Sure...alot of people say the more dices you roll the more fun...i don't, because i don't like RNG and random elements, i prefer random/luck importance or impact to be lessened in favor of choices, actions and consequences...
More dice? Eh... You don't like random elements; however, in a system that has multiple die take the highest, you're hedging the random element into a less random element. The statistical probability of rolling lower is reduced, and the statistical probability of rolling higher is increased by a significant margin. So, mathematically speaking, a multi-dice system would actually reduce randomness. Now, I can buy the "it don't feel right," but I can't buy that it increases randomization or that it promotes more randomization.
I'm saying that your feedback that the idea hasn't been implemented properly doesn't mean that the goal is wrong. Particularly if your vision of how it would be is founded on assumptions in complete opposition to that goal.
Ultimately, I can only judge what's in front of me. The goal could be amazing. They could be wanting to send every collector's edition customer a real, live unicorn that will poo money and eliminate disease worldwide.
The goal is totally irrelevent here. What's important is what's in front of me and how it works. If I burn my house down trying to cook dinner, my wife is not going to forgive me because my goal was to make sure we were fed and that's a good goal to have.
What the stated aim can do is provide us with an avenue for discussion on how we might cook this meal without burning the house down - or in this case, rebuild the house and still manage to eat something.
Talking about player psychology, can somebody tell me whether or not you truly expect players to make a check in which they have 5% of success? In fact, if the consequences are bad enough, players refuse to make checks at much higher chances of success unless it is absolutely necessary. You focus a lot in this discussion on novices and experts and whether or not one should succeed at a task the other should not. There is a second aspect to skill checks, namely whether you even want PCs to make a check and at what point the risks just don't add up anymore. I know this is a difficult subject, because I myself also hate to make checks that are likely to fail (and I know that in an earlier itteration the rogue really complained about making a Stealth check opposed by the Perception check of a dozen goblins worsened by the fact that surprise rules at the time certainly did not make the risk worthwhile), but at the same time making that roll adds tension to the game...
Consistently on my table, even when the odds are stacked against the players, at least one of them will always say: there's always a 20.
And more often than statistically possible, that 20 does happen just when they need it.
Positive reaffirmation (in other words: you tend to remember easier when it works then when it doesn't)
Tell that to the guys on my table who consistently roll three consecutive 20s even though the dice aren't loaded.
But do your players even do so when the consequences of failure are bad? I mean, sure, when it is simple check everybody rolls (which as others pointed out can also a bit of an issue) and chances are that at least one person succeeds, but what about when you jump over a 1000 feet deep cliff (to give a rather extreme example)?
Yes. It's not a matter of what the consequences are if they fail, it's a matter of if it's worth the risk. And sometimes, killing the annoying BBEG is worth dying in the process.
And note that a sliding scale in success/failure would certainly help, and coming up with interesting concequences of failure do as well, it are still house rules and sometimes it can be a bit impractical...
Just a bit of grammar nazi-ing, but "it are"?
I prefer "failing forward" actually: you succeed regardless of roll, it's just a matter of determining the presence of complications or not. Kinda like GUMSHOE I think.
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what you create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
If you're crossing the street and see a city bus barreling straight toward you with 'GIVE ME YOUR WALLET!' painted across its windshield, you probably won't be reaching for your wallet.
This is what I believe is the spirit of D&D 4E, and my deal breaker for D&D Next: equal opportunities, with distinct specializations, in areas where conflict happens the most often, without having to worry about heavy micromanagement or system mastery.
Numbers in general will go up, but there is no assumed progression of attack bonuses that the monsters' defenses have to keep pace with, nor an assumed progression of defenses that the monsters' attack bonuses have to keep pace with.
Scaling will be largely qualitative, but quantitatively it will take the form of HP and damage. There will still be levels, still be numerical increases. Just not accuracy disparities with level.
Which I think is a problem, because that means that a high level monster has to be either grossly bloated in all stats (not just in HP) or loaded with PC-negating abilities just to make sure that their level actually stays relevant.
The fact that they haven't even begun working on monsters makes me worry because the mechanics involving player attack, monster defense, player damage, monster HP, player defense, monster attack, player HP and monster damage hinges on them working together.
They're doing away with the notion that a level 1 town guard should have zero chance of hitting a level 10 dragon. The guard will still have a reasonable, if low, chance to hit the dragon. He's got no hope in the Nine Hells of actually defeating the dragon despite being able to hit him, though. But, an entire town's worth of town guards? Well, enough of them are going to survive being incinerated long enough to maybe put up a fight.
Except we're not talking about NPC vs. NPC fights, we're talking about PC vs. NPC fights; do we really need to watch the DM roll attacks against his own NPCs in 15 minutes of him telling how the guards barely got to drive the dragon away with heavy losses?
