You guys brought up Tolkien.
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5. They are martyrs to encourage reckless PCs to waste resources to sweep them quickly when those resources may be better used in the next encounter.Umm, after having seen this actual play on a very regular basis, no.
Perfect example: my kingmaker game, I brought back the mites for an encounter. And the rest of the party stood back while the fighter killed them all. Not. One. Scratch.
Literally the exchange I had above about "ok, they're did. what's next" happened in that game. So when the mudmen came up in (IIRC) adventure 3 (12 CR 2 monsters), I got rid of that encounter in favor of monsters more CR appropriate. They'd do the exact same thing. I saw them and others do that time and again.
All the rest of your examples can be done with environment. You don't need low level monsters, which eat up XP in the encounter budget, making the actual monsters you want to challenge the adventurers that much less of a challenge.
So no. I disagree. I think a constant increase in BAB is terrible.
Bound accuracy means the monsters are useful at later levels that simply is not possible with Pathfinder today.
Nah dude, you're missing the key point here. They're bait and should be used alongside other challenges. The reason I said reckless PCs is your PCs did the smart thing and let their warrior take them apart with no expended resources because they didn't need to buff to kill them, their actual advancement as heroes means they are now beneath them. However, reckless players can learn the hard way that blowing your roll means not having your resources for more major encounters.
High level characters aren't challenged by the raw statistics of mooks and never should. Instead the mooks are now a narrative device. They are enablers for complex traps, schemes, ambushes, etc. They activate the floor traps, lure PCs into deadfalls, collapse a tunnel onto them, etc. They are an assistant to a higher CR issue that the party has to deal with.
They can martyr themselves making the party waste resources by using things like Aid Another. Oops, sorry Mr. Magus, the four kobolds around the guy who you're really worried about just gave him a +8 to his AC this turn, so now you're missing with spellstrike. Do you waste actions carving up the kobolds who aren't a direct threat or do you try to push through their annoyance while they're giving your enemies massive to-hit bonuses or AC bonuses or saving throw bonuses or giving you penalties? Are they preventing you from getting into good flanking positions with your party? Are they providing flanking bonuses to hit you?
Example, you're fighting a 4th level lizardfolk barbarian (CR 5) and 16 garden variety kobolds (CR 1/4). The encounter is CR 7. During the fight the kobolds do things like pick a dude and start chucking alchemist fires (which are within their 1st level warrior WBL for consumables), they run up and flank party members while using Aid Another to give the Lizardfolk barbarian crazy bonuses like +8 to hit or massive AC boosts or saving throw boosts. You can kill the kobolds but doing so requires spending actions to do so, which is time that the barbarian is going to be pounding your face with his massive armor class (lizardfolk barbarian in a breastplate has AC 21 just from armor + natural armor, before dex or situational items or buffs or shields). They act as walking buffs and debuffs and if completely ignored or unguarded against, you may even get killed by the kobolds (if a bunch of kobolds decide to bukkake you in alchemist fire, you are probably going to hurt a lot if you don't have fire resistance up).
Are they irritating enough that your caster needs to start trimming the hedges with their spells or CCing them to stop them from being a pain? Do they force your casters to start popping their resist energy spells to keep their front liners up? Do they start casting deep slumber in hopes of shutting them down? If the lizardfolk falls asleep from the spell is a kobold going to just wake them up immediately? If the fight goes poorly, will some of the kobolds break off and start running to inform their nearest allies that combat is going on? What if they do that immediately and you've only got five rounds before the cavalry shows up for your enemy team merging several encounters into a mega-encounter!?
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5. They are martyrs to encourage reckless PCs to waste resources to sweep them quickly when those resources may be better used in the next encounter.Umm, after having seen this actual play on a very regular basis, no.
Perfect example: my kingmaker game, I brought back the mites for an encounter. And the rest of the party stood back while the fighter killed them all. Not. One. Scratch.
Literally the exchange I had above about "ok, they're did. what's next" happened in that game. So when the mudmen came up in (IIRC) adventure 3 (12 CR 2 monsters), I got rid of that encounter in favor of monsters more CR appropriate. They'd do the exact same thing. I saw them and others do that time and again.
All the rest of your examples can be done with environment. You don't need low level monsters, which eat up XP in the encounter budget, making the actual monsters you want to challenge the adventurers that much less of a challenge.
So no. I disagree. I think a constant increase in BAB is terrible.
Bound accuracy means the monsters are useful at later levels that simply is not possible with Pathfinder today.
Kobolds are not a threat to 10th-level Pathfinder characters and they are certainly not a threat to 10th-level D&D 5e characters.
Welcome to the myth of bounded accuracy.
A 10th-level Wizard casts the Cloudkill spell, 5d8 poison damage in a 20 ft area, moving 10 feet away from the Wizard each turn, kobolds are dropping like flies, they cannot withstand such an onslaught.
This is why D&D 5e supporters always mention the fighter not the Wizard in these scenarios.
However a lowly kobold has a similar fighting skill compared to a 10th level Fighter just has less hit points and does less damage.
Pathfinder makes sense. A 10th level Fighter is a bad ass and doesn't even get out of bed when news reaches him of an imminent kobold attack, he leaves that job to the 3rd level Fighter.
Bounded Accuracy creates weird scenarios when you examine it in detail. It makes plenty of claims, interesting claims just a shame they are not true.
One thing that came to mind was, why deal with a progression to begin with? Why can't leveling just give you class features, feats and HP? Not saying that's what I want but that seems like a logical step for rules lite D&D type games.
I honestly think that the problems that bounded accuracy solves could be avoided by not insisting that a game always goes from level 1-20. I'm not saying that it isn't frequently fun to play 'clods to gods' but before I started playing, which was well into the 2000s, word of mouth made me assume that leveling 20 levels would take years out of game or at least each level is one year in game. So overall I thought levels meant a lot so a typical adventure would be within a range of five levels if you really had a kind of range to go for. I thought that was the fun of it. Like how with Magic: the Gathering there's like a dozen official ways to play and more when you bring in random casual table stuff, but nobody just allows access to all the cards in the game because between vintage legal, Un-cards and Ante, that's just crazy-talk.
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D&D 5e supporters could try and create a counter argument and say "The Wizard could kill quite a few kobolds but the kobolds would surround the Wizard and kill him.
Not likely,
The Wizard can surround himself with a cloud of daggers
Cloud of Daggers spell, 2nd-level conjuration, Concentration, up to 1 minute, 5 feet cube on each side, a creature takes 4d4 slashing damage when it enters the spell’s area for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there.
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One thing that came to mind was, why deal with a progression to begin with? Why can't leveling just give you class features, feats and HP? Not saying that's what I want but that seems like a logical step for rules lite D&D type games.
