5e doesn't suck... but it doesn't really stack up well against 3.X

[Forum Explorer]

Firstly, let me admit that my understanding of 5e is limited to having read the basic rules once.

Now, if a group of goblins can remain a threat to high level characters in 5e, does that mean that a group of armed common folk could eliminate huge threats on their own? Can a city of reasonable size take out a Ancient Red Dragon in an angry mob?

I'll concede it's my preferred play style but it seems odd to me that adventures would exist in a setting where they are not needed.

If the Dragon just flat up attacks them? Yes.

If the dragon plays smart? It will kill a good 50 of them, retreat, rest for an hour, rinse repeat til everyone is dead. Or it just flies over, burns all their homes and food supplies and lets them starve to death. A target like that is incredibly hard if not impossible to defeat with anything other then a high level adventuring party.

[Knaight]

Now, if a group of goblins can remain a threat to high level characters in 5e, does that mean that a group of armed common folk could eliminate huge threats on their own? Can a city of reasonable size take out a Ancient Red Dragon in an angry mob?

I'll concede it's my preferred play style but it seems odd to me that adventures would exist in a setting where they are not needed.

The existence of large armies that are capable of violence hardly precludes a role for adventurers. After all, there have been specialized small paramilitary groups in historical contexts, the whole concept of the knight errant and similar has some historical basis and a strong basis in older fiction, etc. Both of these generally involve a whole lot less in the way of gigantic monsters.

As for that ancient red dragon example, taking it out is going to involve going on the offensive, and armies are not exactly known for being sneaky. Supplying an army is also going to be highly expensive, and if levies or similar are used it will deplete population to some degree. Said dragon could also have minions which can be circumvented by a small group a lot better than by an army. The economics and logistics favor the small group in a lot of ways. Enter adventurers.

[Nicol Bolas]

You could say that about any army ever though. I think armies realise that most of them will die but it sure beats being at the mercy of the dragon (or other deadly force) constantly.

Why would they need magic items? I found the stat block for the dragon and don't see DR (is DR a thing in 5e?). Is a nat 20 not a guaranteed hit in 5e? If the entire mob would need magic items then that cost would be prohibitive enough to prevent a mob defending the city.

This man raises a fantastic point and I love it.

[Sidmen]

Firstly, let me admit that my understanding of 5e is limited to having read the basic rules once.

Now, if a group of goblins can remain a threat to high level characters in 5e, does that mean that a group of armed common folk could eliminate huge threats on their own? Can a city of reasonable size take out a Ancient Red Dragon in an angry mob?

I'll concede it's my preferred play style but it seems odd to me that adventures would exist in a setting where they are not needed.

Could a mob take out a dragon? No. An adult dragon would just fly over them breathing fire down on them till they all died; but most would fail their fear checks and run away LONG before that.

Could a trained army of archers take out a dragon? Possibly; it'd take hundreds of them and the dragon would have to be utterly stupid and engage them in the open - but it could be done. But dragons are intelligent; if you sent your army out to kill it, it'd probably just circle around and burn the city to the ground in retaliation.

Instead of all that, you could send out a handful of adventurers to slay the creature in its cave (a place where it'd be hazardous to even go with an army - let alone using that army effectively). And the adventurers are going to have better than average odds of surviving the encounter (if level appropriate).

[Forum Explorer]

Could a mob take out a dragon? No. An adult dragon would just fly over them breathing fire down on them till they all died; but most would fail their fear checks and run away LONG before that.

Could a trained army of archers take out a dragon? Possibly; it'd take hundreds of them and the dragon would have to be utterly stupid and engage them in the open - but it could be done. But dragons are intelligent; if you sent your army out to kill it, it'd probably just circle around and burn the city to the ground in retaliation.

Instead of all that, you could send out a handful of adventurers to slay the creature in its cave (a place where it'd be hazardous to even go with an army - let alone using that army effectively). And the adventurers are going to have better than average odds of surviving the encounter (if level appropriate).

Honestly armies being able to maybe kill large monsters actually explains why kingdoms exist at all, and aren't just smoking ruins or being ruled by draconic overlords. But it's costly to fight straight up and there isn't much you can do about a dragon that just raids and pillages beyond getting an adventuring group.

