Mearls On D&D's Design Premises/Goals

Lanefan said:

The actual teams were separate AFAIK, but they both worked for the same boss/company in the same place and the cross-influence is clear. Around the same time there was also a lot of talk (and considerable resistance, which never quite made sense to me) about actually cross-pollenating the games - have iconic D&D monsters show up as Magic cards, for example, and use Magic settings* and storylines for D&D..

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Actually, there was cross pollination. Peter Adkinson, the guy in charge of WOTC at the time, led the redesign for 3e before bringing in Jonathan Tweet to take over as lead for the design team. Now, how much changed after Tweet took over, I have no idea.

Maxperson said:

There is no rule that says what you are assuming.

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It’s all over the combat section:This tells you the purpose of the combat rules is for engaging in combat, not for interactions that don't fit that description.Again, this tells you what combat is, and by extension, what it isn't. If two sides aren't clashing then it typically isn't combat, so don't use the combat rules for that situation. This tells you that the characters taking turns in a combat round are participating "in a battle". They aren't standing around thinking about whether they want to talk to the other party. Someone is taking violent action against someone else.

Maxperson said:

It's also not a direct ability contest in any way, shape of form. Initiative is as obviously indirect opposition, as sun will obviously come up tomorrow. In any case, it's stated in Sage Advice that initiative is not a contest, so it isn't. Since you can't seem to get that it's not direct opposition, just go with the Sage Advice.

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"Indirect opposition" isn't a category recognized in the rules, AFAIA. If I'm trying to hit you with my sword before you cast a spell on me, I'd say my effort to do so is directly opposed to your effort to cast your spell before I hit run you through. I understand that Jeremy Crawford has said the initiative roll is not a contest, but I also think it's much easier for him to say that than it would be for him to talk about how it conforms to the contest rules while at the same time constitutes an exception in terms of how ties are broken. Just look at the pushback I've gotten from you on this subject. He probably doesn't want to deal with that sort of thing on Twitter.

Jay Verkuilen said:

(2) Skills and Saves: While in combat, they managed to implement bounded accuracy fairly well, both skills and saves have issues. They work OK in lower to mid levels, but the scaling starts to break down at the higher levels. This is particularly obvious with regards to saves. Consider that at about 10th level a character who has a strong stat and a strong save has a bonus of around +9 or +10 while one that doesn't have a strong stat and save has a bonus of 0. This means that the first character essentially ignores all low DC threats while the second has about a 50/50 shot. However, high DC threats are essentially impossible for the second character and, without a lot of buffs, stays that way. As DCs get higher, characters gain glass jaws. Similar effects happen with DC creep in skills. At lower levels it's still worth it for many characters to keep trying to do things they're not strong at, but at high levels it's not even worth it. This happens IMO because skills and saves are both binary success/fail situations. One fix to allow DCs and accumulated bonuses to go down would be to make them work less as binary situations. A better skill challenge type mechanic (3 successes before 1 failure, etc.) means things can be more like the combat system. I'd also dump Expertise as written given that it contributes to DC creep.

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Just want to pop in to say that I personally see the way saves work as a huge feature of 5e rather than a bug. I love the fact that high level characters have to account for their weaknesses and have to rely on their team to take down threats that target those flaws.

OB1 said:

Just want to pop in to say that I personally see the way saves work as a huge feature of 5e rather than a bug. I love the fact that high level characters have to account for their weaknesses and have to rely on their team to take down threats that target those flaws.

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I'll second this. The way saves work in 5E is effectively a fix that I've wanted since the 1st edition days of the game. It rendered interesting combats at high level an actual fun experience.

OB1 said:

Just want to pop in to say that I personally see the way saves work as a huge feature of 5e rather than a bug. I love the fact that high level characters have to account for their weaknesses and have to rely on their team to take down threats that target those flaws.

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Doctor Futurity said:

I'll second this. The way saves work in 5E is effectively a fix that I've wanted since the 1st edition days of the game. It rendered interesting combats at high level an actual fun experience.

