#bound rogue

[askvectorprime]

Dear, Vector Prime.

Are there any other Cybertronians named "Transit" besides Primax, Uniend and Tyran?

Dear Bus Busybody,

Of course, but they're mostly alike. Transit is little more than a low-level thug, rarely involved in matters of consequence. On Earth, he likes to hide in populated areas, where the threat of collateral damage is enough to keep Autobots from picking a fight with him.

Even amongst the Decepticons, Transit is one of the most sadistic of them all. When approaching a traffic light, he will deliberately slow down just enough for it to change to red. At a bus stop, he'll surreptitiously angle his rear-view mirrors so the driver can't see people running to the doors before they close. He swaps out his route number and destination when in motion. He declines most contactless payments. He drops most luggage from his compartment. Once a month or so, he'll pretend to break down for no reason at all. And worst of all, he isn't wheelchair accessible. There is simply nothing in life that brings Transit greater satisfaction than making people late, and so despite what he may report to the Decepticon leadership, Transit is such a miserably ineffective soldier in the "war on cars" that he may as well be a double agent.

The one incarnation of Transit I can think of who ever did anything of note did so entirely involuntarily. One of the largest Maximals ever sparked, Transit ferried Micromasters and proto-formers around Damaxus, together with his driver, Arrowbolt. With budget slashes, a standard Class-H energon ration wasn't enough to power Transit's frame, and so he was stuck in vehicle mode indefinitely—not unlike many of the Builders.

Now, Damaxus, as you may know, was one of the first cities to be overrun by Vehicons, with most of the population just trying to go about their lives in the unstable climate of the time when the infection began to spread. Transit was on his usual route, when his passengers saw the chaos begin to unfold outside the windows. Fleeing from the drones, a Cyberdroid, Omega, ran alongside the bus, banging on the door—and Arrowbolt ignored the protests of Socket, one of the Micromasters on board, to stop and let him in. One of the motorcycle drones was right behind him, and it was only the quick action of Major Mayhem, a Predacon in one of the front seats, that stopped the Vehicon getting aboard. Major asked Arrowbolt to take Socket's advice: to not stop again for any reason.

Transit's energon-starved chassis turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as his body had such poor internal conductivity that the virus wasn't immediately transmitted to his spark from his exterior. He thundered through the growing mob, as the Vehicons pounded on his windows and piled onto his roof. Major Mayhem ordered everyone to barricade the entrances as the Vehicons began to break in, and they were able to fend off the attackers for a time—but in the claustrophobic interior, their hostility soon turned to the other passengers.

The other riders were Rockbuster and Bound Rogue, both Maximals; and Yardarm, a Decepticon laborer who bristled at the idea of taking orders from a Predacon. Making matters worse, Rockbuster suggested that the Vehicons were the Builders' doing, blaming Socket and Yardarm. From the driver's seat, Arrowbolt tried to keep the peace, but Major Mayhem accused her of condescension and cowardice he saw as typical in Maximals—which in turn led Bound Rogue to brand him a bigot.

Although Rockbuster's hardwired Claw Buster gun was their most effective weapon against the Vehicons, he quickly ran out of energon. Bound Rogue pointed out that Socket was still practically fully-fuelled, but the Micromaster refused to share some of her own so Rockbuster could reload. That was enough for Rockbuster to finally snap; he turned on Socket, crushing the Micromaster's body in his claw. At that point, however, an ethereal purple light filled the bus—where Omega had been sitting, there was now a tank drone. With Yardarm preoccupied tackling Rockbuster in the aisle, it plunged a claw into the floor. Major Mayhem blasted the Vehicon, but it was too late: the effects of the virus began to take over Transit, reformatting his body into another mindless killing machine… with his passengers still inside.

[transmetal-tk]

Legacy United Robotmasters Universe Bound Rogue

You can't catch what you can't see

[hayweerc]

Covering their fur with the scent of lavender

[ct-9902]

the best way to do rogue's (jay's) character arc wouldn't be him getting his memories back and rejoining the ninja, it would be him getting someone who honestly cares about him. not nya, who only wants her husband from before the merge back. not arin, who only wants the info jay might have about his parents. everyone is looking for jay walker, but no one is looking for rogue. jay walker is the boy from before the merge who grew up in a junkyard and joined the ninja. jay walker is the past, but rogue is the future.

