D&D 5E Blast From the Past - Earliest D&DN Panels

[Iosue]

After the announcement of 5th Edition in early January, 2012, our first chance to really get juicy information came later that month at the D&D Experience. There were three panels regarding Next, and an NDA-bound open playtest. The three panels were Charting the Course, with Mike Mearls, Monte Cook, and Jeremy Crawford; Class Design, with Monte Cook, Bruce Cordell, and Robert Schwalb; and Reimagining Skills and Ability Scores, with Cook, Cordell, and Schwalb again.

Here are the EN World transcripts at the time:
Charting the Course
Class Design
Reimagining Skills and Ability Scores

Here's a page with videos of the last two panels -- the first one was not recorded.

I think the last two panels are especially interesting, in that all three men left WotC before 5e was complete. They were initially the Design Team -- the guys who set the overall direction of the game, in contrast to the Development Team, whose job it was to come up with the mechanical elements to fulfill that design direction. When 5e was finally released, though, Mike Mearls and Jeremy Crawford had become the lead designers.

Looking at the Class Design seminar, I was struck by the prevalence of feats. The big chunky feats of 5e date back to the playtests of late 2013 -- I'd forgotten that they'd been smaller and more varied before that. And it would appear that feats were at the forefront of the Design Team's minds as a way of delivering different options.

Personally, sometimes the things they said seemed very familiar, but other times it felt like they were talking about an entirely different game. It's kind of like, "Oh yeah, that's right. Proficiency bonus is such an integral part of the game right now, but originally there was nothing like it." And there's a part where they talk about DMs just looking at an ability score and deciding that a PC succeeded at something without requiring a roll. At one time that was a Big Thing in D&D Next. Nowadays it's still there, but with backgrounds (and skills) moving from an optional element to a default element, resolution with the ability (skill) check has come to greater prominence.

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

From the class seminar:

"Greg: Today we're going to be talking about Class Design, from Assassins to Wizards. To start things off, let's hear what your favorite class is and why.

Monte: The wizard. Historically it was the one that needed planning and forethought. It rewards good play above the others in my opinion."

I know, totally shocking coming from Monte, right?

"Greg: How complex or simple do you think classes should be?

Monte: I would also add that we want different levels of complexity for classes. For example, if a guy wants to pick up a fighter and have an easy time of it, there should be options for that. But also, if another person wants to pick up a fighter and have lots of options and/or complexity, we want to provide that too. The base game is the foundation. If you opt in to character development options, you can get complexity."

I kind of wish they had stuck with that than giving everyone different archetypes. While a couple of classes did end up with some fairly generic subclasses, I kind of wish that they had a core vanilla option for Sorcerers, Wizards and Clerics without having to choose a bloodline, school or domain that would have been on par with the more specialized options. It is a pretty easy fix if you are DMing and have a player who doesn't want to specialize too much, I can whip up a generic option pretty quickly. I just wish it were there in the PHB for players going into game with a DM that they don't know. It is a minor complaint really, between that and having archetypes start at first level, I think they have had more design space for homebrewing subclasses, some, especially the Bard with only two Colleges and only three levels of subclassing feel pretty limited for coming up with robust alternatives.

Good idea for a thead. I am looking forward to reading more!

 

[TarionzCousin]

After re-reading the transcripts, it sounds like they had the basic concept of "Bounded Accuracy" already factored into the game. They talk about getting more options as you gain levels, but not getting increases to hit, AC, skills, etc.

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

I think the original thinking was that all bonuses were going to be attributes as you say. They had a poll early on about that including an option of 1 to 1 correspondence between attributes and bonus (a 13 Strength got you +3, a 15 Dexterity got you +5) but it fared poorly with the voters. They stuck with the 3E/4E style bonuses, but it didn't end up feeling right because a 20th level fighter with a 20 strength was only marginally better at hitting things with his sword than a 1st level fighter with a 16 strength. I think they hit the sweet spot for progression with the +2 to +6 proficiency bonus although they probably broke bounded accuracy a bit with player vs player high level skill checks where one character has expertise and proficiency and another character doesn't. That is such a rare situation to begin with, I don't think it is anything to fret about. Changing that might have screwed up their plans for saving throws however. I haven't seen it personally, but I have heard some complaints about players continually missing on their bad saves against magic at high levels. Maybe all characters should have just been proficient in all saves, if there actually is a fault it does seem a legacy of not having any/or very few bonuses on top of attributes.