I'd actually prefer that the level 1 town guard PC has only a 5% chance of hitting a level 10 dragon. The level 10 dragon is supposed to be so great a threat that no one is actually able to face them even if thousands of level 1 PCs came up against it**. I actually like the idea that the reason why civilization hasn't been wiped out by monsters is because A) assuming that levels exist in the world, most creatures are of the level 0-1 variety B) cooperation and technology has helped keep the less "civilized" at bay C) most creatures focus less on world domination and more on day-to-day survival, with some of them barely able to scrape a living in spite of their power (you know, like a lot of animals in real life that tend to be more powerful and smarter than humans) D) civilization heralds champions who are able to fend off the more powerful creatures; veterans who, assuming the existence of levels, have earned enough levels to do their jobs
How significant should levels be? Should it just be a bump to your character's ability here and there, like how it's currently done in D&D Next for non-spellcasters, or should it be a significant boost in a character's ability, like how it's currently done in D&D Next for spellcasters (and only due to the gaining of new spells plus more spell slots)?
You seem to be completely missing the point, and focusing on some pretty trivial details and missing the big picture. Yes, DCs (and monster defenses - ACs, 4e defenses, 3e saving throws fall into this category) have always had a finite range. But that range was always pegged to an assumed progression on the part of the PCs. BAB, THAC0, half-level, rigidly advancing enhancement bonuses. All of that assumption about what the DM side of the screen needs to be in order to challenge the player is gone. All the arbitrary and pointless math increases that increase success chance for the sake of increasing success chance are gone.
This does not mean that PC accuracy never improves. What the core, major, big deal point of BA is, however, is that PC accuracy is never assumed to improve, and just counteracted by the treadmill of increasing stats on the DM side. PC improvements to accuracy are real improvements, because the DM side is static. When the fighter gets a +1 to hit at level four, that means the fighter is actually really better at hitting, not just that he needs that +1 to hit because monsters have an arbitrary +1 to AC that the fighter needs to overcome.
BA does not eliminate player advancement. It eliminates the assumption of player advancement specifically in regards to accuracy. Other advancement is still assumed, but not accuracy.
The issue here with Bounded Accuracy when it comes to skills is that they're saying one thing, yet the math and the mechanics prove otherwise (unless the intent is that level 8-10 PCs or level 4 human rogues are supposed to be the equivalent of demigods).
The issue I have with D&D Next as a whole -- including, but not limited to, Bounded Accuracy -- is that levels (which would be the core mechanic involving player advancement) provide so little in terms of advancement that if they're supposed to be at the pinnacle of their capabilities at level 10, I'm not seeing it. Probably because the monsters that they're supposed to be fighting aren't designed to match the levels they're supposed to represent. Probably because only the spellcasters don't suffer from dead levels due to the fact that they get more spell slots as they level -- and we can safely assume that because magic is a class feature of spellcasters, the fact that they get more uses of various types of magic makes getting JUST +1 spell slot less like a dead level and much more like a boon -- while non-casters are expected to have dead levels and the developers don't see it as a problem, when given the complaints it's clear that there are players (including myself) who do find dead levels a problem. Probably it's because it makes demigods and gods almost no different from mortal men, with perhaps "magic!" as the only differentiating factor between them... either that, or a heapload of hit points so obscene it'd make high level solo monsters in 4E look like sticks.
They have some interesting ideas certainly, but there's so much more work to be done before those ideas are even close to passable IMHO.
** actually, it's possible that something like two dozen level 1 PCs or more -- even with scaling and all -- can take on a level 10 foe. There's this one DM I've played with who actually went around and threw two Bulettes [level 9] at our party of level 1 PCs in 4E (along with like 20 DM-controlled minion allies apparently), and although I didn't get to stick around long enough, I heard we eventually won that. Probably because there was a level 4 Fighter in the party, but then again even the level 1s in the party have a 5% or maybe 15% chance to hit [with flanking and maybe a buff or two], plus Aid Another could certainly help in this situation (better one PC that likely hits than two PCs that likely miss and all that jazz).
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what you create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
If you're crossing the street and see a city bus barreling straight toward you with 'GIVE ME YOUR WALLET!' painted across its windshield, you probably won't be reaching for your wallet.
This is what I believe is the spirit of D&D 4E, and my deal breaker for D&D Next: equal opportunities, with distinct specializations, in areas where conflict happens the most often, without having to worry about heavy micromanagement or system mastery.
I think the bounded accuracy system, as most DMs set artificial DCs based on level to shoe horn this mechanic into 3.x and 4e anyway. I also think it opens up many more varied and interesting storylines as monsters and obstacles don't become bracketed by level.
I think the bounded accuracy system, as most DMs set artificial DCs based on level to shoe horn this mechanic into 3.x and 4e anyway. I also think it opens up many more varied and interesting storylines as monsters and obstacles don't become bracketed by level.