[aleki-lives-here]

The second part of tech's pov is actually here, this time including Murderbot being lovingly disassembled while conscious! (an experience that was definitely nothing but pleasant, don't worry about it)

It's officially a series now, I think there'll be five parts total? But don't trust my word, the process is mysterious and unpredictable.

A feed alarm marking the end of ter shift blinked to the center of ter vision just as Ginson pried open the chest panel. Ter tool slipped, jamming into exposed synthetic muscle held to the side by the SecUnit’s one functional hand. Ginson turned off the reminder, rubbed ter eyes with the back of ter hand that hadn��t yet been covered in blood and fluids, and sighed. 

“Everything alright?” Minoa chimed in. Ginson could feel him working in the shared feed workspace, but he was keeping an eye on what te was doing. Which was, of course, not awkward and distracting at all.

“Yes, yes,” te sighed again, and brought the clock to the foreground of ter attention – it was an hour into ter usual rest period – and set a new timer, counting seconds to the morning. Te had a little less than eight hours to finish every diagnostic te could think of and compile the report, and even fewer if te actually wanted to get any sleep.

Which was why te picked up the tool, nudged the Unit’s hand into a more convenient position and pushed the chassis open manually instead of hooking up the specialized machinery and starting the full maintenance cycle that would require at least another half an hour and take the SecUnit offline. 

Blood dripped down from where the organics tore. The SecUnit helped ter maneuver its parts to provide access. Minoa whistled, feed activity slowing down, and peeked over ter shoulder. “That’s… fuck, they actually have, like, organs?”

“Language,” te warned distractedly (Minoa groaned), then answered, “Yes,” and leaned forward to get a better view. The diagnostics couldn’t tell where the damage was, and te hoped looking at it would make things obvious, but there were no visibly leaking parts, and the inorganic tissue was still in the way, even if this one was partially transparent, so te reached to move it aside – thankfully, it was made to resist impacts, not being cut through (if the most inner parts of a SecUnit are being cut, there’s likely nothing more to be done) – moved the tool carefully around the tubing, pulling the tissues away with the other hand, and–

“What’s this?” Minoa exclaimed. 

Ginson stilled ter fingers before te could accidentally cut something that should not be cut. “Nothing you need to look at,” te snapped and immediately regretted it. Judging by Minoa’s silence, it was entirely too harsh. That’s why Ginson hated working with people – te wasn’t good at it, especially when te was busy! Te put the tools aside and faced him.  “Sorry. I don’t mean to yell, it’s just… sorry.”

“No, no, sorry I interrupted,” Minoa laughed, and te shifted awkwardly. “It's late, and you have to work. Ugh,” he made an entirely exaggerated face of disgust. “Eleven pm at work is the exact time and place to be cranky.” 

That just reminded Ginson that te wasn't the only one staying after hours, and Minoa wasn't even paid for this. “If you want to call it a day–”

“Nuh-uh!” Minoa exclaimed and emphatically tapped his lips. “Nope, never, you're not getting rid of me so easily. You think I all but begged to be in your wonderful company just to give up like that?” 

Ginson sighed, but this time it came out exasperated. “Offering help isn't begging.”

“That's besides the point.” Minoa waved dismissively. “Also, where else do I get to poke around in one of these?”

And, to prove his point, he poked. His finger landed at the side of the mostly exposed lung, and he immediately flinched away, making a face. It startled a laugh out of Ginson. “Don't do that,” te had to warn. “These things are delicate on the inside, and cost a fortune. I need to prove it hasn't been damaged, not get it damaged.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Minoa grinned back. Ginson found some part of terself relaxing. “I'll limit my poking to data, then. Your magical fingers are definitely much better suited for this task.” 

Te waved him off, but couldn’t hold back a smile.

At seven hours thirty-eight minutes before the solicitor was due back at the office, Ginson had to accept that a purely visual inspection would lead ter nowhere, and ushered the SecUnit towards the table. It hesitated slightly, still holding its chest open with one hand, and Ginson put its severed arm aside, clearing the space.

