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

[Maxperson]

You realise that there is a lot of overlap between these categories? The people designing games are the same people who you find debating them on forums. I could ask for a show of hands, but I know some prefer to remain anonymous. They don't have any more special insight than you or I have.

In the same way that I could write a popular sequel to A Brief History of Time simply because I'm an Astrophysicist and educator! Again: WotC employs ordinary people, without superpowers.

That's because there is a history of lumping vastly different things in the same box, in the same way that Dune and Star Wars are both space operas featuring desert planets.

Most of what has been written on playstyles is vastly misleading, and written in a prejudicial, "outsider's view" style.

Gygax had it right from the start - present the game as a series of suggestions and ideas, and players will interpret them in whatever way seems natural to them. The only mechanical help people need is to be encouraged to do whatever seems right to them.

You are grossly overestimating the complexity of playstyles. These are not anywhere near on par with A Brief History of Time or a PhD thesis.

It's simplicity itself to get designers who specialize in the major playstyles to do the work. No need for someone who doesn't know much about one to write it up.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You are grossly overestimating the complexity of playstyles.

You are vastly underestimating the variety of playstyles, and the difficulty for an outsider to understand and communicate them. exactly because you are an outsider for most of them, as am I and everyone else.

These are not anywhere near on par with A Brief History of Time or a PhD thesis.

I've written a thesis. Two, actually (one on Astrochemistry, the other on SEND and IT). Explaining my D&D playstyle is a lot harder.

It's simplicity itself to get designers who specialize in the major playstyles to do the work. No need for someone who doesn't know much about one to write it up.

Even if you did get people to define your "major playstyles" that would just lead to a lot more players worring about "doing it right". "My game is Neo-Trad, so is it okay for me to allow a player to make modifications to their class fluff?" The correct answer is "do what seems right to you, it doesn't matter what Bob the playstyle expert thinks".

 

[Micah Sweet]

No. They will not know that a 16 dex + mage armor is equal to chain mail, which is equal to some creature's thick AC 16 hide. They won't even be able to ballpark those as the same.

They may know that they are easy to hit, hard to hit, or somewhere in the middle, but even that won't really be saying much, since nobody is going to know their bonuses to hit or their enemy's bonus to hit, either.

No. They may know that they are low, doing okay, or doing well, but they aren't going to know 30 out of 50, 4 out of 50, or 48 out of 50.

They have no basis for that to even be level, let alone which level. It could just be some shmo who is good with a sword. This is especially true in those editions where NPCs are built differently than PCs, because the PC has no way of knowing how to differentiate a PC and an NPC.

Good thing I don't have to worry about PCs and NPCs being different.

 

[tetrasodium]

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

I got it for about 20-30$ before the tarrifs, pretty far from a Garmin Phoenix or anything that could be fancy enough to be considered a magical item. More importantly is the context chain of how it came up. Claims were made about how PCs couldn't know the recovery rules that govern their own recovery on video game vrs realism grounds so I posted a couple examples of my typical workout and the recovery I very much understand for each. That led to me waking up to see the PCs couldn't understand recovery of their own capabilities goalpost strapped on some roller skates and slid on over to an even more absurdv"but but but exact hp" so I felt it deserved an equally absurd and irrelevant bit of specifically. Others gave good examples of real world non video game humans knowing equivalents and the exasperated elf dressing it up in fluff.

Good thing I don't have to worry about PCs and NPCs being different.

There are all sorts of things where competing and parallel standards exist for very similar things like how some ammunition is described by weight and others in mm or inches while still others are measured in terms of a count per unit of weight

Spoiler: kinda like oilfield measurements?

 

[Not a Decepticon]

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.

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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

Sorry, but I still do not see the class levels, so you do not know if you are taking challenges appriopriate for your abilities; I do not see exact number of hit points, so you know how much risk of dying next fight is going to put you at and whenever you need to recover; I do not see which of your abilities require 8 hours of sleep, and which ones jus an 1 hour nap. Whatever you can know about your physical state is not conveyed through any sort of game mechanics. I do not see a reason why should it be different for characters existing within the world of the game. Sure they can give you equivalent of things you listed....no wait, they cannot, most of them do not have a magic item scanning them nor an overseeing organization keeping track of their health. Just like irl a vast majority of people in real world is not aware of their exact health, ofter under or overestimaging their abilities or endurance. FFS, look no further than all those dudes claiming they can beat Serena Williams in her area of expertise just because they believe a level 1 dude is inherently superior to a high level woman.

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

Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition Player's Handbook was designed to contain rules for every playstyle of M:tA that designers were aware of. It has 700 pages and was, for a while, I believe either biggest RPG book or biggest crowdfounded RPG book, before being beaten by 1000 pages Ptolus Campaign Setting.

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!