I honestly think that the problems that bounded accuracy solves could be avoided by not insisting that a game always goes from level 1-20. I'm not saying that it isn't frequently fun to play 'clods to gods' but before I started playing, which was well into the 2000s, word of mouth made me assume that leveling 20 levels would take years out of game or at least each level is one year in game. So overall I thought levels meant a lot so a typical adventure would be within a range of five levels if you really had a kind of range to go for. I thought that was the fun of it. Like how with Magic: the Gathering there's like a dozen official ways to play and more when you bring in random casual table stuff, but nobody just allows access to all the cards in the game because between vintage legal, Un-cards and Ante, that's just crazy-talk.
The funny thing is, you actually leveled pretty fast in pre-3E. The pace that 3E had was based on how fast you leveled going through the earlier adventure modules when you were playing by the rules.
Of course, people frequently ignored that you get XP for getting treasure in older editions. >_>
One thing that came to mind was, why deal with a progression to begin with? Why can't leveling just give you class features, feats and HP? Not saying that's what I want but that seems like a logical step for rules lite D&D type games.
I honestly think that the problems that bounded accuracy solves could be avoided by not insisting that a game always goes from level 1-20. I'm not saying that it isn't frequently fun to play 'clods to gods' but before I started playing, which was well into the 2000s, word of mouth made me assume that leveling 20 levels would take years out of game or at least each level is one year in game. So overall I thought levels meant a lot so a typical adventure would be within a range of five levels if you really had a kind of range to go for. I thought that was the fun of it. Like how with Magic: the Gathering there's like a dozen official ways to play and more when you bring in random casual table stuff, but nobody just allows access to all the cards in the game because between vintage legal, Un-cards and Ante, that's just crazy-talk.
The progression is important because it allows weak monster and strong monsters to exist side-by-side same goes with player characters, characters with high defence and low defence.
It's not just a matter of a game being rules lite.
Ashiel has just brought up a million and one scenarios that can be used to change the nature of the Pathfinder game. And this can only be done with statistical diversity.
If you can't tackle something head on you look for other ways.
And Seerow brought up the idea about a more bounded RNG. A better candidate for a rules lite game than the problematic bounded accuracy.
I don't think it's an issue of how trivial the kobolds are to kill but the idea that its more like the difference from a random thug threatening Batman(5th edition) with a knife and the same random thug threatening Superman(Pathfinder) with a knife. That guy is toast either way but at least with Batman you have a slight chance of making him say 'ouch' but with Superman your attacks just bounce helplessly on him and you wonder why you tried in the first place. Proper minion rules solve the problem too but...
In half an hour I'm going to play a 5e game where I have two kobold cohorts. They have no adjustments from the Monster Manual so I know how difficult it is to keep these guys alive. But they were able to hit the hydra twice with arrows.
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One thing that came to mind was, why deal with a progression to begin with? Why can't leveling just give you class features, feats and HP? Not saying that's what I want but that seems like a logical step for rules lite D&D type games.
I honestly think that the problems that bounded accuracy solves could be avoided by not insisting that a game always goes from level 1-20. I'm not saying that it isn't frequently fun to play 'clods to gods' but before I started playing, which was well into the 2000s, word of mouth made me assume that leveling 20 levels would take years out of game or at least each level is one year in game. So overall I thought levels meant a lot so a typical adventure would be within a range of five levels if you really had a kind of range to go for. I thought that was the fun of it. Like how with Magic: the Gathering there's like a dozen official ways to play and more when you bring in random casual table stuff, but nobody just allows access to all the cards in the game because between vintage legal, Un-cards and Ante, that's just crazy-talk.
You can definitely do this. It's kind of a E-whatever game and it's actually not bad. There's a lot of ways that you can handle advancement at this point. You could even do away with hit points entirely, or make it so that you begin with HD based on your class and only gain your +Con mod every level thereafter. So a 5th level Barbarian with a +3 Con would have a mere 27 HP instead of the 53 he would have in normal Pathfinder.
If you remove HP for gaining levels and instead make your Con = HP, possibly with a bonus for what your class is or something. Feats like Toughness would give +X HP but that was about it. This would mean that the vast majority of even high level super monsters have less than 40 HP before feats and such.
You could probably even hack Pathfinder to make it survivable with the current metagame by giving PCs hardness based on their level or something, so that they have few HP but take reduced damage from attacks as their level rises. So a 20th level Barbarian might still have like 25 Con = 25 HP, maybe +6 for being a barbarian for 31. Just he reduces all incoming damage by 20 points before applying things like his DR or energy resistances.
Hmmm, I'll think about this for a bit.
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I don't think it's an issue of how trivial the kobolds are to kill but the idea that its more like the difference from a random thug threatening Batman(5th edition) with a knife and the same random thug threatening Superman(Pathfinder) with a knife. That guy is toast either way but at least with Batman you have a slight chance of making him say 'ouch' but with Superman your attacks just bounce helplessly on him and you wonder why you tried in the first place. Proper minion rules solve the problem too but...
In half an hour I'm going to play a 5e game where I have two kobold cohorts. They have no adjustments from the Monster Manual so I know how difficult it is to keep these guys alive. But they were able to hit the hydra twice with arrows.
Maybe if it was a barbarian or someone with DR. A thug probably only has about a 5% chance to actually hit batman and make him say ouch. Batman's evade-% capped. Superman would just take the hit and laugh about it because he's got extreme DR.
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I don't think it's an issue of how trivial the kobolds are to kill but the idea that its more like the difference from a random thug threatening Batman(5th edition) with a knife and the same random thug threatening Superman(Pathfinder) with a knife. That guy is toast either way but at least with Batman you have a slight chance of making him say 'ouch' but with Superman your attacks just bounce helplessly on him and you wonder why you tried in the first place. Proper minion rules solve the problem too but...
In half an hour I'm going to play a 5e game where I have two kobold cohorts. They have no adjustments from the Monster Manual so I know how difficult it is to keep these guys alive. But they were able to hit the hydra twice with arrows.
a Hydra in Pathfinder has an AC 15, a Kobold in Pathfinder has a +3 attack roll, hitting on a 12+
a Hydra in D&D 5e has an AC 15, a Kobold has a +4 attack roll, hitting on a 11+
Insignificant difference.
Proper minion rules solve the problem...yes I agree.
There must be a way of resolving these issues that actually resolves these issues.
Well when I have a bunch of CR 1/4 creatures just to be mowed down I made them feel dangerous by making them aid another, flank, have teamwork feats (which are redonkulous on low level minions) so that they function somwhat like a swarm. If monsters could grant Aid Another actions from a close range a group of 8 supporting the monster in the front could add+16 to attack as one.
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Well when I have a bunch of CR 1/4 creatures just to be mowed down I made them feel dangerous by making them aid another, flank, have teamwork feats (which are redonkulous on low level minions) so that they function somwhat like a swarm. If monsters could grant Aid Another actions from a close range a group of 8 supporting the monster in the front could add+16 to attack as one.
Yep, there's a lot of ways to use low level monster in Pathfinder even in high level encounters. Teamwork feats a hilariously effective at this.
