Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

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honorentheos
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by honorentheos »

My experience with bounded accuracy in 5e is it keeps the wheels glued on a downhill-rolling train. PCs in 5e are insanely powerful compared to what I recall from AD&D. Sure at level 1 they could die due to a couple of unlucky rolls. But by even level 2 they feel more like mid-level PCs to me. At level 3 they all have their subclass options which definitely take them into superhero territory. And by level 5 they feel like an older higher level party. I think the sweet spot is between level 5 and 8 where spell casters are coming into their own while the melee classes are still stomping heads.

The description in the write-up doesn't accurately reflect what I think happens in games. Goblins are barely a challenge by level 3. Level 5? Why bother except as a mob serving a bigger boss. By level 10 I'd guess a party with tactical sense and min-maxed characters may be able to take on any monster in the manual with some planning and a bit of luck.

But, it also means that PCs don't have +10 magic weapons on top of abilities that given them +10 modifiers, nor +gazillion AC armor. The ends of the bell curve flatten out just barely enough that a mob of goblins is still going to get an arrow or two through, and the most powerful PC is still going to have a chance of missing when they dive in after them...even if it's a small chance.

As an example, a few sessions back my regular party was returning back through a fishing village they'd first encountered a little over a week before in game time. At that time they were merely level 8. Now they had just reached level 11. While a ways off they realized the village was burning and began rushing towards it but were still an hour away.

The village was under attack by a horde of Sahuagin and Koalinths, both CR 1/2 monsters. A monster's CR is supposed to tell you how high a level a party of four should be to find it a hard fight. CR 1? Four level 1 PCs should find just one of them challenging. Level 1/2? A level 1 party of four should be able to handle one of them with it being unlikely anyone will get seriously hurt.

I used this opportunity to have the players roll up four level zero villagers and play them in the attack. And at first the players tried playing them like heroes only to realize they couldn't just take them out in one hit while a single sahuagin could kill a couple of these level zero villagers before they could stop it. They learned quickly to hide, set up ambushes to protect themselves from any snooping sahuagin, and hope the cavalry arrived soon.

When the party came through the first time they had heard the villagers were required to pay tribute to a clan of hobgoblins that lived in the hills above the village. The party had business to attend to but thought it sounded like a protection racket so they had thoughts of handling the hobgoblins on their way back. Only it turned out the hobgoblins were legitimately protective of the villagers. After having been caught off guard by the wave of sahuagin and koalinths that surged out of the inland sea to attack the village, the hobgoblins mounted a still counter offensive. The players got a chance to be in the middle of that as zero level villages while CR 1/2 hobgoblins faced off with CR 1/2 sahuagin/koalinths.

Then the first three fastest PCs arrived. I ran this purely as theater of the mind as the mountain dwarf barbarian/artificer charged in with his great axe followed by the war cleric while the rogue began putting out fires. The barbarian has maxed out his strength at 20 so he has a +5 based on ability score. He has a proficency bonus of +4 at level 11. And his great axe is magic with a +1 to attack rolls. So he has a +10 to hit modifier. He also almost always choses to attack reckless so he has advantage. This means he rolls twice and takes the highest result, giving up advantage to an opponent when they attack. He attacks twice, too, and his great axe has a special elemental 1d4 of additional acid damage it does on a hit.

A CR 1/2 sahuagin has an AC of 12. The barbarian only misses one of them on a 1 or 2, and gets to roll twice taking the highest. So he'd have to roll a 1 or 2 on both dice to miss. That isn't likely.

On a hit, he does 1d12+6+1d4 damage. Worst case, he's doing 8 points of damage. Best case, 22. We also play that a crit does max damage plus rolling the dice. So 12+6+4 then rolling for another 8-22 points of damage. A CR 1/2 sahuagin as 22 hit points. A CR 1/2 koalinth? 13 hp offset by an AC 14.

He also gets two attacks per turn when he takes the attack action.

So he's doing 16 - 44 points of damage per turn, with a 1/20 chance of doing another 22 each attack. He could do 88 points of damage in an insanely lucky turn by himself.

Effectively the barbarian mowed them down. I described his hits as cleaving through wounded sahuagin and koalinths to then damage their allies adjacent to them. He was slaying.

