D&D 5E (2024) Mike Mearls explains why your boss monsters die too easily

[billd91]

Perhaps. But then again, WotC has already shown they’re willing to take risks—for example, crossing brands with Magic: The Gathering, Stranger Things, and Critical Role, each aimed at niche or outside audiences. Those products don’t appeal to everyone, but they still consume development time and represent selective gambles. The real question isn’t if they risk fracturing their audience, but how they choose to manage it.

I'm not sure that one-off products, and that's what most of these are - even if a variety of one-offs, would constitute fracturing the audience as much as the 2e paradigm of having multiple settings with on-going support devoted to them. A one-off product may or may not appeal to individual consumers in the D&D market, but whether they do or don't, there's no expectation of ongoing support and that makes them like any other individual product - in which care variety probably helps them more than hurts them. If you don't get them with Dragonlance, maybe you will with Stranger Things, or Planescape, or Spelljammer. By contrast, 2e's proliferation of settings encouraged groups to focus on the specific setting(s) they liked, since it was unlikely anyone could keep up to speed on them all, and continued to lead them in that direction with future expectations.
So, I guess it's part of a choice of how to manage fracturing the audience - mainly the choice to minimize ongoing fracturing of the audience.

 

[payn]

Perhaps. But then again, WotC has already shown they’re willing to take risks—for example, crossing brands with Magic: The Gathering, Stranger Things, and Critical Role, each aimed at niche or outside audiences. Those products don’t appeal to everyone, but they still consume development time and represent selective gambles. The real question isn’t if they risk fracturing their audience, but how they choose to manage it.

If fans of 4E, older editions, or even the 2014 version of 5E have drifted away because the current model doesn’t serve them, the audience is already fragmented—just in a way that sends their money elsewhere. So what’s the better business decision: keep reshaping the core game and hope the next iteration pleases more than it alienates, or offer complementary versions that let players rejoin the brand on their own terms?

Imagine a “D&D Lite” or “D&D Tactical” released alongside the mainline system. Would existing fans care? Probably not—they still have their preferred experience. But those who left for alternatives might come back to a familiar name that finally fits their table. That’s not fracture; that’s reclamation.

In a sense, this is what 5E already tried to do (and, for the most part, succeeded). It promised unity through modularity—a single, flexible framework that could accommodate any table, no matter the edition or playstyle preference. But somewhere along the way, that vision either proved impossible to realize or was quietly outsourced to the OGL ecosystem to sort out. The result is a system that’s stable, familiar, and wildly successful—but also stagnant. For every new player it welcomes, there’s another who’s drifted away, not out of disdain, but out of disinterest. The game didn’t fail them outright—it just stopped evolving in ways that mattered to them.

I don’t believe WotC will ever take the route of formally splitting its design focus—and most of us already know that. But that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? Once we accept it won’t happen, we stop thinking about what could make the game better and start settling for what we’re given.

And I guarantee—that’s exactly what they’ve been banking on for years.

Magic isn’t comparable it’s a license to print money. That game single-handedly keeps flgs in business across America.

Though, no I’m not waiting around for D&D to get better that’s not it’s focus and it doesn’t need to be. Time to try some more RPGs it’s never been better than now to explore.

 

[Zardnaar]

Magic isn’t comparable it’s a license to print money. That game single-handedly keeps flgs in business across America.

Though, no I’m not waiting around for D&D to get better that’s not it’s focus and it doesn’t need to be. Time to try some more RPGs it’s never been better than now to explore.

Magics also pooped the bed multiple times.

Its rapid set cycling means the next set is a few months away.

Looks like its recent set Spiderman hasn't gone down well.

And it started pooping the bed 1994 with Homelands and The Dark.

 

[M_Natas]

So, to help DMs we can incentivise better behaviour (some people mentioned other games, that give boni when you push on), so I tried to do that for 5e:

Fate’s Favor — The Temptation to Press On

“Fate smiles on those who walk the knife’s edge and dares them to keep walking.”


When the party finishes a battle (or an equal encounter the DM finds worthy enough) and chooses not to take a long rest, their defiance of exhaustion draws the notice of Fate.
Her favor grows, but only for as long as they keep pushing forward.

Mechanic

Each consecutive bate/encounter completed without a long rest increases the party’s Fate’s Favor Level by 1.
It resets to 0 after a long rest.
Short rests don’t affect it.

Fate’s Favor Level	Benefit
1	+1 to Initiative rolls.
2	+1 to Attack rolls and Spell Save DCs
3	+1d4 to all damage and healing rolls
4	4 Once per encounter, reroll a failed d20 test.
5	Once per day, when you would drop to 0 HP, remain at 1 HP instead

 

[Charlaquin]

Magics also pooped the bed multiple times.