For those at home, here's some fun/funny teamwork feats for mooks.
Broken Wing Gambit can be amusing to use. There's two ways to use this. Mooks offer themselves as a sacrafice to let a big bad get more hits in, or if you've buffed your mooks (such as via a bard or something) you can have the big bad trigger a ton of mook attacks on an enemy at once. It's all the more hilarious it's your big bad who's been getting buffed with aid-anothers or is a barbarian with Come and Get Me. You take an attack and your foe gets dogpiled.
Cavalry Formation is just freaking stellar on goblins and other critters great at riding. Since you can also just ride on stuff that can carry you, some pugwampis riding on the shoulders of gnolls would be hilariously heinous.
Coordinated Shot causes allies threatening foes in melee to provide a +1 (or +2) untyped bonus on your ranged attacks against that foe. Oh god mooks are frightening when this comes into play, especially when they've got reach weapons (and thus very easily remain out of the way). It stacks with aid another too. It's also a very effective way to set up high-damage shots for spellcasters (scorching rays) or to help other mooks hit enemies with high ACs.
Covering Fire turns all those pesky kobolds into God's gift to AC as supporters. Either you deal with those kobolds or you're not hitting a damn thing ever again. :P
Disarm partner actually makes you more powerful the more your mooks suck. Whenever your mook ally fails to disarm someone, you get to attempt a free disarm against them. Better be packing a locked gauntlet guys...
Improved Disarm Partner...oh sweet god. You now get to make AoOs against people your mooks fail to disarm. Oh god, oh god, run! The mooks suck but their troll buddy with the warhammer is beating the **** out of all of us! Run!
Escape Route allows you to use all those kobolds as a safezone to travel through unmolested. :O
Outflank simply makes mooks more threatening when flanking.
Shake it off makes mooks into walking saving throw buffs without even needing to use Aid Another (it totally stacks with aid another though). Works for minions too making their saves better.
Stealth Synergy. Dear god...you may never see them coming again. (o_o)"
Swing About is pretty fun for messing with people and extracting VIPS.
Volley Fire combos nicely with covering fire and coordinated shots. Just have lots of ranged folks pepper enemies or make aid another attacks against enemies while getting more bonuses for peppering the enemies.
Wounded Paw Gambit allows enemies to suddenly start focus-firing on someone. With these plus a lot of the other ranged attacking feats can actually make mooks really good at poking enemies.
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Six pages and nothing new.
Bonded Accuracy seems like a paired down version of the 4th edition mechanic of all the classes doing the same thing with different words.
With that said, I doubt very much that PF ver2 will have any sort of Bonded Accuracy as it is in either of the successors of 3rd edition of the Brand.
Instead, I envision a revamp on how Magic Items work with the character, with +1 to hit/damage be changed to reflect a power bonus for magic abilities, with bonus to hit/damage being at least double the + for weapon costs. (+2 weapon to have +1 to hit/damage)
I would also not have any items replicate class features. (No Ring of Evasion) and have pricing structures that would take more useful items and give them a mark up. (Something that can be GM prerogative)
And yes, Vancian Casting would change/be eliminated.
One thing that came to mind was, why deal with a progression to begin with? Why can't leveling just give you class features, feats and HP? Not saying that's what I want but that seems like a logical step for rules lite D&D type games.
I honestly think that the problems that bounded accuracy solves could be avoided by not insisting that a game always goes from level 1-20. I'm not saying that it isn't frequently fun to play 'clods to gods' but before I started playing, which was well into the 2000s, word of mouth made me assume that leveling 20 levels would take years out of game or at least each level is one year in game. So overall I thought levels meant a lot so a typical adventure would be within a range of five levels if you really had a kind of range to go for. I thought that was the fun of it. Like how with Magic: the Gathering there's like a dozen official ways to play and more when you bring in random casual table stuff, but nobody just allows access to all the cards in the game because between vintage legal, Un-cards and Ante, that's just crazy-talk.
The funny thing is, you actually leveled pretty fast in pre-3E. The pace that 3E had was based on how fast you leveled going through the earlier adventure modules when you were playing by the rules.
Of course, people frequently ignored that you get XP for getting treasure in older editions. >_>
I had a stingy DM (AD&D-2e), it took us a long time to go up a level.
In my current gaming group, going up levels faster and having more toys to play with (no dead levels) is a big plus.
We email each other between game sessions and discuss the pros and cons of feats and magical items. IMO that is the strength of a game system if players are discussing the game or their characters in between game sessions.
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Shake it off makes mooks into walking saving throw buffs without even needing to use Aid Another (it totally stacks with aid another though).How are you using aid another to buff saving throws? In the Core rules, aid another has no effect on saving throws.
Maybe it is this:
You can also use this standard action to help a friend in other ways, such as when he is affected by a spell, or to assist another character's skill check.
I did start an FAQ to try to get some clarification on what that meant, but I dont think too many people were interested in it.
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Shake it off makes mooks into walking saving throw buffs without even needing to use Aid Another (it totally stacks with aid another though).How are you using aid another to buff saving throws? In the Core rules, aid another has no effect on saving throws.Maybe it is this:
You can also use this standard action to help a friend in other ways, such as when he is affected by a spell, or to assist another character's skill check.I did start an FAQ to try to get some clarification on what that meant, but I dont think too many people were interested in it.
Yeah, that's what I was referencing. Aid Another as written is quite versatile. You can use it to help people escape Web Spells, make saving throws, shake off dominates, get out of nets, etc.
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With that said, I doubt very much that PF ver2 will have any sort of Bonded Accuracy as it is in either of the successors of 3rd edition of the Brand.
Instead, I envision a revamp on how Magic Items work with the character, with +1 to hit/damage be changed to reflect a power bonus for magic abilities, with bonus to hit/damage being at least double the + for weapon costs. (+2 weapon to have +1 to hit/damage)
I would also not have any items replicate class features. (No Ring of Evasion) and have pricing structures that would take more useful items and give them a mark up. (Something that can be GM prerogative)
And yes, Vancian Casting would change/be eliminated.
I doubt Vancian casting would go away in any future edition. IIRC, quite a few of the Paizo peeps LIKE Vancian, and I don't see them removing elements of the game that they themselves enjoy.
Although I could see it tweaked perhaps, as happens in some of the Unchained magic rules.
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With that said, I doubt very much that PF ver2 will have any sort of Bonded Accuracy as it is in either of the successors of 3rd edition of the Brand.
Instead, I envision a revamp on how Magic Items work with the character, with +1 to hit/damage be changed to reflect a power bonus for magic abilities, with bonus to hit/damage being at least double the + for weapon costs. (+2 weapon to have +1 to hit/damage)
I would also not have any items replicate class features. (No Ring of Evasion) and have pricing structures that would take more useful items and give them a mark up. (Something that can be GM prerogative)
And yes, Vancian Casting would change/be eliminated.