At seven sixteen Ginson had gone through most of the circulatory system piece by piece, still finding no explanation for the lowered performance. It wasn’t surprising – the numbers weren’t significant enough to warrant so much effort in any other circumstances, but the manager had been clear: te was to investigate and list every smallest issue, and prove that (ignoring the mangled arm that happened during the assignment and could not be blamed on the company) no, there was no malfunction, so no, the company wouldn’t be paying for the mess. 

Ginson really hoped there wasn’t any malfunction, because if there was… best not to think of that.

At seven ten, Ginson was waiting for the liquid pump to pause the flow on one third of its pipes, so they could be rerouted to an external pump, when Minoa made a surprised sound. Te made sure the errors from the temporarily reduced blood flow cleared out, then asked, “Something interesting?”

“Uh, I guess?” Minoa’s attention was on the feed. “Dunno. I’m gonna– yeah, that, I’m gonna run it against the archives, but maybe?.. Give me a couple of minutes.”

At six forty-seven Ginson fiddled with the disconnected pump, still warm and dripping liquids. It looked perfectly good in ter fingers, but the diagnostics did return an improvement now that it was out of the picture, so, here. A meaningless problem solved. Te wiped the pump and ter hands and focused on the report and the list of other things that returned less than perfect status. Could the left knee joint being 1.7% too tight cause a SecUnit to misinterpret the order? No. Did anyone care about ter opinion or basic logic? Also no.

Stars, te was tired.

“So,” Minoa said and then paused for a good half a minute. Ginson looked at whatever he was working on in the feed – graphs and automatic reports by programs te wasn’t familiar with, structured in ways that didn’t feel intuitive. Minoa sent some of it to the display surface. “Got a minute?”

“I’m listening,” Ginson sighed. 

“Okay,” Minoa smiled and rubbed his hands together. “So, first of all, I wasn’t actually sure what I was looking for?” He looked apologetic. “I ran the code you sent, and the results were all very clear, and then I thought: surely I can do better than this! And you know I don’t really know how to interpret the logs, but it’s the exact kind of data I work with, so I ran some of my code just to see what’s up with that. And you know its performance is generally abnormal, right? Turns out, that’s not the only weird thing!”

That was interesting, Ginson told terself, and it was. Just, at any other hour, you know? Once te'd had a good long nap, then it would be interesting.

“I don’t have all the data from all the SecUnits,” Minoa continued, “but what I did have on hand has yielded fun discrepancies. This,” a graph appeared on the display surface, “is feed activity. This is what you’d see in new SecUnits, and some of the old ones here. This one would fit more with the first bunch, which is weird–”

“Individual differences,” Ginson interrupted. 

“Huh?”

“They are all different. I don’t suppose it shows up for you, but it’s critical in my work. Every Unit is a bit different. They perform differently. They approach things differently and in different ways.” Te shrugged. “Neural tissue. You really can’t get them acting the same, no matter how much structure and how many constraints you implement around their decision-making process.”

“...Right,” Minoa said. 

Ginson thought he looked disappointed, and felt another pang of guilt. Te fidgeted with the pump again, bits and pieces moving inside of it with every twist of ter fingers. “And other differences?” Te tried to sound enthusiastic or at least like te wasn’t dying for a soft pillow and some quiet.

“Right! Okay, there's quite a few to look at, but the most interesting one from those I could check is, I think, the cleaned up data for research on the governors and their effects. The primary focus was the cumulative damage to neural tissue and whether it was worth doing something about, but we tracked many metrics, and one of the things we tracked was hormonal response. The stress levels are higher in older SecUnits as a rule, but they fluctuate a lot, and, looking at the governor module’s influence, there’s always this spike right before it activates, and a long period of recovery afterwards, no matter which level the punishment was at.”

Ginson snorted. “So basically you’ve discovered that they have stress reactions to pain?”

Minoa blinked and looked at the SecUnit. Ginson did, too. It was still lying on the table, unmoving, tubes going out of the hole in its chest and to the external pump. It was still online. Suddenly, it made ter uncomfortable. 

