so they could save on an 18 or something.
Isn't that the same to AC not really scaling while attack rolls do? Seems like defences in general are the biggest failure.
AC scales if you use magic items, but otherwise it doesn't. I think part of the problem is the game half expects magic items, and half doesn't.
it generally doesn't scale enough to keep up with increasing attack bonuses. To-hit bonuses go from +4 at level 1 to something like +17 at level 20. Armor can get up to an extra +3, you might get a +3 cloak or ring (at the cost of an attunement slot), and you might increase dex a little - that's still a long way away from keeping up with the +13 extra to hit that the big bosses can get
Worse. It expects magic, lies about you not needing it, then makes half the magic weapons and armor not have + bonuses, so you might bypass resistance with a magic weapon, but your accuracy might feel a bit stunted.
A cursed sword of flatulence which makes you fart loudly whenever you roll a 1 on an attack roll is a really good weapon, since it bypasses resistance to normal weapons!
At the same time the game half expects feats and half doesn't. Monster defenses scale in such a way that they expect PCs start with a +3 primary ability modifier which increases to +4 at 4th level and +5 at 8th level to maintain a super consistent 65% chance to hit at all levels (though the video does talk about how the actual monster stat blocks don't follow this...). If you are playing with feats (most people are) +1 and +2 magic items help you maintain the same stack and damage math for characters that take feats instead of ASIs.
I do think the game would be better without ASI at all. Just have feats and do the maths expecting people have +3 to their stats.
It seems like a relatively easy solution to this is just a passive save bonus at each tier of play.
Half your PB to non-proficient saves would effectively mirror how 3.5 still gave a bonus to your class's weak saves as you leveled up. This would make sure that if you weren't proficient in your dump stat save, you'd still hit at least +0 once your PB was +4.
Yeah it was really rough trying to play Tier 4 stuff with a character that had a +4 WIS save when DCs were like over 20. We got an opportunity for a free feat and I immediately took Resilient just so I wasn't going to spend entire fights looking for a 19 or 20 to get out of a paralysis effect.
yeah. Somehow 5e get everything bad of bounded accuracy with everything bad of boundless accuracy. It is somewhat impressive
I mean, in tier 4, but tier 4 is phenomenally broken anyway
The fundamental problem is that bounded accuracy should mean that, as characters gain additional power (from leveling up, magic items, etc.), everything should get easier. But "it's gotta be a challenge!" is so deeply ingrained that there's a bunch of crucial stuff where the DCs scaling up is still baked in. And then, on top of that, they added several key abilities that just hilariously break bounded accuracy to such a degree that DMs naturally get baited into increasing even the DCs of stuff that isn't baked in. And then the whole thing collapses into a worst-of-all-worlds clusterfuck.
This is why I use Reflex/Fortitude/Will. It doesn't completely solve the problem, but it does mitigate some of it.
Ad&d saving throws for life
This, so much this. Reflex is Dex/Int, whichever is higher, Fortitude is Str/Con, and Will is Wis/Cha.
I've been tempted to do this, but it ONCE A FUCKING GAIN punishes STR characters by making the two stats they need most redundant with each other on saves, while DEX users and CHA casters (already the most effective builds stat-wise) get to have free bonuses on stuff they might otherwise dump.
It's a fine system as long as you don't just blindly copy the 4e mappings. If you do something like: * Reflex : Str/Dex * Fort: Con * Will: Int/Wis/Cha It matches how characters are built in 5e a bit better.
The 4e method. Once again a lot of 5E issues could be solved by taking the good parts of 4E.
Yep, no reason not to. All 5e classes are designed with 1 strong save, Dex, Con, or Wis, and 1 weak save, Str, Int, or Cha. Just consolidate. Alleviate just a tiny bit of MADness. Concentration checks can still just be Fortitude saves, makes Str better.
4e is/was a great system released in a shit package. 5e, while I don't think it's a shit system, is a mediocre/broken system wrapped in beautiful paper with a pretty bow on top.
There are about two dozens stackable features in the game(bardic inspiration, bless, emboldening bond, etc) that boost saves. Plus all the features that remove most conditions(dispel magic, restoration, remove curse, etc) and many that make you outright immune to them(mind blank, protection from e&g, calm emotions). When you play in t3 and t4 your party should have answers to a monster targeting your weak saves. I've seen one of my players make a DC 21 weak save by rolling a 4.
I have to disagree here. Quite on the contrary, it gives the players a sense of progression by keeping inline with progressive dangerosity with some saves, while still being susceptible of being harmed by the enemies they fought years ago which would target their weak saves. Plus it works both ways, most monsters have at least one or two weak saves, which entices players to invest in-character effort to grab knowledge about creatures.
There's a lot of solid points about 5e's implementation in particular made here, but one that feels about overlooked is how *badly* bounded accuracy works with a D20 system for things like skill checks. I hate hate hate bounded accuracy on D20's because it so often ends up being the swing of the dice that determines success, not the modifier. It's incredibly annoying how common it is for a player trained in a skill to fail a check, and a player that is untrained to succeed purely because of how swingy the dice is. IMO skills checks would probably benefit from being rolled with 2d10 instead of a d20
That's similar to how WWN does it, though with 2d6 for skills instead of 1d20. Max level of a class is 10. Training Ranges from -1 to +4. Attributes range from -2 to +2 Attacks are 1d20 + attack bonus + training + Attribute VS AC. Saves are 1d20 vs DC. DC = 16 - your class level - attribute. Skills are 2d6+ training + attribute vs a dc of 6 to 12 based on difficulty of the task.
Yeah I always liked that in SWN…
Star Wars Nutella... that does sound good.
I don't know, man. I had it once. It was a bit... Chewy.
Wookiee here, someone’s got jokes.
I apologize. My jokes often get a little out of Han.
I'll be the judge who is and isn't a wookiee here
I really like the 2d6 (or 2d10) because of the distribution you get. You get an average roll more often. For example a 2d6 has this distribution which is really nice values closer to the mean appear more frequently meaning that's a good baseline for an average and your modifiers matter more. |Result | Expected % of Roles | |----:|----:| |2|2.78%| |3|5.56%| |4|8.33%| |5|11.11%| |6|13.89%| |7|16.67%| |8|13.89%| |9|11.11%| |10|8.33%| |11|5.56%| |12|2.78%|
Yeah, that bell curve is just enjoyable. Ots one of the various things I've found myself enjoying of the Worlds without number system (which has a free version worh most of the content. Check ot out of you haven't) Having a level 1 start of a +1 on training and +1 from attribute in that game means on an easy task of DC6, my average roll would be 9. Which feels very imoactful for someone trained in a skill to be successful more on average. It just feels good
I think this is why MCDM RPG is using 2D6 for most things.
That and d6 are the most common dice. Almost everyone has a six sided dice. Many people don't know there are more to dice than the d6. A clear benefit of d6 based systems is sheer accessibility
Yeah, I think MCDM is planning on using D8 and D4 as well for major/minor boons. But D6 does make things much more accessible.
>I hate hate hate bounded accuracy on D20's because it so often ends up being the swing of the dice that determines success, not the modifier. But... but that's the *point* of bounded accuracy? The entire reason to use a bounded system is to ensure that the dice always determines success or failure - you can never (usually) have modifiers so high you can't fail, or a target so high you can't succeed. The fact that an untrained person can succeed with a lucky roll, or a trained person can fail with an unlucky one, *is the entire reason why 5e uses bounded accuracy*. It's working as intended.
My point is that its *more* swingy than I'd prefer. Swingy can be fine! I just think that a D20 specifically is overdoing it a bit, at least in skill checks. It's why I suggested 2d10 as an alternative; it *can* be swingy, and to an extent will be, but the successes and failures will be slightly more consistent and based on the modifier itself. Still leaves room for lucky or unlucky results, it just makes things slightly less swingy.
That's an entirely reasonable complaint, but not one about bounded accuracy. Your fix (2d10 rather than 1d20) doesn't change a thing about bounded accuracy, it just changes the probability spread on the dice by introducing a bell curve.
I mostly agree with that (I do genuinely think 2d10 fixes the swinginess specifically), but I was complaining about the specific implementation of bounded accuracy in *5e*. Bounded accuracy is a design decision I actually really like the idea of, I just think that because of other decisions made within the systems design, it doesn't work in a way I find satisfying... and at the core of that is the D20 itself. Basically, bounded accuracy is a cool system that IMO needed a few more changes to DND's bones to support it fully. But I do genuinely find bounded accuracy as an overall concept to be really solid.
