Mearls On D&D's Design Premises/Goals

First of all, thanks [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] for collecting this. I generally avoid Twitter because, frankly, it's full of a$$holes.

That aside: this is an interesting way of looking at it, and underscores the difference in design philosophies between the WotC team and the Paizo team. There is a lot of room for both philosophies of design, and I don't think there is any reason for fans of one to be hostile to fans of the other, but those differences do matter. There are ways in which I like the prescriptive elements of 3.x era games (I like set skill difficulty lists, for example) but I tend to run by the seat of my pants and the effects of my beer, so a fast and loose and forgiving version like 5E really enables me running a game the way I like to.

 

[cbwjm]

Smaller Feats received more often would be a good option. Skill points... I wouldn’t mind them, but they’re not the kind of thing I’m looking for. They only give a small numerical bonus, which is the least interesting kind of mechanical differentiation. Prestige classes or 4e style paragon/epic classes would be fine, but such things tend, like 5e subclasses, to be a single choice made only once. Not exactly the expansion of character variety I’m looking for, though neither would it be an unwelcome bit of player choice.

Ideally, I’d like something along the lines of 4e’s Powers, or Pathdinder’s variant Class Features (or Class Feats in PF2). What I want is for not every Fighter (or every Champion) to get the exact same abilities at the exact same levels as every other Fighter (or every other Champion.) I want a choice of what new ability I gain when I level up, not just one choice of what set of abilities I will get over the course of my character’s career, or a handful of choices of what numbers I want to be higher. I want different options for what I can use my action to do than every other character of the same class and subclass has. I want customization in a mechanical sense, not only in a roleplaying sense.

It’s all well and good to describe my attacks differently than Tommy describes his, but if we’re ultimately still rolling the same d20 to see if we can roll the same d8, with maybe slightly different modifiers, then I’m not really doing anything different. I’ve been accused in this thread of playing the same characters over and over with different mechanics, but to me if I don’t have different mechanics, I’m playing the same characters over and over with different descriptions. You need both. D&D is both roleplaying and game, and the false dichotomy that seems to exist between them in public perception only serves to harm a hobby that by definition is supposed to be both. Let me come up with fun and interesting characters to imagine myself as, and then give me the tools I need to express those characters through the game’s rules! Having either without the other just feels hollow to me.

I would quite like to see variant class features. Like something that could be taken in place of Second Wind for the fighter or Arcane Recovery for the wizard providing just that much more customisation. I'm all for homebrew and can create this stuff myself, but it would be nice to see what the D&D team would come up with for this.

Something I would have liked from the very start was for classes to all gain their subclass abilities at the same levels allowing for some subclasses to overlap or for a substitution subclass ability to be slotted in no matter which class wanted to take it (for instance, an ability that grants an animal companion that replaces a 3rd level subclass ability could be chosen by any class).

 

[Eric V]

@Charlaquin and @Eric V I think another factor in this discussion and why there might be a divide is, frequency of play. The more frequently one plays, getting through the material and roleplaying various class, then the greater the likelihood one will be asking for something like an Advanced Player's Guide for more variation.

Yeah, that makes sense to me.

 

[Fallstorm]

Conversely, as I agree we aren't privy to the internal workings at WotC, could it be possible they've in fact tried such an overlay internally and found that it does break the system? If yes, that'd sure explain why it hasn't been released.

Well, you are correct we are not privy to what WOTC is doing behind the scenes . So, it is possible that they have tried this but until they say so I am going to hold them to the idea that they promoted 5E and that was game that would have a core chassis as appealing to as many people as possible that captured the basic elements of D&D throughout the editions, but also a game that though modular expansions to the game would allow various groups to dial the game to their taste. While the game like most editions of D&D has optional rule sidebars I really have not seen the modular expansion promised. At least not yet.

I mostly haven't, and am glad of it.

Reason being is that the few CharOppers I've played with are the same people who get their knickers in knots when I or another player does something suboptimal or gonzo or silly just for fun; leading me to generalize that they tend to simply take the game far too seriously.

I can't say you are wrong as that is your experience. My experience has been different. In my experience bad players have 1) thankfully been few and far between and 2) when they have shown up have not been represented by any one playstyle.