“Well, yes. The thing is: this one doesn’t. Or, if it does, then less than other SecUnits. There’s little to no correlation between its governor module and stress responses. By that I don’t mean it doesn’t have stress responses, because it does, and they’re– there’s a lot of those. And I mean, a lot. If I were a MedSystem looking at a human, I’d give them anxiety meds.” He paused and blinked some more. “...Can constructs have anxiety?”

“The hormonal responses are calibrated for optimal performance,” Ginson dismissed. Te squinted at the graph, then closed ter eyes and accessed it in the feed instead. That, somehow, didn’t make it make more sense. “Individual differences,” te muttered. 

“I suppose,” Minoa sounded sceptical. “Do you know how long it’s been like this?”

“No idea. Logs aren’t kept in full for long.”

“So no logs pre-RaviHyral incident?”

That made Ginson pause. The SecUnit was a mess when te’d gotten ter hands on it first. Being infected with code that took control of its systems and forced it to kill indiscriminately – that was something out of a horror show, and none of them got out of it unaffected. Some were decommissioned as their performance reliability never returned to acceptable figures. Every other one had their memory thoroughly purged. 

Half of those showed repeated problems afterwards, which was how they ended up in ter basically personalized care. Ginson knew them, pulled them apart and put them back together with ter own hands, and hated seeing three more of them gone, never returning from other contracts. Te compiled reports of their state afterwards, and all looked like unfortunate accidents, and were unfortunate accidents. It still felt a bit like ter failure. Maybe they were still underperforming, some error stuck in the organic parts of their systems that Ginson couldn’t access, and the mistakes were the consequence of ter lack of ingenuity. 

But out of the ten Ganaka Pit SecUnits, there was one outlier. It hadn't been an outlier early on – In fact, it was one of the units struggling to return to baseline functionality – but then something happened and it shot beyond the baseline, enough to get Minoa's attention. It was great at its job, and Ginson never found out how it got there.

Te stared at the graph now, and wondered. It made ter feel deeply uncomfortable.

“Neural tissue can be unpredictable,” te repeated. “Especially after extreme adversarial circumstances. And it largely controls its own hormone release so it can self-regulate, and that’s what it did.”

Minoa didn’t look any less sceptical. “You made this sound like a very natural response that every Unit has,” he pointed out. “But then shouldn’t they have the same stress response to their governor module being activated? All the others do.” He gestured at the graphs.

“Well, what other explanation is there?” Ginson asked and immediately regretted it. The discomfort turned into painful pulsing between ter ears. This day couldn’t be over soon enough. “Whatever,” te waved ter hand. “It doesn’t give us much. I’m going to run the proper diagnostics on the endocrine system, but it’s not like it could have forced it to jump into the blast radius against an order.” 

Except hormones affected decision making (that’s why they were there to begin with), and so, yes. This could in fact make it jump into the blast radius without paying attention to an order. If it didn’t have the appropriate fear of the governor module’s punishment protocol, it was the exact kind of thing that’d make it disobey. 

Ginson winced. The only worse result te could deliver was finding out it was a rogue that got caught in an explosion in an attempt to commit mass murder. Oh, ter supervisor would love that conclusion. 

The good thing about hormones was: they were in the blood, and that blood was already conveniently running through a machine capable of taking every test needed. By which Ginson didn’t just mean the SecUnit, though of course it could track its own levels, but the external pump could double as a diagnostic tool. That was just great, and a wonderful way to appear like a good diligent worker that took time to run double tests instead of enjoying ter rest – if a single supervisor would think to realize how much effort hooking it all up would have taken if Ginson hadn't already done that. 

Half of the Unit’s hormone levels were of course elevated. Te’d already talked about individual differences – this was exactly about that. This SecUnit didn’t like going through any tests or repairs. It’d found those stressful since Ganaka Pit, and usually Ginson tried to keep it offline for everything that didn’t require its participation. Te felt a bit bad for keeping it awake like that. Poor thing must have spent the whole time in fear, but, well – it’s not like te had much of a choice here. Te’d take ter time if te had any. 