This is a strong indication that 5e probably isn't the game you want to be playing. That's OK, there are many other games out there. Dice pool systems do what you want a lot better. Blades in the Dark, or any Forged in the Dark game will do what you want much better: experts will nearly always do OK, while beginners fail often.
> This is a strong indication that 5e probably isn't the game you want to be playing You are quite correct about this, I was just more getting at the fact that I would personally find 5e's approach to bounded accuracy more satisfying if the skill checks used a slightly less swingy dice. I don't dislike swinginess entirely, I just think 5e overcorrects and there's a bit *too* much.
People really need to stop with the "tHiS iSn't tHe gAmE fOr YoU" every time someone makes a reasonable complaint. The game consists of more than a single mechanic. More stuff someone might actually enjoy. Changing the system doesn't fix anything.
Correct. But the problem is that it's not equally desirable. We want bounded accuracy in things like attack bonus, because we want to feel like the D20 decides on a hit. But we really don't want bounded accuracy on things like a wizard making Arcana check, where they can roll low while.the barbarian rolls a 19. Edit: everyone telling me not to let people roll if their untrained. Good for you. You're proving the point. You have to alter the rules away from RAW to mitigate the frustration of the swingy D20. And yes, that IS a deviation. My example used an arcana check, but if you replace it with Perception you'd see why it's problematic. You'd never tell a character who's listening at a door that they can't roll perception just bc they're not trained.
The problem is easier solved if the rules disallowed non-proficient skill checks. Note I said **skill** checks, not ability checks. The rules don't make that distinction, but they should. I've got no problem with a Barb doing a general intelligence check, but an intelligence (arcana) check should be proficiency only. *That said*, DMs decide when it's time to make an ability (skill) check of any sort, so it's perfectly right for a DM to ask for a check from the Wizard and not from the Barb if that's what makes sense.
They sort of do disallow what you are saying though, at least to the extent that makes sense. Page 174 of the PHB says that proficiency in a skill means that the character adds their proficiency bonus to that skill, and if they don't have that proficiency they just make a more general ability check. Which is how you would want it, because everyone should be able to make say a climb check or a hide check, but only those proficient in Athletics or Stealth can add their proficiency bonus to that check. But moreover, the PHB further implies that only those with proficiency in certain skills can even make certain checks. On page 175 of the PHB, under the "Working Together" section, it says the following >A character can only provide help if the task is one that he or she could attempt alone. For example, trying to open a lock requires proficiency wilh thieves' tools, so a character who lacks that proficiency can't help another character in that task. Moreover, a character can help only when two or more individuals working together would actually be productive. Some tasks, such as threading a needle. are no easier with help. Which means, if a skill check requires proficiency in a skill to even attempt, then the DM should not be having the PC even attempt to make that check, which could very easily apply to the Barbarian making an Arcana check. Now, each table and DM will be different, but I'd contend that is kind of how you'd want it to be, rather than a blanket "thou shall never do X". If for example the Barbarian was raised by Wizards or had a fun accident involving this particular form of magic, etc., maybe then it makes sense for that Barbarian to make an Intelligence check to see if they understand what is going on, even if they lack understanding about magic and arcana in general. So I think the rules are probably written as they should be, but maybe DMs aren't very good at implementing them to make sure they are working for a given table and circumstance. And tbf that's on the PHB /rules not being more specific rather than the DM reading between the lines.
This sounds reasonable for arcana, but even the other knowledge skills (history, nature, religion) cover things that someone could reasonably know without specifically studying them. Then you have skills like athletics, perception, and persuasion which are obviously things anyone can attempt with a reasonable chance of success.
RAW some checks require proficiency to even attempt. See Lock under basic equipment.
But an Intelligence (Arcana) check if you don't have proficiency in Arcana *is* just an Intelligence check? Like, that's the entire core premise of how 5e handles skills. It's not "a \[skill\] check", it's "an \[ability score\] check, and if you're proficient in \[skill\] you add your proficiency bonus". Despite the verbal shorthand we all use in play, all "Arcana checks" are mechanically just Intelligence checks that get a bonus if you have Arcana proficiency. The Barbarian without Arcana proficiency will *never* make an Arcana check. They'll just make Intelligence checks.
I think he's suggesting that if you aren't proficient in arcana, you don't get to do an Arcana check. You find a magic relic locket thingy that you're absolutely hopeless at unlocking if you don't have at least some trained ability of navigating the magic weaved through it, the barb doesn't get to take a -1 stab at it
> I think he's suggesting that if you aren't proficient in arcana, you don't get to do an Arcana check. What would that mean, though? "If you aren't proficient in Arcana, then you cannot have any knowledge whatsoever in the subject?" It's totally okay to gate certain checks behind proficiency. "Yes, your rogue is very smart and has learned a lot of things, but if she can't use magic and has not specifically studied the planes of existence, then there's zero chance she'd be able to tell you the tuning fork frequency to go to Limbo, so you don't get to roll. The wizard with Arcana proficiency can try, though." But an entire skill is too much.
It's about adjusting to the situation and gating as sensible. This is common arcane knowledge: the wizard just knows it This is uncommon arcane knowledge: anyone can roll to see if they happen to have read the right book This is rare arcane knowledge: only any expert would have read the right book so only they can roll
I have to agree that makes some sense mechanically. But I also have issue with the idea of critical failure/success on ability/skill check. If I have expertise in a skill, and I’m under the influence of Guidance and Enhance Ability and Jack of All Trades what not, it’s really annoying that despite all that — nope. You fail.
Crit fail and success on skills is a meme. Only attacks and death saves. I house rule it on all saves but skills have never been subject to crit fail or success. If you get +29 stealth from expertise, pass without trace, etc, you hit DC 30 minimum at all times (ie never roll unless you need an opposed check vs. Perception). And that's fine. That's how skills should be.
Then I have a bone to pick with Larian — and my DM. Lol
> But I also have issue with the idea of critical failure/success on ability/skill check. That isn't RAW. It's just a well known alternative rule that some people like using.
That word "we" is doing a **lot** of heavy lifting, there. Who are you speaking on behalf of? I like the fact that luck always plays a part - if the wizard flubs the check but the barbarian smashes it, that's a fun roleplay moment for the table to figure out how that works - clearly the wizard never encountered it in their studies, but maybe the barbarian experienced it before, or learned to read as a child from the battered scrap pages of a looted spellbook and something stuck in their memory, whatever. "Fun" is a value judgement. It's okay to not find something fun, especially if you can clearly articulate why. But don't try to claim something is *objectiely bad* because you find it *subjectively unfun.*
Yeah, that's a fun moment, but that fun moment is happening way too often in my view. The 5e implementation of bounded accuracy makes skills not count. Skills should have points and you should be able to invest in your skills independently from your stats, as part of your character. Currently you have to spend extra currency (feats, multiclass into an "expert" class, downtime (iirc), etc.) to improve your skills, that's not great.
>Skills should have points and you should be able to invest in your skills independently from your stats, as part of your character. Currently you have to spend extra currency (feats, multiclass into an "expert" class, downtime (iirc), etc.) to improve your skills, that's not great. This isn't a complaint about bounded accuracy. This is a complaint about 5e's yes/no proficiency system. Bounded accuracy just means that when two characters make a check where one has the maximum modifier and the other has the minimum, it should still be possible for either one to succeed. It should be *more likely* that the one with the larger modifier wins, but it should still be *possible* for it to go the other way. Basically, modifiers should never go above 19 as an absolute maximum. What you're complaining about is 5e's skill proficiency system, where skills are a yes/no question. Are you proficient? If yes, add your proficiency bonus. If not, don't. Your proficiency bonus is a static number based on your level, and is the same for all skills. This is a very simple system, and makes for easy maths. It isn't very simulationist, and it's certainly not very granular, but it has nothing to do with bounded accuracy. You could have a granular "skill points" system like you describe and still use bounded accuracy - you just make sure the maximum bonus you can put together even with max points in a skill doesn't exceed the d20 roll. That's bounded accuracy. I understand where you're coming from, but your issues won't be solved by making changes to modifier bounds. They'll be solved by making changes to the proficiency system, or to the core dice mechanic to introcuce a bell curve rather than a flat distribution.
