D&D 4E Mike Mearls on how D&D 4E could have looked

The sentence about skill checks and errata cuts off mid.

Yup, don’t need hundreds of comments to tell me this whole post is a bad idea.

What would’ve been better if wizards unlocked words of power? Warriors would’ve unlocked what - moves of power? Appreciate it as a great miniatures game. Geez.

Sadras said:

I had the same experience in 4e. Having characters on different resource clocks, such as in 5e, provides additional stresses and decision points.

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I found, the primary issue with 5e was that if one wanted to put stress on the resource management side of things one needed to ensure the recovery system (rest) used, worked for short/long rest PCS AND for dungeon, city and travel type adventures. For my table the rest mechanics that were offered in the PHB and DMG were just not practical in all the abovementioned categories all the time.[/QUOTE]

In general I prefer having different resource schedules for the reasons you mention, but I feel that 5E has some chafing points induced by that. There's a balance. Everybody on the same schedule is monotonous but too markedly different schedules I think leads to inter-party conflict that's mostly about resource management. And I agree that it doesn't work for all settings. It seems kind of ludicrously slow in the dungeon and often doesn't bite outside it.

pemerton said:

Who do you think has asserted the contrary? Every paragraph you quoted from [MENTION=86279]Stacie GmrGrl[/MENTION] had some first person pronoun or adjective in it ("I", "me", "my"). She was talking about her gaming experiences and preferences, not everyone's.

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Definitely. She was very clear. I found her general point interesting and enlightening as it put in a short sentence my view, which went to the opposite conclusion but for a similar reason. I somewhat enjoyed it as a player (or at least I had good times in some campaigns) but really hated DMing it due in no small part to how much I felt my agency as DM was stripped away. Of course this is largely a function of detailed rules and the "RAW or else!" attitude that many players seemed to develop. It's not an inherent property of 4E---one could run more freeform, although it was challenging not to use a map given how baked into the system that was. I've been avoiding using a map quite a bit more of late; with the right group it works well and leads me to make vastly more dynamic fights than I did. But I really wouldn't want to run a rules-heavy type game without one.

MwaO said:

Except oddly enough, level 15 PCs see DC 20 checks as often level 1 PCs see DC 15. And level 15 PCs don't see all that many DC 15 checks, just as level 1 PCs don't see all that many DC 10 checks. Almost as if it would be expected that they'd have a +5 to the skill check for some strange reason? Why is that?

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Is this in official products or DMs choosing the DC and wanting to make it difficult for the players?

MwaO said:

Bounded Accuracy doesn't exist. 5e is 4e/2 math, just with a lot of smoke and mirrors to make it difficult to figure out. If you would get a +4 to hit in 4e from leveling up in 4e total due to everything, you ought to get a +2 to hit in 5e due to everything. If you would be expected get +12 to skills in 4e, you'll get +6 in 5e. You just have less certainty about when and how it might happen.

Examples:
A 1st level 5e PC likely has a +5 in their best skills. Over 19 levels, goes up to +11. That's +6.
1st level 4e PC likely has a +9 in their best skill. Over 19 levels, goes up to +21. That's +12.
1st level 5e PC likely has +5 to hit. Over 19 levels, they get +2 from stat, +3 from magic weapon, +4 from proficiency or +9.
1st level 4e PC likely has a +7 to hit. Over 19 levels, they get +2 from expertise feat, +4 from magic weapon, +10 from level, and +2 from stat assuming they started with an even stat. Or +18.

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The difference being that the DC for a moderate skill check in 4e for PC is 10 at level 1 and 22 at level 19. For a PC in 5e that moderate skill check DC is 15 for a 1st level PC and 15 for a 19th level PC. The DCs don't go up for skill checks, the PCs just get better at them. It's also the same in combat. You fight an enemy who is wearing chainmail and a shield (AC 18) in 5e and that AC will stay the same all the way from level 1 to level 20 in 5th ed. Not so in 4e where the AC will increase based on the level of the enemy that you're fighting in 4th edition.