I doubt Vancian casting would go away in any future edition. IIRC, quite a few of the Paizo peeps LIKE Vancian, and I don't see them removing elements of the game that they themselves enjoy.
Although I could see it tweaked perhaps, as happens in some of the Unchained magic rules.
I could easily see them switching to arcanist style casting in a future edition. It gives that nice sorcerer flexibility that some people like where you can spam a spell 5 times if need be, but you still get a good deal of the flexibility of a wizard.
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Six pages and nothing new. Bonded Accuracy seems like a paired down version of the 4th edition mechanic of all the classes doing the same thing with different words.
Except, it's not.
1e & 2e alike employed bounded accuracy in many areas:
* a character's AC was limited to fall within +10 and -10.
* no matter how high your Wisdom score got, it was limited to a +4 adjustment to your magical defense (+4 began at an 18 Wisdom and lasted to 25 Wisdom and beyond).
*thief skills were bounded and based off percentile dice
Bounded accuracy has nothing to do with the class system, class features, or a complex system of naming class features that are all essentially mechanically the same (i.e. 2d10 to a group of enemies or whatever).
Bounded accuracy can be a very good thing. If you don't often sit at tables where at level 5+ you've got a PC or two with +30 to +50 Diplomacy destroying the DCs of printed scenarios/modules, then it might not be an issue for you. Bounded accuracy employed in Pathfinder 2e could cap a character's Diplomacy to something (15 + character level), thus your 5th level PCs would still be challenged by adventures because they'd feel a risk of failure.
Six pages and nothing new. Bonded Accuracy seems like a paired down version of the 4th edition mechanic of all the classes doing the same thing with different words.Except, it's not.
1e & 2e alike employed bounded accuracy in many areas:
* a character's AC was limited to fall within +10 and -10.
* no matter how high your Wisdom score got, it was limited to a +4 adjustment to your magical defense (+4 began at an 18 Wisdom and lasted to 25 Wisdom and beyond).
*thief skills were bounded and based off percentile dice
Bounded accuracy has nothing to do with the class system, class features, or a complex system of naming class features that are all essentially mechanically the same (i.e. 2d10 to a group of enemies or whatever).
Bounded accuracy can be a very good thing. If you don't often sit at tables where at level 5+ you've got a PC or two with +30 to +50 Diplomacy destroying the DCs of printed scenarios/modules, then it might not be an issue for you. Bounded accuracy employed in Pathfinder 2e could cap a character's Diplomacy to something (15 + character level), thus your 5th level PCs would still be challenged by adventures because they'd feel a risk of failure.
And how would characters that don't specialize in that particular skill fare?
If my diplomancer bard only has a 20% greater chance of befriending someone than the 7 Charisma wizard with no social skills then the system is pretty screwy. It means that you get wacky anomolies like people who should be god like in their capabilities only being somewhat better than an average person.
If my sorry level 2 expert ass with no points in perform(Strings) can ever play guitar better than Slash, even if I am having a good day(nat 20) and Slash is having a bad day(nat 1) then the system is severely flawed. And Slash wouldn't even be level 20. What is the level of someone who is extremely skilled, but not world record breaking? Level 5 or so? Can cases like that be handled in a d20 system while still using bounded accuracy? More importantly, can they be handled without resorting to stupid things like feats that exist solely to reproduce the wide gulf between skilled and unskilled, and thus making the actual skill modifiers close to meaningless?
Six pages and nothing new. Bonded Accuracy seems like a paired down version of the 4th edition mechanic of all the classes doing the same thing with different words.Except, it's not.
1e & 2e alike employed bounded accuracy in many areas:
* a character's AC was limited to fall within +10 and -10.
* no matter how high your Wisdom score got, it was limited to a +4 adjustment to your magical defense (+4 began at an 18 Wisdom and lasted to 25 Wisdom and beyond).
*thief skills were bounded and based off percentile dice
Bounded accuracy has nothing to do with the class system, class features, or a complex system of naming class features that are all essentially mechanically the same (i.e. 2d10 to a group of enemies or whatever).
Bounded accuracy can be a very good thing. If you don't often sit at tables where at level 5+ you've got a PC or two with +30 to +50 Diplomacy destroying the DCs of printed scenarios/modules, then it might not be an issue for you. Bounded accuracy employed in Pathfinder 2e could cap a character's Diplomacy to something (15 + character level), thus your 5th level PCs would still be challenged by adventures because they'd feel a risk of failure.
And how would characters that don't specialize in that particular skill fare?
If my diplomancer bard only has a 20% greater chance of befriending someone than the 7 Charisma wizard with no social skills then the system is pretty screwy. It means that you get wacky anomolies like people who should be god like in their capabilities only being somewhat better than an average person.
If my sorry level 2 expert ass with no points in perform(Strings) can ever play guitar better than Slash, even if I am having a good day(nat 20) and Slash is having a bad day(nat 1) then the system is severely flawed. And Slash wouldn't even be level 20. What is the level of someone who is extremely skilled, but not world record breaking? Level 5 or so? Can cases like that be...
Yep. Bounded accuracy can be a very, very bad thing. (IMO) Past a certain point I don't want to fail at simple tasks with my skills or have unskilled people rolling better than I do with a lucky 20. It can't help but happen that way though when your modifier is much less than the d20. In the case wakedown talks about, if you put EVERY resource into one skill, you should be awesome at it. If you aren't, something is wrong.
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If my diplomancer bard only has a 20% greater chance of befriending someone than the 7 Charisma wizard with no social skills then the system is pretty screwy
Not sure how you get to such a dramatic assumption as 20% greater chance.
If Pathfinder 2e implemented bounded accuracy such that no character could have greater than (character level + 15) in a single skill...
At level 5, the 7 Cha wizard is rocking a -2.
Your bard, also assuming level 5, if built to the absolute maximum in this theoretical Pathfinder 2e bounded system was rocking a +20, he has an infinitely greater chance to hit a difficult (i.e. DC25) check than the example wizard (who cannot actually make this check).
Bounded accuracy is particularly important to the segment of players where the GM likes to use the adventures that Paizo prints and the majority, if not all, of their players have extremely high degrees of system mastery (thus are building characters who regularly complete combat before even reaching enemy's round 1 initiative, or don't even need to bother rolling skill checks that are supposed to be near-impossible for plot purposes). GMs can do a few things - they can artificially move the goalposts (uh, yeah the DC25 Diplomacy check is actually DC50 for this particular group). Bounded accuracy is particularly important as the game ages and additional supplements make stacking bonuses to certain abilities/skills extreme before the expected norm (which players will of course want to do, I'm guilty of this as much as anyone else).
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Since we've moved on to Diplomacy as an example, here's an example of bounded accuracy at work taking level 5 bards from organized play campaigns (as the most prevalent campaigns for their respective systems).
We'll assume for this skill challenge, that the bard is meeting with a leader/elder/chief/etc and needs to make a hard Diplomacy check. Thus, the bard gets a few minutes to prepare themselves before going in.