Oh, and he is a totem of the bear barbarian of course, so he takes only half damage from any damage type other then psychic. His AC is 18 from natural armor now, and when he rages his 136 hp basically double to 272 hp. Whenever one got through his 18 AC and rolled their 1d8+2 damage, he basically got to see how completely irrelevant the damage was they were doing to him when he was able to take them on at a squad level or lower.

Oh, and did I mention the artificer multiclass? Yeah, so after his bonus action round one to rage, every subsequent round he uses his construct cannon to go around blasting enemies as well. It also has an AC of 18 and does 2d8+3 damage. That's another 5-19 points of damage.

Yeah he's the tank. But that's fairly indicative of why I don't think bounded accuracy means a leveled up party would feel like goblins were a problem, or the inn keeper's giant rat problem would be something to fret over.

So there is the bell curve of bounded accuracy. The sahuagin can still be used as minions at this level, the PCs feel like superheroes, but there is some small risk of getting swarmed, just because of the numbers. Toss in a few CR 5 water elementals, a CR 11 Marid, and give a few sahuagin giant barracuda they ride while slinging spears like a greek warrior riding a chariot and you have yourself a fight. Oh, and make protecting the villagers the priority so it keeps things interesting, plus a tenuous relationship with the hobgoblins who are allies but don't trust they...good times!
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by honorentheos »

Here's a table from the 5e DMG that shows the way bounded accuracy effectively makes it easier to plan and run mobs of monsters:

Mob Attacks
d20 Roll Needed Attackers Needed for One to Hit
1–5.......................1
6–12 ....................2
13–14....................3
15–16....................4
17–18....................5
19.......................10
20.......................20

This helps me plan out the role of monster mobs. The sahuagin with +3 to hit needing a roll of 5 to hit the barbarian's AC 18 only pose a risk of hitting if there are four or more of them, and then only doing 7 points of damage. Throwing 40 of them at him suggests they could get 10 hits in to do 70 points of damage. That's enough to scare even my level 11 party. We've used the mob rules enough they have a good sense to feel out when trying to solo a mob is suicide or potentially a threat to one of them even when they attack as a group.
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by honorentheos »

Physics Guy wrote:
Sun Mar 12, 2023 9:28 pm
You can take that too far, though. At one point I tried switching from round-by-round combat with initiative rolls to a second-by-second resolution, with players who were supposed to get one action per ten-second round instead rolling a d10 every second to see whether they would be able to act in that second. That was probably bad in several ways but the worst was just unanticipated statistics: the average number of actions was still one per ten seconds in my system, but occasional lucky bursts of multiple actions within just a few seconds were balanced out by frequent long lulls in which a heroic fighter would just stand around, not even able to try to hit anything, for many more than ten seconds. Thinking I would make melee more exciting and vivid, I had effectively doubled the roll-to-hit phase by adding a roll-to-try-to-roll phase before it. At first I didn't understand why it wasn't working, but after one really miserable battle I thought through the probabilities, realised the problem of frequent long lulls, and abandoned the horrible system.
That''s sounds almost exactly like something out of a game from the late 80's / early 90s. LOL. I can see why it had some initial appeal. But also why it turned out to not do what you wanted it to do.

I once tried to make a one-on-one fight allow for tactical combat by saying each player could only move 1/6th of their movement at a time, and could declare when they wanted to take their action before or after they made that move once per movement speed allotment. I thought it would help make it be more than the toughest melee fighter closing in on their turn followed by rounds of rock em, sock em robot. Needless to say it didn't do that at all. It just meant we got to watch them close tediously slowly and then rock em, sock em.
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by honorentheos »

Bret Ripley wrote:
Sun Mar 12, 2023 10:05 pm
I don't think I've ever met anyone who like the AD&D magic system ... certainly no group I was ever a part of ever used the rules as written. If I recall correctly we followed used the number of spells per spell level based on character level, but parted ways with the rules after that. MUs could use any of their available spells without prior memorization, and while that had the potential to make MUs more powerful this was "balanced" by two things: the spells that were acquired were selected semi-randomly, and the fact that MUs didn't tend to survive for very long.