Maybe I'm wrong, but that's what I've been led to believe bounded accuracy is, that no matter the level, the difficulty remains the same rather than an ever increased DC based on the level of the party/challenge.

pemerton said:

A fighter might jump - for instance, as per this passage from Tower of the Elephant:

A high wall enclosed this garden, and outside the wall was a lower level, likewise enclosed by a wall. No lights shone forth; there seemed to be no windows in the tower - at least not above the level of the inner wall. Only the gems high above sparkled frostily in the starlight.

Shrubbery grew thick outside the lower, or outer, wall. The Cimmerian crept close and stood beside the barrier, measuring it with his eyes. It was high, but he could leap and catch the coping with his fingers. Then it would be child's play to swing himself up and over, and he did not doubt that he could pass the inner wall in the same manner. . . .

Leaping lightly he grasped the wall and swung himself up to the top with one arm.​

Other examples: fighters are (notionally) the best at combat, yet it is wizards and not fighters that have a class ability that permits killing a foe without having to go through hp ablation. Wizards have abilities that enable them to issue powerful commands, extract oaths, etc (suggestion, geas, charm person) - there is no reason why fighters, as leaders, couldn't have comparable class abilities. Etc.

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Unlike White Men I think that you will find that ADnD Fighters can in fact jump so that problem is solved at least.

And Fighters are such powerful commanders that they automatically attract followers so that problem is solved.

Although Fighters do not have codified abilities to bypass HP, they do have the ability to physically force a Dragon to submit themselves to the Fighter (with no Saving Throw). Which is nothing to sneeze at.

From Gygax's DMG (pp 9, 21, 81):

a person of the nature which this game presupposes, i.e. an adventurer in a world of swords & sorcery . . .

it is enough fantasy to assume a swords & sorcery cosmos, with impossible professions and make-believe magic . . .

The mechanics of combat or the details of the injury caused by some horrible weapon are not the key to heroic fantasy and adventure games. It is the character, how he or she becomes involved in the combat, how he or she somehow escapes - or fails to escape - the mortal threat which is important to the enjoyment and longevity of the game.​

Those are just some examples which at least suggest that the designers intended the play of the game to, in some fashin, emulate or be suggestive of sword and sorcery fiction.

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And in some fashion it does. Only without being able to defeat a Lich with one hit instead taking half an hour to play through what the book did in a paragraph.

So we have a couple of options here. Either

a) Gygax was correctly telling us that in theory his game emulates a sword and sorcery world and in practice it does emulate a sword and sorcery world,

2) Gygax was correctly telling us that in theory his game emulates a sword and sorcery world but in practice it does not emulate a sword and sorcery world,

iii) Gygax was incorrectly telling us that in theory his game emulates a sword and sorcery world but in practice it does emulate a sword and sorcery world,

d) Gygax was incorrectly telling us that in theory his game emulates a sword and sorcery world and in practice it does not emulate a sword and sorcery world.

or my personal favourite:

5) Gygax was correctly telling us that in theory his game emulates a sword and sorcery world and in practice it does emulate a sword and sorcery world but just not every single sword and sorcery world that has been written about with perfect accuracy.

Garthanos said:

Hmmmm

1) the ability to become perfectly immune to ranged attacks perhaps sometimes with some whirring wall of steel move others an instant dodge/leap in reaction it should include spells from range (just as a flyer can be immune to grounded non-ranged combatants) - this immunity might be a stance which gives up ability to attack if the fly spell does the same.
2) parkour like ability to navigate over most terrain without impairment (no difficult terrain mods).
3) jump well lets call it obnoxiously far without triggering attacks of opportunity
3) ability to climb without skill checks and without speed impairment (not as good as flight but its a step).
4) ability to see longer distance perhaps by spending time concentrating and focusing perception in some fashion might also improve ability to see obscured targets.
5) ability to move possibly long distances without becoming fatigued. (kind of just a story thing usually in D&D but if you are talking about in the fiction)

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I see a lot of those could be covered with simple ability checks. For some of the others though, what is the Fighter going to give up in exchange for say becoming immune to ranged attacks? For example Rangers only have d8 HD and Paladins can not have weapon specialisation so what about this type of Fighter?

Jay Verkuilen said:

Agreed. Without liking 4E in its entirety, there are a lot of good ideas. Several At Wills I think are great examples and would have been cool to make the Warlock not just an Eldritch Blast spambot (as an example).

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One of my biggest regrets was the lack of a way to get extra At Will powers. The best work around that I found was picking up various wands.

