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Dec 20, 2012 -- 3:46PM, Negflar2099 wrote:

The problem is that it doesn't make sense because fantasy doesn't make sense. In fantasy a hero can take out the demon that killed 1000 guards. So hero > demon > guards. Yet that same hero will often either run away from or sometimes be captured by less than 20 or so guards. That doesn't make sense.

You achieve this with weapon immunities/ resistances. If a dragon is nigh immune to non-magic weapons, then it doesn't matter how many low level guards you throw at it.

Heroes on the other hand, don't benefit from that immunity, so while they have the skills to take down a dragon they can still be outnumbered and taken down.

Dec 23, 2012 -- 6:59AM, lokiare wrote:

Dec 23, 2012 -- 12:53AM, Molecule wrote:

Dec 22, 2012 -- 4:57PM, lokiare wrote:

Its because the developers have repeated over and over that you can use lower level monsters at higher levels and monsters will stay relevant and things like that. It turns out they aren't any more relevant than other editions and they sure don't last any longer when you actually run the math...

Well, they might not be mathematically better in Next (I honestly don't know), but they're definitely more usable from a gameplay perspective.  Fighting things that can only hit you on a 20 doesn't FEEL very exciting, even if the numbers work out so that it's actually as difficult as the version where they hit you relatively frequently but do less damage.  I might consider running an encounter that's primarily based on low-level enemies in Next; in 4e trying to do that would have been pretty uninteresting for me and most of my players.

I also disagree with the 'hitting on a 20 doesn't feel heroic' part. Actually yes it does, that's kind of the definition of heroic. You are so awesome things can barely touch you unless they get lucky. That's how the game should feel. Not this gritty, still worrying about Kobolds crap...

Hear, hear!

Can you imagine in our Star Wars game the designers bounding the progressions so that padawans are able to hit Sith Lords? "Look, the low-level guys are relevant for longer! Yay!" It would be ridiculous.

The level of heroism in D&D shouldn't be be any different than the level of heroism in Star Wars. We play the games for the same reasons, just in different settings, and we abslutely want our heroic characters to be totally unphased by lower-level characters. That kind of heroism, after all, is ingrained in the D&D mythos.

Dec 20, 2012 -- 3:46PM, Negflar2099 wrote:

I'm on the fence about the bounded accuracy system. I think there's a lot of tweaking to do, but as a concept it's not bad. I don't hate it. I feel like it might solve a few problems that I've had in D&D since the beginning, like the "spit-on-the-king" mentality that takes over players once their AC gets to a certain point. Once they realize that no matter how many guards the king has they are basically immune to anything he can throw at them all sense of believability and respect goes out the window and this happens way too soon.

This is more of a problem the more you think of the world as a static place the PCs climb levels through, like a series of levels in a video game or take the 'sandbox' style of play in which the world is (treated as if) it were all 'statted out' before the first session (not really possible, of course, that's too much work for any DM).  If you decide the king is a 13th level character and his guards are 'Myrmidons' (1e 4th level fighters, IIRC), then when the party's flirting with epic levels, he's gotten pretty lowly..

One solution is to stat NPCs relative to the PCs, rather than in some absolute sense.  At low level, the King might be untouchably powerful and his guards might be statted as significant challenges to the party even in small numbers or 1:1.  At very high level, the King's guards would level-apropriate "minions," but the King, himself, still might not be statted out as a combat challenge for story reasons.  

Another solution, of course, is just to ignore the personal-power discrepancy, and depend upon the legitimate authority of the King in that culture.   Monarchies prospered as the primary form of government for centuries and there are still titular monarchs today with /some/ political and legal power.  Yet the persons themselves were still just people, none of them weilded magic, were actually chosen/empowered by God (though that belief may have existed), or even were such improbably capable warriors and legend may have made them out to be.  So the PCs respect (or hate or fear or whatever) the King because he's the King, and everyone in the Kingdom respects him - heck, in a fantasy world, the King may even 'be the land' - if the players go for a little casual regicide just because the numbers say they can, they might bring litteral as well as political ruin down on the Kingdom...

The problem is that it doesn't make sense because fantasy doesn't make sense.

That's one nice thing about fantasy, it doesn't have to make empirical sense.

In fantasy a hero can take out the demon that killed 1000 guards. So hero > demon > guards. Yet that same hero will often either run away from or sometimes be captured by less than 20 or so guards. That doesn't make sense. I don't know how many movies I've seen where heroes regularly get beaten up by enemies that were themselves beaten up by things the hero just finished ground pounding.

Conflict is rarely that simple.  If it were, sports commentators would be able to call the winner of any tournament after the first round just based on who had beaten whom in the past, and no game would ever be in question; generals would just take a good look at opposing forces and surrender if they were superior.  Even RPGs /try/ to make combat something other than a foregone conclusion, with some random dice rolls...

The bounded accuracy system is attempting to bring some logic to this mess.

I hope its not trying to bring anything quite that simplistic.  

Bounded accuracy is just trying to get one set of stats for a monster to serve even when the monster is used in very different ways in different stories at different levels.  That's not going to work as well in any given instance as a custom-statted monster, but it can save a whole lot of design effort.