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Please don't misunderstand me, I still want high level threats to be hard! However, I think what you guys are citing as good is a side effect of crummy math, not an actual intended feature. Side effects aren't things you rely on. What you want to do is find a way to get the feature (high level stuff being hard) without the unintended consequences.

The problem with really sky high DCs, such as 23 or more is that many characters essentially have 0 chance of breaking free of the effect unless the party is very good at buffs. I'd like things to be somewhat viable for most parties even if they're not totally optimized, for instance, not having a dedicated buffer. This often means their character is essentially knocked out of the fight, which is IME very, very frustrating and boring for the player. This is particularly true for "lose a turn" type abilities. I've rarely seen (or felt myself) more frustrating times as sitting there doing nothing while long turns go around the table, waiting to make a save I basically can't succeed at.

For example, one way to make high level threats tough without having DCs go nuts is to have higher level abilities and attacks require multiple saves against different stats. For example, if you have a dragon breath that attacks two different save types, different characters will fail different effects. Only really prepared characters or parties will save against all. That would let DCs stay lower (say 20 or less) but still keeping threat levels high. For example, if red dragon breath involved a Dex save to avoid fire damage but also a Con save to avoid some kind of debuff, say getting the wind sucked out of your lungs and having disadvantage until the end of your next turn, the rogue types would avoid the damage by rolling out of the way but end up getting the wind knocked out of them for a turn. White dragon breath might require a Str save to avoid being frozen in place (i.e., restrained) and Con save to avoid damage. etc.

Another method would be to have some threats have saves that start at disadvantage. If the character has a source of buff that breaks out of that, great, they're rolling straight up.

Jay Verkuilen said:

Please don't misunderstand me, I still want high level threats to be hard! However, I think what you guys are citing as good is a side effect of crummy math, not an actual intended feature. Side effects aren't things you rely on. What you want to do is find a way to get the feature (high level stuff being hard) without the unintended consequences.

The problem with really sky high DCs, such as 23 or more is that many characters essentially have 0 chance of breaking free of the effect unless the party is very good at buffs. I'd like things to be somewhat viable for most parties even if they're not totally optimized, for instance, not having a dedicated buffer. This often means their character is essentially knocked out of the fight, which is IME very, very frustrating and boring for the player. This is particularly true for "lose a turn" type abilities. I've rarely seen (or felt myself) more frustrating times as sitting there doing nothing while long turns go around the table, waiting to make a save I basically can't succeed at.

For example, one way to make high level threats tough without having DCs go nuts is to have higher level abilities and attacks require multiple saves against different stats. For example, if you have a dragon breath that attacks two different save types, different characters will fail different effects. Only really prepared characters or parties will save against all. That would let DCs stay lower (say 20 or less) but still keeping threat levels high. For example, if red dragon breath involved a Dex save to avoid fire damage but also a Con save to avoid some kind of debuff, say getting the wind sucked out of your lungs and having disadvantage until the end of your next turn, the rogue types would avoid the damage by rolling out of the way but end up getting the wind knocked out of them for a turn. White dragon breath might require a Str save to avoid being frozen in place (i.e., restrained) and Con save to avoid damage. etc.

Another method would be to have some threats have saves that start at disadvantage. If the character has a source of buff that breaks out of that, great, they're rolling straight up.

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I disagree that its crummy maths, and I think its designed to create characters with two key strong points and four exploitable weak points. The Issues with the DCs become noticeable against very potent opponents, but it makes the ability to engage high level PCs with lower CR challenges much more feasible and interesting. My own experience with D&D in general is that the DCs simply aren't tough enough for most of a PC's career, anyway, so the weak spots a PC has with saves are critical to making any threat feel "threatening" as a result. I suppose an argument could be made that there are other ways to balance this out, sure......but I am not having any issues with the system as it currently stands, and it functions a lot better for my needs than all prior save systems in editions 1 through 4, so it's hard for me to find a point of agreement that the maths are bad in this scenario when they finally, for the first time, feel right. Your own example, to use it again, demonstrates that you're trying to work out a contrived method of "fixing" something that isn't broken. The question I raise is: how often are your PCs actually running in to DC 23 saving throws? At what level are these a thing that happens consistently enough to be a major threat? And most importantly, how is it that the PCs have reached such a high level and are still (as a group) unable to resolve this DC? I've yet to see this happen in my games, but I'll concede I haven't run anything higher than level 17 yet.