We were mostly poor students back then, so our books tended to be second-hand, and modules were considered an unnecessary extravagance. Many of the rules we followed were "table rules" and all the content was homebrewed. There wasn't even a gaming store anywhere near where I lived -- heh, I remember at one point programming my Texas Instruments calculator to use as a random number generator because I didn't have any dice that weren't 6-sided. I guess the homebrew aspect of my earliest D&D experiences stayed with me when I eventually began DMing -- I only ever purchased one "module": a campaign setting based on the city of Lankhmar in the world of Nehwon, the setting of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. (Warning: if anyone dares suggest that "Ill Met in Lankhmar" is not a literary classic, we shall have words.)

Thinking about those old days brought to mind the first time I tried my hand at DMing; to call it a train wreck would be to under-appreciate the level of interest an observer may find in a train wreck. It was a one-off (mercifully) that took place in a sparse dungeon that included a clearly insane NPC that I naïvely expected the players to follow, a ridiculous "Pit Fall Harry" type puzzle, one extremely obvious trap, an architectural impossibility, and one big bad giant spider -- I don't remember if we even made it to the spider. It was a dull, tedious experience for everyone involved; one of the players went so far as to tell me to my face that he'd never play a game I was running again. He kept his word, and I can't blame him for it. It was a few years before I tried my hand at DMing again, and that was a much better experience. But Lord, how that first game sucked.
Ouch.

I guess I should share my first time as DM. I convinced my sister and brother to join a game I had planned with two friends, taught them to roll up their characters, and got them excited to play what was barely a grid map one level dungeon. No nuance, no mystery, not even an obvious trap. It was a set up involving entering the dungeon, hearing a raucous banquet (I envisioned it to be like the goblin feast in The Hobbit) which the four PCs interrupted. I believe there was a small amount of banter before it came to inevitable blows.

My sister's PC took an arrow in round 1 and died. She quit, my brother felt bad, I felt bad, my friends felt bewildered, we ended the game.

I'd like to think I got better at it but that's a rough memory.

ETA: That said, I really did enjoy prepping for it. My dad kept pads of green engineering grid paper which I claimed one of, and spent happy hours drawing up the rooms and planning what was going to happen when the party went through them. That pleasure managed to linger after the sting and I learned a few things. I do prefer playing as the DM now over planning, but planning as a DM is its own kind of fun.

ETA2: My order of preference being DMing the game, planning the game, then playing as a PC. I think once a person gets the DM bug it's harder to just play as a PC. For me, anyway. I do enjoy playing when I get the chance. Just not as much as I enjoy running a game.
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by honorentheos »

Res Ipsa wrote:
Sun Mar 12, 2023 11:36 pm
honorentheos wrote:
Sun Mar 12, 2023 5:39 am
That's how I heard the story, too.
Thanks. I’ve had a couple great moments - near misses are cool too.
One thing that I found myself wondering about was the odds both your experience and mine involved Rocs? Then the more I thought about it the more likely it seemed.

I mean, how many other large flying monsters has your party encountered that you would have zero qualms over attacking and killing that would also be able to attempt to pick a PC up and drop them?

Then I realized I misspoke, and it was a Vrock not a Roc. But still, pretty close just a lower-level fight. I'm sure many a party's first encounter with an evil, large flying monster might be against a Vrock or Chaisme. But young dragons could show up before a party is ready to take on a Roc, so I was wrong about the similarities in the encounter and how likely it would have been we both had similar encounters happen where a forgotten feather fall spell was in play.

Oh well. Still, I prefer the story with the tiger. Or something.
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by Physics Guy »

I was only a player a couple of times. The first time, I might have taken unfair advantage of the novice DM who was temporarily replacing me. My magic-user got away with possessing the body of a flesh golem and ran through the game casting spells while being immune to normal weapons.

