D&D 5E 07/29/2013 - Legends & Lore It’s Mathemagical!

[Trickster Spirit]

I will repeat myself: I get tired of reminding the casual players at my table which of the five zillion numbers on their character sheet they're supposed to be using now.

Arithmetic is not the problem here.

You and I are in a similar boat. I currently DM Pathfinder for a group consisting of nothing but casual players - I'm literally the only one at the table who has read any of the books, let alone owns any of them. They're all great roleplayers, reasonably intelligent people who enjoy cutting down goblinoids and coming up with interesting back-stories for their characters. But for all their enthusiasm about finally achieving "ultimate nerd" by finally getting together to play some D&D, character creation was a nightmare and my players still go cross eyed when I ask them about anything on their sheet more complicated than their BAB.

Personally, I find myself torn on this issue; I broadly agree with DEFCON 1 here, that D&D has always been a game of number-crunching, and that if you can't find your Spell Level DC on your character sheet, the game might just be too complex for your tastes. But at the same time I've always hated that "Well if your group can't handle a little complexity, go find a game other than D&D to play and quit wasting time complaining to the rest of us who can handle it" attitude, which always reeks of elitism and bad-wrong-fun one-true-way-ism even if that's not the spirit in which the remarks were intended.

Ultimately I think the solution is modularity in the form of Basic / Standard / Advanced D&D. Basic should pare things down to a manageable level of complexity for our casual players and then we should be able to cherry pick game mechanics to build something more resembling "classic" D&D but still providing for an easy to run and play experience. No WotC edition of D&D has ever really managed to pull off "D&D as easy or as complex as you want it to be" right, and if they even come close I'm going to love switching my group over to Next.

 

[Dausuul]

Sure, there are a bunch of numbers on the character sheet already. That isn't a good reason to pile on more--quite the contrary! The more numbers there are, the more of a burden it becomes on the casual players and the more the advanced players have to take up the slack.

And it's not just the casual players, either. I can and have handled the blizzard of numbers involved in running in a high-level 3E spellcaster. But what I found was that the value of most of those numbers, in terms of adding tactical options, character detail, game balance (ha!), or accurate simulation of the game reality, was very low; dealing with them was a waste of time and brainspace. Raw quantity of numbers has nothing to do with tactical depth. As a DM, I'm here to slaughter player characters with fiendish monsters and diabolical schemes; as a player, I'm here to weasel out of my well-deserved demise*. In neither case am I interested in playing a human Excel sheet.

What is the point of having save DCs scale with spell level? It seems like the goal is to solve the "ghoul problem reversed," where a caster can cripple powerful monsters with low-level debuffs. This is certainly a problem worth addressing, but I hope they find a more streamlined way to do so. (I like Mearls's earlier idea of using 1E-style saves.) Any fool can throw more numbers at a problem; part of good design is finding ways to solve such problems without adding mechanical overhead.

[size=-2]*No, I don't really subscribe to this antagonistic view of the DM/player relationship. But it's more fun if everyone thinks I do.[/size]

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

What is the point of having save DCs scale with spell level? It seems like the goal is to solve the "ghoul problem reversed," where a caster can cripple powerful monsters with low-level debuffs. This is certainly a problem worth addressing, but I hope they find a more streamlined way to do so. (I like Mearls's earlier idea of using 1E-style saves.) Any fool can throw more numbers at a problem; part of good design is finding ways to solve such problems without adding mechanical overhead.

It's designed to solve TWO problems. One is that without scaling save bonuses then a level 1 monster with a paralyze attack is just as dangerous as a level 20 monster with that same attack. If you give scaling save bonuses to PCs then that means that, at higher level, they have a much greater chance to save against low DC(from low level monsters) than against high DCs(from high level monsters).

However, if you give PCs scaling save bonuses but don't change the DCs of spells as level increases then that just means magic gets less and less useful as you go up levels. A level 20 character might have +11 to save against spells but level 9 spells still have a DC of 15, so they almost never work.

The same effect happens if you tie the save DC to the target instead of the caster. This was the way it worked in 1e/2e and was one of the largest complaints about the system. Once you reached high levels, you spells would start doing less damage and having less effect because nearly every monster could save against them on a 4+. Plus enemy spellcasters had the same problem when trying to affect the PCs.

The only way to solve the first problem without causing the second is to have DCs scale as you go up levels. Now, that can either apply to ALL of your spells(which is probably the simple way to do it and the way it currently works in the playtest) or you can have it scale based on the level of the spell you cast(which creates a system that encourages you to only use high level spells).

The only other real solution is to not scale either the DCs or the saves but give the target a modifier based on the difference between their level and the caster's. This would mean no recording save bonuses or changing spell DCs. But it would mean doing math on every single save as well as giving out metagame information just to make the save(i.e. "I get a +2 to the roll, eh? That means he's 2 levels below us!"). Math at the time of resolution is never really preferable as many people find basic math hard to do quickly. For many people looking up the DC in a box on their character sheet goes much faster than trying to minus 3 from the number they rolled.

 

[Dausuul]

Mmm... the thing is, high-level AD&D spells were designed on the expectation that high-level foes would reliably make their saving throws. That's why "save or X" spells have nastier values of X as the spell level gets higher.

Let's imagine two spells. One is 4th level, the other is 8th level. Both are single-target spells that grant saving throws, and both impose a status effect on a failed save. Call them Knockdown and Lockdown respectively.

Now, if you're a 5th-level wizard, you can cast Knockdown once per day. If you're a 15th-level wizard, you can cast Lockdown once per day. So we expect that Knockdown will have roughly the same average impact against a 5th-level ogre that Lockdown has against a 15th-level storm giant.