The test was simple and automated, but took time. The hormones flushed away from its system, then flooded it again. The SecUnit twitched minutely when they plateaued at the highest concentration, and Ginson patted its hand briefly. “Sorry, it’s not going to be a pleasant test,” te muttered. 

Minoa gave ter a startled look that made ter cheeks warm up, but didn’t comment. 

The hormones slowly flushed again and as its results returned almost clear, Ginson dropped a modified governor module diagnostic in its feed. There was an immediate spike in adrenaline that the machines quantified, which was also great because here, proof that Minoa’s findings were a fluke and all of it worked beautifully. The systems connected to the governor, exchanged messages, orders (limited to those the Unit could perform without moving physically), received responses, all in a timely manner and with elevated stress. 

Then came the test of punishment procedures. The shocks were administered at regular intervals, with growing magnitude, the governor module registered every one as completed with not a single problem, except…

“There are no pain-related spikes,” Minoa pointed out. 

Ginson could see that. 

The test finished, and returned all clear. “The endocrine system is being tested, that must interfere with the regular hormone production,” te lied. Because it didn’t, and the first spike was a proof that te’d not messed something up in the settings. The SecUnit had a fully functional hormone production system that could deliver as much adrenaline as needed, and somehow, magically, it didn’t have the natural, innate-to-all-constructs (and humans and, te was sure, animals too) responses to pain. 

“Should we test for it separately?” Minoa offered and clapped his hands. “If that’s the reason it’s been performing better, we should look into it!”

Ginson cleared ter throat. “Minoa…” 

“Come on, call me Tom.”

“Uh,” Ginson blinked and for a whole second looked away from the SecUnit. “Right. Sorry, – could you get me some coffee?”

Minoa stared for a few seconds before smiling. “Sure! How much sugar?”

“Three.”

“On it, boss!” 

He left and closed the door behind himself, and Ginson lowered terself on a chair and slowly, articulately, allowed terself a singular thought: holy fucking shit. 

Okay, te could still be wrong. Te wasn’t dismissing the idea that it was all a fluke, and a natural difference, and there wasn’t a singular test that came out anything but clear, and, most importantly, the SecUnit hadn’t actually killed anyone it wasn’t supposed to. It did ignore an order. And it did show the complete lack of natural responses to pain–

Wait, was it pain generally or pain from the governor? Te had full access to the logs, and te knew the exact timestamp te needed – ter alarm had gone off at exactly eleven, – and, yes, there was the spike in response to the tool slipping and hurting it, and then it lowered its pain sensors even further. So it felt pain alright, and had all the natural and universal reactions associated with it. Except when it came to the pain delivered by its governor. 

So, returning to that thought: holy. fucking. shit. 

At six hours and two minutes, Ginson spent an entire minute staring at what had to be a rogue SecUnit, lying on ter table, chestplate to the side, hooked up to an external pump and currently riding another hormonal high. That made no sense. There was not a single universe in which it made sense for a fucking rogue SecUnit to allow Ginson to do any of this to it! To continue allowing this, for months! 

…Was this why it hated being tested so much? Was it scared of being found out?

At five fifty te was carefully connecting the tubing back to the SecUnit’s liquid pump as the door opened again. “The sugariest coffee I could find!” Minoa announced. He placed it on the table without being told to do so, and peeked at what Ginson was doing again, and drew out a disappointed, “Is this a no for additional testing then?” 

“Not tonight,”” Ginson replied. “There’s already a lot to do–”

“Awwww.”

“–and hunting for mysterious possible problems – that likely don’t even exist because all the diagnostics are clear – would not just be a waste of time, it would be- it would be utterly unproductive, is what it would!”

“Okay, okay, I get it. I was just curious–”

“Well, I’m not! If it works, don’t fix it! My job here is to make sure that it was working within normal operating parameters during the contract. And it was! There’s a whole fucking lawsuit–”

“Hey, language,” Minoa tried for a joke.

“–and who do you think would be blamed if it were to have malfunctioned? Do you think it’d be whoever demanded it stopped in the middle of saving the workers? There was no malfunctioning involved, just some stupid contradictory orders, and that’s it. That is it!”