 

[Iosue]

After re-reading the transcripts, it sounds like they had the basic concept of "Bounded Accuracy" already factored into the game. They talk about getting more options as you gain levels, but not getting increases to hit, AC, skills, etc.

Oh yeah, they were talking that from the very beginning. In fact, these panels were the first I heard of it. But, interestingly enough, given their talk about simple vs. complex, initially it was all rather disjointed. Each class had a different attack bonus progression - casters had an attack bonus AND a spell bonus progression, skills keyed off of something else entirely -- for a long while there it was dice. And the idea was that all of these things would, both separately and together, be kept on a tight leash, providing some degree of improvement, but not so much as to create huge, unbridgeable chasms between characters.

I can't imagine what it must have been like at WotC when they came up with the proficiency bonus. Well, I can, but what I imagine is Rodney Thompson, Jeremy Crawford, and Mike Mearls, holding jagged sheets of paper aloft, inscribed "proficiency +1 to +6", screaming to the heavens and rejoicing in their bloody work like Beowulf, the broken and defeated corpses of Basic Attack Bonus, Spell Bonus, and Skill Dice lying on the floor. [MENTION=697]mearls[/MENTION], tell me I'm wrong!

 

[mearls]

I can't imagine what it must have been like at WotC when they came up with the proficiency bonus. Well, I can, but what I imagine is Rodney Thompson, Jeremy Crawford, and Mike Mearls, holding jagged sheets of paper aloft, inscribed "proficiency +1 to +6", screaming to the heavens and rejoicing in their bloody work like Beowulf, the broken and defeated corpses of Basic Attack Bonus, Spell Bonus, and Skill Dice lying on the floor. [MENTION=697]mearls[/MENTION], tell me I'm wrong!

That's actually not far off from the reality, but it was more of a delayed celebration. Peter Lee, Rodney Thompson, and Rob Schwalb (who was in the office for his quarterly visit) had been tasked with clearing out all the competing bonuses and boiling things down to a simpler, leaner system. I honestly didn't think they'd hit the target so cleanly, and assumed that the work would yield an incremental step forward.

Instead, they nailed it and transformed 5e into a really kickass game. It was the last, major breakthrough we needed to fully realize the vision we had.

IIRC, we were cautious but optimistic at first, but as we integrated the concept into the game things really came together. The real celebration didn't begin until we saw a huge leap forward in the playtest approval ratings. That's when I knew we had threaded the needle. After that, it was just putting in the work to finish the game.

 

[Iosue]

Thanks for the detailed reply, Mike. My compliments to Messrs Lee, Thompson, and Schwalb; "Nailed it" is absolutely the phrase.

 

[Dire Bare]

I kind of wish they had stuck with that than giving everyone different archetypes. While a couple of classes did end up with some fairly generic subclasses, I kind of wish that they had a core vanilla option for Sorcerers, Wizards and Clerics without having to choose a bloodline, school or domain that would have been on par with the more specialized options.

I agree. The simple class options and the complex class options are there, in the class/subclass system presented in the PHB . . . but if you're a newb, you might not know enough about the game to pick the simple option if that's what you want! And if your DM is also a newb . . . .

Perhaps in the 5.1 edition they could do what you suggest, provide a basic default class option for each of the main classes (or at least the core four). Instead of a group of *equal* class options, one of which might be *simpler*, the default for fighter is the "basic fighter" and if you want a different class option, you are *moving away* from the default choice. It would play out the same at the table, but perhaps make choosing beginner classes easier.

 

[TerraDave]

...And there's a part where they talk about DMs just looking at an ability score and deciding that a PC succeeded at something without requiring a roll. At one time that was a Big Thing in D&D Next. Nowadays it's still there, but with backgrounds (and skills) moving from an optional element to a default element, resolution with the ability (skill) check has come to greater prominence.

I think Monte Cook did at least 3 legends and lores where he highlighted this mechanic where if the ability score was above the DC, you just succeeded. And some stuff like that did linger on in the early play-test.

But Monte left and I think they learned that people actually like to roll dice.

 

[Celtavian]

I'm looking forward to testing bounded accuracy at high levels. I want to see if a group of humanoids in conjunction with a powerful creature like a dragon or giant can provide a real challenge to a party at higher level. Basically, I want to see if an orc army can still put the fear in a high level party. They could not in 3E. In 3E even an army of giants was fairly trivial to high level characters. I think they might be able to in 5E. I would like that as a DM as it widens my options for encounter design.