The next times were years later, when we had wound up a long campaign and got every player to design and run a one-shot adventure with the usual party, while I understudied with their PCs. I deliberately did very little but they all produced really fun games that were all strikingly different in tone and style, from each other and from mine.
I was a teenager before it was cool.
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

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honorentheos wrote:
Mon Mar 13, 2023 4:18 am
By level 10 I'd guess a party with tactical sense and min-maxed characters may be able to take on any monster in the manual with some planning and a bit of luck.
Even a Tarrasque?
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by honorentheos »

Dr. Shades wrote:
Mon Mar 13, 2023 7:29 am
honorentheos wrote:
Mon Mar 13, 2023 4:18 am
By level 10 I'd guess a party with tactical sense and min-maxed characters may be able to take on any monster in the manual with some planning and a bit of luck.
Even a Tarrasque?
The Tarrasque is the classic example of a world ending monster with an Achilles Heal. That being it lacks ranged attack options. There are so many threads and even videos of how a low level ranger with a couple of the right magic items could take it out it's a cliché. Would it be fun? Probably not.
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by Res Ipsa »

honorentheos wrote:
Mon Mar 13, 2023 5:12 am
Res Ipsa wrote:
Sun Mar 12, 2023 11:36 pm
Thanks. I’ve had a couple great moments - near misses are cool too.
One thing that I found myself wondering about was the odds both your experience and mine involved Rocs? Then the more I thought about it the more likely it seemed.

I mean, how many other large flying monsters has your party encountered that you would have zero qualms over attacking and killing that would also be able to attempt to pick a PC up and drop them?

Then I realized I misspoke, and it was a Vrock not a Roc. But still, pretty close just a lower-level fight. I'm sure many a party's first encounter with an evil, large flying monster might be against a Vrock or Chaisme. But young dragons could show up before a party is ready to take on a Roc, so I was wrong about the similarities in the encounter and how likely it would have been we both had similar encounters happen where a forgotten feather fall spell was in play.

Oh well. Still, I prefer the story with the tiger. Or something.
Bonus points for the Tiger reference!

My current party is a little weird. The original intent was to do a few short one offs to give the DM a chance to try out a bunch of ideas he had. So we just picked races/classes that we thought would be fun to play. The DM picked the opening segment of Strahd to start out with.

There are only three players. I’m a Reborn Bard. The other two are a Gnome wizard and a Hexblood Monk. All three of us are new at our respective classes. And none of us are min-maxers.

Even at level 8, The Roc was a challenge. We certainly don’t feel invincible yet! And we’re heading for the castle. Gulp.

Featherfall is one of those specialized spells that I’ve found really useful. Fall damage usually comes at very inconvenient times. And it allows for escape from bad situations.
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by honorentheos »

Res Ipsa wrote:
Mon Mar 13, 2023 4:15 pm
honorentheos wrote:
Mon Mar 13, 2023 5:12 am

One thing that I found myself wondering about was the odds both your experience and mine involved Rocs? Then the more I thought about it the more likely it seemed.

I mean, how many other large flying monsters has your party encountered that you would have zero qualms over attacking and killing that would also be able to attempt to pick a PC up and drop them?

Then I realized I misspoke, and it was a Vrock not a Roc. But still, pretty close just a lower-level fight. I'm sure many a party's first encounter with an evil, large flying monster might be against a Vrock or Chaisme. But young dragons could show up before a party is ready to take on a Roc, so I was wrong about the similarities in the encounter and how likely it would have been we both had similar encounters happen where a forgotten feather fall spell was in play.

Oh well. Still, I prefer the story with the tiger. Or something.
Bonus points for the Tiger reference!

My current party is a little weird. The original intent was to do a few short one offs to give the DM a chance to try out a bunch of ideas he had. So we just picked races/classes that we thought would be fun to play. The DM picked the opening segment of Strahd to start out with.

There are only three players. I’m a Reborn Bard. The other two are a Gnome wizard and a Hexblood Monk. All three of us are new at our respective classes. And none of us are min-maxers.

Even at level 8, The Roc was a challenge. We certainly don’t feel invincible yet! And we’re heading for the castle. Gulp.

Featherfall is one of those specialized spells that I’ve found really useful. Fall damage usually comes at very inconvenient times. And it allows for escape from bad situations.
That sounds like a fun premise for a group. I like the characters, too. Gnome wizard is a fun build and the two subclasses from Van Richten's sound like a promising mix though I haven't played or had anyone play either in a game.

I would imagine three lvl 8 PCs going up against a Roc requires some planning in order to beat it, no? Presumably your PC had become grappled and restrained after a successful talon attack (DC 19 to escape? Yikes) so the party must have had it pretty low on hp if they defeated it before it could take off on it's next turn. So it was not a given the party was going to stop it and the feather fall casting was likely then? Did someone get a timely crit?
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