[Gnomes2169]

Not at all. They're just not level 20 heroes. Nobody in LotR is much higher than 5. The order topped out at what? 14? And each of them could still handle hundreds of goblins over the course of the battle without risking serious death. It wasn't until other, even higher-level forces got involved that anybody died. Would they have died if they stayed? Sure. But if you throw 10,000 goblins at anybody and don't give them an option to retreat, even 3.5 wizards will eventually run out of spells and have to escape.

So what you are saying is, level 20 is a magical point where nothing low level should threaten the party? Or... What? Honestly, rereading your arguments before and then this, it seems like you're back pedaling a bit here... Should an army of low CR creatures be a threat to a party of high level characters, or should they be a laughable show of force? If they should be a threat, then what makes them a ridiculous tool to use?

What I'm saying is just straight slugging-it-out is not an approach heroes are going to take with an army. They are going to use other means to defeat it. And those means should work once a sufficient power level is reached.

The confusion comes in once you imply that the heroes should still be able to slug it out on top of the other options. What I and other posters have been trying to point out is that 5e models "find some other ways to take out an army" better than 3.5 mechanically, simply because the later makes high-level characters so laughably overpowered that the army will do next to nothing to them.

That is considerably higher than 100.

It's also an army of 1000-ish level 17-25 wizardclerics with their bonded level 12-18 fighterrangerkensai. They will be killing a little more than 100 mooks, methinks.

I don't see your point. You seem to think I'm advocating that level 20 heroes can take on an infinite amount of goblins. I'm not. I'm saying that by the time you reach a point where the PCs cannot realistically handle the number of goblins that it would require, your DM should have already been kicked out of your gaming session for trying to put you in that scenario in a straight-up fight. Armies should be dealt with through subtlety and battlefield tactics, not a fist-fight.

The point was that in 3.5, if you had to take on the army with a no hold barred bout of fisticuffs, you could easily do it unless the armies literally numbered in the hundreds of thousands. And even then, it was more than a little debatable whether or not it would actually stop your PC's. Even in the Wheel of Time where you literally have characters that the universe itself grants favor to, this is not possible. And you really have been arguing for this by arguing that the PC's should be basically untouchable by lower level threats, so once again, are you or are you not arguing that an army should actually be a threat to level 20 characters? ("Army" in this case being less than 1000 creatures.)

I would argue 3.5 and 4e actually model Wheel of Time exceptionally well for what it's worth.

... Only with heavy-handed homebrewing, since the magic system is basically, "Spend some energy, do whatever you can think of."

Goblins should be less than adults since goblins are, as far as I know, usually physically inferior than grown men in most ways. If you really want to continue this pointless example that 100 nerds could beat a martial artist, go for it. But plenty of martial artists have taken on armed gangs, both in fiction and in history, and come out on top. Ip Man ring a bell? Great movie, see it if you haven't.

I wasn't aware that nerds in your world had strength, con and dex scores equal to or higher than the average person's. To get that, one usually has to work out once a week or have a moderate-labor intensive job, and that typically only gives a 9-12. While it might be stereotyping to say that most nerds don't work out and that they tend to have higher paying jobs than janitorial work or food bussing, I would guess it to hold true that your average "nerdy nerd" will probably fall into the 7-9 strength, 9-12 dex (twitch reflexes on video games, man) and 7-9 con range. Oddly, that's about where we find goblins. Children, though, tend to have 2-6 strength, to say nothing about their terrible dexterity and constitution scores (on average).

As well, an armed gang will typically be less than 100 people in the same place at the same time. On top of that, if you want to change your "single encounter" of 1 person vs 100 people simultaneously to 1 person vs 100 people split up into 20 groups of 5 (and thus 20 encounters), I'll gladly change my tune from "impossible" to "highly improbable." However, one person in real life cannot defeat 100 people if they are armed in the exact same or anywhere near a roughly equal way. The one guy can have an AK-47 and the mob can have only flintlock muskets, and that one guy is going to die in the first volley.