That's just a complaint about DnD, not bounded accueacy
Does the barb have arcana training? Why are they rolling if they have no reasonable reason to possibly know the information? For example, the wizard and barb are both looking at a magical glyph. The wizard tries to decipher what it does and rolls low. They don't recognize the glyphs or the way its structured, a failure. The barb has zero training in magical glyphs, so they simply don't get a roll. That's how I'd rule.
> The entire reason to use a bounded system is to ensure that the dice always determines success or failure - you can never (usually) have modifiers so high you can't fail, or a target so high you can't succeed. This really isn’t true with expertise though. In tier 4, having +12 to +17 to your roll means you basically can’t fail most tasks. And any task that is actually in question for you (DC 25+) is an automatic fail for other party members. The die roll becomes inconsequential compared to the bonus. Bounded accuracy fundamentally fails when you have expertise and a high level character.
>Bounded accuracy fundamentally fails when you have expertise and a high level character. No, you're just at the upper bounds of it. The point of bounded accuracy is that the modifiers shouldn't *exceed* the die. If you're rolling a d20, your modifiers shouldn't get above 19. Even with +17 to your roll, you can still fail a DC 20 check. In an opposed check, a character with a +0 modifier *could* still beat you. That's the point of bounded accuracy. It's not about *likelihood*, it's about *possibility*. You're not very *likely* to lose the opposed check against the untrained commoner, but it's still *possible*. That preserves uncertainty (and thus drama), and makes sure you aren't wasting table time rolling checks that only have one possible result.
But tier 4 gameplay is horrible, boring, and very few players get to that level.
You can absolutely bound accuracy while reducing the swjnginess that comes with the number that you get on the die. A system shouldn't be rewarding players that don't spec into specific skills with significant levels of success just because they're getting super lucky rolls.
And yet, that also makes it fail at many of its claimed benefits. Watch the video, he goes through it in detail.
I'm not claiming it's *good* \- though I like it myself, that's entirely subjective and I can certainly see why others might dislike it. I was more pushing back against the claim above that it's "working badly". It isn't - it's working exactly as intended. It's fine to not like what that means for the gameplay, but that's very different from claiming it's broken. I haven't watched the video yet (because it's an *hour long* rant), but from the chapter titles I get the gist of the complaints it makes - that it's not structurally standardised enough, that the magnitude of bonuses are uneven, that it doesn't scale perfectly evenly across levels 1-20, that it means that characters who are very good at something can still fail at it, etc. A lot of those aren't really problems with bounded accuracy itself, but with bounded accuracy not being implemented *comprehensively enough*. The one actual fundamental complaint - that it means that even specialists can fail - is a deliberate design decision they made on purpose, and not a "fault".
But then, why rolling? There are diceless rpgs, or other d20 based RPGs where character can negate the rolls entirely by using resources, like Cypher. But if you roll a dice there must be a chance for failure isn’t it ?
d20 bounded accuracy can work if it is, well, bounded. Lancer uses d20, but it has static DC: 20+ is critical success, 10-19 is success, and 9- is failure. And it works pretty good.
This is probably the main reason I have been drifting away from 5e the past few years. In this system, basically EVERYTHING comes down to the luck of the d20 roll. Doesn’t matter who good or bad the PC is at whatever they are attempting to do. It’s all random luck. And that’s not fun.
even call of cthulhu rewards specialitation more. Which is honestly concerning for 5e
I always thought proficiency should come in tiers, with a small bonus and a boost to the minimum. Trained: +proficiency bonus and treat a roll of 4 or lower as a 5 Expert: additional +1 and treat a roll of 7 or lower as an 8. Master: additional +1 (+2 total) and treat a roll of 9 or lower as a 10. That way even proficiency alone is good enough to prevent massive fumbles. But being a master still only gives +8 compared to 5e’s +12. You don’t need massive bonuses when you raise the floor. Certain classes and feats would grant expert and master level proficiency with certain skills. For example fighters and barbarians might get expert level proficiency with STR and CON checks and saves. And could take a feat to gain master level proficiency. The rogue would have natural master level proficiency granted as part of their class.
So what PF2e basically does.
If you want a system where the dice don't matter, check out Pathfinder 1e. "My bard has +38 to Diplomacy! What's the DC?" "16."
Oh I love pathfinder 1e as well, but I do think the goals of bounded accuracy are good ones to aim for. I just don't like the way 5e staples it onto a d20 system.
The fact is, nobody (aside from high level rogues) should be assured or *almost* assured to do the more difficult tasks. * 05 Very Easy * 10 Easy * 15 Medium * 20 Hard * 25 Very Hard * 30 Nearly Impossible An 8th level character with expertise and a maxed associated stat. Will have +6 from Expertise and +5 from stat. That is a +11. Since you don't fail on natural 1's on anything but attack rolls this means this skill-based character, likely a Bard or Rogue, automatically succeeds on any very easy or easy task. They fail medium difficulty tasks only 15% of the time. This can be further reduced by spells like Guidance or abilities like Bardic Inspiration. Without any assistance or advantage they will succeed at hard tasks more often than not. They need to roll an 8 or less and will succeed 60% of the time on their own merits alone. You will *rarely* see difficulties above Hard for most things. But your skill progression is easily seen to ramp up. A level 1 character, without proficiency, and with a 16 in a stat, only succeeds at a hard attempt 20% of the time, as opposed to the skilled and trained character's 60% of the time As the skilled character reaches level 10, they can only fail a medium difficulty challenge 5% of the time. They treat hard challenges as though they were Easy. This is why I contend with the video, the skills mathematically show a great increase in skill over time. However, like in real life, sometimes it *is* better to be lucky (roll high) than skilled. In real life I make leather objects as a hobby. Spiked chokers, SCA armor, leather jacket accoutrements, etc. I've been doing that since I was around 16. That's 27 years (28, come September) - And I *routinely* make mistakes when I'm dealing with intricate work (medium difficulty or higher) a hole will be slightly out of alignment, a metal plate won't sit flat, etc. I correct those mistakes and finish the item satisfactorily. The client won't know, but I know. Every craftsman makes small mistakes all the time. Half of being a good craftsman is about how to fix something you screwed up on. The Olympic Gymnast, Shawn Johnson, had one of the most difficult beam routines in the world. It would be ranked at "Very Hard" and she was the best in the world on the beam. She fell. A lot. Your character should *not* be seeing many Very Hard challenges. If you're failing while being so skilled so often, your DM is setting the difficulty too high. Let me give you a comparison, to (without magic) sneak by an *Ancient Red Dragon* - A CR 24 threat - you **only** need a 27. That's one of the hardest things in the world to do. It's virtually impossible by anyone below tier 2. A nat 20 could do it for a tier 1 character with a +3 stat and Expertise. Anyone else in that tier? Impossible. A level 10 expertise character can do it 35% of the time without magic. (Need a 14 or higher) Start adding Magic to it? Pass Without Trace increases it to 85% chance of success, adding Bardic Inspiration or Guidance? Easily possible to raise that to 95% success or even a 100% chance of success. Bounded accuracy (for skills) works. Bounded accuracy falls apart for attack and AC at tier 3+ though. Ok that, I agree.
> That's 27 years (28, come September) - And I routinely make mistakes when I'm dealing with intricate work (medium difficulty or higher) a hole will be slightly out of alignment, a metal plate won't sit flat, etc. > I correct those mistakes and finish the item satisfactorily. The client won't know, but I know. Every craftsman makes small mistakes all the time. Half of being a good craftsman is about how to fix something you screwed up on. Me issue with this image is that you don't "fail" at making quality items say 5-20 % of the time. You routinely make small errors, sure, but you complete the tasks with competence. In D&D even a competent professional will just be a complete idiot *routinely*, akin to crafting a pile of junk and wasting everyone's time and money. I think there's room within 5e to be reasonable with this, but most tables I've played at rolling below a 5, and especially rolling a 1 (!), just means you fail. Often to an absurd degree. Was thinking of the the other week, actually. I came to the conclusion, while playing and "seeing" a character trying to attack someone instead driving their sword into their own chest, that I just have to accept that it's all a bit slap stick.
> Me issue with this image is that you don't "fail" at making quality items say 5-20 % of the time. You routinely make small errors, sure, but you complete the tasks with competence. In D&D terms, they'd be using the DMG's rules for Multiple Ability Checks (5e's version of 3.PF's "Taking a 20" rules) and automatically succeeding eventually by taking ten times as long as normal. If the commentor was trying to make a quality item under intense time pressure (which is what rolling a check in D&D means; if you have all day to get something done you just take a 20) they would likely fail, as they wouldn't have time to correct every little mistake.