1. PFS Core: 35% chance at hard DCs
In PFS Core, there is a system of bounded accuracy, which is essentially that you're limited by a limited set of rules to stacking bonuses.
human
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12 Fame (Murder's Mark, Godsmouth Heresy, Feast of Ravenmoor)
Gold: 1398+1398+3711=6507 to spend
Purchase Limit: 1500gp
--
5 ranks in Diplomacy .. +8
18 Charisma (started 17, raised to 18) .. +4
Feat 1st (Skill Focus: Diplomacy) .. +3
Feat Human (Persuasive) .. +2
eagle's splendor (CRB, 1min/level)
--
Total .. +17
Hard Diplomacy check (DC30)
Need to roll a 13+ (35% chance of success)
Hard DC30 can be seen in many subtier 4-5 & 5-6 scenarios (I started at season 4, and see them in 04-06, 04-11, 04-13, 04-14, etc..)
A PFS Core Bard has a 35% chance of success for a hard diplomacy check in a 5th level adventure.
2. PFS Classic: 100% chance at hard DCs
This is where there's really no bounded accuracy anymore. This bard automatically makes the hard diplomacy check without needing to roll (their diplomacy is at +30 for the check).
human
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12 Fame (Murder's Mark, Godsmouth Heresy, Feast of Ravenmoor)
Gold: 1398+1398+3711=6507 to spend
Purchase Limit: 1500gp
--
silvered tongue (human racial from ARG) .. +2
5 ranks in Diplomacy .. +8
18 Charisma (started 17, raised to 18) .. +4
Feat 1st (Skill Focus: Diplomacy) .. +3
Feat Human (Persuasive) .. +2
trait (charming) .. +1
mulberry pentacle ioun stone (SoS, 400gp) .. +1
adoration (ultimate combat, 1min/level) .. +2
perfume/cologne (UE, AA) or cultural adaptation (HoG) .. +2
raiment of command (Runelords AE, 1hr/level) .. +5
eagle's splendor (CRB, 1min/level).. +2
--
Total .. +30
Hard Diplomacy check (DC30)
Automatic success
Hard DC30 can be seen in many subtier 4-5 & 5-6 scenarios (I started at season 4, and see them in 04-06, 04-11, 04-13, 04-14, etc..)
3. 5e Core Bard: 75% chance at hard DCs
We only have "5e Core" to work with at the moment, so it's really more of a comparison to PFS Core at this stage.
human
expertise in Diplomacy .. +6
18 charisma .. +4
enhance ability (1hr) or any other PC helping .. advantage
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+10 total
Hard Diplomacy check (DC20)
Need to roll a 10+ with two rolls (75% chance)
Hard DC18-20 can be seen in 5e adventures and scenarios released so far... HotDQ doesn't have any DCs above 20 at level 6-7 play.
Probability-wise, I think the middle ground is the right place for a game system to be balanced.
I've seen a number of times in PFS play, where a group of 6 strangers gather and during character introductions, someone identifies themself as a diplomat (and is likely similar to the PFS Core character above with +15). In that same game, another player doesn't introduce their PC as such, but then quite unapologetically marginalizes the +15 player with their +30 or greater on the same skill (largely in part to their greater system mastery and access to more printed materials). Sure, this is partly a player problem, but one would hope a game's rule system has some measures in place to mitigate fairly common personality types in an RPG.
I've seen the +15 players disappear from gamedays and cons (or rather, change game systems) at a far greater rate than the +30 players... my hope is a Pathfinder 2e system is more balanced to eliminate some of this table tension and be a game for all... some sort of bounded accuracy can go a long way to achieving that.
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Since we've moved on to Diplomacy as an example, here's an example of bounded accuracy at work taking level 5 bards from organized play campaigns (as the most prevalent campaigns for their respective systems).
We'll assume for this skill challenge, that the bard is meeting with a leader/elder/chief/etc and needs to make a hard Diplomacy check. Thus, the bard gets a few minutes to prepare themselves before going in.
1. PFS Core: 35% chance at hard DCs
In PFS Core, there is a system of bounded accuracy, which is essentially that you're limited by a limited set of rules to stacking bonuses.
** spoiler omitted **
A PFS Core Bard has a 35% chance of success for a hard diplomacy check in a 5th level adventure.
2. PFS Classic: 100% chance at hard DCs
This is where there's really no bounded accuracy anymore. This bard automatically makes the hard diplomacy check without needing to roll (their diplomacy is at +30 for the check).
** spoiler omitted **...
Point of order, a need for 13+ is a 40% success chance. A need for a 10+ is a 55% chance of success. With reroll that is 80% (79.75%) chance of success.
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...And how would characters that don't specialize in that particular skill fare?
If my diplomancer bard only has a 20% greater chance of befriending someone than the 7 Charisma wizard with no social skills then the system is pretty screwy. It means that you get wacky anomolies like people who should be god like in their capabilities only being somewhat better than an average person.
If my sorry level 2 expert ass with no points in perform(Strings) can ever play guitar better than Slash, even if I am having a good day(nat 20) and Slash is having a bad day(nat 1) then the system is severely flawed. And Slash wouldn't even be level 20. What is the level of someone who is extremely skilled, but not world record breaking? Level 5 or so?
Conceptually, I like bounded accuracy. I don't mind the numbers of the game being dragged down and tied together a little bit.
The problem with bounded accuracy is that it has been put into a system where you need, at minimum, a +4 modifier for the impact of that modifier to be felt with any consistency. The d20 is simply not a good dice for a bounded accuracy system, in my opinion. It has far to much variation in its results.
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...And how would characters that don't specialize in that particular skill fare?
If my diplomancer bard only has a 20% greater chance of befriending someone than the 7 Charisma wizard with no social skills then the system is pretty screwy. It means that you get wacky anomolies like people who should be god like in their capabilities only being somewhat better than an average person.
If my sorry level 2 expert ass with no points in perform(Strings) can ever play guitar better than Slash, even if I am having a good day(nat 20) and Slash is having a bad day(nat 1) then the system is severely flawed. And Slash wouldn't even be level 20. What is the level of someone who is extremely skilled, but not world record breaking? Level 5 or so?
Conceptually, I like bounded accuracy. I don't mind the numbers of the game being dragged down and tied together a little bit.
The problem with bounded accuracy is that it has been put into a system where you need, at minimum, a +4 modifier for the impact of that modifier to be felt with any consistency. The d20 is simply not a good dice for a bounded accuracy system, in my opinion. It has far to much variation in its results.
I felt that hard last night. It feels very binary too, like you either are kinda good or suck. On one hand my best checks felt like they failed too much and my worst checks succeeded too often. The d20 just has a huge range making so many checks really swingy.
I feel like things would work out better if the proficiency range weren't so small, but I feel better about a three track system, ending in +6,+9 and +12. You get good, medium or bad at something and work out the math from there.
