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I still think it's funny that wakedown listed a monster that is a hard-counter to his alchebarian. On a side note, are you going to respond to any of the monster and/or encounter breakdowns I posted wakedown?
I would understand if you didn't want to, because your argument was bad but I did spend some time on lovingly baking that post, so it'd be nice if you at least tasted it for the camera.
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"or in the case of 2e actually put points into their Hide In Shadows"
You didn't have point buys in AD&D, and for rolling ability scores (3d6)
Crack open your 2e PHB again if you don't believe me.
I was being generous with Dex 16 (actual likely characters?), and you are using an Elf as an example..
Back in the 1e/2e days, I know most of the campaigns I played in were roll 4d6, drop lowest. We'd roll an entire array, decide if we liked it, then roll another array. Or, if you were playing Baldur's Gate, you kept clicking "re-roll". Almost everyone ended up with 18 in their primary stat, which for a rogue was Dex. In play, for the most part, I was used to every fighter having a 18/percentile strength (although they may take the 18/56 Str alongside the 17 Con, 15 Dex instead of the 18/96 Str, 11 Con, 13 Dex).
And yes, I'd say of the two dozen rogues I saw in 1e-2e days, the majority were elves or halflings.
... so dodgy. How about a Tieflng with Dex 20, that would be a stealth check +11, not 7. Skewed analysis.
In presenting an apples-to-apples comparison between PFS Core, PFS Classic, 1e, 2e and 5e, you don't have tieflings as a ubiquitous ooption. All of those have elves though if you want to build out one of them across all systems. The stats I provided were for humans, universal across all systems. So, pretty much the opposite of 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.
I'd like to believe this, but I don't see that as true.
In general, the folks I see who are opposed to bounded accuracy are the ones who are predominantly players with characters who specialize or stack modifiers beyond Pathfinder Core's non-strict bounds.
In Pathfinder PFS Core, a 5th level human bard in play basically has an upper bound of +17 Diplomacy. You might not think of it as an upper bound, but it's there.
In Pathfinder PFS Classic, a 5th level human bard in play can achieve a +30 Diplomacy. Well above the expectation that a GM may have previously had when only the CRB was in play.
In 100% of my posts where I discuss an implementation of bounded accuracy in Pathfinder 2e, I suggest implementing a ceiling on skills at something like (15 + character level). The only people's characters this would affect are clearly the ones that would exceed this. And out of them, I'd wager it's not 100% that would be opposed to such a ceiling as they understand the consequences of achieving bonuses way above the expected norms in adventures and scenarios.
I will leave with another example... six players are sitting down at a PFS scenario heavily reliant on Diplomacy.
GM: The old man looks at you, and says "okay Pathfinders, present your case..."
John (heavily invested in the story so far): Okay, so we know the old man respects wisdom, perhaps we can tell him a tale about some of the things we've done that would seem wise? That might help use eke out some sort of circumstance bonus for this check.
Lindsey (also heavily invested int he story): Oh, didn't we learn he lost his wife to a cultist of Rovagug? Maybe we should tell him about that cult we defeated?
Tom (playing a PC with a +12 Diplomacy who introduced himself as being a friendly Varisian and a "party face"): Hey yeah, with your guys arguments, and maybe those circumstance bonuses, I can get up to a +16 or even higher. We should easily be able to make the DC25 or whatever check.
Mark (quiet up until now, but with a character that can easily obtain +30 Diplomacy at level 5): Guys, just stop. GM, I cast adoration and raiment of command. I take 1 for a 31, can we move on?
The Other 5 Players: (look at Mark, look at GM) ...
I have seen the above happen. Many. Times.
The bounded part of bounded accuracy helps to prevent these situations in organized play and restore a lot of the teamwork and interest to the game.
The only person at that table who is against bounded accuracy is "Mark". It's clear why he doesn't like the idea of bounded accuracy in his Pathfinder.
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I still think it's funny that wakedown listed a monster that is a hard-counter to his alchebarian. On a side note, are you going to respond to any of the monster and/or encounter breakdowns I posted wakedown?
