Mearls On D&D's Design Premises/Goals

Kobold Boots · Oct 9, 2018

Jay Verkuilen said:
Oh I want those high level characters to fear encounters.

I guess what I'm saying is that there are ways of challenging high level parties without raising DCs to astronomical levels. Bonus and DC creep is bad. It really hurt both 3.X and 4E and was something that WotC tried (not entirely successfully IMO) to avoid in 5E. Motivational psychology suggests that once the probability of success gets lower than about 25% helplessness ("too hard") sets in and about 75% boredom ("too easy") sets in. A well designed game should endeavor to keep probabilities in that range most of the time and only rarely let them drift outside. By and large, 5E does this but there are spots, such as very high DCs in skills and saves, where they violate it, either by letting bonuses get too high or DCs being too low or too high, or both.

An attack that requires multiple saves is good because chances are you can get through to some weak spots, as an example. If you have dragon breath requiring multiple saves for multiple effects, the chances that every party member is affected by something is much higher, whereas what you have with only one very high DC is that strong save types can often avoid the effect entirely while weak saves just take it. In the context of skills, one way of keeping DCs be lower is to require multiple successes to do something such as open a lock or disarm a trap. Of course, this would require reworking the numbers in the game so I'm not pretending it would be a totally off-the-shelf change.

Hi -

Fear isn't mechanical, it's social. Saying you want people to fear high level encounters because the dice enforce it is sort of underwhelming and setting the DM up to be the bad person at the table.

Far better in my opinion to "know" as a DM what the big bad is in your story and foreshadow bad things happening to important characters throughout the games being played. Drop some prophecy about the heroes who finally defeat it losing everything they hold dear to do it, and actually have them making compromises for the greater good along the way, and they'll fear what's coming far more effectively than raising your DCs or making something hard to hit.

2c
KB

Note: A lot of my posts lately have had at their core DM mastery of the rules AND planning ahead with an eye to story. I think a lot of these discussions center around problems that happen when one of these two things is lacking.

Jay Verkuilen · Oct 9, 2018

Numidius said:
Smells like modularity to me, your solution.
Very interesting.
Keeping numbers low (so basicly the same % chance thru the levels), while increasing, instead, the tiers of power/influence/effect of the pc vs the world and viceversa.
(Like: on an enemy inferior by two/three tiers, you just deal damage/crit; one tier below: roll to hit with automatic advantage, same level: no change; and viceversa)

I think this kind of approach could lead to getting rid of levels and DCs altogether, in favor of a more spread out growth and resolution mechanic, with more emphasis on situational, narrative bonus/malus, extended contests, multiple successes and the like.

Maybe...

Hmm, maybe. That's farther than I was thinking... but interesting.

I like the fact that, say, ogres, are still viable thugs even for higher level characters so I wouldn't want to tier it too much. In many respects I think they got the combat system fairly right (with some not super difficult to fix exceptions), but I think the kinds of things you're thinking about would be pretty good in skills especially.

For example, Expertise might provide Advantage on skill checks (as opposed to doubling proficiency bonus), while some higher level threats might impose Disadvantage. Thus a character with Expertise would be rolling straight up against such a threat.

Jay Verkuilen · Oct 9, 2018

Kobold Boots said:
Hi -

Fear isn't mechanical, it's social. Saying you want people to fear high level encounters because the dice enforce it is sort of underwhelming and setting the DM up to be the bad person at the table. <...> Far better in my opinion to "know" as a DM what the big bad is in your story and foreshadow bad things happening to important characters throughout the games being played. Drop some prophecy about the heroes who finally defeat it losing everything they hold dear to do it, and actually have them making compromises for the greater good along the way, and they'll fear what's coming far more effectively than raising your DCs or making something hard to hit.

Oh absolutely, you have to set it up as part of the secondary reality. I totally agree with that and wasn't implying otherwise. However, it works best when the mechanics line up with the foreshadowing, and help evoke the right kind of tension from the players. I want to make sure that the high level monsters were sufficiently threatening. All too often they have glass jaws, too, or don't do enough damage, and thus feel quite underwhelming.