So, do you want to simulate realism, or do you want to have a system where you ignore common sense when it comes to who can beat up who? Because 3.5 and 4e after a certain level (we'll say 11) and exhalted all model the second one superbly, while 1e, 2e and 5e as well as Ironclaw and most Warhammer 40k books (Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader) model "realism" a bit better.

A mob cannot coordinate effectively enough to be a threat to a trained warrior unless they somehow surround him on all sides and throw themselves at him with utter disregard for their own well being. And that will never happen. Nobody wants to be the first guy to die.

Raw numbers makes up for coordination. Mobs have mob mentality, the front lines are so charged with endorphins, anger and enthusiasm that they will do things they never considered before (see: violent mobs attacking a line of police men holding riot shields) and people in a mob tend not to care about being injured (or even notice it at first). You are applying rational thinking (possessed by individuals and small groups) to an irrational entity (mobs and countries) instead of looking at the logic of the irrational entity as has been observed in history. I'm not sure where this "lone immortal in real life" idea of yours is coming from, but a single person will not scare a mob enough to make them stop (actually, the lone person will not scare them at all), and they will gladly and easily swarm the lone person and rip them limb from limb.

[Sartharina]

You could say that about any army ever though. I think armies realise that most of them will die but it sure beats being at the mercy of the dragon (or other deadly force) constantly.

Armies have the discipline needed. Mobs don't. Armies are hard to wield against a dragon, though.

Why would they need magic items? I found the stat block for the dragon and don't see DR (is DR a thing in 5e?). Is a nat 20 not a guaranteed hit in 5e? If the entire mob would need magic items then that cost would be prohibitive enough to prevent a mob defending the city.

Hmm... I can't remember of dragons are immune to nonmagical weapons or not...

[Gnomes2169]

Armies have the discipline needed. Mobs don't. Armies are hard to wield against a dragon, though.

Hmm... I can't remember of dragons are immune to nonmagical weapons or not...

Not immune, but resistant. So unless the mob has magic bows, they are only dealing 1/2 damage.

[Finieous]

My "native edition" was AD&D and I've played every edition*, including OD&D. Every edition has had its strengths, weaknesses and quirks, and I've had a great time with all of 'em. There's a list of factors that make a good D&D campaign -- DM, players, setting, the D&D IP, playstyle, etc. -- and the particular edition of the rules doesn't really even show up on it. Edition warring makes everyone dumber.

* I only played "4E" in the context of the boardgames, but the boardgames were great...I hope they keep doing them.

[Knaight]

Honestly armies being able to maybe kill large monsters actually explains why kingdoms exist at all, and aren't just smoking ruins or being ruled by draconic overlords. But it's costly to fight straight up and there isn't much you can do about a dragon that just raids and pillages beyond getting an adventuring group.

There's also the matter of how much territory is held where. Small raiding groups weren't capable of seriously threatening large civilizations through direct combat - there's a reason that raids tended to hit monasteries, outlying villages, etc. and not big cities. Raiders still affected how raided civilizations grew, and in aggregate often did do a lot of damage.

A dragon is similar. They're roughly equivalent to a medium sized raiding group, with way more mobility than they would otherwise have. They're capable of threatening less central areas by themselves, even without surprise. They aren't capable of flying right up to a major city hosting an army and directly attacking it. Personally, I don't have a problem with this. It's pretty much on board with much of the literature - there's a lot more of monsters existing at the fringes of society (which can include being in a city, for more covert entities) than of them going up and terrorizing armies.

[Psyren]

@ Dragons, armies and adventurers - you need the adventurers to get the dragon because the army is slow and cannot be in two places at once. You send the army out to fight the dragon and he circles around to roast the village before they get home, followed by starvation and death. You leave the army at home and the dragon can raid the countryside unchecked like he's been doing. And if you split the army, you just end up with half of it dead (or a portion of the attacking half dead and the dragon fled to get the other portions later) which goes right back to scenario b.

But both 5e and 3.PF have armies, dragons and adventurers so I'm not sure why we're arguing about this. Bounded accuracy means the army has a better chance against the dragon but that doesn't appreciably change the above paradigm - dragons are still faster than armies so they can still harry the flanks or circle to the goal.