Didn't read that until now. You may or may not have noticed this thread grew by over 100 posts between that post with the alchebarian, your reply, and my next post. A lot of long posts.
Your comments are all good and sound and speak to a GM with flexibility to build encounters which present adversaries in a thematically appropriate light.
If you'll notice I posted earlier that my comments are heavily influenced by the rules as they are employed in organized play, whereby GMs and players are presented printed scenarios and the GMs act as referees and run the adventures as written.
A well-built alchebarian basically "has his way" with printed scenarios that are in his level range. In fact, a level 2 alchebarian is easily tackling the combats of level 4-5 scenarios and recent rules have it such that it's far less common for players to identify their PCs are essentially above-the-grade for how they contribute to an APL calculation and "play up".
The alchebarian doesn't really run into problems except very infrequently, as his Will save is his primary weakness (at least in the half-dozen alchebarians I've seen dominating tables). Even then, the alchebarian's brother always seems to be playing an oracle, bard or what-have-you with the convenient scroll of calm emotions or what-not in a spring-loaded wrist sheath. Given initiative order, even the "ridiculously hard" fights that the alchebarian gets himself into (a couple 3-4s with Confusion come to mind), it's practically like he has no weakness.
The problem occurs when a lot of scenarios feature primarily combat without the tactics you cite as counters to the alchebarian, and those adventures usually give key indicators to when you should pre-buff, and usually 10 mins of pre-buffing and 12 rounds of rage cover the entire freakin' adventure.
You will undoubtedly point to problems with the adventures, and I've said as much many times in reviews and in discussions on the PFS forums. I'd suggest that over 70% of PFS scenarios feature a lone BBEG that can be killed before he/she acts in round 1 by this alchebarian.
But, both are factors. Now that I've GM'd a good number of PFS Core games, I can tell you that combat is a lot more "epic" in feel as there are a lot less stacking of modifiers and BBEGs actually get to take their turns in the less-than-stellar scenarios. So, there's something to be said about the bounds that PFS Core has versus the bounds that are present in the full breadth of Pathfinder rules today.
(and it's worth noting the alchebarian isn't taking on the scenario with just himself and his oradin/bard brother, but 4 other players of equally optimized characters).
As I mentioned earlier, I recently GM'd Sarkorian Prophecy, a nice tight little scenario featuring a fearsome outsider. My table had a magus and a witch who within the first round of combat can apply -4 to AC (the witch, cackling of course) and the sickened, entangled, fatigued and shaken conditions. This, coupled with just 1-2 PCs like the aforementioned alchebarian, basically mean everyone is rolling for "anything but a 1" to hit epic, legendary (and ideally scary) adversaries. Guess what happens when those players roll a 1? They re-roll it like it didn't happen. So basically, nobody every misses. These are the games that need bounds defined. In many of them, a potentially new player was sitting there with the Valeros or Seelah pre-gen thinking, WTH??
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I'm really not seeing the problem here. Badly written adventures being run by people that are specifically disallowed any flexibility don't play well.
Bad games are bad. What a revelation.
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Huh. Your argument has convinced me that the PFS house rules need to implement bounded accuracy, ASAP.
Thank you Epic Meepo for listening to my pleas for help!!
we already had the discussion a few pages ago about how what you are describing is not in fact bounded accuracy.
Except, it is. The term bounded accuracy in tabletop gaming was pretty much brought to the forefront by Wizards in 2012. How they used it in 2012 evolved through 2014 and the launch of 5e.
You'd need to watch or read recent interviews with Mike Mearls, forumites, OSR folks, etc to get the full gist of how the term has evolved since 2012.
If you wade through thousands (probably tens of thousands) of posts of designers and gamers talking through the concept, you'll see what I mean.
The simplest articulation from 2014 is:
Bounded accuracy is the idea that player rolls must stay largely within defined minimum and maximum values.
Yes, please. This definition. Especially in organized play!