One reason I'm so averse to things like stunlock is that they deny a player the ability to participate in the game. Too much of that doesn't mean the players like what's happening, it makes them irritated and/or helpless. Those aren't the emotions I'm looking for. Debuffs like prone combined with forced movement are good because they make it harder for a PC to do something but they don't totally invalidate the PC's turn. If they have a ranged weapon, it might be time to switch to that instead of relying on their devastating melee axe abilities over and over, at least until they get back into the fight.

Campbell · Oct 10, 2018

An encounter is not difficult for the player because it bites into your resources or makes you lose control of your character. It is difficult for the player because they have to make difficult decisions. A difficult encounter should engage a player's skill at reasoning about the fiction as well as their mechanical ability. What we need is more effort put into the design of higher level threats that provide compelling fictional hooks to engage with along with unique mechanics that players should have to cope with and learn.

KenNYC · Oct 10, 2018

Jay Verkuilen said:
Oh I want those high level characters to fear encounters.

Level Drain.

Jay Verkuilen · Oct 10, 2018

KenNYC said:
Level Drain.

Heh, that would do it!

Practically speaking, though, level drain and the like have a way of totally ruining the campaign. In many respects I think it's worse than a TPK.

Jay Verkuilen · Oct 10, 2018

Campbell said:
An encounter is not difficult for the player because it bites into your resources or makes you lose control of your character.

IMO losing control of your character via turn denial, stunlock, and other "suck" powers seems to engender more frustration in players than anything else. A little of this goes a LONG way and too much quite swiftly turns into anger. I don't think that's what we're usually wanting.

It is difficult for the player because they have to make difficult decisions. A difficult encounter should engage a player's skill at reasoning about the fiction as well as their mechanical ability. What we need is more effort put into the design of higher level threats that provide compelling fictional hooks to engage with along with unique mechanics that players should have to cope with and learn.

I agree. For instance, I think solo monsters would best be handled in a way that video games often do: Essentially treating them as composite monsters of some sort. This could be quite literal, in the sense that you could simply have something like two or three different monsters that cosmetically appear to be one, and perhaps share a pool of hit points but not actions.

Another way that I've thought would be useful is for the solo monster to gain a number of legendary actions that is based on the number of PCs (or PC-grade characters if there are such NPCs floating around). This helps having the PCs try to force the three legendary saves and then going to town but it also lets a party that's good at lockdown still have it be worthwhile, given that the legendary foe isn't using attacks or other things at that time.

pemerton · Oct 10, 2018

Numidius said:
Keeping numbers low (so basicly the same % chance thru the levels), while increasing, instead, the tiers of power/influence/effect of the pc vs the world and viceversa.
(Like: on an enemy inferior by two/three tiers, you just deal damage/crit; one tier below: roll to hit with automatic advantage, same level: no change; and viceversa)

4e is a version of this: in combat, for instance, PC and opponent bases scale at basically the same rate, and so the % chance remains largely the same through the levels; but creatures that are inferior per the fiction relative to the PC tier are framed as minions, and hence die on a hit; or get bundled up as a swarm, and hence get taken down in swathes.

4e non-combat has less tight maths, which can produce some of the issues [MENTION=6873517]Jay Verkuilen[/MENTION] has identified (the big offender in my game is the +6 to all knowledge skills that a Sage of Ages gets). But the orientation of the game is still towards what you describe - level-appropriate DCs that try to establish roughly consistent chances of success, with the differences of tier being expressed in the fiction rather than the mechanics.

Numidius said:
I think this kind of approach could lead to getting rid of levels and DCs altogether, in favor of a more spread out growth and resolution mechanic, with more emphasis on situational, narrative bonus/malus, extended contests, multiple successes and the like.