Minoa was silent for a while after te’d finished. “Sorry. I was just curious, is all. We don’t have to do any of that if you don’t want to, tonight or ever.”

“There’s no need to check that, because it’s nothing but bullshit,” Ginson said and made sure ter voice sounded confident. 

Minoa was silent again. Ginson stared at the SecUnit in front of ter and felt sick. It stared at the ceiling, never once meeting ter gaze. A regular, normal, obedient SecUnit that helped with its own disassembly because a tech had asked it to, who just happened to receive conflicting orders that one time. Te’d checked the logs, there were conflicting orders. It was just that simple.

“Okay,” Minoa said finally. “I’m sorry. Is there something else I can help you with?”

Ginson felt awful. He’d done nothing but try to help and cheer ter up, but it was just… not a good night for that. “No. It’s fine, I’ll finish here myself. There’s just a lot of tedious checks, you’ve already helped enough,” that sounded wrong. Te winced. “Sorry, I’m really grateful, just…”

“No-no, I get it,” Minoa assured. His voice sounded odd. “Well, I suppose it’s time to spare you from the fun of my company.” He laughed. “Hang out at some point later?”

“Sure,” Ginson agreed and turned toward him. “Good night.”

“Good night,” he echoed and left.

At five forty two Ginson suddenly had no distraction from wondering whether a rogue SecUnit would jump up and kill ter the moment its blood was safely running all inside its body. It hadn’t yet. But it really wasn’t convenient to murder someone while they were conducting your own repairs. 

Ginson spent a few minutes sipping ter coffee and mulling over that possibility, and every other possibility that bloomed in ter imagination, and then got to work. 

At one hour thirteen minutes te submitted a final report that said that yes, there were minor problems with the SecUnit’s systems. Its pump was performing 2.3% worse than standard. Its left knee joint was too tight. A patch of skin on its back had been regrown at some point with slight defects. But there was nothing more than that, and nothing that would have made it malfunction and do what it shouldn’t have, and definitely not a single tiniest thing that would make the company liable for the damages, and even less that would point to ter, good Tech Ginson, as not having conducted a thorough enough check of the SecUnit’s functionality. 

It was a great report, all in all, with the result of every diagnostic attached. And te didn’t even get murdered while writing it, so maybe it really was the truth.

[thistlefur]

[secondstar-acorn]

can’t think of anything to say other than it was everything I could have ever expected and wanted and hoped for. seeing them perform truly is an electric experience and I am so, so grateful I got to be there. I’ve never felt such overflowing joy and love in one room before and that truly is down to what a one-of-a-kind group Starkid is. I’m so happy and a little emotional that it’s over but like it’s sung in days of summer, “don’t wanna see you go but it’s not forever, not forever” ⭐️💜

[theoutcastrogue]

Bounded Accuracy, why it was necessary, and why it doesn't have to apply to skills

"Why Bounded Accuracy?", by Justin Alexander

"Let’s start by talking about bounded accuracy. Endless ink has been spilt on this topic, but I think one of the clearest way to understand bounded accuracy — what it is, why it works the way it does, how it’s supposed to be used — is to look at the design lineage which created it.

To do that, we need to go back about twenty years to the development of the Epic Level Handbook for 3rd Edition. The concept was to extend play past 20th level, allowing players to continue leveling up their characters forever.

The big problem the designers faced was that different classes gained bonuses to core abilities — attacks, saving throws, etc. — at different rates, which meant that their values diverged over time. By 20th level, the highest and lowest bonuses had already diverged so much that the difference exceeded the range of the d20 roll. This meant that any AC or DC you set would either be an automatic success for some PCs or impossible for others.

The designers of the Epic Level Handbook tried jumping through a whole bunch of hoops to solve or ameliorate this problem, but largely failed. As a result, the Epic Level Handbook was a pretty flawed experience at a fundamental level (and its failure may have actually played a major role in Wizards of the Coast abandoning the OGL and the doom of 4th Edition, but that’s a tale for another time)."