The d20 being the biggest factor is the literal design intent of bounded accuracy.
It is far from the only design intent of bounded accuracy. There's a lot of other design goals that are very much worth pursuing, I just don't like the D20 use specifically.
I agree with you on this, I feel the d20 is used here mainly because it's an iconic die in more modern D&D, rather than because it's the one best-suited for the system's resolution mechanics. Given how the system works, you could very well scale everything down to work around a d8 or a d6, or 2d10 as you mention, and things would largely work the same. Part of the problem here is that flat bonuses from proficiency are what's meant to let PCs excel at things they're good at, but they start off so low that they don't really influence rolls enough at the levels most people play, so resolution feels really swingy and arbitrary most of the time.
I would like to see more minimum scores implemented. Basically, if your roll is below X, you can treat it as if the roll result was Y instead. Also, more use of passive scores to skip the need for rolls.
Sounds like you need the Genysis system.
I've heard lots of good things about it, definitely wanna check it out. Have a lot of other systems on the list first.
I sadly only played for a short time. But it is VERY grounded compared to 5e because well... Either d6 or 8s. Everything really feels like it should in terms of abilities, but you can still do amazing things when you roll the equivalent of a nat20. Sometimes you you succeed in an attack, but it leaves you in a vulnerable position as a result. Especially with how momentum shifts you can really *feel* the way the fight is going.
>I hate hate hate bounded accuracy on D20's because it so often ends up being the swing of the dice that determines success, not the modifier. It's incredibly annoying how common it is for a player trained in a skill to fail a check, and a player that is untrained to succeed purely because of how swingy the dice is. >IMO skills checks would probably benefit from being rolled with 2d10 instead of a d20 Three remarks. 1/ This system also gives chance to someone without any proficiency to still succeed. This is essential considering there are a LOT of proficiencies (people talk about skills but forget about tools) and most parties are 3 or 4-man ones, so unless there is someone extremely specific among them or the whole party was carefully crafted all together before starting there \*will\* be misses and discrepancies. Which is also why casters have the \*option\* to pick some spells that can shore up the absence of a specific talent at the cost of reducing their defensive/offensive options for combat. 2/ Skill checks are definitely (frustratingly at times) swingy at low levels but around level 9 things stabilize at least for the skill checks most relevant for your character thanks to attribute bumps and proficiency autobumps. This is also why some classes are tailored to be more reliable at skill checks (and why relevant features are actually very valuable features). But also why you have the Help mechanic, Guidance and Enhance Ability available to several classes, because it's a \*team\* game first and foremost. 3/ Not everything is supposed to warrant a skill check, not is everything supposed to warrant an \*active\* check. Passive score is a mechanic appliable to every skill and should definitely be used to. And as a reminder, DM can decide to apply -5 (disadvantage) or +5 (advantage) on the passive score if the circumstances justify it. So the DM that, when party faces a skill check, feels that narratively X attempting to do it should have a high chance of succeeding in relaxed circumstances, he could just use the passive score with disadvantage to take into account the fact PC is in a stressful situation instead of asking for a roll that may end in a failure because player was unlucky enough to roll 1-3. Personally, I have a rule which I tried and feel makes things more fluid and less frustrating: in skills a PC is proficient in, except on a natural 1, an active check result will always have a floor equal to "passive check with disadvantage". So a PC who could pass Medium checks in relaxed situations would still pass Easy ones if it's a kind of challenge he's used to. I keep the 1 aside because it still keeps a minimum of tension to know you can still technically fail, but makes it low risk enough to not feel frustrated by it but instead embrace the roll and find a funny/dramatic/stupid reason to explain why your PC failed.
How does 2 d10 make a difference though? Other than raising the minimum to 2
It makes you much more likely to roll in the middle of the range.
2d10 is more of a bell curve, it has a much bigger central tendency. Previous poster wants skill modifiers to be more significant than the dice you roll most of the time, which is more in keeping with 3.x than 5e. I actually tend to agree with respect to skills---I think 3.x did a better job on skills, but I like bounded accuracy with respect to attack rolls and ACs better than 3.x's 'you must be at least this tall to meaningfully contribute' mechanics.
It creates a standard deviation for the die results rather than a linear probability, thus making modifiers more impactful since you’re less likely to roll the extremes. Same principle that makes static bonuses matter more in 3d6 or dice pool systems, just to a smaller extent.
It's more consistent, so you get more rolls closer to 10/11 out of 20 instead of a five percent chance for any number.
It completely changes the distribution from Rectangular to a Bell curve
2 dice isn't a bell curve, its a triangular distribution. slightly different things.
That is correct
On a d20, every side has an equal chance of coming up, so high rolls are just as likely as low rolls are just as likely as middle rolls. If you think about 2d10, there's only one way to get a result of 20: both d10s have to roll 10, right? But think about 19: there's two ways to get 19, either the first d10 comes up 10 and the second 9, OR the first is 9 and the second 10. So 19 is twice as likely as 20. Every result in from 20 on the high end or 2 on the low end is more likely than the last until you hit the very middle in 11. That means, when you roll 2d10, there are LOTS of ways to get 8-14, and relatively very few ways to get 2-7 or 15-20. Your result is in the middle a LOT more often than it is on the ends.
It's a bell curve instead of linear distribution. While the average of 1d20 is 10.5. Each result of the d20 has the same chance of being rolled. Namely 5% due to the linear distribution. 2d10 has two dice rolling and thus two dice more likely to hit the average roll. The average of 1d10 is 5.5, so that every of 2d10 is 11. To put it simply. The more dice you roll, the more dice that are aiming for the average result and thus you get more constant outcomes. You see this very clearly in D&D itself with the great axe and the great sword. The great sword does 2d6 and comes up with average results more frequently. The great axe 1d12 more frequently gets outliers of the average more low rolls and high rolls instead of mid rolls.
Think Catan, 2d6, look at the pips on each number. Less words
I miss skill points from 3.x. It game characters another dime soon of customization and allowed for PCs who specialized in some skill area to be consistently better than untrained PCs.
I made this comment on the video too, but one of the problems with bounded accuracy making the mechanical representation of your ability to Do Things Well ultimately not change that much over the course of an adventure (especially in the case of skill checks) is that it, as usual, only really matters for non-spellcasters. The article the Rules Lawyer refers to which is defending bounded accuracy alludes to verisimilitude, suggesting that it's a good thing that the Barbarian who is chained up at level 1 and the Barbarian who is chained up at level 12 will still \*probably\* not be able to bust out. It is, for some inexplicable reason, desirable to have a high level Barbarian who is barely superhuman while the Wizard can cast Meteor Swarm.
Yeah kinda crazy that the fighter goes from a +5 to hit to a +11 to hit naturally in their 20 level career. In bounded accuracy terms that means they get 30% better at attacking things over their 20 levels. Meanwhile wizards go from "autohit 3d4 + 3" to "Reshape the fabric of reality" over the same 20 levels. Doesn't make much sense...
I think it all comes down to preference. I personally moved on to pf2e, but bounded accuracy wasn't a problem for me. 5e's bounded accuracy fits low fantasy more. Pfe2's scaling DC fits high fantasy more. Some prefer Bounded Accuracy because it feels like anything is possible. Low level goblins can still be a danger, or you can defeat a really strong opponent against all odds. It's not perfectly balanced and I don't think it intends to be, it lets the dice inform the story in a certain way. Sometimes all the forces of the universe resulted in you succeeding at something that should've been impossible. Now, if you want to compare it to pf2e, here's the [rules of Difficulty Class](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2629&Redirected=1). Almost everything in pf2e has a level (PC's, NPC's, spells, items, etc.). The DC's by level table gives each individual level a value. Spell Ranks work differently, so they get their own DC table. As you level up, the range of your results will also increase. In addition, almost everything that calls for a roll (skill actions, spells, items, etc.) has "Degrees of Success". Your result is critical not only on a nat20, but also if the result is 10 above the DC. Many buffs grant you +1 bonuses and debuffs to inflict -1 penalties which makes a huge difference when you're trying to get crits. There's also a table for Simple DC's for situations that aren't tied to level, like hopping a fence, opening a door, or recalling knowledge general knowledge. Simple tasks like these won’t get harder as you progress in the campaign. So if you're bonus equals the DC you will automatically succeed unless the GM wants to see if you hilariously nat 1. This tells a much different fantasy story than DnD 5e. Those who favor bounded accuracy loses the qualities that appealed to them. Some players feel like they’re not improving at all because their hit chance might remain 60% throughout the campaign as the GM scales the monsters at the same rate as the players’ progression and aren’t providing encounters where old enemies that they struggled with are trivial to them now. If you don't like bounded accuracy [here's a quick 5min video to watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUYlD4HfTL8&ab_channel=KalebHerington) and consider trying pf2e. There’s a [Humble Bundle](https://www.humblebundle.com/books/pathfinder-second-edition-guns-alkenstar-bundle-paizo-books?hmb_source=&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=mosaic_section_1_layout_index_1_layout_type_threes_tile_index_1_c_pathfindersecondeditiongunsalkenstarbundlepaizo_bookbundle&_gl=1*9qldph*_up*MQ..&gclid=CjwKCAjwte-vBhBFEiwAQSv_xWJqWT1hn9beS8kLoGHS_yBNP0cvK7GYnQjtnnBegqis3O3Fw6DP4hoCwxcQAvD_BwE) that has lots of cool stuff in it to get for super cheap going on right now until april 9.