But really the biggest problem with bounded accuracy in Pathfinder is that there are a lot of things published that aren't compatible with it. Basically any second edition of pathfinder that can't play well with the existing books is probably going to get backlash.
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Six pages and nothing new. Bonded Accuracy seems like a paired down version of the 4th edition mechanic of all the classes doing the same thing with different words.Except, it's not.
1e & 2e alike employed bounded accuracy in many areas:
* a character's AC was limited to fall within +10 and -10.
* no matter how high your Wisdom score got, it was limited to a +4 adjustment to your magical defense (+4 began at an 18 Wisdom and lasted to 25 Wisdom and beyond).
*thief skills were bounded and based off percentile dice
Bounded accuracy has nothing to do with the class system, class features, or a complex system of naming class features that are all essentially mechanically the same (i.e. 2d10 to a group of enemies or whatever).
Bounded accuracy can be a very good thing.
AD&D 1e and D&D 2e had THACO for goodness sake. An illogical and counter intuitive combat system that is not even missed by the sternest of Grognards.
Yes, AC was bounded to 10 to -10 but player characters and monsters to-hit rolls were not bounded to +2 to +6 like they are in D&D 5e.
A 1st-level AD&D Thief with 16 Dex has a 10% hide in shadows and a 15% move silently check. A 7th-level Thief has a 43% hide in shadows and a 55% move silently Being the ridiculous system that it is, it didn't even take into account the monsters level of perception 'sigh'. Nevertheless from 1st-level to 7th-level that is over a 300% increase in skill expertise.
In D&D 5e, a 1st-level Rogue (Thief) with 16 Dex has a +7 stealth check, a 7th level Rogue (Thief) has a +9 stealth check, that is a 30% increase of skill expertise over 7 levels.
AD&D 300% skill increase over 7 levels.
D&D 5e 30% skill increase over 7 levels.
Some people like to think that D&D 5e's 'Bounded Accuracy' echoes the classic feel of earlier editions like AD&D because WOTC said so, yet in finer examination the systems are completely different.
Conceptually, I like bounded accuracy. I don't mind the numbers of the game being dragged down and tied together a little bit.
The problem with bounded accuracy is that it has been put into a system where you need, at minimum, a +4 modifier for the impact of that modifier to be felt with any consistency. The d20 is simply not a good dice for a bounded accuracy system, in my opinion. It has far to much variation in its results.
I have to admit, I'm not overly fond of the d20 as the basis for so many rolls. I have a lot more fun with systems where you get a dice pool or your baseline roll is 2d6 or something else with two or more dice.
...And how would characters that don't specialize in that particular skill fare?
If my diplomancer bard only has a 20% greater chance of befriending someone than the 7 Charisma wizard with no social skills then the system is pretty screwy. It means that you get wacky anomolies like people who should be god like in their capabilities only being somewhat better than an average person.
If my sorry level 2 expert ass with no points in perform(Strings) can ever play guitar better than Slash, even if I am having a good day(nat 20) and Slash is having a bad day(nat 1) then the system is severely flawed. And Slash wouldn't even be level 20. What is the level of someone who is extremely skilled, but not world record breaking? Level 5 or so?
Conceptually, I like bounded accuracy. I don't mind the numbers of the game being dragged down and tied together a little bit.
The problem with bounded accuracy is that it has been put into a system where you need, at minimum, a +4 modifier for the impact of that modifier to be felt with any consistency. The d20 is simply not a good dice for a bounded accuracy system, in my opinion. It has far to much variation in its results.
I felt that hard last night. It feels very binary too, like you either are kinda good or suck. On one hand my best checks felt like they failed too much and my worst checks succeeded too often. The d20 just has a huge range making so many checks really swingy.
I feel like things would work out better if the proficiency range weren't so small, but I feel better about a three track system, ending in +6,+9 and +12. You get good, medium or bad at something and work out the math from there.
But really the biggest problem with bounded accuracy in Pathfinder is that there are a lot of things published that aren't compatible with it. Basically any second edition of pathfinder that can't play well with the existing books is probably going to get backlash.
Strangely enough when I ran the D&D 5e playtest (Murder in Baldur's Gate) with my gaming group, they felt disassociated from their characters because they didn't get a sense of their skill level, they said it felt random or arbitrary and missed the codification of 3.x
However, they really like the DM screen, with the adventure specific map of the Baldur Gate City, I liked it too I think it is one of D&D 5e's better ideas.
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Rodney Thompson (WOTC designer) on bounded accuracy:
"The basic premise behind the bounded accuracy system is simple: we make no assumptions on the DM's side of the game that the player's attack and spell accuracy, or their defenses, increase as a result of gaining levels.
Instead, we represent the difference in characters of various levels primarily through their hit points, the amount of damage they deal, and the various new abilities they have gained.
Furthermore, gaining levels grants the characters new capabilities, which go much farther toward making your character feel different than simple numerical increases."
Bounded Accuracy was never about restraining the RNG. Simplified math, story over mechanics, and having a fixed challenge rating system.
In D&D 5e challenges are fixed, no more punching above your weight, because it's impossible to take on more powerful creatures outside your 'challenge rating'
Thanks for this quote.
To me the ability to more easily defeat a skeleton or wolf lets me know how much I have grown, and have far I have come. Sometimes I will throw old enemies at players, that gave them problems before. By defeating the same encounter much more easily they know they are different.
PS: I am not using your post, not saying you agree or disagree with the quoted statement.
I wish these things had a longer edit time, even if the deletion time was removed. That is supposed to say " I am using your post, not saying you agree or disagree with the quoted statement"
I wish these things had a longer edit time, even if the deletion time was removed. That is supposed to say " I am using your post, not saying you agree or disagree with the quoted statement"Rodney Thompson (WOTC designer) on bounded accuracy:
"The basic premise behind the bounded accuracy system is simple: we make no assumptions on the DM's side of the game that the player's attack and spell accuracy, or their defenses, increase as a result of gaining levels.
Instead, we represent the difference in characters of various levels primarily through their hit points, the amount of damage they deal, and the various new abilities they have gained.
Furthermore, gaining levels grants the characters new capabilities, which go much farther toward making your character feel different than simple numerical increases."
Bounded Accuracy was never about restraining the RNG. Simplified math, story over mechanics, and having a fixed challenge rating system.
In D&D 5e challenges are fixed, no more punching above your weight, because it's impossible to take on more powerful creatures outside your 'challenge rating'
Thanks for this quote.
To me the ability to more easily defeat a skeleton or wolf lets me know how much I have grown, and have far I have come. Sometimes I will throw old enemies at players, that gave them problems before. By defeating the same encounter much more easily they know they are different.
PS: I am not using your post, not saying you agree or disagree with the quoted statement.
Don't worry about it, I understood what you meant.
Well, with 3d6 instead of a d20, thanks to the curve I think smaller modifiers mean more, since you roll your median more often maybe?
