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.

 

[TwoSix]

No.

My idea of an advanced players handbook with a lot less mechanical bits would be a reflection of [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION]'s with lots more. It's not really about sheer number of choices of character building option, but the number of choice points.

I'm talking about a version of D&D where I choose my race and class, gain a couple features at 1st level and then never have to make another character building choice again. The Basic rules don't give me that. Even with the champion, I have ASIs to allocate, for example, and all the classes still gain too many features overall.

In a nutshell, I want more classes to choose from than the Basic Rules give, but I want each of those classes to have fewer features than the PH gives them.

I could get behind that. A book of prebuilt classes, with all the subclass features and ASI slots filled in already. Automatic spell choices filled in, as well. (Maybe an optional rule to allow you to customize the spells if you wanted.)

It would also be a great way to experiment with some new concepts, since you can bake them into one specific class without having to worry about how they synergize with regular PHB material. There's no need for a requirement that these classes are created as an exact subset of possible PHB builds, after all. You could introduce new abilities to fill in the ASI slots instead of just a +2 to a stat. Or mix and match subclass abilities to fit into the subclass slots.

Plus, without a menu of options, you could probably fit a class onto 2 pages. So plenty of room for lots of concepts.

 

[Satyrn]

I could get behind that. A book of prebuilt classes, with all the subclass features and ASI slots filled in already. Automatic spell choices filled in, as well. (Maybe an optional rule to allow you to customize the spells if you wanted.)

It would also be a great way to experiment with some new concepts, since you can bake them into one specific class without having to worry about how they synergize with regular PHB material. There's no need for a requirement that these classes are created as an exact subset of possible PHB builds, after all. You could introduce new abilities to fill in the ASI slots instead of just a +2 to a stat. Or mix and match subclass abilities to fit into the subclass slots.

Plus, without a menu of options, you could probably fit a class onto 2 pages. So plenty of room for lots of concepts.

That eliminates the choice points. But I do also mean fewer mechanics overall. Like, boil a class down to its one or two essential features. The Rogue would wind up with, like, only sneak attack, the druid would have only wildshape and spellcasting, etc.

Interestingly, weirdly, 4e's classes (minus all the AEDU powers) fairly match what I'm envisioning.

 

[TwoSix]

That eliminates the choice points. But I do also mean fewer mechanics overall. Like, boil a class down to its one or two essential features. The Rogue would wind up with, like, only sneak attack, the druid would have only wildshape and spellcasting, etc.

Interestingly, weirdly, 4e's classes (minus all the AEDU powers) fairly match what I'm envisioning.

Hmm. Something like "Sneak attack 1d6 at 1st level, goes up by 1d6 every odd level. At even levels, gain +1 to a stat. "? Or is that too simple?

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Satyrn]

Hmm. Something like "Sneak attack 1d6 at 1st level, goes up by 1d6 every odd level. At even levels, gain +1 to a stat. "? Or is that too simple?

Yeah, that's the idea.


And as an aside, an idea that popped into my head just now: I'd want to look at only getting to activate that sneak attack (and other class features . . . and spells, too, maybe) by spending inspiration, and so there'd have to be roguish personality traits, bondsm flaws, etc. This might strengthen the "roleplaying" bit of the game, but I'd also want to see it work the way iserith handles it, with the player claiming inspiration without any need or call for DM approval.

 

[OB1]

Ok, I've been dancing around this, but, here's my reason why you folks that want greater mechanical complexity in 5e will not see it from WotC:

Time.

That's it in a nutshell. Xanathar's took what, about a year of playtest material? More? I think there were UA articles being chucked out, and on a weekly basis for a while there, for more than a year to make Xanathars. And Xanathars isn't really adding any complexity to the game. Sure, a bunch of sub-classes and a handful of spells, but, really, that's about it. Some expansion on downtime activities. No new subsystems, no psionics or artificers or any new mechanics at all, AFAIK.

Over a year for WotC to produce that.

Now, you folks want an "Advanced PHB". How much lead in time do you think they'd have to spend to make a book, say a couple of hundred pages long, with the changes that you folks claim to want? We're talking major rewrites to fundamental systems - new feat systems, new class systems, new resolution systems. If something as pretty minor as far as rules changes go like Xanathar's takes the better part of two years to get out the door, something like what you want is probably going to take double that.

And that's IF you can actually work the kinks out of it.

Do you honestly think that WotC is going to spend 3-4 years developing a book for D&D that only a minority of gamers actually claim to want? Seriously?

