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Mearls On D&D's Design Premises/Goals
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<blockquote data-quote="Jay Verkuilen" data-source="post: 7760671" data-attributes="member: 6873517"><p>Please don't misunderstand me, I still want high level threats to be hard! However, I think what you guys are citing as good is a side effect of crummy math, not an actual intended feature. Side effects aren't things you rely on. What you want to do is find a way to get the feature (high level stuff being hard) without the unintended consequences. </p><p></p><p>The problem with really sky high DCs, such as 23 or more is that many characters essentially have 0 chance of breaking free of the effect unless the party is <em>very</em> good at buffs. I'd like things to be somewhat viable for most parties even if they're not totally optimized, for instance, not having a dedicated buffer. This often means their character is essentially knocked out of the fight, which is IME very, very frustrating and boring for the player. This is particularly true for "lose a turn" type abilities. I've rarely seen (or felt myself) more frustrating times as sitting there doing nothing while long turns go around the table, waiting to make a save I basically can't succeed at. </p><p></p><p>For example, one way to make high level threats tough without having DCs go nuts is to have higher level abilities and attacks require multiple saves against different stats. For example, if you have a dragon breath that attacks two different save types, different characters will fail different effects. Only really prepared characters or parties will save against all. That would let DCs stay lower (say 20 or less) but still keeping threat levels high. For example, if red dragon breath involved a Dex save to avoid fire damage but also a Con save to avoid some kind of debuff, say getting the wind sucked out of your lungs and having disadvantage until the end of your next turn, the rogue types would avoid the damage by rolling out of the way but end up getting the wind knocked out of them for a turn. White dragon breath might require a Str save to avoid being frozen in place (i.e., restrained) and Con save to avoid damage. etc.</p><p></p><p>Another method would be to have some threats have saves that start at disadvantage. If the character has a source of buff that breaks out of that, great, they're rolling straight up.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jay Verkuilen, post: 7760671, member: 6873517"] Please don't misunderstand me, I still want high level threats to be hard! However, I think what you guys are citing as good is a side effect of crummy math, not an actual intended feature. Side effects aren't things you rely on. What you want to do is find a way to get the feature (high level stuff being hard) without the unintended consequences. The problem with really sky high DCs, such as 23 or more is that many characters essentially have 0 chance of breaking free of the effect unless the party is [I]very[/I] good at buffs. I'd like things to be somewhat viable for most parties even if they're not totally optimized, for instance, not having a dedicated buffer. This often means their character is essentially knocked out of the fight, which is IME very, very frustrating and boring for the player. This is particularly true for "lose a turn" type abilities. I've rarely seen (or felt myself) more frustrating times as sitting there doing nothing while long turns go around the table, waiting to make a save I basically can't succeed at. For example, one way to make high level threats tough without having DCs go nuts is to have higher level abilities and attacks require multiple saves against different stats. For example, if you have a dragon breath that attacks two different save types, different characters will fail different effects. Only really prepared characters or parties will save against all. That would let DCs stay lower (say 20 or less) but still keeping threat levels high. For example, if red dragon breath involved a Dex save to avoid fire damage but also a Con save to avoid some kind of debuff, say getting the wind sucked out of your lungs and having disadvantage until the end of your next turn, the rogue types would avoid the damage by rolling out of the way but end up getting the wind knocked out of them for a turn. White dragon breath might require a Str save to avoid being frozen in place (i.e., restrained) and Con save to avoid damage. etc. Another method would be to have some threats have saves that start at disadvantage. If the character has a source of buff that breaks out of that, great, they're rolling straight up. [/QUOTE]
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