(EDIT: to be clear, I have seen DC 23s come in to play on rare occasion and they appear to be very nonthreatening to players, especially players with a modicum of cooperation in the group; a PC with the right save will make it, every time, and the ones who don't have that save as a primary will usually fail, sure....but that's clearly the game working as intended, not some sort of accident of design. The fact that the GM can count on this to be a likely outcome is icing on the cake, it makes prepping high level conflicts and having some idea of how they will play out much easier to determine.)

Doctor Futurity said:

I disagree that its crummy maths, and I think its designed to create characters with two key strong points and four exploitable weak points.

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I don't have a disagreement with the goal; I do think the math is messed up and things could be better.

The Issues with the DCs become noticeable against very potent opponents, but it makes the ability to engage high level PCs with lower CR challenges much more feasible and interesting.

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I think you're mixing two things up here... not sure. I'm trying to keep the latter without the former, although I do think the game starts to break down without using mob rules when you have hordes of lesser foes due to the grind.

Essentially I'm arguing that it's a good thing not to let save DCs get too high, although one might want to control bonuses too. The main reason is to maintain the ability to threaten characters without totally locking others out of being able to do things.

My own experience with D&D in general is that the DCs simply aren't tough enough for most of a PC's career, anyway, so the weak spots a PC has with saves are critical to making any threat feel "threatening" as a result. I suppose an argument could be made that there are other ways to balance this out, sure......but I am not having any issues with the system as it currently stands, and it functions a lot better for my needs than all prior save systems in editions 1 through 4, so it's hard for me to find a point of agreement that the maths are bad in this scenario when they finally, for the first time, feel right.

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They're OK as long as you keep DCs to about 18 or under and for much of the game that's how they are. It's only when you start going into the upper reaches of DCs that it starts becoming a problem. I didn't really do the numbers until mid teen levels.

I agree, though, that many DCs are probably a bit too low, while urging people to be careful of very high ones.

Your own example, to use it again, demonstrates that you're trying to work out a contrived method of "fixing" something that isn't broken. The question I raise is: how often are your PCs actually running in to DC 23 saving throws? At what level are these a thing that happens consistently enough to be a major threat? And most importantly, how is it that the PCs have reached such a high level and are still (as a group) unable to resolve this DC? I've yet to see this happen in my games, but I'll concede I haven't run anything higher than level 17 yet.

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You start running into those kinds of foes when you get above those levels. You can tell WotC didn't follow their own guidelines written in the DMG because many monsters in the MM have saves that lie quite far from them.

I'm not sure what's particularly contrived about having an effect like dragon breath attack multiple things. There are a number of spells (not enough IMO) that attack multiple saves or do multiple types of damage, e.g., Hunger of Hadar, Ice Storm, or Flame Strike. This is an elegant way of having effects that get around different kinds of defenses in a partial way.

(EDIT: to be clear, I have seen DC 23s come in to play on rare occasion and they appear to be very nonthreatening to players, especially players with a modicum of cooperation in the group; a PC with the right save will make it, every time, and the ones who don't have that save as a primary will usually fail, sure....but that's clearly the game working as intended, not some sort of accident of design. The fact that the GM can count on this to be a likely outcome is icing on the cake, it makes prepping high level conflicts and having some idea of how they will play out much easier to determine.)