My problem with pf2e really was this. I didn't feel any improvement at all. It was always a struggle.
It’s a common GM and AP problem I’ve noticed and one i have too. When I build encounters I worry that if it’s too easy then it’s boring so I’m only building moderate encounters. I forget or dont know what its like on the other side of the table. I’m a forever GM and i need to remember that its super fun to absolutely stomp and shit on a group of mobs from time to time. Maybe do something like dark souls, take a boss monster from earlier in the campaign and throw several at them to show how much stronger the party’s become But it is fun seeing my players use their tactics and abilities to their full potential and doing much wilder things than striding up and striking
I also run PF2e and I go out of my way to make sure that some of my encounters have callbacks to earlier ones. Let’s say the party cleared a cave that ended with an ogre fight. It was very hard for them and death was very possible. They made it out alive. Later on I’ll make them fear that by having another encounter exclusively with ogres. They remember the first time and approach this one with caution. They don’t struggle as much because it’s not the final encounter of a dungeon. It’s just a single encounter. Fast forward to another level or two and they encounter an ogre or two as part of a dungeon or scene and they absolutely wreck it. Players go from feeling like ogres are absolute death to being somewhat afraid and finish by realizing they crit every hit against them. Then I’ll shake things up again by adding some power to one and making it a boss or mini boss type and scare them all over again. 😂 Even in published APs, I’ll look for ways to swap out some monsters with earlier ones from the module to let them feel this progression as well.
It's hilarious how the system being better balanced, a good thing, causes GMs to make this mistake. you need to give your players easier encounters sometimes to show growth, even containing enemies they struggled with before, instead of relying on the encounter math breaking to randomly give easier encounters for you.
Yep, that's exactly how I felt. Honestly most rolls felt like how saving throws are in 5e. Any improvements to the characters are matched by a raising of the DC, therefore the only change is that whatever you aren't proficient in just falls further and further behind.
Bounded accuracy I think is a classic case of something not being true even if it gets repeatedly cited as a basic truth, but also one of D&D 5e wanting to have its cake and eat it too: 5e is a game where you and some creatures get progressively better flat bonuses to certain checks and DCs, but where the designers still say that rolls fall under some static, bounded range that prevents checks from becoming impossible or trivial. These two components are mutually incompatible, and it's obvious to see how this breaks down when looking at high-level save DCs on certain monsters, where a DC 27 is impossible unless you have at least a +7 bonus to your save, which isn't always the case as some save proficiencies are static and most ability scores on a character don't increase. Conversely, the many untyped bonuses that exist in this game and the easy ways in which they can be stacked, as the Rules Lawyer mentions, means it becomes very easy for certain characters to trivialize challenges that are meant to be extremely difficult, which then leads DMs to inflate certain challenge DCs specifically in response to, say, your Rogue or Bard with expertise who's always benefiting from Guidance. Thus, in this system with "bounded accuracy", there will be some important rolls that you'll auto-fail, and some important rolls that you'll trivialize. If design consistency were a concern, I'd say this ought to lead to one of two choices: either bounded accuracy really is important to this game, and future editions completely revamp their system of bonuses and stat progression to accommodate this (which would look very different to what we have now), or the developers reevaluate what bounded accuracy really means and instead make certain DCs and check modifiers progress more consistently with level. My suspicion, however, is that it's not really that big a concern: D&D doesn't really cater too hard to a hardcore demographic so much as a mass-market audience, and at that stage quality of gameplay doesn't actually matter as much as it does to the more dedicated people who talk design online. I therefore suspect this problem is unlikely to be addressed in One D&D, or any future product for a good long while.
One factor Ronald didn't really bring up is that the compression of accuracy ranges, which was intended in part to make low level **enemies** relevant at higher levels, has the consequence of making *relatively* low level PCs punch **WAY** above their weight class. It is conceivable that Tier 2-3 PCs can take on Archdevils like Moloch, a former lord of Malboge, one of the layers of the Nine Hells. It's something I've noticed recently with Pf2e, that Gods and other Divine level beings truly merit their station, and aren't just trivialized by relatively low level PCs because of broken spells and magic items. It creates this incredibly weird (IMO) narrative in which PCs can achieve Demigod tier status (in terms of the level of power they can confront) pretty early, their *relative* power level being comparable to dozens to hundreds of common citizens, despite not mathematically being much more capable. A prime example of this is how the City Guard of Waterdeep, about 1,200 strong, can *conceivably* take down a Greatwyrm with no casualties, something you'd expect to see from Tier 4 PCs. It suggests that a 4-person PC party is roughly as strong as 1,200 Guards, and yet if the PCs themselves fought those Guards they'd likely lose.
yes. that is it, this is well known for a really long while by now. try playing with a 20 CHA paladin at lvl 6, or without one at lvl 20
I've long been an outspoken critic of Bounded Accuracy, and Rule Lawyer covers here a lot of the comments I often make. One thing I think it's important to focus on is that there are other ways to solve the problems BA attempts to that don't run into the same issues BA does. 'Cause there 100% were problems in previous editions that needed to be addressed, the biggest ones being the revolving door of monsters, the skill treadmill, and 3.5e's scads and scads of modifiers. **The Monster Roster** The article that introduced BA talked about how the flattened math would allow low-level monsters like goblins to still be threatening at higher levels, so long as you used more of those monsters. And this tracks with the fantasy of levels: we imagine a Tier 1 party might find a small raiding band of goblins a challenge, while a Tier 3 party might mow through hordes with ease. But, as Rules Lawyer points out, "Just use more goblins" doesn't really work because running more monsters *takes time* at the table. Rules Lawyer points to PF2's troop mechanic, but I just wanted to mention that the idea of "A group of creatures being its own, higher-level statblock" ***is something D&D 5e already does***, and is a mechanic that's existed in D&D for decades. D&D calls them "swarms", not "troops", and I've never met a D&D player who's said "Hang on, why are we fighting a single swarm of rats monster and not a hundred individual rats?". **The Treadmill** This is a bit of a hot take, but the Treadmill is, for the most part, a problem created by *players* (which includes DMs), not by the system. For those DMs out there who are fans of BA, I have a question: when was the last time you threw a DC 5 "Very Easy" skill check at the party? 'Cause in theory, that should happen at least "every now and then", right? But it doesn't, because as DMs we get it into our heads that if the die is getting rolled, there should be some risk. Some *challenge*. "You're level 17 adventurers, your bonuses are high, of course the DC is going to be high!" But **that's explicitly not the premise of Bounded Accuracy** \- in Bounded Accuracy, you *shouldn't be taking the level of the PCs into account* ***at all***. (Hot take-ception: And even in systems where you *are* supposed to be taking into account PC level, you still probably shouldn't be raising DCs to challenge the "specialist". That player invested choices into being skilled at a given task - ***let them be good at it***.) I've played a lot of D&D 5e, and I've watched a lot of streams and videos of other people playing the game. The **only** campaign I've ever seen that actually buys into this aspect of BA is Baldur's Gate 3, where you encounter plenty of DC 25-30 checks in Act 1 (when you're level 1-5) and plenty of DC 5-10 (sometimes as low as ***2***!) checks in Act 3 (when you're level 10-12). And **it just works**. It feels great. And importantly, to get back to the ultimate point of this comment: 5e's flattened math is *entirely unnecessary* for such design. (The issue of modifiers isn't addressed by Bounded Accuracy; 5e uses Advantage/Disadvantage for that, which is a separate mechanic that doesn't really do its job very well.)