Traditionally in D&D, the status effect imposed by the 8th-level Lockdown is going to be a lot nastier than that imposed by the 4th-level Knockdown. If Knockdown is "each round, save or fall prone," then Lockdown is going to be more like "save or be unable to move or act for the duration." But a spell with a 1/round chance to knock the target prone is only a moderate hindrance, while a multi-round stun is tantamount to a one-shot kill. So how can we make it so that Knockdown works as well on ogres as Lockdown does on storm giants?

The only solution is to give storm giants more ability to resist Lockdown than ogres have to resist Knockdown. AD&D handled this by giving storm giants better saving throws. 3E negated this solution (by introducing scaling save DCs) and didn't put in anything to replace it, which is why "save-or-lose" magic is overwhelmingly dominant at mid to high levels in 3E. 4E tried to sidestep the issue by making it so 95% of spells dealt damage, but this was unpopular and Wizards soon caved, whereupon the problem returned. They finally managed a partial fix by giving solo monsters special abilities to deal with the worst status effects.

The current proposal is to return to the 3E system, albeit with (I hope!) less drastic DC scaling. This is, at best, a solution to one problem that introduces another problem. I certainly don't see any overriding necessity for going with this as opposed to the AD&D approach.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

That was also possibly one of my least favourite features of 4e.

I hate it with a passion when this is how skills work, that a high level PC that has never ever bothered climbing, using diplomacy or blacksmithing, is automatically better than a lower level PC that has been investing and doing it since day 1.

Oddly enough, it doesn't bother me that much when applied to attack tho... A Wizard with same BAB as a Fighter... yes it does feel odd, but still the Wizard is going to have lower Strength and swing a staff, and has no special maneuvers to use, so the Fighter doesn't feel penalized and the Wizard can occasionally contribute to the fight when spells-sparing. I am not sure, but I can accept this for attacks. After all, attacking is always pretty much a yes/no check.

Skills on the other hand are not binary, there are different possible things you can do depending on your score, and different degrees of success. Furthermore, using a skill is most of the time an individual's effort (and it's usually over in one roll) so I prefer niche protection of the PC who choose to specialize, while attacking is a group effort that requires many rounds.

It bothers me still on attacks, but you have inspired me with some hope. If they have an optional skill point system (please!) that allows for customisation, there could be a parallel optional weapon point system (please!), a la 2E WP and NWP. Your proficiency is determined by where you spend the points, with varying quantities available for different classes.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I just hope they stick custom subclass design in the DMG. I'm a fan of forced choice class design. I see your (sub)class as being like an academic program. You might have to learn stuff you think you'll "never use" because it's part of the package, but you can still specialize and take electives (feats). I just don't like allowing players to build their own class, and if it's in the PHB, I'm going to have to deal with forbidding it without losing players. As the DM I might occasionally use it. I just don't want it presented as something that "advanced" players can feel entitled to.

 

[gotbrain]

I thought he said he would lower the base to account for adding the spell level? So it would be something like 5 + ability mod + slot level.

so a level 1 caster with 18 mod would have a save DC of 10 (5+4+1) while a 20th level caster would have a save DC of 20 (5+6+9). This keeps it within bounded accuracy range.


i do like the spells by slots scaling as long as the effects increase as well as the DC. But this makes me wonder do spells needs levels at all? Why not just have a book of spells and determine their effects by slot level? Why not a 1st level fireball that does 3d6 and a burst of 5' or a 9th fireball that does 12d6 and a burst of 45'?

If it is what I would imagine it is... your save DC would be 10 + ability mod + slot level. That doesn't seem that complicated to me.

And in my opinion it's a heck of a lot better than not having your save DC go up at all regardless of the spell slot you cast a spell. To have your Sleep spell be a DC 14 save if you cast it with a 1st level spell slot OR a 9th level spell slot does not sit right either. If you're spending a 9th level slot to cast Sleep... it should be harder for enemies to resist in my opinion.

 

[Ratskinner]

...so why can't we just give you a fixed number of spells you can cast in a day and ignore what level they are cast at? Just use your caster level as the signifier for how powerful they will be, get rid of spell levels/slots. This also sidesteps the trick of simply using low level slots for non-save spells and utilities that lead to caster domination.

I'd cheerfully adopt this notion.

 

[Li Shenron]

I just hope they stick custom subclass design in the DMG. I'm a fan of forced choice class design. I see your (sub)class as being like an academic program. You might have to learn stuff you think you'll "never use" because it's part of the package, but you can still specialize and take electives (feats). I just don't like allowing players to build their own class, and if it's in the PHB, I'm going to have to deal with forbidding it without losing players. As the DM I might occasionally use it. I just don't want it presented as something that "advanced" players can feel entitled to.

It definitely feels to me that custom subclasses are part of the "Advanced" game, they might not even make it to the 3 core books, but if they do I agree DMG is better to include Advanced material.

 

[Blackwarder]

I don't like the idea of save DC being fluid like Mike suggest in the article, I wasn't sure how I felt about it before but having a day to think about it I really don't like it.

First of all, it require another calculation around the table, blah.
Secondly, it require another more time around the table while folks search for their spell DC or wait to hear what it is.
Third, I don't think that casting a higher level spell should automatically make the spell harder to resist, I'd much rather have higher level spells have their effects grow in power and length than simply make them higher to resist so a 9th level sleep would be sufficient to to effect an entire village for a full day but it wouldn't be harder to resist, higher level spells should just have bigger effects on a save.

On reflection I think that having the save DC be tied to the target instead of the attacker is the best way to go, it makes it much easier to so at a glance the odds, it's easier to balance and it's quicker while playing around the table.

Edit: and before folks start complaining high level monsters/PC will always pass the save I just want to point that we already have a mechanic in D&DNext to solve that, it's called disadvantage.

Warder