[The Rogue notes: I think the big problem with 3.5 was that the breaking of the d20 roll (where the AC or DC you set could be auto-fail for some and auto-success for others) happened LONG before epic levels, if players made characters with different levels of optimisation. Which was sometimes a result of, well, studying, pouring through splatbooks and looking up combos on the internet, but other times it just happened, without any effort. Some classes had to jump through hoops to keep up with the rest, and that was bad.]

"On that note, fast forward to 4th Edition: The designers knew this was a problem. (Several of the designers had actually worked on the Epic Level Handbook.) They wanted to avoid this problem with the new edition.

Their solution was to level up everyone’s bonuses across the board: Classes would be strong at some things and weak at others, but the values wouldn’t diverge. This methodology was, furthermore, wedded to 4th Edition’s design ethos of “level up the whole world with the PCs” and more or less fundamental to its My Precious Encounter school of encounter design.

Fast forward again, this time to 5th Edition: The 4th Edition of the game had burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp, and 5th Edition’s mission was to win back the D&D players they had lost. The whole “level up the world” ethos was widely identified as one of the things people who hated 4th Edition hated about 4th Edition, so it had go.

Bounded accuracy was the solution. Importantly, bounded accuracy was about two things:

Controlling AC & DC so that the target numbers never become impossible for some of the PCs.

Controlling bonuses so that the results don’t become automatic successes for some of the PCs.

In other words, all of the results exist within that boundary. Hence, “bounded accuracy.”

If you go back to the original problem experienced in 3rd Edition (and which metastasized in the Epic Level Handbook), you can see how this solves the problem. It also avoids the 4th Edition problem where your numbers get bigger, but your results never actually improve because the numbers increase in lockstep: As long as the DCs remain consistently in bounds, the moderate increases to the PCs’ bonuses will see them succeed more often as they increase in level, resulting in high-level characters who feel (and are!) more effective than 1st level characters."

– Justin Alexander | The Alexandrian, September 2022

Commentary: Bounded Accuracy and Skills

This very well-written summary was part of an article roasting the 5e skill system, and specifically arguing that Expertise is bad because it breaks Bounded Accuracy, and Reliable Talent makes it worse. And with this, I disagree.

I think that Bounded Accuracy is excellent for combat's standard rolls: attack vs AC, and saving throw vs DC. That's when you need numbers that challenge the whole party: some characters may have a better chance than others, sure, but the d20 roll doesn't become irrelevant because this one is guaranteed to succeed and that one is doomed to fail.

But for otherwise interacting with the world, I actually don't think the numbers need to challenge the whole party. I think immersion and simulation (I like these!) are better served by making such challenges tricky. Occasionally they will be too easy for some, and/or too hard for others, depending on where the characters focused their training. And when that happens, it's up to the party to figure out ways to make up for it, to look for other, creative solutions rather than get stuck on a skill check that one or more of them are doomed to fail, and in the end to acknowledge that some tasks are suited for only some of them.

So maybe half the party auto-failing to scale that wall means they need to find another way in, or use their spells, or have the athletic ones climb up and throw down a knotted rope. That's good! It's a complication that requires a solution other than rolling a single check! Maybe only the Wizard (with 2024 rules) has a chance of making that extreme Arcana check about a long lost artifact. That's great! It makes sense and it's immersive, they should be the only one able to make it. And maybe, if your goal is to stealthily scout ahead, don't send forth the clanging armoured warriors, only send the sneaky rogues. That's fantastic! It's basic tactics! What's not to like?

I have BIG beefs with the 5e skill system, on account that it's half-baked (and 5.5 is somehow even less baked), and doesn't give details or DCs even for the most bog-standard skill uses that you expect to come up at every campaign. A generic DC table from very easy to nearly impossible is great as a guideline for niche cases, and crazy things the players came up with. But things like climbing walls and picking pockets should come with instructions and numbers. As is, the DM is either winging it every time and the players are in the dark, or the DM is doing the designers' work for them, and homebrewing DC tables for everything. But bounded accuracy is not the problem here, imo.