[Alberic Strein]

A dragon is similar. They're roughly equivalent to a medium sized raiding group, with way more mobility than they would otherwise have.

Wait, you're comparing a dragon with a real life boat full of vikings?!

You noted the increased mobility of flight, but still, even discounting the breath attack, and the possible resistance to magic weapons, there is a huge difference between one big creature and a group of smaller individuals. If a dragon attacks an armed ost and after a long battle retreats, with both sides having done around the same damage and being about half dead/destroyed. The dragon will remain a dragon, with just as much power, just less hp, while the army will have lost half its members, crippling its strength.

Powerful monsters are much worse than a powerful group of humans.

For the whole 100 unskilled Vs 1 master debate, and to add to the whole 'mob mentality' bit, I would like people to remember we belong to a species who regularly trample its own members to death. Sometimes for fear of death (turns out that during a fire the 'fire' bit isn't the most likely to kill you) and sometimes to get the best out of Black Friday.

Personally I don't think a mob would have issues surrounding a single skilled individual and then dogpiling him. Even if they were unarmed and unarmoured. Of course in normal circumstances that wouldn't happen, 'motivated' wouldn't cut it, however 'experiencing a severe panic attack' would.

[Knaight]

Wait, you're comparing a dragon with a real life boat full of vikings?!

You noted the increased mobility of flight, but still, even discounting the breath attack, and the possible resistance to magic weapons, there is a huge difference between one big creature and a group of smaller individuals. If a dragon attacks an armed ost and after a long battle retreats, with both sides having done around the same damage and being about half dead/destroyed. The dragon will remain a dragon, with just as much power, just less hp, while the army will have lost half its members, crippling its strength.

Vikings are among the groups which would work here, though there are a lot of others. You've also highlighted another point here, regarding how a single large entity has a pretty major advantage regarding attrition - though the nature of raiding is striking at comparatively undefended targets, so it's not like the attrition was usually that bad unless something went really wrong.

[Hytheter]

You know, assuming the six year olds are sufficiently motivated, actually fighting to kill and won't just cry and run at the first sign of trouble, 100 of them will totally kill you no matter how good you are with a sword.
How many do you really think you can kill before you get swarmed? How do you plan on fighting back once four kids have grabbed your legs and pushed you over, two are holding down each arm, 1 is scratching at your eyes and one is repeatedly kicking you in the nads? And there are still like 50 more, assuming you already killed 40 before that happened, somehow.
And if they're armed? You don't need a lot of strength to hurt someone with a knife; a knife wielded by a 6 year old can still kill you, let alone a hundred.

I really think some of you are severely underestimating the sheer force of numbers here.

[huttj509]

Firstly, let me admit that my understanding of 5e is limited to having read the basic rules once.

Now, if a group of goblins can remain a threat to high level characters in 5e, does that mean that a group of armed common folk could eliminate huge threats on their own? Can a city of reasonable size take out a Ancient Red Dragon in an angry mob?

I'll concede it's my preferred play style but it seems odd to me that adventures would exist in a setting where they are not needed.

Adventurers are unneeded if you have a sufficiently large mob, sufficiently motivated that they don't care if, say, 10 of them survive.

"Hey guys, we saved the city...I mean, there's not much city left, but the dragon's dead, now about those 100 funerals..."

[Talakeal]

D&D is built around a single tier of power, and that tier is "Conan in Middle Earth"

Man, if that were only true. I would play the hell out of that game.

[runeghost]

Depends on the person. I know plenty of folks who are stuck in the mindset that AD&D 1st Edition is the one-true way and everything else pales in comparison. The idea that things might have improved after 1st Edition is something they won't even consider. I see a lot of people who started with 3.x clinging to it as the one-true way these days too.

I'm not like that. Even though I started with Basic/AD&D back in the very early 1980s, I moved on. For years, I was nostalgic about my favorite edition (2nd Edition) and I grew to really dislike both 3.x and 4e because the rules kept getting in the way of the fun. 5e turned all that around, and has replaced 2nd Edition as my favorite edition (something I didn't think would happen, but I'm ecstatic that it did).