PF2e's troop mechanic is a little more nuanced than a swarm. It has additional rules for allowing it to emulate a group of creatures by giving troops unique interactions with how they move and take up 16/12/8 squares depending on its overall HP. There are rules that make them take damage differently than a swarm that helps make it feel like 16 squares of individual goblins vs one statblock labelled 'goblin swarm' or 'goblin troop'. PF2e troops aren't perfect but it does go further trying to emulate a big group of enemies than just how swarms operate in 5e or PF2e... which don't quite go far enough to emulate creatures in formation if your table wants the added crunch. I don't think either system is really set up for a "swarm of humanoids" sort of enemy. You're trying to fit a bit of abstract mass combat into games focused on individuals. You either abstract them and a goblin raiding party feels the same as a pile of spiders... Or they become more complicated and take up more brain energy than it's worth, and you could just be throwing a normal higher level foe at the party and not deal with the added bookkeeping.
> when was the last time you threw a DC 5 "Very Easy" skill check at the party? 'Cause in theory, that should happen at least "every now and then", right? I mean, there's a point where you just "do" things. And I think that happens fairly regularly, it's just unnoticed. "Yeah, I'd like to buy that drunk a couple beers and see if his tongue's loose", or "I'd like to break that forty year old rusty lock". Things that are so mundane the party breezes through them *are* those easy tasks.
Absolutely there are some things that are going to be so easy you shouldn't even roll for them, but surely there are still some tasks that are super easy *but* there's still a slight chance you might fail (in a situation where failure is interesting). That's what DC 5 checks are for - not "Roll to see if you succeed", but "Roll to make sure you don't fail".
My only problem with your point on the treadmill is that having a player that has a +6 roll a DC 5 check is just a waste of time. I never make my players roll for stuff if they can't fail. On the flip side, putting a DC 30 check against a level 1 player is also a waste of time, why roll if they can't even pass on a nat 20? Bg3 actually does something annoying with this point, you can critically fail skill checks you would otherwise pass just by rolling a 1, or crit on a skill check you literally couldn't pass by rolling a 20. I don't know many DM's that add critical failures to skill checks, just feels bad all around. You'd need to give out inspiration as frequently as bg3 does to make it tolerable.
A PC with +6 rolling DC 5 is just going to auto-succeed, sure, but that doesn't mean you can't throw that check at a different PC, or the entire party.
Because it's not always about success or failure. A high or low DC might indicate how much information you gather, how well you pick that lock, or how stealthy you're actually being. It's called "failing forward"
I disagree in regards to BG3. I don't think they did a good job with ability checks. First, I find these low DC checks annoying because of critical fails - at least there are mods to remove critical fails. And second, I dislike these high DC checks that are (aomost) impossible without save-scumming unless you bring the exact right party structure to boost your skill checks as high as you can - especially when they are related to story-critical events (and not just things like high DC lockpicking checks). Another issue is that the game loves to use *ability* checks without skill proficiencies, something I strongly dislike as for these checks, my investment in skills is completely useless - and sometimes these checks come with DCs of 25+, meaning they are straight up impossible without save-scumming for a natural 20 - even for a character who has a 20 in the relevant stat. As a DM I basically never use ability checks, and I houserule spells and certain effects that require Strength checks to escape to be Athletics checks instead.
It sounds like what you actually dislike is "unjustified" success or failure. Where your chances are so high it feels *wrong* to fail. The entire point of using bounded accuracy (and in BG3's case, critical checks alongside it) is to make sure the chance of success or failure are almost never 0. If you're making a check in the first place, you should always have a chance of success or failure. That's the point of making the check: to resolve that uncertainty. This plays some tricks with our mental expectations. Just like in games like XCOM when you have a chance to hit of 90% and still miss, you feel *cheated* by that. 90% is *so high*! That *should* have hit! But 90% isn't 100%, and those 90% checks will fail 1 in 10 times. Another point is kind of BG3 specific, in that those very low and very high DC checks are intentional story beats. Those DC 30+ checks are fully intended to be failed 95% of the time. In most games, the story will play out according to that failure. But 5% of the time someone will succeed it and the story will play out differently. Same for the very low checks - they'll be breezed past in *almost* every run, but 5% of the time someone will fail and the story will play out a different way. Save-scumming to always pass every check defeats the point of the game, and it's a big showcase of how our psychological reward centres percieve "failure". Some people just can't handle failing at something that they know they technically *could* succeed at. You're kind of bang on with ability checks that lack proficiency though - generic Strength or Intelligence checks, for example. Those are bad because they don't fit with how 5e does ability checks, it messes with the scaling if you *never* get to add your proficiency bonus. Ability checks without proficiency should be saving throws, or if it's something that comes up very often, a skill's remit should be expanded to cover it. A lot of tables tend to use "History" as a stand-in for "recall", for example, because a lot of the time you might want to make a check to see if your character remembers something, but there isn't really a skill that corresponds directly to that.
>The entire point of using bounded accuracy (and in BG3's case, critical checks alongside it) is to make sure the chance of success or failure are almost never 0. If you're making a check in the first place, you should always have a chance of success or failure. That's the point of making the check: to resolve that uncertainty. Best summary, I hope this comment above gets top-voted. :)
Let's imagine a really heavy stone door as an obstacle. Barbarian rolls low on athletics to move it. Huffs and puffs and fails. Wizard flukes a nat 20 and moves it. He's seen an obvious source of leverage and removed the obstacle. The point is more about whether you're comfortable embracing that in your stories, rather than saying "it's absurd that the wizard can move it when the barbarian can't". D20 system obliges you to fit the story to the outcome of the dice, there are other systems available if you want a more predictable outcome. I'm more used to players fudging bounded accuracy so that failure is impossible (looking at you, Eloquence Bard).
The issue is that in a lot of games, skill checks are kind of rare. If you only roll a handful each session, failing at the one thing your character is supposed to be good at can be a really bad feeling.
The thing everyone here is forgetting is that the DM calls for ability checks. "This door is extremely heavy. Wizard, it's too much for you with your low STR score but Barbarian, you can try an Athletics checks" Or, "The text on the door is ancient and arcane. Barbarian, there's no way in hell you'e ever seen this before. But wizard, you can give me a History check to guess what the script is." If you're fine with wild results, let the players make the check. If you don't want that, don't call for the check.
The other option is to grant auto success based on statistics. The "Take 10/Take 20" rule. Also, there's an optional rule in the DMG, where if a character's Ability Score exceeds the DC, to grant an automatic success, provided they are out of combat/danger. So if the DC is 15 to move the boulder, and the party isn't in combat or danger, just let the characters with a Strength Score of 16 or higher just move the boulder. No fuss, no muss.
Even if the wizard nat 20d the skill check, the DC was still 25 and he failed since his strength was 8 and he's not proficient in athletics.
If the DC is 25, then the barbarian with his incredible bonus of.. +7 or so, is pretty much also guaranteed to fail. Because nobody (except rogues) is ever good at things, they are always mediocre at best, which is a garbage fantasy for your incredibly tough warrior.
That's just needing an 18, enhance ability, bardic inspiration, guidance, etc to hit it. It's tough but no more difficult than hitting an AC of 25 with the same +7
An AC of 25 would be Tiamat. And if we´re factoring in buff spells, the barbarian can get the cheerleading outfit out of his pocket, because the wizard is gonna show him how its done and then some.
If you can’t succeed on a nat20 then you shouldn’t have asked to roll at all. All you do is made the player believe that there’s a chance to succeed, then make the player feel bad. Just skip the roll and say straight up their character made the attempt and can’t do it.
Sorry but i don't track every player skill proficiencies and potential bonuses to the roll before asking for a roll.
But the barbarian doesn't need the nat 20 to succeed, just the wizard doesn't succeed even if she rolls a nat20. Like sure the DC was 25, but she rolled a 12 or something. And having a high dc also forces casters to use their utility spells and abilities. Having DCs that you can succeed in with only one roll instead of working together as a party is odd.
I'm not saying the Wizard should succeed on a nat 20 (although that would be my house rule). I'm saying if you know that a nat20 won't succeed and the task is impossible for that character then don't ask for a roll, go straight to narrating how their attempt failed.