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IMO the fact that the strong save characters make it every time and the others fail every time is exactly the problem. That predictability for the DM is also predictability for the players. "A dragon, well I'm screwed...." I don't want to have players in that situation. More than once I remember a fight where the poor barbarian's player was reduced to rolling a save for three or four rounds in a row when facing something mind-affecting. That really sucks to be stun-locked for that long. The gap between a strong save character who makes it most of the time and the weak save character who nearly always fails is the issue. At lower levels this isn't nearly so determinative and various things like advantage or disadvantage actually help. When the probability of success or failure is extreme, advantage and disadvantage stop mattering. Have a point of Inspiration against a high DC foe? Why bother? It won't help you. Even many buffs won't help you unless, of course, you built the party to be strong at that. A lot of parties aren't good at buffing. IMO this should not be a requirement but if you want to get to high level play given the structure of the save system, it kind of is.

Challenging the strong save character by raising DCs very high is one reason why DCs have crept up, just as they did in previous versions of the game. It's the same with skills at high levels. Again, don't get me wrong, I want those great wyrms and liches to be tough! Hence having their attacks target multiple defenses. I don't see that being particularly contrived. It's actually playing to the features of the system of being pretty resilient against two attack types and relatively weaker against others and as I said previously there are a number of spells that use this; it's an underutilized approach. A number of spells in the book could be written this way, too, such as Prismatic Spray.

So my point in the original post is that WotC's math was not as good as it could be, or, to use my stronger word, crummy. WotC often makes math errors to keep things simple but which create a number of potential problems. They did it in 3.X with saves as well. One of the big goals of bounded accuracy was to keep DC creep in check, which is an admirable goal. Unfortunately in the areas of the game where they have binary success/failure, most notably skills (which they didn't spend much time on, or at least chose to leave quite thinly developed, as the case may be) and saves, they didn't really manage. A cure is to keep the DCs (and bonuses) down but have success or failure not be so binary.

Satyrn said:

Should probably be called the Uncanny Dungeon instead, though.

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Uncanny Vale. "Vale" is a thing in 4e.

Jay Verkuilen said:

I don't have a disagreement with the goal; I do think the math is messed up and things could be better.




I think you're mixing two things up here... not sure. I'm trying to keep the latter without the former, although I do think the game starts to break down without using mob rules when you have hordes of lesser foes due to the grind.

Essentially I'm arguing that it's a good thing not to let save DCs get too high, although one might want to control bonuses too. The main reason is to maintain the ability to threaten characters without totally locking others out of being able to do things.




They're OK as long as you keep DCs to about 18 or under and for much of the game that's how they are. It's only when you start going into the upper reaches of DCs that it starts becoming a problem. I didn't really do the numbers until mid teen levels.

I agree, though, that many DCs are probably a bit too low, while urging people to be careful of very high ones.




You start running into those kinds of foes when you get above those levels. You can tell WotC didn't follow their own guidelines written in the DMG because many monsters in the MM have saves that lie quite far from them.

I'm not sure what's particularly contrived about having an effect like dragon breath attack multiple things. There are a number of spells (not enough IMO) that attack multiple saves or do multiple types of damage, e.g., Hunger of Hadar, Ice Storm, or Flame Strike. This is an elegant way of having effects that get around different kinds of defenses in a partial way.




IMO the fact that the strong save characters make it every time and the others fail every time is exactly the problem. That predictability for the DM is also predictability for the players. "A dragon, well I'm screwed...." I don't want to have players in that situation. More than once I remember a fight where the poor barbarian's player was reduced to rolling a save for three or four rounds in a row when facing something mind-affecting. That really sucks to be stun-locked for that long. The gap between a strong save character who makes it most of the time and the weak save character who nearly always fails is the issue. At lower levels this isn't nearly so determinative and various things like advantage or disadvantage actually help. When the probability of success or failure is extreme, advantage and disadvantage stop mattering. Have a point of Inspiration against a high DC foe? Why bother? It won't help you. Even many buffs won't help you unless, of course, you built the party to be strong at that. A lot of parties aren't good at buffing. IMO this should not be a requirement but if you want to get to high level play given the structure of the save system, it kind of is.

