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Dec 24, 2012 -- 9:33PM, Maxperson wrote:

Dec 24, 2012 -- 9:24PM, Mand12 wrote:

So I just saw Hobbit.

Caster supremacy, yo.  Dwarves are fine at slashing and smashing, but when their backsides were in the fire, it took a wizard to keep them from being bacon.  Every time.  Like, 6-7 of them.

And he even got good melee!  No fair!

Yeah.  I'm not liking the director's anti-dwarf attitude.  He's turned most of the dwarves that he has touched into mockeries of what Tolkien dwarves are.  He only really got one right, and that was Thorin.

Yes, the roly-poly/ho, ho, ho crap from Gimli (and kept getting knocked prone in combat...?) still insults me.

Dec 23, 2012 -- 8:04PM, Mand12 wrote:

Dec 23, 2012 -- 6:21PM, Tony_Vargas wrote:

One solution is to stat NPCs relative to the PCs, rather than in some absolute sense. 

Here's the thing:  in a BA system, you can do this.  In a non-BA system, you can't not do this.

Not at all, you just get different results.  Under bounded accuracy, the range of ability covered is simply narrower.  So, if you stat NPCs relative to PCs under bounded accuracy, the difference is minor compared to just statting them in an absolute sense - there's not a great benefit to doing or not doing so, because everyone can hit everyone all the time.   In a more traditional level-based system, statting NPCs relative to PCs makes interaction with them meaningful and mechanically, 'sound,' while statting them in an absolute sense causes them to 'swing' wildly in significance as the party advances in level - the issue the OP was talking about.   The bounded accuracy solution is simply to limit the effect of advancement.  If NPC stats are static rather than relative to the PCs, NPCs stay meaningful only to the extent that advancement /isn't/ meaningful.  If NPC stats are relative to the role they're meant to play in the PCs' story, they're meaningful, but not static.  FWIW.

In 5e, for instance, /accuracy/ is bounded, but hps/damage aren't, so a low-hp monster or NPC fairly quickly becomes a 1-hit kill (or even a kill on a miss or auto-hit or successful save) and is unable to meaningfully threaten the party with his damage output.   The party that couldn't stand against the King and his personal elite guard at 1st level wills still be able to trivially demolish them at 20th.  It'll just be with massive damage instead of hitting on a '2.'  

If you want the king to remain 'tough' at all levels, you'd have to stat him differently at higher level - maybe he acquired the Zax, the Cloak of Kings, and it's vast protective power while the PCs were getting all those levels?

Anyway, that's only one possible solution, a mechanical one, and probably not the best.  The best solution would be letting the PCs role in the campaign change to reflect their growing power.  At 1st level, they might run in fear of the kings guards, at paragon, they might negotiate with him as a virtual equal, at epic, the concerns (and ruler) of a single kingdom are no longer that significant to them...