Bell curved unified checks would probably be better for both D&D and Pathfinder assuming we want to work with smaller numbers. Works out for FUDGE dice. The only problem is that having 1d20 is both iconic and simple.
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AD&D 300% skill increase over 7 levels. D&D 5e 30% skill increase over 7 levels.
You're missing out on first on actual likely characters, and then second on actual play experience.
A 1e/2e 1st level rogue probably had a Dexterity bonus, or in the case of 2e actually put points into their Hide In Shadows if they cared about it. Since we're comparing apples-to-apples you could regularly have a 30% Hide in 1e as 1st level elf rogue with an 18 Dex elf. In 2e, you could've spent up to 15 points in Hide at 1st level and be sporting a 40% Hide with ease.
So, you're trying to sneak past the orc guards, you roll the dice and you succeed 40% of the time at first level.
By the time you hit 7th level, the same 1e rogue has 70% success odds.
So in 1e, over those 7 levels, you feel like you are succeeding about twice as often as you used to be.
If you look at 3.x/PF, your basic rogue who wants to be good at Stealth without expending precious combat feats is probably looking at a 1(rank)+3(bonus)+3(Dex)=+7 Stealth. Assuming your average enemy has a Perception of +3 (which they do if you look at 1st level adventures, summing up Emerald Spire level 1 as an example since it's the most recent level 1 I've run), he has a 70% chance of success.
If you look at standard, core 3.x/PF rogue at 7th level, they are now sporting around +14 Stealth.
The last level 7 adventure I ran was Sarkorian Prophecy. Let's look at the level 7 Perceptions: +16, +23, +0, +13, +1, +4, +0, +19 or +9.5 average. The rogue's still around a 75% chance of success.
So, in Pathfinder, you feel like when you attempt Stealth or a skill you've generally maxxed ranks in (but not invested excessively at), your rate of success doesn't generally change as you level.
If you compare 5e and a 1st level rogue (+5 Stealth) with a 7th level rogue (+10 Stealth), you'll see it's essentially just like Pathfinder since the opposed Perceptions you will see in that span also grow by about +5 (from ~10-12 to ~15-18).
So in 5e, your success rate is essentially constant as you level up (just like 3.x/PF), it essentially being at about 75% when you attempt to do so - actually higher once you factor in advantage.
I generally approve of later editions starting characters at higher success rates (75% instead of 40-50%) for skills they are attempting.
I get that it's hard to look at a level 7 rogue built in 3.5e with a +14 (or +20 even not counting advantage) and look at his counterpart in 5e with a +10 and imagine them being comparably successful... the actual numbers get in the way of seeing the actual success rates you'll experience when playing.
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[examples]Your examples keep assuming that Pathfinder characters encounter only monsters whose CR is approximately equal to their own level. Sure, in a poorly-designed adventure ...
My examples all draw from the last 100 adventures written and published by Paizo that I've run.
I've picked random examples based on recent runs, or ones I thought were particularly fun. You'll find the average DCs/ACs all trend upward and your success rate is essentially constant, barring extreme stacking of modifiers by PCs.
Some of them are actually pretty darn good, so I don't know if I'd say they are poorly-designed because the PCs never meet groups of lower-level enemies. It practically never happens (that higher level adventures maintain lower or constant DCs/ACs), though.
0-01 Silent Tide
0-02 The Hydra's Fang Incident
0-03 Murder on the Silken Caravan
0-04 Frozen Fingers of Midnight
0-05 Mists of Mwangi
0-06 Black Waters
0-07 Among the Living
0-13 The Prince of Augustana
0-14 The Many Fortunes of Grandmaster Torch
0-16 To Scale the Dragon
0-24 Decline of Glory
0-26 Lost at Bitter End
0-27 Our Lady of Silver
1-29 The Devil We Know, Part 1: Shipyard Rats
1-33 Assault on the Kingdom of the Impossible
1-35 Voice in the Void
1-37 The Beggar's Pearl
1-38 No Plunder, No Pay
1-43 The Pallid Plague
1-48 The Devil We Know, Part 4: Rules of the Swift
1-49 Among the Dead
1-51 The City of Strangers, Part 1: The Shadow Gambit
1-52 The City of Strangers, Part 2: The Twofold Demise
1-55 The Infernal Vault
2-01 Before the Dawn, Part 1: The Bloodcover Disguise
2-02 Before the Dawn, Part 2: Rescue at Azlant Ridge
2-03 The Rebel's Ransom
2-08 The Sarkorian Prophesy
2-11 The Penumbral Accords
2-12 Beneath the Silver Tarn
2-13 Murder on the Throaty Mermaid
2-15 Shades of Ice, Part 1: Written in Blood
2-17 Shades of Ice, Part 2: Exiles of Winter
2-19 Shades of Ice, Part 3: Keep of the Huskarl King
2-21 The Dalsine Affair
2-23 Shadow's Last Stand, Part 1: At Shadow's Door
2-24 Shadow's Last Stand, Part 2: Web of Corruption
2-25 You Only Die Twice
3-00 Blood Under Absalom
3-01 The Frostfur Captives
3-02 Sewer Dragons of Absalom
3-03 The Ghennet Manor Gauntlet
3-05 Tide of Twilight
3-06 Song of the Sea Witch
3-07 Echoes of the Overwatched
3-08 Among the Gods
3-09 The Quest for Perfection, Part 1: The Edge of Heaven
3-10 The Immortal Conundrum
3-11 The Quest for Perfection, Part 2: On Hostile Waters
3-13 The Quest for Perfection, Part 3: Defenders of Nesting Swallow
3-15 The Haunting of Hinojai
3-16 The Midnight Mauler
3-17 Red Harvest
3-18 The God's Market Gamble
3-19 The Icebound Outpost
3-20 The Rats of Round Mountain—Part I: The Sundered Path
3-21 The Temple of Empyreal Enlightenment
3-22 The Rats of Round Mountain—Part II: Pagoda of the Rat
3-23 The Goblinblood Dead
3-25 Storming the Diamond Gate
3-26 Portal of the Sacred Rune
4-01 Rise of the Goblin Guild
4-02 In Wrath’s Shadow
4-03 The Golemworks Incident
4-05 The Sanos Abduction
4-06 The Green Market
4-07 Severing Ties
4-08 The Cultist's Kiss
4-09 The Blackrose Matrimony
4-11 The Disappeared
4-12 The Refuge of Time
4-13 Fortrest of the Nail
4-14 My Enemy's Enemy
4-15 The Cyphermage Dilemma
4-16 The Fabric of Reality
4-18 The Veteran's Vault
4-19 The Night March of Kalkamedes
4-21 Way of the Kirin
4-22 Halls of Dwarven Lore
4-23 Rivalry's End
4-24 The Price of Friendship
4-25 The Secrets Stones Keep
5-00 Siege of the Diamond City
5-01 The Glass River Rescue
5-02 The Wardstone Patrol
5-03 The Hellknight's Feast
5-05 The Elven Entanglement
5-06 You Have What You Hold
5-07 Port Godless
5-08 The Confirmation
5-09 The Traitor's Lodge
5-10 Where Mammoths Dare Not Tread
5-11 Library of the Lion
5-12 Destiny of the Sands Part 1: A Bitter Bargain
5-13 Weapon in the Rift
5-14 Day of the Demon
5-15 Destiny of the Sands Part 2: Race to Seeker's Folly