Challenging the strong save character by raising DCs very high is one reason why DCs have crept up, just as they did in previous versions of the game. It's the same with skills at high levels. Again, don't get me wrong, I want those great wyrms and liches to be tough! Hence having their attacks target multiple defenses. I don't see that being particularly contrived. It's actually playing to the features of the system of being pretty resilient against two attack types and relatively weaker against others and as I said previously there are a number of spells that use this; it's an underutilized approach. A number of spells in the book could be written this way, too, such as Prismatic Spray.

So my point in the original post is that WotC's math was not as good as it could be, or, to use my stronger word, crummy. WotC often makes math errors to keep things simple but which create a number of potential problems. They did it in 3.X with saves as well. One of the big goals of bounded accuracy was to keep DC creep in check, which is an admirable goal. Unfortunately in the areas of the game where they have binary success/failure, most notably skills (which they didn't spend much time on, or at least chose to leave quite thinly developed, as the case may be) and saves, they didn't really manage. A cure is to keep the DCs (and bonuses) down but have success or failure not be so binary.

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Food for thought....I haven't really found this issue to be one which bothers me, but I can see your logic. The main reason I fail to see it as a serious issue is twofold: first, DC 23 for saves is exceedingly rare until late in the game, and second, the odds of guaranteed crippling failure at high level are very situationally dependent. Yes, I can agree that could be a problem if those situations crop up a lot (e.g. DM regularly uses foes that hit the weak spots all the time), at least in the sense that the PCs may feel like their chance of success must be greater than it allows for (without making effort to build the PC toward that end goal).

On your idea of one attack hitting for two or more saves with different effects, I think the idea itself is neat regardless of whether it is considered a fix for this issue or not. I seems like it's a fix in the sense of "spread the trouble" which is fine....but what it sounds like you're really interested in is finding a way high level PCs can show more proficiency in non class saves. OTOH the only things in the game I know of which ask for DC 23 saves tend to be world-ending boss monsters which, to be fair from the DM's perspective, are not creatures you want to see the PCs easily making saves from. Building better monsters with a wider range of effects across multiple saves would definitely make the misery spread around (in a good way).

Doctor Futurity said:

Food for thought....I haven't really found this issue to be one which bothers me, but I can see your logic. The main reason I fail to see it as a serious issue is twofold: first, DC 23 for saves is exceedingly rare until late in the game, and second, the odds of guaranteed crippling failure at high level are very situationally dependent. Yes, I can agree that could be a problem if those situations crop up a lot (e.g. DM regularly uses foes that hit the weak spots all the time), at least in the sense that the PCs may feel like their chance of success must be greater than it allows for (without making effort to build the PC toward that end goal).

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A lot of that depends on those possibilities being in play but I know from having either played or looked through a lot of the WotC stuff that they have quite a number of such monsters.

On your idea of one attack hitting for two or more saves with different effects, I think the idea itself is neat regardless of whether it is considered a fix for this issue or not. I seems like it's a fix in the sense of "spread the trouble" which is fine....but what it sounds like you're really interested in is finding a way high level PCs can show more proficiency in non class saves.

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I'm actually OK with having some of the really high bonuses go down, too. Ditto for skill checks. I'd have been happier if save proficiency was something like Advantage with the bonus remaining a stat bonus, and then keeping the DCs lower. Ditto for things like Expertise, which I feel also contributes to DC creep at high levels.

OTOH the only things in the game I know of which ask for DC 23 saves tend to be world-ending boss monsters which, to be fair from the DM's perspective, are not creatures you want to see the PCs easily making saves from. Building better monsters with a wider range of effects across multiple saves would definitely make the misery spread around (in a good way).

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Oh like I said I wasn't at all trying to make the world-ending boss monsters easy, not at all. What I don't want is them being built to totally lock a player out for multiple rounds due to the DCs being so high nobody but the perfect match can make them. There are other ways to make things threatening while still preserving bounded accuracy.

But yes hitting multiple points is a good way of spreading the misery around and it's a good way to make higher level abilities work well.