To clarify: when I asked how those players would do in a 1e game I didn't mean 1e back in 1983 when there wasn't much else, I meant if you were to switch to 1e today and dive right in.

How would they do in a system where character differences aren't relfected in the mechanics beyond the most coarse-grained of ways (e.g. differences in classes and races)?

Lan-"and now to find out why I've been mentioned so many times in here..."-efan

Good question. Well, when we have done a throwback game a few years ago of 1E. It was very short. Each person played a far different class and it was done as a novelty so we didn't really worry about differentiating ourselves too much as the game was more or less a one-shot. Also everyone was playing a different class in that one so the fact that it was not a long running campaign and we used different classes meant we weren't focused so much on mechanical differentiation. We had an okay time playing this game but we all agreed that 3E (as that was the D&D system out at the time we tried this) while we respected what 1E offered the game had advanced for a reason. In fact, as much as I have fond memories of 2E and still own the books. I loved it for the time and reading the rules now I have no desire to play it. The only retro D&D I play is PF/3.5 and 4E. Without features like feats, trained skills, and so forth the game was just not as enjoyable for us.

I would state again though that while we are all tactically minded CharOppers story and world development are equally valued by us. 3E a rules heavy system also gave us very memorable (in my opinion) campaigns we played through like Shackled City and my favorite The Age of Wyrms. Those were crunch heavy campaigns that were well developed and rich in story and setting enough to satisfy both the CharOps people and the "Deep Role-play" people. Would you not agree? So again I don't think this should be a this OR that scenario but rather a this AND that scenario is all I am saying.

 

[Manbearcat]

Originally Posted by TwoSix
I think it's probably more around "concept" than it is about "narrative". Not to trivialize other people's play agendas, but I think their focus is on demonstration of backstory, concept, and capabilities, not generation of plot.

Where capabilities are in the non-combat but also non-spellcasting sphere, I'm reminded a bit of @Manbearcat's "DCs > 30" thread (which I think was lost in a crash a year or three back). They seem to be heavily gated behind GM decision-making. Do you have thoughts on how this works out in practice?

Ah the last thread on these boards that I really invested any headspace and vigor too. It was a good one as well, with a lot of diverse and interesting angles in conversation about game design generally and 5e resolution specifically. Unfortunately, the crash killed it (and a long DW PBP thread I had) and sucked the last vestiges of interest I had in this forum.

However, I would be interested in your thoughts on this subject [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] . I think you participated in that old thread a fair bit. How do you think your thoughts above interface with various GM approaches (earth-centric causal logic vs various types of genre emulation) to task resolution at the epic tier of play, particularly where martial characters are vying for relevance of (or at least the realization through play of their archetype) with spellcasters in non-combat conflict resolution.

 

[Maxperson]

@TwoSix, @Maxperson,
Two observations. First, I agree that not all build combinations would make sense. But just taking sub classes times races, we get 2,960 (assuming I counted right) alternatives. Even if 90% of those don't make sense for some reason, that leaves close to 300 options. Heck, make it 99% and throw in a smidgeon of feat/build/multi-class choices (i.e. champion fighter with dex vs strength, sword and board vs great weapon) and I think there are more builds than I could ever personally play.

I found that having many feats made my ideas easier to carry out. Could I make a bounty hunter with a ranger or fighter? Sure. It was a heck of a lot more fulfilling to have the bounty hunter prestige class, though. Same with feats. I could cludge feats that were kinda sorta what I was looking for into an idea, or with the extra feats put out I could grab one that matched exactly or nearly so.

It has never been about playing every possible combination. I'm never going to be able to play more than a small handful of my ideas in any edition of D&D, because I DM most of the time. Even as a full time player it would only be a moderate handful. However, the more options I have available, the more like I am to be able to create the concept I envision without having to force things or pick up things I really don't want for the character.

Second is just a general observation that may or may not apply to any specific individual that posts here. I played/judged a lot of living campaigns in 3.x and 4E. In my experience with those campaigns and editions, most people that cared about optimization gravitated to a handful of builds.

In other words, to many people the multitude of options in previous editions was an illusion.

I get the desire for more options and especially more significant choices at higher levels. I guess the difference may be that I have fun coming up with a character concept and then seeing if I can approximate that concept given the (somewhat limited) options I have.