[blacknight7890]

It's funny that the one time Pomni says fully within the bounds of the level is the horror adventure

[bitchesgate3]

Kr'y'izoth are one of two species of undead githyanki which can be found in the realms of Dungeons & Dragons. Specifically, they are one of the two unique githyanki undead created by Vlaakith CLVII through the powers of the Crown of Corruption, with the other being the Tl'a'ikith. Created from githyanki wizards, sorcerers and warlocks, kr'y'izoths appear as emaciated and charred githyanki shrouded by an aura of flickering, shadowy-black flames of necrotic energy. These flames obscure their features; even those who knew the creature in life are often hard-pressed to recognize them in death. They speak in a hollow, clipped tone of voice. Ironically, they're described as far more social and versatile than tl'a'ikiths are, which means the lich-queen uses them as high-level troubleshooters. With their additional ability to magically heal others, this means that kr'y'izoths are often attached to elite githyanki units, and so can be found across the Astral and on other planes as well as guarding Vlaakith's palace on Tu'narath. Created from githyanki warriors, predominantly fighters and rangers, tl'a'ikiths are much more common than their kr'y'izoth counterparts, but are usually kept on Tu'narath or other githyanki strongholds as elite guards. These undead githyanki appear as pale, spectral versions of their former living selves, still wielding their race's trademark silver swords. They never speak, instead simply obeying whatever orders they have been given.

[halamshirals]

man...

[residents-of-the-darkforest]

I realized that of the afterlives in Warriors, only two have official names. So I’m gonna make the names for the rest

Loners --> Sun-Bound Place

Loners travel a lot, so it would be logical to assume that where the sun is is an important, or at least daily, aspect of their life so that they do not get lost. When they die, they go here, named such because being ‘bound’ to the sun means they can never get lost from home again--they are where they should be, in a paradise.

Some may also believe that they have become part of the sun (this is up to you) and that they are now what guides their loner kin. 

Rogues --> Sunless Sky

I believe that rogues are the more violent versions of loners, and so they would basically go to the “Dark Forest” equivalent. They go where they cannot even tell where they are. 

They are the colourless night that kits get lost in. Mothers often warn their kits not to leave while she is sleeping, otherwise the nasty rogues who died long ago will capture them and take the kits with them into the black sky, where they’ll be lost forever.

Unlike with the Dark Forest however, because there is no code to guide behaviour, cats from the Sunless Sky can join the Sun-Bound Place if proven trustworthy enough.

Kittypets --> Neverending Twolegplace

For kittypets, much different to warriors, the Twolegplace is their home and, to them, a great place. They imagine it as a Twolegplace that never ends, each home filled with all the toys they could want, large gardens with plenty of trees and perhaps real prey, and each of the homes have a friendly fellow housecat. It is a perfect community.

If they believe the Twolegs come with them depends on the cat, some believe it is only for cats, others believe that the Twolegs come too, but only those who have cats.

Others as well believe that no dogs or other nuisances are present.

Kittypets Who Are Dicks --> Barren Land

The opposite of the Neverending Twolegplace, it is a place that has nothing from a household. No toys, no catfood or nip, no large gardens--no grass at all--no houses. It is a barren desert, basically.

Much like rogues, these cats do not follow a code and are thereby not ‘breaking the law,’ they are only condemned because they can be dangerous and disrupt the peaceful afterlife of others. They may also be able to join the Neverending Twolegplace if proven trustworthy.

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Because kittypets, loners, and rogues are way more widespread than Clan cats, it stands to reason that names of their afterlives may be different as well. These names are the most commonly used among the cats in range of the Clans.

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Taglist: @ambitiousauthor @starfalcon555 @frightnightindustries @elementaldeityoffood @wills-woodland-warriors @liberhoe

[lususnatura]

i feel like it's fellow rogues would just come to accept at some point that blamore is going to be eating around them at least 40-45% of the time around them, because his metabolism is literally just THAT hyperactive that it pretty much is always carrying snacks on his person. which is,, well, really not so good on one hand. but on the other hand, if blamore likes you, then you may just get free snacks from him... so yay for that??? idk LOL

[hayweerc]

Sonic has fleas and gets a bath.

[uldren-sov]

so was no one going to tell me that Heinrix van Calox of all people was Like That or were you just waiting to see him lay me out like he did

[thistlefur]