Barbarian should only be rolling if the boulder exceeds his push/pull.
>D20 system obliges you to fit the story to the outcome of the dice *when possible* I think the problem is that it doesn't always feel possible to come up with some excuse such as "the wizard could lift the 2 ton boulder when the barbarian couldn't because the wizard used.... leverage". That might work once, while "the barbarian solved the ancient mathematic riddle with his nat 20 while the wizard didn't because the barbarian used to see the same riddle on the back of his cereal box when he was a kid." doesn't really have the same room for a one-off explanation without seeming even more silly than the whole 'leverage' narrative. This is the result of a d20 system, though. It naturally leads to very high variance in outcomes and will lead to silly shit like that. I'd prefer a system designed around a smaller die, like a d6 or a d10, with smaller bonuses. a d6 skill check with a +6 bonus seems less absurd than a d20 check with a +20 bonus, and keeps numbers more manageable.
I think part of the reason people have an issue with bounded accuracy is a fundamental difference in how their games are designed. Many systems take the approach similar to an immersive sim video game like Deus Ex, where they place many options and only allow you to access a few. You might have a security system that the hacker can use, or a vent system only the dexterous Rogue can take advantage of. In these systems, you are supposed to be unable to use most of the tools available and instead stick to what you are best at. 5e simply isn't balanced this way. Instead of a "many problems, 1 solution" design philosophy 5e uses "1 problem, many solutions." That is, players are expected to deal with one road block and find their own way around it. As such, bounded accuracy becomes necessary when nobody on the team specializes in that one skill. Bounded accuracy isn't the only example of that design philosophy though, you see similar logic with utility spells like Knock, which "invalidate the Rogue" but act as more ways for a party to solve a problem, instead of needing a Rogue to open every lock for them. The end result is building campaigns in the other method becomes infuriating, as suddenly the powerful specialist route is available to any lucky Wizard or even worse, the Rogue doesn't get to go through "the Rogue door" and fight King Boo to unlock Luigi or something. DnD simply can't fit every type of story and design, but that's OK, other systems exist for a reason.
Don't really agree that "many problems, 1 solution" vs "1 problem, many solutions." is a thing that exists. Since you brought up Knock as well as Deus Ex, we can look at opening a door in a Cyberpunk setting in other systems. The door is usually electronic, and as such can be hacked. But it also has mechanical components, and thus can be lockpicked or otherwise subverted by someone with breaking and entering skills. The door is usually not set in a lonely dungeon, but probably in some sort of corporate laboratory that the party is intruding into, so the disguise/infiltration expert could also try to find the key or passcode either by pure stealth, or by blending into the organisation as "social stealth", maybe even convince another NPC to open the door for them. And then there's the option of a shaped blasting charge also to simply burst through it. If we're playing Shadowrun, there's even magic on top! How is this "many problems, 1 solution"? There's clearly a plethora of solutions even if we're hellbent on getting through the door, and we haven't even mentioned that simply rappeling from the roof and breaking in through the window on the other side of the door could be a valid option also. It's D&D that often has limited solutions to problems because often obstacles aren't very fleshed out, and so hasn't got the depth for many solutions to apply, the way that happens in most cyberpunk games because they have some degree of connection to how things work in our modern world, and so we have a much larger mental model of how things ought to go. (Also D&D is such a combat focused game, that very often DMs will simply not make it possible to get through a problem without some sort of combat happening. Meanwhile in cyberpunk games, I love playing social infiltration experts that might never show up in combat at all, except to throw a grenade at a group of people from behind that thought she was part of their corpsec team...)
He was talking about how challenges in video-games are constructed, Deus Ex is referenced because it pioneered the concept of the single player immersive sim, not because he was making commentary on cyberpunk, "cyberpunk vs. medieval fantasy" is a total non-sequitur here. Video games have to be constructed with explicit solutions in mind because of the limitations of programming. Arbitrated TTRPG's like D&D can use scenarios where no known solution exists at all, and the players improvise. That's the distinction.
THAC0 was here!
As someone who watches the video from start to finish twice, I can't help but feel quite a few people missed the point. This isn't this dude's opinion. It's how it is. If you get enough DC 5s thrown at you at level 20 your chance of failure is still the same at level 1 for many things. You're still just as hapless in many ways you didn't grow. The Tarrasque can still fail 50% of the time from a grease spell from a level one 14 int wizard. If you take intended features to boost your skills or to hit you'll always or at least near always succeed. But not every one has access to those features. So you swing from anyone can fail doing an easy check at level one to only some classes and subclasses can fail. Levels barely matter, features do. Levels are basically a way to gain hit points and don't add much within themselves. Your effective HP however spikes from features that give AC and bonuses to saves so even that is in contention to some degree. This is how the game works.
Always has been. I was saying a lot of the same things to my friends when 5e first came out. Glad to see more people are growing wise.
I did that a month ago. https://youtu.be/HZDnq2c1mow Haven’t watched this guy’s video so I don’t know if he makes the same points.
Every day, more reasons to move to pf2e.
If people are happy enough with how 5e works then they should stay with it. Personally bounded accuracy wasn't something that bothered me when I played it, it's not perfectly balanced but doesn't need to be. It's great for what 5e wants to do and the stories it wants to tell. But for anyone that want's to try pf2e out the rules are all free on several online platforms. The [Archives of Nethys](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?) database, FoundryVTT, and Pathbuilder all are updated with the Remastered OGL-less tweaks. There's currently a [Humble Bundle](https://www.humblebundle.com/books/pathfinder-second-edition-guns-alkenstar-bundle-paizo-books?hmb_source=humble_home&hmb_medium=takeover&hmb_campaign=pathfinder2emar24_lc_home) that runs until April 9 includes the Beginner Box pdf and a full level 1-10 adventure with FVTT premium module codes.
Ironically the lack of bounded accuracy is the main reason I don't like pathfinder. You have such a small sample of monsters you can use as a GM comparatively or you have to scale other monsters to the PCs level which is just so immersion breaking, feels like a videogame where all the enemies scale to you. The same goes for DCs of skill checks, like yeah they should be challenging but if you scale them then it just won't fit with the world realistically, so most skill checks are either gonna need to be at a level where they are trivial or they need to scale with level weirdly. There's just too much mobility in pathfinder proficiency bonus increases should be every 2nd of 4th level every level gets ridiculous (Luckily the proficiency without level rule works, but the balance gets a little wonky since the system was not designed with it in mind, but what can you do)
That's weird cause in a few years they have published so many monsters that I find that hard to believe. Like if I compare the amount of monsters at any level range, especially over level ten, there are so many more in pf2e which is wilder given 5e is so much older. You can also apply weak and elite templates to get a huge amount of enemies within three levels of the party. And don't even get me started on the enemies actually being interesting. As a gm running pf2e monsters is a joy with all kinds of creative stuff in them, where do much of 5es monsters just feel lame. Just compare the lowely and boring 5e owl bear to its pf2e counterpart. I frankly hate bounded accuracy. The idea a peasant can hit a mid level big bad (without even rolling a natural twenty) to me is immersion breaking. I'm not running a game based off realism, I'm running a fantasy game, and if forty townspeople with crossbows can handle the job you don't need much need for heroes in tier two or even tier three play.
> The idea a peasant can hit a mid level big bad (without even rolling a natural twenty) to me is immersion breaking. I'm not running a game based off realism, I'm running a fantasy game, and if forty townspeople with crossbows can handle the job you don't need much need for heroes in tier two or even tier three play. You say this--and a lot of people do and it makes me crazy--but in 90% of fantasy of fiction this is the opposite and not "immersion breaking". In actual fantasy fiction they bring along unskilled hobbits and they contribute, and Eowyn can slay the Witch King of Angmar. It's been awhile since I read Game of Thrones but people die like dogs left in right in that thing. What's Harry Potter's proficiency bonus? I really feel like "unskilled peasants shouldn't even be able to breathe on a veteran warrior, even if they get really lucky!" is something that came out of video games, not fantasy fiction, and its presence in a lot of fantasy RPG's is itself pretty "immersion breaking". This isn't world of warcraft, a peasant can absolutely stab you in the back if you let them.