Look, I get wanting new options. But, given how WotC approaches books now, it's just not going to happen.

Just to double down on this a bit, Xananthar’s, continued with the same design goals as the core books and remains the 5th best selling D&D book on Amazon a year after its release, being behind the core three and the latest AP. Volos and Mordenkanins follow right behind.

Even the three year old SCAG at #11 is beaten only by the newer guides and APs getting ready to release, being ahead of every older AP.

The point is, Wizards non AP books are designed to sell to a wide audience for multiple years. They are not niche products, and as they have limited time and resources to spend on each book, they can’t be. As Hussar says, they are not going to spend 2-4 years creating a book for 10% or 20% of the audience.

Instead, they have handed that market over with open arms to 3rd parties to come in and fill those niches. They even promote it! And those 3rd parties can experiment and take risks that WotC can’t.

WotC is going to continue with story first, light as possible design that allows players to tell stories about brave adventurers facing deadly perils and try to continue to bring millions of new players into the hobby and allowing talented companies to make money by catering to sunsets of that community with their blessing.

 

[OB1]

Mearls On D&D's Design Premises/Goals

Oops, double post.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, all the participants are trying to perform the actions and movement of their turns as soon as possible. That's why it's a DEX check. It's about moving quickly.

I might accept this if initiative was decided by a random roll, but it isn't. It's a DEX check, so it represents an effort to move and act quickly.

Ah. I mostly have it as a random roll, redone each round, and always will - far better reflection of the fog of war than a) locked-in initiative order and b) giving high dex types a continuing advantage all the way through the combat.

Dexterity as a stat has enough going for it already, without this.

That said, if plied with enough beer I might be talked into having dex matter for the first round only, to reflect how quickly you can react, draw your weapon, ready your spell, or whatever.

In D&D, 5th Ed., that's called taking the Ready action. You still want to take that action first so the opportunity you're waiting for doesn't pass you by.

If I'm a heavy fighter and we're facing a bunch of opponents I want to see where they're going - are they trending to our left, to our right, focusing on a particular party member, or what - before I move to engage. I don't want to commit myself to the wrong part of the line and get stuck there, which could easily happen if I move too soon. A low initiative, or a held action from a higher one, is fine here.

And [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] here's an example of natural character action being in conflict with RAW game mechanics. Because the initiative order is locked in, the game mechanics thus force me to want to have the highest init. I can so that each round I can act before as many opponents as possible. But if I want to wait during the first round and react to how the fight develops I'm mechanically hosing myself for the whole combat by moving myself down the locked-in initiative order. Direct conflict: for the first round the mechanics want fast while the character wants slow, while in subsequent rounds both the character and mechanics want fast and I'm stuck with slow.

Re-rolling each round, or using something like Mearls' variant, solves this to a large extent and is also far more realistic - but it's not RAW.

Lanefan

 

[Sadras]

Just to double down on this a bit...(snip)

You weren't kidding, you literally doubled down on this.

 

[heretic888]

That’s fine. Not everyone’s tastes are the same, and I would hope there would be options for both a mundane fighter and a fighter that plays with special techniques.

To clarify though, I’m not a fan of arbitrarily limited resources. I don’t want my fighter to have a special technique that he can only use once per day simply because the rules say he can only use it once per day. I think the Berserker Barbarian’s Frenzy is a good model of how I like my martial techniques. He has a special move only he can do (spending a bonus action to enter a special mode where he gains damage resistance and an extra attack), and it’s limited not by how many times per day the rules say he can use it, but by how many levels of exhaustion he’s willing to take. Another good example is Pathfinder 2nd edition’s shield block mechanic. In PF2, any character who is proficient with a shield and uses one of their actions to raise it can use a reaction to a successful hit against them to reduce the damage, but the shield takes damage instead, potentially breaking it. Fixing the damage takes enough time that it’s not practical to do in combat, but is fast enough you can probably have it ready for the next combat. So, in effect, characters who use shields gain an encounter power, but unlike 4e encounter powers, there is an in-fiction reason for the limit on frequency, instead of an arbitrary limit.

Just to be clear, there are non-arbitrary, "in-fiction" reasons for the limits to 4E's encounter and daily powers. They are described quite clearly in both "Wizards Presents: Races & Classes" and "Martial Power 2", although it could certainly be argued they didn't go far enough in communicating these ideas to their audience (I personally think 4E needed another year of development to tweak the math and polish its presentation aesthetic).