5-16 Destiny of the Sands Part 3: Sanctum of the Sages
5-21 The Merchant's Wake
5-22 Scars of the Third Crusade
5-24 Assault on the Wound
5-25 Vengeance at Sundered Crag
5-26 Legacy of the Stonelords (Special)
6-00 The Paths We Choose (Special)
6-02 The Silver Mount Collection
6-03 The Technic Siege
6-04 Beacon Below
6-05 Slave Ships of Absalom
6-06 Hall of the Flesh Eaters
6-07 Valley of Veiled Flame
6-08 The Segang Expedition
6-12 Scions of the Sky Key, Part 1: On Sharrowsmith's Trail
6-14 Scions of the Sky Key, Part 2: Kaava Quarry
6-15 Overflow Archvies
6-19 Test of Tar Kuata
AP-01 Rise of the Rune Lords: Burnt Offerings
AP-02 Rise of the Rune Lords: The Skinsaw Murders
AP-03 Rise of the Rune Lords: The Hook Mountain Massacre
AP-04 Rise of the Rune Lords: Fortress of the Stone Giants
AP-05 Rise of the Rune Lords: Sins of the Saviours
AP-61 Shattered Star: Shards of Sin
AP-67 The Reign of Winter: The Snows of Summer
Broken Chains
Emerald Spire 1 : The Tower Ruins
Emerald Spire 2 : The Cellars
Emerald Spire 3 : Splinterden
Plunder and Peril (1)
Plunder and Peril (2)
The Midnight Mirror
Thornkeep 1: The Accursed Halls
Thornkeep 2: The Forgotten Laboratory
Thornkeep 3: The Enigma Vaults
Thornkeep 4: The Dark Menagerie
Thornkeep 5: Sanctum of a Lost Age
Advancement in Pathfinder is all about becoming significantly more badass than creatures that are below your level.
The only time I've actually seen this called out in Pathfinder/3.x was in Age Of Worms in Encounter at Blackwall Keep, and even then the PC APL only out-levels the CR by a couple levels.
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AD&D 300% skill increase over 7 levels. D&D 5e 30% skill increase over 7 levels.You're missing out on first on actual likely characters, and then second on actual play experience.
A 1e/2e 1st level rogue probably had a Dexterity bonus, or in the case of 2e actually put points into their Hide In Shadows if they cared about it. Since we're comparing apples-to-apples you could regularly have a 30% Hide in 1e as 1st level elf rogue with an 18 Dex elf. In 2e, you could've spent up to 15 points in Hide at 1st level and be sporting a 40% Hide with ease.
So, you're trying to sneak past the orc guards, you roll the dice and you succeed 40% of the time at first level.
By the time you hit 7th level, the same 1e rogue has 70% success odds.
You didn't have point buys in AD&D, and for rolling ability scores (3d6) I was being generous with Dex 16 (actual likely characters?), and you are using an Elf as an example, who has the highest racial bonus.
It's funny how you didn't use the same principles with your 3.x example, so dodgy. How about a Tieflng with Dex 20, that would be a stealth check +11, not 7.
Skewed analysis.
Anyways I was showing the level of progress between AD&D and D&D 5e characters. Opposition to Bounded Accuracy is concerned with why there is little difference between a 1st-level character and a 20th-level character.
The idea that Pathfinder is on this constant treadmill (in relation to level and challenge rating) is clearly fabricated. A CR 2 Worg has a perception check +11, while a CR 2 Skeleton Champion has a perception skill of +6, that's a 5 point difference, significant enough to sabotage the treadmill idea.
Yeah, the d20 is iconic. It's kinda something that can't be removed. It's liking taking the heart of something.
With that said, if we were to do something really out there, I'm a fan of roll-to-keep like L5R. Basically, you roll so many dice, but you can only use a certain amount of dice (which is usually less than what you rolled). It plays both with the odds of completion while also still limiting what you can do. It's my favorite roll system.
But, as I just said, d20 is kinda the core of the experience.
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Speaking from experience, PF plays fairly well with 2d10 as the core roll instead of 1d20I have to admit, I'm not overly fond of the d20 as the basis for so many rolls. I have a lot more fun with systems where you get a dice pool or your baseline roll is 2d6 or something else with two or more dice.Conceptually, I like bounded accuracy. I don't mind the numbers of the game being dragged down and tied together a little bit.
The problem with bounded accuracy is that it has been put into a system where you need, at minimum, a +4 modifier for the impact of that modifier to be felt with any consistency. The d20 is simply not a good dice for a bounded accuracy system, in my opinion. It has far to much variation in its results.
Sort've. It depends on how much you care about critical hits- unless you alter critical ranges, you've just dropped the 3 standard crit ranges (20, 19-20, 18-20) from 5% - 15% to 1% - 6%.
Using these instead:
20 -> 18-20 (6%)
19-20 -> 17-20 (10%)
18-20 -> 16-20 (15%)
Works out fairly well, though once you drop Keen or whatnot into the mix things get slightly messier, since the closest you can get is:
17-20 -> 15-20 (21%)
15-20 -> 14-20 (28%)
It also has the side effect of making figuring out your odds on the spot slightly tougher, especially for players that aren't very skilled at arithmetic. A good rule of thumb is that your odds of rolling a 10 or higher are 64%.
Yeah, the d20 is iconic. It's kinda something that can't be removed. It's liking taking the heart of something.
With that said, if we were to do something really out there, I'm a fan of roll-to-keep like L5R. Basically, you roll so many dice, but you can only use a certain amount of dice (which is usually less than what you rolled). It plays both with the odds of completion while also still limiting what you can do. It's my favorite roll system.
But, as I just said, d20 is kinda the core of the experience.
Sure, but that system is already there. . . Shadowrun already has one take on a d6 system, Decipher games have another, and GURPS has yet another.
There's already all the stuff from White Wolf with d10s and there's already the one roll engine for Wild Talents.
If I wanted to play any of those games, I'd play those games.
When I play PF I want to play a d20 based high fantasy game where I can play as a powerful spellcaster and fight monsters in a medieval setting.
Any edition that leaves any of that description out is not going to be successful.
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I use 19-20, 18-20 and 17-20, critical threats that overcome AC are automatic crits. Improved Critical/Keen increases the threat range by 1 notch [So a Keen Rapier would crit on 15% of hits.]
I don't think a game without confirmations would be for me. The threat doesn't even matter if it was going to miss anyway, and the auto-success makes a lot of really great abilities useless and redundant, and it nerfs armor.