Parmandur said:

I am not sure how 5E's elegant approach to Skill resolution could be improved with a by-level chart? The flat chart for DCs also applies in combat: 1-30 for everything, mirroring the 20 to -10 spread of AD&D for THAC0.

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cbwjm said:

5e has a DC chart showing the DC for easy, moderate, difficult checks. It doesn't need a DC by level chart because they don't change based on the players level. A DC 15 check is a DC 15 check no matter if you are level 1 or level 15.

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Jay Verkuilen said:

The whole point of bounded accuracy is to avoid having to have a DC by level table

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MwaO said:

Except oddly enough, level 15 PCs see DC 20 checks as often level 1 PCs see DC 15. And level 15 PCs don't see all that many DC 15 checks, just as level 1 PCs don't see all that many DC 10 checks. Almost as if it would be expected that they'd have a +5 to the skill check for some strange reason? Why is that?

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5e PCs progress in their non-combat capabilities as they progress in their combat capabilities (bettern Prof bonuses, stat increases, for many access to more and more impactufl spells, magic items, etc).

The combat mechanics recognise this and build it in (partly by escalating ACs, mostly by escalating hp and damage). But the non-combat mechanics don't. I don't see this as a strength in a level-based game.

Jay Verkuilen said:

Because while WotC tried to implement bounded accuracy they ended up not actually achieving it, especially in the higher levels where the constant modifier of proficiency bonus plus stat and Venger help you if there are other bonuses drives up modifiers. They tamped down on DC creep but ultimately failed to solve it. I think there are things they could have done that are missed opportunities. Most notably, they could have kept DCs down if non-combat challenges required multiple successes for more complicated tasks, e.g., "make three DC 15 checks to pick this complicated triple lock" with abilities like Expertise allowing the PC to do something qualitatively different rather than just boosting the roll, for instance to be able to accumulate multiple successful checks on a given roll.

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What you describe would be, in effect, implementing "hit points" for non-combat actions (which is one feature of a skill challenge, though not the only one - a skill challenge is also "closed scene resolution").

But 5e doesn't have such a system, and that's what I've got in mind when making the contrast with 4e and pointing out how 4e, as a result, is the most "martial"-empowering version of D&D.

If all DCs are read of an "objective" chart, then you can't give the 20th level fighter the ability to shove his/her hands into the forge to aid the artificers without also opening up that possibility for the 1st level fighter. Which means - given that it's obviously absurd for the 1st level fighte r- it's off the table altogether. Nothing is opened up for the 20th level fighter as it is in 4e.

Shasarak said:

I see a lot of those could be covered with simple ability checks.

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Not buying it for the vast majority. You have rules in place that govern the terrain impairment, opportunity attacks and climbing being slower etc etc. and it generally takes more than an ability check to change that. And the flyer avoids most all those things. without any rolls because of his plot coupon.

Shasarak said:

For some of the others though, what is the Fighter going to give up in exchange for say becoming immune to ranged attacks?

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Well for one he might not be able to make ranged attacks while doing it.(and possibly the round after for that trance like focus )

He might be spending a hit die/healing surge to simulate extreme fatigue or pulling muscles on that super leap to get out of the way of the ranged attack spell. (this might be one expenditure for the stance duration - if he was actually attacked by a ranged opponent)

Another possibility by focusing on ranged defense - you might grant advantage to melee attackers. - might even only give disadvantage to ranged opponents but that is weaker than flight.

If one is comparing to a flier is giving up his ability to attack entirely then the fighter might be in so defense focused mode unable to attack in effect he is using his attack action to put up that wall of steel or to make a surging leap.

I have a character that can turn into a raven in raven form he cannot really attack but he can fly all day that way and it also acts as a superb disguise.

And the melee combatant might need to be able to confer many of these advantages on an adjacent ally as flight spells often allow it. (throwing them from an area of effect guiding them over difficult terrain with no loss of speed etc)

Additional mostly flavor things.
For the paladin/oath bound hero he would have an oath against making ranged attacks. And i suspect most melee oriented fighter might not have great ranged attacks anyway. So they are giving up a non-favored attack like a mage giving up melee attacks.

Of course since this is not talking about balancing against specific flight ability.