If monster levels don't matter, then why bother giving them levels in the first place?
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what you create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
If you're crossing the street and see a city bus barreling straight toward you with 'GIVE ME YOUR WALLET!' painted across its windshield, you probably won't be reaching for your wallet.
This is what I believe is the spirit of D&D 4E, and my deal breaker for D&D Next: equal opportunities, with distinct specializations, in areas where conflict happens the most often, without having to worry about heavy micromanagement or system mastery.
If a rule causes most people who read it to either implement it improperly or ignore it outright and do something it explicitly tells you not to do out of lack of understanding, then it's a bad rule.
First, we have no idea if it's "most". Your anecdotal experience runs counter to my anecdotal experience, in which the vast majority of DMs understand how to set DCs in 4e. In my experience, the guys who don't "get it" are looking for a reason to hate the edition, just as, in my experience, most people who don't get bounded accurayc are looking for a way to not like the playtest.
I thought I made it clear that it was my own experience I was referring to. And I've played with a wide variety of DMs ranging all skill levels. They were certainly not looking for a reason to hate the edition.
Furthermore, Bounded Accuracy isn't in the same boat at all, since it's not a rule that DMs will be able to ignore.
It will be worse, because people use their misunderstanding of bounded accuracy to justify all sorts of house rulings (and house rulings are specifically to be encouraged in this edition).
Which means you should get ready to hear "bounded accuracy forced me to make the following changes, which turned my game into a mess." Player psychology is a bitch.
I weep for the future...
You must have been weeping for a very long time, then. Gamers have been using that excuse to twist their favourite games into irrepairable mess with their own house rules and blaming designers since... Pretty much Day 1.
To be fair early editions were already a mess mathematically and rules wise, with all kinds of contradictory and odd rules. So in early editions house ruling was a requirement to make the game work properly...
Because it makes your PC better. There doesn't need to be a systematic reason to increase it.
When your PC gets a +1 weapon, you're actually better, not just better because we arbitrarily raised all the monsters' ACs when we call them level 6 instead of level 1.
You're right. The D&D crowd likes seeing their to-hit rolls get bigger as they level up, just because they level up. But that's a matter of "too damn bad" - they're not going to just appease the majority, here. They're making the design choice, even if people are too uninformed or stuck in their ways to understand or appreciate the advantages of that choice.
We're supposed to notice when the PCs get better. In prior systems, that improvement just gets matched exactly by an arbitrary, pointless increase to the other side. There's no actual advancement when you're running on a treadmill - your "improvements" only serve to prevent you from falling behind the assumed trajectory. Instead, nothing is assumed about how quickly a PC will progress. They will progress, yes. But they won't be assumed to progress, and nothing will be built into the system to counteract that progression.
It is not clumsy, it is not lazy, and I'd appreciate it if you took the time to try to actually understand what's been said on the topic before you insult the people who came up with it. All of your thinking on this subject is completely uninformed, completely misguided, and completely compromised by assumptions whose removal is the entire purpose of the whole endeavor.
I like the idea behind it, I just don't like the implementation. In fact that sums up my current view on all of 5E. Good idea, bad execution.
I don't think they understand what you are saying so here is an example:
4E Level 9 White Dragon AC 23 5E Level 9 Green Dragon AC 16
4E chance to hit Dragon 20-((23-14-1)*5) = 60% 5E chance to hit Dragon 20-((16-10-1)*5) = 75%
The 4E characters stays at around 60% chance to hit for nearly their entire career, it fluctuates up or down by 10% depending on whether they have the right magic item bonus for their level or whether they are fighting an easy or hard monster, but it stays right around there. A 5E character gains 5% every 5-6 levels. The monsters ACs are all in the range of about 14-18 no matter what level they are so the Fighter in 5E literally gets better at hitting whereas the 4E fighter does not...
The 4E characters stays at around 60% chance to hit for nearly their entire career
For progressively harder-to-hit monsters
, it fluctuates up or down by 10% depending on whether they have the right magic item bonus for their level or whether they are fighting an easy or hard monster, but it stays right around there. A 5E character gains 5% every 5-6 levels. The monsters ACs are all in the range of about 14-18 no matter what level they are so the Fighter in 5E literally gets better at hitting whereas the 4E fighter does not...
I don't know how you can look at a guy who can now hit on an 11 a target that he used to have to roll a 20 to hit (and then didn't get critical-hit bonuses), and say he hasn't gotten any better at hitting.
"The world does not work the way you have been taught it does. We are not real as such; we exist within The Story. Unfortunately for you, you have inherited a condition from your mother known as Primary Protagonist Syndrome, which means The Story is interested in you. It will find you, and if you are not ready for the narrative strands it will throw at you..." - from Footloose
