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

[tetrasodium]

Tell me exact number of hit points you have right now, as well as remaining number of spell slots, short and long-rest depended class features and your carrying capacity. You should be able to do that immediatelly, if you are aware of your body's capability at all times.

And I explained why I find it stupid.

Then the solution is to play with actual people who want to play, not "optimize" the fun out of the game.

Took me literal seconds and I was already wearing the sensor when I woke up. You are pushing for something that makes no sense. I can also take a potion equivalent to improve those numbers. Furthermore, you didn't explain why it's not a problem, I believe you dismissed the problems in the rules design and I believe assigned blame.and gave an opinion for how you rationalize it.

Start looking into fitness trackers and smart watches, it's incredibly common for them to include a value that looks at various all the time monitored readings to estimate how ready you are for another workout ... This one for example

Garmin's enhanced Body Battery feature explained

Garmin has recently introduced better Body Battery details to a number of its watches. Here's what you need to know.

gadgetsandwearables.com

 

[MichaelSomething]

View attachment 419340

Took me literal seconds and I was already wearing the sensor when I woke up. You are pushing for something that makes no sense. I can also take a potion equivalent to improve those numbers. Furthermore, you didn't explain why it's not a problem, I believe you dismissed the problems in the rules design and I believe assigned blame.and gave an opinion for how you rationalize it.

Start looking into fitness trackers and smart watches, it's incredibly common for them to include a value that looks at various all the time monitored readings to estimate how ready you are for another workout ... This one for example

Garmin's enhanced Body Battery feature explained

Garmin has recently introduced better Body Battery details to a number of its watches. Here's what you need to know.

gadgetsandwearables.com

So you're saying it requires a magical item for a character to know their HP and recovery abilities???

 

[bedir than]

Tell me exact number of hit points you have right now, as well as remaining number of spell slots, short and long-rest depended class features and your carrying capacity. You should be able to do that immediatelly, if you are aware of your body's capability at all times.

While HP wouldn't be practical, the spec ops units I served with knew the entire team's energy levels, nagging injuries and the medics would give IV fluids during rests (cure wounds). We also knew, precisely without counting, the ammunition for all weapons, battery levels for electronics and how much food we had.
We could see when someone tired and needed another to take some of their load as well.
This was trained into us so thoroughly that it was not a matter of thinking, but instinct.

For the real-world people most like D&D adventurers these concepts aren't difficult

 

[kigmatzomat]

The solution is to play with actual people who want to play, not "optimize" the fun out of the game.

Ooh, I love role-playing characters.

"Hey elf, when can you cast spells again?"
"Tomorrow after I have got a full night of reverie."
"Who told you that? You come with some kind of manual? Just go cast magic!"
"A grandparent was a spellcaster who needed a full rest. A parent as well. I found over the centuries that I too am utterly incapable of incantations once I hit my limit."
"But you put a spell around our tent."
"Correct, that is a ritual, not an incantation. Those take longer and are not taxing."
"I still don't understand."
"Have you never trained for so long, or worked so hard, that your limbs were not merely tired but refusing to function?"
"Yeah. When I was a kid we hat to build a levee to protect ourselves from a flooding river. We all worked until we couldn't move. Couple of peopled drowned when they fell down in the mud and couldnt even roll over."
"That is called a refractory period. The body has exhausted its resources and is incapable of function. I have that for magic."
"How do you how many spells you can cast? Do you get tired?"
"Not as such but there is a sense of it. Plus I can log what I cast. Most spellcasters can cast less than a dozen incantations, so its fairly simple. There is a clear progression based on how long it takes to prepare and learn spells. Having three hundred years of personal experience combined with greater than a millenia of combined experience from my forebears and it becomes a trivial exercise."
"So no manual?"
"Don't be daft, there are hundreds of manuals on magic. Every mage who lives to get gray hair writes a book. Its what we do. I've written twelve. And dont act like I haven't seen you reading that 'Transform yourself like Mordenkainen' booklet. You have guides available to discuss 'leg day' vs 'rest day' and 'lifting', or the guides on how to wield that two handed sword against a person with a shield compared a person with another sword. Go visit a library."
"What, now?"
"Why not? You've got around 17 hours until you need to be head down if we want to be at it again at dawn."

