D&D 5E EN World Interview With Mike Mearls, Lead Designer of D&D Next

DMKastmaria · May 21, 2012

ColonelHardisson said:
Which is fantastic. Adventuring parties without a healer of some kind along - like, say, a band of barbaric fighters or a dwarven infantry squad - should be able to push on in a D&D adventure as their literary and legendary counterparts do. Very few such tales ever have a specific "healer" or cleric.

Except when the hero is actually seriously injured. Then, in those tales, someone does heal him. Because coming back from a near mortal wound in just a couple of days, would kill the reader's suspension of disbelief.

Swick · May 21, 2012

Thanks for sharing the interview--it was great.

I'm looking forward to the play test!

nedjer · May 21, 2012

Interesting to see how the language has panned-out as, in addition to the customary levels, settings, dimensions and abilities, the Next core language looks packed with the abstract language of later editions such as feats, themes, surges, domains, dominance, . . .

This kind of suggests a modular 4e take aimed at the existing market instead of any sort of Old School/ light feel aimed at opening-up the market. Guess we'll find out soon

Dark Mistress · May 21, 2012

Interesting read, but still in the same place as I was. Liking some of what I read and disliking some of what I read.

I am with clever though in that I don't want healing surges at all. Now if they was a optional rule, part of the modularity they keep talking about. Then no problems, I just don't want them to be a core required rule personally.

kevtar · May 21, 2012

Immediate interrupts... why did it have to be immediate interrupts?

I enjoyed the article with the exception of interrupts (sigh). I really don't like immediate interrupts and I'm skeptical that making them more "automatic" will make them less intrusive, and even more skeptical that having them "rob" future turns will reduce drag. Time will tell I guess.

mlund · May 21, 2012

Using an interrupt to alter a die roll result is easy as pie. The only threat of time bloat is if you let a hem-and-haw player drag down the game. It's the same problem you run into when they try to do things on their own turn. It's operator error and pretty much unavoidable if a player insists on taking those options. Hopefully they'll be classes without a ton of "A, B, or C" decisions to make mid-combat so you can steer that sort of indecisive player into a position where he's less flustered.

Seriously, the game needs chances for players to say things like, "I push him out of the way!" or "I duck!" or "I parry the blow."

The "complex" interrupts eating into your next turn really strikes me as an elegant solution.

I look forward to the day I see a 5E Warlord spending his next turn's Minor action to yell "Duck!" and reduce a character's damage suffered from a hit by 2d6 or something instead of waiting until his turn to do "non-magical, really!" healing.

- Marty Lund

Mark CMG · May 21, 2012

Morrus said:
That said, I'm sure they'd rather we were pouring over every word than ignoring it - when people care enough about your game to discuss it endlessly 18 months before release, that can only be a good thing.

Yup, I'm sure I spend fifteen minutes or so several times a week glancing over the latest 5E news, then a like amount of time commenting on it when some portion of the design discussion catches my attention. I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss an interpretation of design focus based on the assumptions apparent in off-the-cuff interview remarks. What I pointed out wasn't out of context and it's fairly clear from their segregated design plan regarding the three pillars that they were going to have to focus on one of them as a higher priority. I don't think anyone is all that surprised that it turned out to be a combat-focused. It's just a little disappointing to some folks. I was thinking that nearly 40 years in they'd have a fairly good idea how to do combat rules and could spend more of the design time with a roleplaying focus. I know it isn't the same people over those 40 years but the hope is that the people they have are standing on the shoulders of giants rather than reinventing the wheel each time.

Gaming Tonic said:
My NDA has been lifted so that I can share my experience with you. I think that says a lot about how WotC wants to include the fans in the process. They did not have to release my NDA.

All NDAs are lifted or just some (or just your NDA)? Why would they only lift certain NDAs? I hope everyone who has their NDA lifted will be sure to keep a critical eye on the whole process, in the discerning sense and not necessarily in the negative sense unless warranted. It's nice to get some design details but nothing quells interest faster than marketing couched as insider info.

Mark CMG · May 21, 2012

mlund said:
The "complex" interrupts eating into your next turn really strikes me as an elegant solution.

I've been working for some time with an alternate system for attacks of opportunity whereby you only get them if you are actually going to use that as your action rather than as an extra action. Any given character being able to manufacture more relative time than others has never really struck me as good design.

hayek · May 21, 2012

Mark CMG said:
I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss an interpretation of design focus based on the assumptions apparent in off-the-cuff interview remarks. What I pointed out wasn't out of context and it's fairly clear from their segregated design plan regarding the three pillars that they were going to have to focus on one of them as a higher priority. I don't think anyone is all that surprised that it turned out to be a combat-focused.

Mearls' line:

"Most themes offer a mix of abilities, but you can choose to focus on one part of the game if you want to. Still, a guy who takes a combat-based is only marginally better than a character who takes a theme that focuses elsewhere."

is clearly saying that someone who takes combat-based themes is only marginally better at combat than someone who focuses elsewhere. I know nothing about whether D&DN will actually favor combat over all other aspects of the game, and your concerns about the game may be quite valid. But interpreting Mearls' line as saying "characters who focus on combat are better at D&D than others" is just inaccurate.

Confirmation bias - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

...

Mark CMG · May 21, 2012

hayek said:
Mearls' line:

"Most themes offer a mix of abilities, but you can choose to focus on one part of the game if you want to. Still, a guy who takes a combat-based is only marginally better than a character who takes a theme that focuses elsewhere."

is clearly saying that someone who takes combat-based themes is only marginally better at combat than someone who focuses elsewhere.

Precisely the point. Why should there be a concern if one character is better at combat than another in a system that doesn't favor combat? Alternately, if he had emphasized that someone taking an exploration theme would be better at exploration than someone taking a different theme then the inference might be that the current focus was on exploration. However, that hasn't come up yet so I don't know if it is a concern of the designers.