The Dice that Bind: Bounded Accuracy in D&D Next

Welcome to your doom!

Wizards of the Coast has an article up about a game mechanic/rubric/system that they are evaluating for inclusion in D&D Next. The system, called “bounded accuracy” seeks to curtail some of the negative side-effects of player advancement.

In past editions of D&D, as characters leveled up, they automatically gained numerous skills and abilities. Though this makes sense from a “practice makes perfect / what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” sort of thought line, the way it was implemented became a bit broken as characters reached higher levels.

In earlier editions of D&D, low level characters would be reasonably challenged by a hostile encounter with the city watch, or an attempt to scale a cliff. However, as they leveled, these challenges would remain challenging for some while becoming dice-negatingly easy for others, depending on where the players chose to put their points as they leveled. To keep things challenging, GMs had to scale the difficulty of such challenges along with the player’s growing power. City watch officers were laid off in droves and replaced with elite squads of psi-ninjas, and freak hurricanes would appear out of the blue sky any time the characters ventured near a mountainside or city wall... all to maintain a sense of excitement. This mutual power-escalation also often caused a fracturing of player engagement as different characters began specializing in different skills. This resulted in encounters in which the player with the skillz would be the only participant while the others adopted an “Its not even worth trying” stance, choosing instead to just sit things out and comment on their companion’s performance.

Based on my reading of the article, bounded accuracy seeks to mitigate this spreading power creep without removing the rewards gained by leveling. It doesn’t eliminate the power gains, but rather condenses them, so that small bonuses are more meaningful and so that those without bonuses can still participate with some hope of success. According to WOTC, the bounded accuracy system will allow low level characters/monsters to remain a potential threat even against much higher level opponents.

In past editions of D&D, a low level creature couldn’t even make contact in a fight with high level opponents, because the gap between attack rolls and AC made such attacks mechanically impossible. A 10th level player could reasonably decimate an entire continent of kobolds, even if they all banded together to fight back. Zombie hordes were just not that scary past the levels where just a few zombies would suffice. Bounded accuracy seeks to correct that by replacing the gains in attack and defense rolls with gains in hit points, thus allowing the little guys to get in their punches while keeping the big guy resilient. Under this system, if you got enough kobolds in on the action, it could mean death by a thousand tiny fists, even for a badass level character.

The folks over at Obsidian Portal voiced their opinion on the matter in this week’s Haste podcast. The OP guys really hone in on the bounded accuracy’s implications in combat. They raise an excellent point that such strength in numbers threats pose other problems under the D&D rules, specifically that resolving tons of little attacks takes tons of time and drags a game to a halt.

I agree that running a great orcish pigpile might not work very well. However, I think the new system presents a tantalizing opportunity for long, running-battle encounters. The heroes might not have to face a whole horde of low-level baddies at once for it to be a challenge. If the GM sends in the bad guys in waves, he/she can keep the encounter’s scope manageable while  creating a slowly building challenge for their heroes.

M is for Masses of Minions

This is the 5th post of my Building a Better Villain thread that runs throughout the April A to Z Challenge.

Let’s talk about minions, that wonderful staple of archvillainy. Most exemplars of evil strive to command hordes of lesser baddies to do their dirty work for them. Minions act as an arch-villain’s eyes and ears, his/her mischievous hands and, when necessary, a living shield to cover a quick getaway.

My favorite minion scene ever. (Yes, I know they are technically, "henchmen".)

The mechanic behind minions in D&D 4e is one of the things I like about that particular edition. Minions are basically 1-hit bad guys that are only really encountered in the company of other, tougher antagonists. While they can dish out some damage to the heroes, they can also be mowed down like wheat, allowing the good guys to feel like a bunch of real badasses. The disposable minion mechanic helps mitigate the problems associated with mass combats in D&D. However, it can be taken further.

Mass melee with minions
When the heroes finally wind their way through an archvillain’s tangled, trap-filled lair, chances are, the boss baddie isn’t going to face them on his own. He’s gonna want backup in the form of as many minions as he can muster. If the heroes caught their arch alone, chances are, he would drop a smoke grenade, or a bag of bees and get out of Dodge, lickety split. Unfortunately, working sufficient backup into a battle is problematic.

First off, the baddie will ideally want to outnumber the heroes. In a typical D&D situation, this means at least 6 bad guys to a group of 5 heroes. The arch will likely want to tilt the scales even further, perhaps an order of 2 to 1 pushing things into the realm of a dozen bad guys staring down the heroes. By a strict reading of the D&D mechanics, such a situation will likely turn into an hours-long slog at the gaming table and-despite the exciting premise of a massive battle- will end up being no fun for anyone.

The biggest challenge to mass combat encounters, especially boss+minions is the sheer amount of dice rolling that has to take place. If a DM makes every individual roll for a big brawl between a party of 5 adventurers and a dozen bad guys, things get really boring reeeally fast! First, the GM will be rolling about twice as much as the players, and second, even if each character’s turn (declare an action, roll and move) is resolved in a minute or less, a round of combat (representing 6 seconds in game time) can take 15 minutes or more. That minute per turn mark becomes nearly impossible to hit when you factor in additional rolls like saving throws made in response to attacks, hunting for individual minion’s stats, etc.

Well, I have a couple tricks that I use to speed up these big brawls and keep the focus on the players.

1. Do hitpoints by the fives: I calculate minion hitpoints with tally marks, each representing 5hp. When one of my players lands an attack, I round to the nearest five and make the corresponding mark. This really speeds up my mental math when trying to calculate damage to a minion.

2. Forget the dice: Though I roll dice for unique actions taken by minions, if I am calculating saves for a whole posse caught in the PC pyromancer’s ubiquitous fireball, I instead rely on a pregenerated sheet of random D20 rolls. I use the WOTC online dice roller to generate a single roll of 1000 d20 and then copy and paste the breakdown into a Word doc. 12 minions caught in a blast? I simply calculate the minimum roll needed to save and then tick off the next 12 entries on the list. I do the same when a dozen minis go after the PCs with swords. tick off the attack rolls down the line. Speeds things up like you wouldn’t believe.

3. There is no I in Team: Have the minions work together as a group. Combine attacks into single actions like a unified volley of arrows. Turn avoidance into a single reflex save with the minion’s attack roll as the number to beat.

4. Minions + Minions cancel each other out: Sometimes, the PCs also bring friends to a fight, swelling the combat numbers to truly unwieldy proportions. In these circumstances, I simply narrate the flow of minion on minion violence. The groups of support characters become a sort of dynamic element to the setting, rather than fully realized participants. The focus is thrown to the players and their nemises while the battle swirls around them.

My particular game is full of massive minion encounters, and these shortcuts allow me to keep things exciting for the players while maintaining a feel of a full, frenetic fight.