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Then they are NOT aware that they can benefit from long rest every 24 hours and thus will not think of waiting 24 hours to take another long rest. Because that is the exact minutia of the rules, that we're aware as players and it is for us players to take care of. Rest of your strawman is irrelevant.

That's not minutiae.

That's literally the single most important source of power in 5e.

Knowing when your powers become available to you for use is kind of the single most important thing to know about them. Otherwise, you literally don't know whether you can use it...ever. That's a thing in the world, regardless of whether it is part of the rules or not. If your character can know they're able to use fireball, they must be able to know when that happens!

 

[kigmatzomat]

While I was rather facetious about in-game knowledge, I will say my 5e groups well exceed the "20 rounds per day" and also take rests after retreating to what could be considered a safe distance. From my game logs, most "adventuring days" last about 3-5 hours with us calling it around lunch time. Some time we actually "take lunch" (short rest) but others its eat some jerky while the rogue, bard and warlock try to puzzle something out without killing everyone.

We are usually down to around 25% resources and have gone through a dozen encounters. As someone who is normally a GM, I am mad at the design of things like Princes of the Apocalypse where it does contortions to avoid fights bringing in reinforcements.

The 5e approach of "only a small number of foes" is, imo, the root cause of many issues. It would make lower level enemies viable longer when they are present by the dozen. Tactics and use cases change. Yes, it makes combats more complex and last longer. But it would also exhaust more resources ahead of the boss battles without trying to figure out how to keep having relatively tiny set pieces that make sense.

I'd love to run a bunch of 5e-only gamers through 2e style encounters, such as warbands of 6d10 goblins. (From memory. I vaguely remember some goblin encounters were in lots of d100s)

 

[Maxperson]

For sure...but thwt doesn't create an obligation for WotC to make a game for every playstyle, even if they are trying to cast a wide net.

I would love to see WotC put out a 300 page book that contained all the major playstyles in it.

They could devote 10-20 pages to each playstyle, teaching DMs how to run that sort of game, create worlds to fit the playstyle, and put in rules additions, substitutions, and subtractions to aid the DM in achieving a good version of that playstyle for D&D. Doing that would not fracture the player base, since no matter which style you pick, you're still playing D&D and would still want the new monster books, settings, adventures, etc. that you would have without a book on playstyles.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I would love to see WotC put out a 300 page book that contained all the major playstyles in it.

I see two major problems with that:

1) you can see from this forum that it’s common for people to mis-understand any playstyle that is not the one they prefer, and it’s pretty much impossible to explain it to them. They just (and I have experienced this from both sides) “make no sense”. So who is going to write this book?

2) There are as many different playstyles as there are tables, 300 pages wouldn’t even scratch the surface.


This is more of a a PhD thesis type project than a book for popular consumption.

 

[Maxperson]

He's right, but it's really semantics. The wizard's fireball doesn't slowly fill up with energy until it is recharged and ready to go again. The wizard has a broad pool of energy with which to power the spells that he knows, and with rest he can refocus that energy and power his spells once more.

Ultimately it's the same difference.

 

[Maxperson]

This did not answer the question though.

Are you saying that Wizards in your worlds, for example, are completely ignorant of the fact that their magic recharges after they sleep?

It doesn't recharge after they sleep. It recharges after they sleep AND enough time has passed for that sleep to help. If the wizard wakes up from a long rest, uses all of his spell slots 10 minutes later, and then immediately sleeps for another 8 hours, nothing is replenished.

The wizard would likely know that it takes both time and sleep to regain his magic, but he wouldn't have a clue what his AC, HP, and character level are. Most mechanics are for the player.