Its rapid set cycling means the next set is a few months away.

Looks like its recent set Spiderman hasn't gone down well.

And it started pooping the bed 1994 with Homelands and The Dark.

Spider-Man “hasn’t gone down well” in the sense that there is a lot of very vocal criticism of the set among fans, and unlike other Universes Beyond sets, it hasn’t broken records in terms of number of sales. However, despite looking like it’s going to be the worst-selling Universes Beyond set to date… it’s still selling better than the best-selling in-universe set. Which is terrible news for those of us who don’t like Universes Beyond, because if even a flop of a UB set sells better than an incredibly successful in-universe set, then in-universe sets are going to look like financial liabilities to the Hazbro Corpos.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

better behaviour

The problem isn’t bad behaviour from players, the problem is that having a long sequence of fights without resting makes little narrative sense outside of megadungeons and quickly gets repetitive.

The solution is to balance encounters around 1-3 encounters per day.

 

[Zardnaar]

Spider-Man “hasn’t gone down well” in the sense that there is a lot of very vocal criticism of the set among fans, and unlike other Universes Beyond sets, it hasn’t broken records in terms of number of sales. However, despite looking like it’s going to be the worst-selling Universes Beyond set to date… it’s still selling better than the best-selling in-universe set. Which is terrible news for those of us who don’t like Universes Beyond, because if even a flop of a UB set sells better than an incredibly successful in-universe set, then in-universe sets are going to look like financial liabilities to the Hazbro Corpos.

Not sure but it turned up in a top ten worst sets of magic.

I remember a surprising amount of them (haven't played in 15 years).

 

[bedir than]

The problem isn’t bad behaviour from players, the problem is that having a long sequence of fights without resting makes little narrative sense outside of megadungeons and quickly gets repetitive.

The solution is to balance encounters around 1-3 encounters per day.

A wilderness or city day that involves a rest at lunch/tea/dinner/siesta/etc makes narrative sense.
I try to have two difficult encounters on both sides of that (usually 4 rounds per) and the balance is fine. I also tend to use Tales of the Valiant monsters because they have a bit more punch. I like harder hitting with lower HP in general on monsters for tonal/story reasons.

When the group dives into a dungeon I mix in easy and medium and easily get to the 20 rounds as easy and medium can be done in 2 rounds or less. I also vary the timing of when a major fight happens (changing the timing of nova usages).

 

[Not a Decepticon]

You have badly misinterpreted the rule. Nothing in it suggests 24 hours of real world table time.

Literally from Player's Handbook page 186 or you can look in the SRD:

A character can't benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period

I do not know where you got the "real world time table", sicne I was still taking of tame in game. but the 5-minutes adventuring day is directly forbidden by the rules.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Perhaps. But then again, WotC has already shown they’re willing to take risks—for example, crossing brands with Magic: The Gathering, Stranger Things, and Critical Role, each aimed at niche or outside audiences. Those products don’t appeal to everyone, but they still consume development time and represent selective gambles. The real question isn’t if they risk fracturing their audience, but how they choose to manage it.

If fans of 4E, older editions, or even the 2014 version of 5E have drifted away because the current model doesn’t serve them, the audience is already fragmented—just in a way that sends their money elsewhere. So what’s the better business decision: keep reshaping the core game and hope the next iteration pleases more than it alienates, or offer complementary versions that let players rejoin the brand on their own terms?

Imagine a “D&D Lite” or “D&D Tactical” released alongside the mainline system. Would existing fans care? Probably not—they still have their preferred experience. But those who left for alternatives might come back to a familiar name that finally fits their table. That’s not fracture; that’s reclamation.

In a sense, this is what 5E already tried to do (and, for the most part, succeeded). It promised unity through modularity—a single, flexible framework that could accommodate any table, no matter the edition or playstyle preference. But somewhere along the way, that vision either proved impossible to realize or was quietly outsourced to the OGL ecosystem to sort out. The result is a system that’s stable, familiar, and wildly successful—but also stagnant. For every new player it welcomes, there’s another who’s drifted away, not out of disdain, but out of disinterest. The game didn’t fail them outright—it just stopped evolving in ways that mattered to them.

I don’t believe WotC will ever take the route of formally splitting its design focus—and most of us already know that. But that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? Once we accept it won’t happen, we stop thinking about what could make the game better and start settling for what we’re given.

And I guarantee—that’s exactly what they’ve been banking on for years.

This is why my solution is to drop the official game altogether and find and/or make one that works for me and my people. I make the game better, instead of waiting in vain for WotC to do it.