But, yeah, some people are definitely stuck in their "native edition" and refuse to budge.

I started with AD&D (well, OD&D, technically, but swiftly moved to AD&D 1st Edition). Played with various house-ruled mixes of 1st and 2nd from junior high through college. After a few years of break from any sort of fantasy game (did most WW and SR for those years), I got back into D&D with 3.0, and soon moved to 3.5. I loathed 4th, and have only dabbled in 5th. Currently playing in one pure 1st campaign, and another much "looser" casually retro game.

I've had fun with almost all the D&D I've played over the years, but the systems are quite different. 1st and 2nd are close - each has its quirks, and I enjoy them both depending on what I want to do. (90% of all the bards I've ever seen were 2nd ed bards.) 3rd and its variants are really a different but similar game. You can do some very fun things with it, but there are also some classic D&D things you just can't do cleanly. (Multiclassing is the biggest, off the top of my head. I think 3rd also went a very wrong direction with Monks.) My biggest complaint with 3rd & Co is how easy it is for it to become a heavily min-maxed tactical combat game, and how some players will get irritated (to put it mildly) if it isn't played that way. It's also awfully crunchy for a D&D.

I can take casual roleplayers, who have never played any edition of D&D, and get them up and running on their own, making their own *useful* choices about what character they want and what they want that character to do in a single evening, with 1st, 2nd, OD&D or most of the retroclones. I can't really do that in 3rd and its sisters. I think I can do it in 5th, which feels to me like a half-way point between 1st/2nd and 3rd (in a good way), but I haven't done so, because, well, I have a massive investment in other editions, and own exactly one 5th Edition book.

And, I guess that's what it comes down to. 1st/2nd is like a well-built and familiar tool in my hands. It has its quirks, but I can use it well. 3rd is a different tool, good for what its good for. (The less said of 4th the better.) 5th, looks to be decently built, but I don't see it as bringing anything new and valuable enough to the table to warrant the outlay in money and time to use it.

[Sartharina]

Man, if that were only true. I would play the hell out of that game.

The only editions that don't restrict themselves to that power level are 3rd and 4th.

[mephnick]

Honestly 3rd and 4th edition are the editions least like traditional D&D, so when someone is adamant that 3.5 is the TRUE edition of D&D I am always a little confused and assume it's the only one they've played.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[Talakeal]

The only editions that don't restrict themselves to that power level are 3rd and 4th.

I don't want to get into an argument of semantics, but I have never played a D&D PC that feels like Conan or in a world that feels like Middle Earth. I have played in every edition, and every single one had loads of arbitrary restrictions placed on characters and had a setting that was constantly trying to top itself with increasingly more magic, bigger monsters, epic plots, and powerful NPCs.

Honestly 3rd and 4th edition are the editions least like traditional D&D, so when someone is adamant that 3.5 is the TRUE edition of D&D I am always a little confused and assume it's the only one they've played.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

AD&D had the best balance and feel, but the rules were wonky. Sometimes you want to roll high, sometimes low. Sometimes high numbers are good, sometimes bad. Ability scores give bonuses at seemingly random rates. The crazy saving throw categories. Exceptional strength. The wrestling and boxing tables. Demihuman level limits and race / class restrictions. The wackiness of dual classing. Monsters generally not having ability scores. 10% bonus XP for having a high stat in your primary score. No attempt to balance weapons. The list just goes on and on.

I like 3e the best because the rules are somewhat streamlined and consistent. The three saving throw system and positive BaB and AC systems are brilliant in concept (although not always in execution). The only things mechanically I really hate are cross class skills and iterative attacks, but that is a minor peeve.

I really wish they would make a 2.5 edition, with the feel and balance of 2e but the streamlined rules of the d20 system. I am sure there is some OGL game out there that fills that niche, but man is it hard to find players for non D&D games.

[Sartharina]

I really wish they would make a 2.5 edition, with the feel and balance of 2e but the streamlined rules of the d20 system. I am sure there is some OGL game out there that fills that niche, but man is it hard to find players for non D&D games.