Again, assuming they see these as powers to begin with. If I play a Fighter, my characters DOES NOT know he has Action Surge or Second Wind, I roleplay it as them just pushing themselves in time of need. Mechanics are for players, not the characters.

And knowing A RULES EXPLOIT is always going to be minitiae.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Pretty sure that's just one subjective interpretation of how to translate the mechanics of spellcasting into the setting.

So in other words, the thing you have to do to stop this stupid "One fight, 32 hours of doing nothing to always perform optimally" is to say this interpretation of rules will not fly at your table? Good to know we spend 60 pages arguing over a self-imposed problem coming from poorly thought preference of gamestyle at your table.

 

[MichaelSomething]

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.

Isn't that just a perception check??

Measuring and understanding endurance is a skill; abeit one that not everyone has...

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[EzekielRaiden]

Sorry, but I still do not see the class levels, so you do not know if you are taking challenges appriopriate for your abilities; I do not see exact number of hit points, so you know how much risk of dying next fight is going to put you at and whenever you need to recover; I do not see which of your abilities require 8 hours of sleep, and which ones jus an 1 hour nap. Whatever you can know about your physical state is not conveyed through any sort of game mechanics. I do not see a reason why should it be different for characters existing within the world of the game. Sure they can give you equivalent of things you listed....no wait, they cannot, most of them do not have a magic item scanning them nor an overseeing organization keeping track of their health. Just like irl a vast majority of people in real world is not aware of their exact health, ofter under or overestimaging their abilities or endurance. FFS, look no further than all those dudes claiming they can beat Serena Williams in her area of expertise just because they believe a level 1 dude is inherently superior to a high level woman.


Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition Player's Handbook was designed to contain rules for every playstyle of M:tA that designers were aware of. It has 700 pages and was, for a while, I believe either biggest RPG book or biggest crowdfounded RPG book, before being beaten by 1000 pages Ptolus Campaign Setting.


Again, assuming they see these as powers to begin with. If I play a Fighter, my characters DOES NOT know he has Action Surge or Second Wind, I roleplay it as them just pushing themselves in time of need. Mechanics are for players, not the characters.

And knowing A RULES EXPLOIT is always going to be minitiae.

So, just so we're absolutely clear:

Wizards literally have no idea when their spells become available. It just happens, spontaneously, always after a consistent pattern, but literally centuries of people practicing these arts while actively academically studying them, not one of them has ever figured out that a combination of minimum time and bed rest are required for being able to cast spells again. Nor has any deity ever told any Cleric how it works. Nor has any natural spirit ever told any Druid. Nor have any Bards, Artificers, Paladins, or anyone else who casts spells ever figured it out. Even though absolutely everyone works by precisely the same pattern which could be discovered with an extremely simple series of experiments.

I'm sorry, this is patently ridiculous.

 

[pemerton]

Because long-term, satisfied customers lead to more customers. The questions then become: how many more customers? And how much effort (=money) does it take to provide said satisfaction? And is the result worth the effort?

I don't think there's much reason to think that WotC would increase its sales - perhaps not even in absolute terms, let alone after outlay - by publishing multiple, different versions of D&D.

There's also the matter of personal pride on part of the designers. While my understanding is that Wizards pays more than pretty much all other RPG companies (except maybe MCDM), you still don't become an RPG designer for the fat paycheck. You do it because it's a thing you love doing. And when doing a thing you love doing, you don't want to do a naughty word job. You might sometimes have to do a less than satisfactory job because of outside factors (bossman says deadline is in a week and fixing the issue you found would be a month's work so you scrap that bit and fill it in with something that takes less effort), but you likely won't be happy about it.

If I was a 5e designer I'd be pretty pleased with my work. Like anything done in the context of commercial employment, it's not a pure expression of any designer's vision. But it's a cleverly-designed game: the integration of significant elements of 4e D&D while producing a game that users can experience both as a descendant of 3E D&D and a descendent of AD&D.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

So, just so we're absolutely clear:

Wizards literally have no idea when their spells become available. It just happens, spontaneously, always after a consistent pattern, but literally centuries of people practicing these arts while actively academically studying them, not one of them has ever figured out that a combination of minimum time and bed rest are required for being able to cast spells again. Nor has any deity ever told any Cleric how it works. Nor has any natural spirit ever told any Druid. Nor have any Bards, Artificers, Paladins, or anyone else who casts spells ever figured it out. Even though absolutely everyone works by precisely the same pattern which could be discovered with an extremely simple series of experiments.

I'm sorry, this is patently ridiculous.

People do things in real life without needing to map video game mechanics to them, I see no reason why it should be different for in-universe rpg characters. You trying to strawman my argument increasingly makes it look like you cannot accept a story with any less 4th wall-breaking than Order of the Stick.