D&D 5E Mearls' Interview with Bleeding Cool

[TarionzCousin]

In Saturday's News section, Morrus posted this:

WotC's Mike Mearls has been interviewed on Bleeding Cool and discusses broadly his career and what he likes about D&D 5th Edition.

Link.

Is there anything new or insightful in this interview?

I have not kept up with the 5E playtests, but this was news to me:

I think the biggest thing would have been to hit upon the mechanics we created for skills and proficiencies. We unified the progression for skills and weapons under one set of rules. That removed a lot of complexity and allowed us to include skills in the simplest version of the game without adding a lot of rules overhead. It was a big breakthrough that didn’t take come into play until late in the process.

 

[Li Shenron]

I think he is referring to the proficiency rules.

The final playtest rules have them: just one progressive bonus for all classes and all categories of proficiencies (weapons i.e. attack rolls, saving throws, skills, tools...), and the bonus depends only on total character level.

This removed the need to specify an attack bonus progression and saving throws progression for each class, and and the need for special treatment of multiclass characters.

Indeed, it's one of the biggest innovation of 5e

 

[oxybe]

I think he is referring to the proficiency rules.

The final playtest rules have them: just one progressive bonus for all classes and all categories of proficiencies (weapons i.e. attack rolls, saving throws, skills, tools...), and the bonus depends only on total character level.

This removed the need to specify an attack bonus progression and saving throws progression for each class, and and the need for special treatment of multiclass characters.

Indeed, it's one of the biggest innovation of 5e

you mean like 4th ed's half level bonus that applied to all attacks, defenses & skills? what 5th ed did with proficiency is hardly innovative, but more akin to the tuning of a concept previously introduced within the bounds of the smaller bounded accuracy.

unfortunately for me, I saw nothing in the article that hasn't been said in some form in the past 2 years. I can understand wanting to promote the game, but promote D&D 5th... not it's designers! give me some article promoting a mechanic or something I can sink my teeth into beyond "it plays faster" without telling me how it does it beyond "removing complexity".

complexity for complexity's sake is just as terrible a motivation for designing as simplicity for simplicity's sake. give me something with meat, a system that has actual depth over focusing on a scale of complexity. a bland meal is bland regardless of how many or few ingredients are used.

 

[Blackwarder]

you mean like 4th ed's half level bonus that applied to all attacks, defenses & skills? what 5th ed did with proficiency is hardly innovative, but more akin to the tuning of a concept previously introduced within the bounds of the smaller bounded accuracy.

unfortunately for me, I saw nothing in the article that hasn't been said in some form in the past 2 years. I can understand wanting to promote the game, but promote D&D 5th... not it's designers! give me some article promoting a mechanic or something I can sink my teeth into beyond "it plays faster" without telling me how it does it beyond "removing complexity".

complexity for complexity's sake is just as terrible a motivation for designing as simplicity for simplicity's sake. give me something with meat, a system that has actual depth over focusing on a scale of complexity. a bland meal is bland regardless of how many or few ingredients are used.

If you've played the play test documents than you;s know how it plays faster.

We got 2 months for till they start releasing products, We'll get our preview articles in due time, be advise that if you have kept up with the play test you won't have a lot (if any) WOW moments.

Warder

 

[Plaguescarred]

That caught my eye too, Mike seems to refer about the inclusion of Skills in Basic D&D rather than being a module for Standard or Advanced D&D. I wonder if Skills will be optional or baked in core rules since they're now part of monsters statblocks within adventures such as Scourge of the Sword Coast.

 

[DEFCON 1]

That caught my eye too, Mike seems to refer about the inclusion of Skills in Basic D&D rather than being a module for Standard or Advanced D&D. I wonder if Skills will be optional or baked in core rules since they're now part of monsters statblocks within adventures such as Scourge of the Sword Coast.

I believe in the current version of the games, skills are indeed part of the base game. Rumor has it that alternative types of skill systems (for instance, Fate-like "aspects") will be in the DMG.

I think that at the end of the day through playtesting... they were unable to find any better method of getting the Rogue their thief skills for the base 1E-like version of the game that didn't didn't generate overlap when layering a skill system on top of it.

So now their skill system is very basic for the base game. The only "downside" to it is that it gives the Fighter, Cleric, and Wizard skills as well in the base game (in addition to the Rogue). That'll annoy some really old-school players (who don't want to use skills at all)... but at the end of the day, it means they'll have to jerry-rig their own solution where they strip skills from the other 3 classes so that only the Rogue has their "thief skills". But oh well.

 

[Li Shenron]

That caught my eye too, Mike seems to refer about the inclusion of Skills in Basic D&D rather than being a module for Standard or Advanced D&D. I wonder if Skills will be optional or baked in core rules since they're now part of monsters statblocks within adventures such as Scourge of the Sword Coast.

Unless they changed them compared to the last playtest packet (very likely not), skills certainly aren't optional for a single player, unless such player is ok with having something less than everybody else at the same table.

If nobody at the same table wants to use skills, then they are probably fine. But I think the expectation is that the vast majority will use them.

 

[TerraDave]

you mean like 4th ed's half level bonus that applied to all attacks, defenses & skills? what 5th ed did with proficiency is hardly innovative, but more akin to the tuning of a concept previously introduced within the bounds of the smaller bounded accuracy.

.

No. 4E has different bonuses for skills you are good at vs. weapons you are proficient with. 5E has the same bonus, and 5E does not have the half level booster....I mean they are both D20 games, but given that, the way you do math for an ability check, skill check, attack, and how that changes as you level...are different.

 

[Sage Genesis]

No. 4E has different bonuses for skills you are good at vs. weapons you are proficient with. 5E has the same bonus, and 5E does not have the half level booster....I mean they are both D20 games, but given that, the way you do math for an ability check, skill check, attack, and how that changes as you level...are different.

He doesn't mean how the entire skill bonus is calculated. He's referring to how in 4e you can have a half-level bonus to attacks, skills, and defenses. Depending on your level it's always the same number. And in Next you can have a proficiency bonus to attacks, skills, and saving throws. Depending on your level it's always the same number.

Only real difference is that in 4e you have a +10 bonus at level 20, whereas in Next you have a +6 bonus at level 20.

The lower proficiency bonus and relatively lower amount of other bonuses do make the math cleaner and quicker to work out. But it's an iteration, not an innovation.

 

[tuxgeo]

< snip > . . . But it's an iteration, not an innovation.

There is one, small, slightly innovative part about it, however: The trained-skill bonus went from being a flat +5 (adjustable to +8 by using the "Skill Focus" feat) to being the same value as that common "based-on-character-level" bonus that 4E used for ability checks, attack rolls, and defenses.

Perhaps that is the one simplification they needed in order to allow them to put skills into the Basic game.