Have you tried 5e?

[ProphetSword]

I really wish they would make a 2.5 edition, with the feel and balance of 2e but the streamlined rules of the d20 system.

They did. It's called 5th Edition.


Edit: Sartharina beat me to the punch by just a few seconds...

[Talakeal]

Have you tried 5e?

Yeah, it looked really promising, but the whole bounded accuracy thing kills it for me. Skills and saving throws are just too pathetic and unreliable, and you could never make someone like Conan in this edition. I am told that is by design, as it is supposed to be a team game and independent minded and self sufficient heroes therefore have no place in it.

They did. It's called 5th Edition.


Edit: Sartharina beat me to the punch by just a few seconds...

I will admit 5E feels closer to 2E than 3E, but it still falls well short. While the math may be a bit more streamlined (although again it falls well short of 3E) it doesn't actually work as well a 2E did as far as I can tell.

[Madfellow]

I am told that is by design, as it is supposed to be a team game and independent minded and self sufficient heroes therefore have no place in it.

That's every edition, man. D&D is a co-op game, remember.

[Talakeal]

That's every edition, man. D&D is a co-op game, remember.

That is true, but it is especially bad in 5e. In earlier editions f I want to focus on something I can be pretty much guaranteed to succeed on standard tasks within that area. My 3E Monk or 2E fighter doesn't need a paladin's help to reliably make saving throws against low level effects or the assistance of a bard to succeed on routine tasks using their class skills.

For example in 2E is I have an 18 in my the relevant stat I have a 90% chance to succeed on ability or proficiency tests, which means 90% success rate. In 5E the best a level 20 character can achieve is a +11 (unless they are a bard or rogue), which means they have a 80% chance to fail that same test. A level 20 5E character is twice as likely to fail the same skill test as a level 1 2E character.

3E admittedly took it a bit too far as you could stack crazy combos from dozens of different books and get obscene numbers, but given the choice I would prefer being overly competent in my area of expertise to inept any day. It also had too many restrictions hard coded into classes with class skills, good and bad saves and attack bonuses. I do really like that in 5E you can take a feat to add proficiency to skills or saves, its just not enough.

[Vitruviansquid]

I've been following this thread for awhile now, because I've been wanting to check out 5e without dropping money on it, and the conversation mystifies me.

When I DM'd DnD for the first time in 4e, I was flipping through the Monster Manual looking for monsters to put in my campaign and it occurred to me that I had this gigantic number of monsters in the book, but only a tiny section of them was going to be usable at any point in the campaign because the numbers don't match up. Back then, it seemed silly to me that 4e gave every character a +1 bonus to basically everything at every 2 levels because if that bonus did not exist, I would be probably be able to poach monsters from one more level up or down and use them in the session without the D20 system breaking down as it does when target numbers are too high or too low. Bounded accuracy is great. The reduced power curve means everything becomes relevant for longer in the campaign. It means that I, as the DM, can use, say 15% of the monster manual at any one time rather than 10%, and it means I can run the same monster-themed story arc for 2 levels longer than I would in 4e. It seems like an objective improvement to the game to me.

Now, some players I've seen in this thread are saying bounded accuracy is bad, because it doesn't make them feel powerful, or it doesn't make them feel like their character is growing. Well, I have an easy cure for that. Go into your character sheet, and add +10 to your to-hit and AC for every level you currently have. So if you're level 5, you had +50 to both. Now go into your monster manual, and do the same for every monster, adding +10 to the to-hit and AC for every level of CR the monster have. Now you will realize that you haven't done anything to change the state of the game when you're fighting level appropriate monsters. All you've done is make it stupid to fight monsters 1 CR above or below you, and outright impossible to fight monsters 2 CR above or below you. All you've done is narrow the variety of monsters you could fight on a given day in your campaign without breaking the D20 system.

I can't wrap my head about the complaint that bounded accuracy makes it impossible for your high level character to plow through a million and one goblins. That's not a feature! That's a problem! The DM having fewer options is objectively bad!