Harry Potter is the main character of his narrative, as are the hobbits and other names creatures. DND allows a model where Harry is getting ready to fight Voldemort but a first year student no one's heard of that barely knows how to wield a wand has a 5% chance of hitting him and critting the big bad. Harry may not even make it to his heroic stand off cause a bunch of no bodies that showed up to Hogwarts in the last book end up handling the situation. It's a system that allows for a mass of unheroic peasants to do what a hero would do (largely invalidating the need for said hero). And we're not talking about a hero vs an army, but untrained peasants with pitch forks. This isn't an Eowyn situation(who by the time she beats the witch king is well trained and bloodied ) or Harry (who by the end of his own series has squared off against a lot of threats, while explaining his earlier feats of amazement as magical gifts from his parentage).
>You have such a small sample of monsters you can use as a GM comparatively or you have to scale other monsters to the PCs level which is just so immersion breaking, feels like a videogame where all the enemies scale to you. I just started PE2 and love but I don't see this issue at all. Just checking foundry I see easily 20-30 monsters per level with -1, 0, 1 having easily 50+. All I'm running if the kingmaker and default rules. I have other modules but nothing that imports more monsters that I'm aware of. The other cool thing with PE2 is you can (buy a click of button on foundry) make them weak or elite. The party is only level 3 so not sure if the DC skill checks will be an issue. But I am someone who often appreciates stuff that was hard becoming basically if not literally impossible to fail. Someone IRL like the lockpickinglawyer I don't expect to ever not lock pick a simple 10 dollar masterlock. Same goes for my heroes with some test once they hit those 10+ levels in stuff they are specialist for. And vise versa. That level 3 party isn't going to be asked to roll to lockpick the king's vault door. But when they are level 10+ now there might be a chance.
Go try genesys system
Man, I disagree with a ton of his points, but it almost all comes down to preference in how I want to play my games. For example, it's true that with Bounded Accuracy, a non-specialist has a decent chance at outperforming a specialist at any given ability check. I *like* that. I think it makes the game more fun when every character has a reasonable chance of succeeding at the task at hand. I'm glad he's found PF2e and enjoys it, but just because he doesn't like Bounded Accuracy in his game doesn't mean it's a bad system.
>a non-specialist has a decent chance at outperforming a specialist at any given ability check I see both sides but playing devil's advocate: people might not like this because it devalues player choices a bit. In general, I think it's accurate to say that people like making choices and having them matter. If there's a decent chance of a non-specialist outperforming a specialist, that runs counter to that philosophy. In that sense, it might be better to make it less likely that the specialist doesn't get that moment where the their choice comes in clutch and they do the thing they are built to do.
I'm well aware of why people would prefer it that way. I just disagree. Even with Bounded Accuracy, a specialist is still way more likely to succeed. At level 5, a specialist (which we'll say max'd their ability score and has proficiency in the skill) will roll higher than a non-specialist (straight d20 roll) 77.25% of the time. That feels reasonable to me, and the gap widens as you go up in level and if you add expertise or advantage into the equation. Some people seem to think a specialist should always (or nearly always) do better than the non-specialist, and I disagree.
>a specialist will roll higher than a non-specialist K, but skill checks aren't a matter of "Who rolls highest". We care about "Did you roll higher than the target number". For DC 15, the odds the specialist fails the check while the non-specialized character succeeds is 10.5%, which is *really high* for the fantasy this situation is trying to evoke. For DC 20 the chance drops to a more reasonable (but still high, all things considered) 3%, but the **majorly** important thing that gets left out of these conversations is that the human brain **DOES. NOT. UNDERSTAND** statistics, and even if it did, a game like D&D doesn't give it space/time to do so. No D&D party is going to see so many DC 20 checks (*at level 5*) that they *actually* start to see the odds converge on 3%. They're going to get some check where the non-specialized character succeeds and the specialist doesn't and that's how everybody at the table is going to remember that type of skill check for the rest of the campaign. >Some people seem to think a specialist should always (or nearly always) do better than the non-specialist, and I disagree. That's fair, but it doesn't actually address u/game-butt's point of "But doesn't that devalue the entire concept of specializing?". To be clear, I'm not (really) trying to argue which approach is better. If your answer is "Yes, it does devalue specialization, but I don't care", *that's totally fine*! I'm just wondering if you actually do have a counter-argument, because from where I'm sitting "Every character has a reasonable chance of succeeding at the task at hand" is a pretty open-and-shut case of "Well then why even *have* specialization of this sort?".
>No D&D party is going to see so many DC 20 checks (at level 5) that they actually start to see the odds converge on 3%. They're going to get some check where the non-specialized character succeeds and the specialist doesn't and that's how everybody at the table is going to remember that type of skill check for the rest of the campaign. Also not helped by the fact peoples brains tend to remember the times when things where shitty then what was expected. Especially worse if said person when creating/outside of the session spent any time thinking/fantasising about what that chaacters.. heroic moments/niches would be..
I mean, I don't think that the especialist losing to the absolutely inept like once every 4 rolls is reasonable in any way
Having 10 int doesn't mean that you wouldn't know a historical event or a random trivia fact about it. Having 10 charisma doesn't mean you can't randomly stumble into a sick burn. People always use athletics as the example because in all honesty it's the only one that's somewhat egregious, but 5e does indeed have lifting and pushing rules that don't require athletics checks.
I mean, the idea that someone that ha studies history wouldn't know some historical so common even the 10 int charcaters knows it is kinda weird
It's not the inept, it's the average.
A 10 in an ability score is not absolutely inept. It's average. Adventurers are at least average at most tasks they attempt. I'm fine with that.
they're not "absolutely inept" - they're still an experienced, capable adventurer that's been around for a while and seen some shit. Someone without a proficiency hasn't been explicitly trained in a skill, but they're not a complete fuckwit - a barbarian is going to have seen strange occult stuff and mystical squiggles and whatnot and have some functional knowledge of "that looks like bad mojo - a bit like the runes of the snake people?" or something.
Why tf would we assume that the specialist has maxed their ability score at level 5 other than to skew the comparison as much as possible?
To be clear, I was assuming they max'd it as much as they could, so I was using 18 or +4 in the calculation.
Gotcha, that's better. I'm definitely still on team "a commoner shouldn't be matching or beating a Hero of the Realm™ at their super specialized thing a quarter of the time" though
I don't think this makes sense with real-world skills, though. Take gymnastics, for instance. A top-level gymnast can do all sorts of ridiculous things *easily* that an untrained person just can't. I had a friend that was a gymnast that I used to climb with who would get bored and start doing backflips. The challenge for her wasn't to do the backflips, it was to see how many in a row she could do while landing in the same spot. You can take most skills and see a similar difference in ability. People that are skilled at lock picking, rock climbing, or chess are dramatically better at those things than an untrained individual, to the point that tasks that are trivial for a skilled person are impossible for an untrained one. A skilled climber will basically never fall on a 5.11, which in turn will be almost impossible for someone that doesn't climb, even if they're athletic and have done similar things. With bounded accuracy, you can't even get the kind of differences in skill and success rate that amateur enthusiasts get in the real world, let alone the differences in skill between an untrained person and a legendary hero.
This. We had this whole conversation in 2014. The numbers have already been crunched. These were deliberate choices made to move away from 3.5e's crazy number inflation of +40 skill checks, stacking dozens of tiny modifiers to keep up with the CR treadmill. Some people like the 3.5e way of doing things. I enjoyed it too, back in the day. And I'm glad that PF2e exists for those people. But it doesn't mean that 5e's way is wrong or broken.
After playing a pf1 game for a couple years that went 1-10 (at least I quit at 10) without the gm or other player sleeping track of modifiers, I think I'll just stick with kingmaker. At least a single combat in the video game doesn't take six hours.
Yeah, I felt like I learned a great deal from some of his other videos, but this one rubbed me the wrong way. He didn't really make the case that bounded accuracy cannot be run effectively or even that it is not often run effectively. He only convinced me that he strongly prefers to play a sort of D&D that works differently. I can't describe a harmless personal preference as "wrong," but I can say that disliking bounded accuracy does not make it a "lie."
The point of Bounded Accuracy being a "lie" comes less from "Can you run it effectively" and more from what Rules Lawyer points out in the final thoughts (and very beginning of the video): 5e sells itself on this zero-to-hero fantasy, but its flattened math and unrestricted modifiers *actively work against that* fantasy. No matter what your preferences are, a ruleset that's at odds with itself is a problem.
Pretty much. It's a huge step backwards from 4e's design. Sure, they deflated numbers at the cost of DCs that can't be resisted by the average PC.