Ultimately you're going to have a few builds that do approximately the same thing. Blaster caster, control, hit things with melee, or hit things with ranged (I may be missing an option or two and there are combos). That's just the nature of the genre and foundation of the game. Are different ways of achieving that goal really going to feel all that different?

Or ... what from a mechanical perspective what would you want to see? Not talking "I'd like to do a <insert class or prestige class I may or may not have heard of>", but mechanically. What gaps are missing? If you want to run a shaman for example, how does that differ from a druid (perhaps with multi-class) other than flavor that could be added with a background?

I agree with this. Many people like to optimize and you see the same spells, feats, classes, etc. over and over, and that's true with every edition so far. People are people and you have a lot that like to optimize, and a lot that just don't care. Where I don't agree with you, is in the options being an illusion. A lot of us don't care about optimizing Not that we don't do it if it fits the concept, but we will toss out optimal choices for sub-optimal(not bad) choices that fit the character concept we envision. There was no illusion regarding the number of choices I had in 3e. It was too many in my opinion, but 5e has too few in my opinion.

 

[Hriston]

Look again at the contest section. This quote makes it impossible for initiative to be a contest by RAW. "Sometimes one character’s or monster’s efforts are directly opposed to another’s. This can occur when both of them are trying to do the same thing and only one can succeed." There is no other way given for a contest to occur, and initiative isn't an ability check where only one can succeed, nor is it one where the efforts are directly opposed to another's.

That's funny because that's exactly what it seems like to me. All the participants in combat roll initiative because they're all trying to go before everyone else. The thing is it isn’t just one contest. Each participant in combat has a separate contest with each and every other participant in which each is trying to go before the other. The outcome of all of those contests is what establishes initiative order. The participant who wins all his/her contests goes first. The one who lost all his/her contests goes last.

 

[robus]

That's funny because that's exactly what it seems like to me. All the participants in combat roll initiative because they're all trying to go before everyone else. The thing is it isn’t just one contest. Each participant in combat has a separate contest with each and every other participant in which each is trying to go before the other. The outcome of all of those contests is what establishes initiative order. The participant who wins all his/her contests goes first. The one who lost all his/her contests goes last.

But where is the opposition?

 

[Hriston]

But where is the opposition?

If I’m trying to go before you, and you’re trying to go before me, then by trying to move more quickly than you I’m opposing your effort to go before me, and by trying to move more quickly than me you’re opposing my effort to go before you.

 

[5ekyu]

If I’m trying to go before you, and you’re trying to go before me, then by trying to move more quickly than you I’m opposing your effort to go before me, and by trying to move more quickly than me you’re opposing my effort to go before you.

Right, they both/all cannot go first.

Tho more direct opposition, one trying to prevent the other is covered as another contest in the following sentdnces.

They pretty much set up two contests types - the sort of race where only one gets first and the trying to stop someone else.

 

[pemerton]

Despite the discussion/debate regarding differing mechanics, I feel many of us do not place enough importance on backgrounds and personality characteristics which loses a major roleplaying aspect of the game and leaves us all to easily concentrating on mechanics.

I've noticed this about the mythological figures posts. I think I'm the only poster on those threads who suggests Bonds/Flaws/Ideals for those characters, which in my view are often more important to those mythological figures than their stats (eg whether Lancelot is a 10th or 18th or 20th level paladin seems like a matter of taste, depending on what sort of campaign one is trying to integrate him into; but that he has a massive flaw of Love for Guinevere seems undeniable, and depending whether you set his Loyalty to Arthur as an Ideal or a Bond you might get an interestingly different flavour).

I think there's a lack of symmetry here that can be interesting to think about: a NPC is, as a character, more likely to be defined by key personality traits or loyalties/goals/obligations - because the GM may shape action declarations and descriptions for that PC; whereas with a PC I think these are more apt to be emergent - even when using personality traits or relationships as part of the system, what these mean in any detail tends to emerge in play - and the way they emerge in play is shaped by the action declarations of the player, which reflect their desires for how they want their PC's "story" to unfold.

Your ideas about using background descriptors as a form of resolution mechanic are interesting.