[Knaight]

Now, some players I've seen in this thread are saying bounded accuracy is bad, because it doesn't make them feel powerful, or it doesn't make them feel like their character is growing. Well, I have an easy cure for that. Go into your character sheet, and add +10 to your to-hit and AC for every level you currently have. So if you're level 5, you had +50 to both. Now go into your monster manual, and do the same for every monster, adding +10 to the to-hit and AC for every level of CR the monster have. Now you will realize that you haven't done anything to change the state of the game when you're fighting level appropriate monsters. All you've done is make it stupid to fight monsters 1 CR above or below you, and outright impossible to fight monsters 2 CR above or below you. All you've done is narrow the variety of monsters you could fight on a given day in your campaign without breaking the D20 system.

I'd focus more on the effect of bounded accuracy on skills, from a modeling perspective. +6 proficiency and +5 ability gets only a +11 on a d20 system. So, the theoretical masters of their craft have problems with tasks they should find fairly easy (DC 15) all the time. Meanwhile, completely untrained chumps are surprisingly good at succeeding on these same tasks. A more curved scale can help a lot here - 3d6 instead of 1d20 makes that +11 absolutely spectacular - but the 1-20 range is generally lost there, which causes problems with the system math.

Now, say proficiency changes a bit. Maybe you get +2 per proficiency change instead of +1. That +11 is now a +17, where the odds look a bit better in a lot of ways. Doubling proficiency does cause some issues elsewhere, such as the combat system, though it's pretty easy to mitigate most of them. At that level of change, it also doesn't narrow the variety of monsters. You've highlighted that +/- 10 is ridiculous, but that doesn't make the current bounding system good.

[Milo v3]

Go into your character sheet, and add +10 to your to-hit and AC for every level you currently have. So if you're level 5, you had +50 to both. Now go into your monster manual, and do the same for every monster, adding +10 to the to-hit and AC for every level of CR the monster have. Now you will realize that you haven't done anything to change the state of the game when you're fighting level appropriate monsters.

Bounded accuracy isn't a problem because we want higher numbers. Increasing the numbers on both sides does nothing to fix the issue.

[Talakeal]

@ vitruviansquid:

Bigger numbers is not the problem. Nor is the inability to mow through hordes of orcs. Imo those are both good things.

The problems are not being able to reliableass routine skill tests no matter how good you are and saving throws not scaling much with level, which means that a character who can defeat a hundred first level fighters will probably be brought low by a couple dozen first level wizards.

Also, while it is a commendable goal that monsters can be used at more levels, this has the unintended side effect of making summoning spells really OP and leaving epic level monsters easilly dealt with by mundane armies.

[Vitruviansquid]

I'd focus more on the effect of bounded accuracy on skills, from a modeling perspective. +6 proficiency and +5 ability gets only a +11 on a d20 system. So, the theoretical masters of their craft have problems with tasks they should find fairly easy (DC 15) all the time. Meanwhile, completely untrained chumps are surprisingly good at succeeding on these same tasks. A more curved scale can help a lot here - 3d6 instead of 1d20 makes that +11 absolutely spectacular - but the 1-20 range is generally lost there, which causes problems with the system math.

Now, say proficiency changes a bit. Maybe you get +2 per proficiency change instead of +1. That +11 is now a +17, where the odds look a bit better in a lot of ways. Doubling proficiency does cause some issues elsewhere, such as the combat system, though it's pretty easy to mitigate most of them. At that level of change, it also doesn't narrow the variety of monsters. You've highlighted that +/- 10 is ridiculous, but that doesn't make the current bounding system good.

Let's put aside skill challenges right now, because people in the thread are talking about whether or not it's cool to have an army be able to kill a dragon, not about picking locks. I was, however, under the impression that a lot of the silliness in 3.5's system arose from skills becoming too easy for characters specialized at them, such as sir bearington here. http://imgur.com/r/gametales/tAV3wHl

Now, the part I underlined is patently false. Any bonus you give players just for leveling up does narrow the variety of monsters. It might not narrow the variety enough to sour me on an entire system (I still enjoy 4e despite its +1 bonus every 2 levels) but it's still there and all it achieves is limiting your DM's options, which is objectively bad.