Again, 4e can be considered a version of this (and literally is a version of this if you strip out the level adjustments for creatures and the stat gain and enhancement bonuses for PCs). The differences between tiers are really about complexity (higher level PCs have more, and more complex, options); the range of effects available, which straddles fiction and mechanics (eg flight is available reliably only in paragon tier; stun, likewise, isn't really a feature of heroic tier) and hence also feed into the fiction of the situation (eg in paragon tier you can run fights that involve the PCs having to avoid falling into lava, and perhaps falling into it and surviving - heroic tier doesn't support that sort of fiction give the lack of flight abilities, the lack of condition-removal that helps the players deal with a mechanically tenable representation of lava, etc)

For 4e to work as I've described the GM has to use the level mechanics properly when doing the mechanical side of encounter-framing, and also has to pay attention to the fiction that is implicit in that mechanical framing given the tier of the PCs. I personally didn't find that very challenging (the guidelines are clear and the maths transparent and robust), but I think that need for the GM to think about encounter-framing in mechanical as well as in-fiction terms was quite unpopular.

pemerton · Oct 10, 2018

Campbell said:
An encounter is not difficult for the player because it bites into your resources or makes you lose control of your character. It is difficult for the player because they have to make difficult decisions. A difficult encounter should engage a player's skill at reasoning about the fiction as well as their mechanical ability. What we need is more effort put into the design of higher level threats that provide compelling fictional hooks to engage with along with unique mechanics that players should have to cope with and learn.

Now that's what I call serious thinking about encounter design in a RPG!

I want to elaborate on it a bit. Compelling fictional hooks aren't trivial to come up with. In my experience (reading D&D modules, and modules for other systems too; reading posts on these boards; what I've seen from other GMs; etc) these are often done in terms of MacGuffins that the players are expected to collect/identify and then deploy - the Sunsword vs Straad would be a well-known example. Another common variation is the gate/portal that the "big bad" has to be forced through by the PCs. But this sort of thing can just re-establish the "control of your character" issue at a higher level, by setting up steps that have to be taken to resolve the encounter. Everything becomes a puzzle with a single (or a small set of) pre-established solution(s).

I think for fictional hooks to permit, and even better invite, open-ended play we need reliable ways of setting difficulties for various sorts of interaction with the fiction, of establishing balanced consequences of various choices, etc. (It can be done through unmediated adjudication of the fiction, but I think this always in danger of collapsing into sheer player persuasion/GM fiat - I felt the pressure of this in my Classic Traveller game when the PCs got taken as prisoners on board an enemy starship and the players used that opportunity to stage a hijacking (taking advantage of their numbers being about twice what the NPCs were expecting, having taken on some unknown-to-the-NPC recruits). The outcome wasn't sheer GM fiat, but it had strong elements of it, because Classic Traveller doesn't have a conflict resolution mechanic for this particular sort of scenario. I tried to use Burning Wheel-style framing and adjudication of the discrete checks in the process to manage it; and frankly, even in BW this sort of scenario is not easy to handle in a fiat-free way.)

I think at least one edition of D&D obviously provided such reliable ways. Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic does likewise.

Numidius · Oct 10, 2018

pemerton said:
For 4e to work as I've described the GM has to use the level mechanics properly when doing the mechanical side of encounter-framing, and also has to pay attention to the fiction that is implicit in that mechanical framing given the tier of the PCs. I personally didn't find that very challenging (the guidelines are clear and the maths transparent and robust), but I think that need for the GM to think about encounter-framing in mechanical as well as in-fiction terms was quite unpopular.

You explayned it very well. I think I can understand that feeling of unpopularity, because I tend to do less prep as possible. Referring to my previous post on "information sharing at the table", and applying to 4e SkChallenge, I can see how is completely one-sided on the Gm shoulders, meaning a lot of prep, as you say: both mechanically and fictionally.
Meaning: deciding when & where to have the challenge, possible outcomes, numbers of successes needed, DC, skills involved, and so on.
Not only this "one-sided info" burdening the Gm homework (YMMV), but also limiting the surprise factor in-game, having pre-planned the most of it (again, YMMV and IMHO).
A lighter, less crunchy approach to Skill Challenges, might also provide a frame to improvise them on the fly?
Thus sharing more evenly the "information" among players, in real time, and rapidly agreeing at the table about the crunchy bits and the situation in fiction, before going to roll.