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

[Zardnaar]

Yea I think stumbling across that 13.333 BTC section totally by accident while debunking the milestone fawning really shows how far off the mark the 5e encounter per rest expectations & how insanely overly permissive the rest/recovery rules are.

Yeah 3E did that part better.

I voted 4 encounters back in the playtest iirc. I think the disconnect was people though 6-8 was more= better and that numbers very different pre 4E.

Anyone voting for that wouldn't have been aware of the attrition thing they were planning.
I remember one of the designers talking about it (Mearls?).
. Concept was sawed from the get go as they left save or sucks thst bypass HP in the game with low defenses.

Concept also fails when you ramp up damage.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

In any case, long rests resetting everything is at the core of the problem. All or nothing nature of them makes it really tricky to balance. It sorta works if you use them to bookmark the narrative "chapters", like gritty rests that are extended downtime at the end of an adventure arc, but sometimes that does not flow so neatly either.

Rests restoring things more incrementally would be in a lot of ways be much better, and then we would not need to have two types of rests either. But with so many separate things and how spell slots work easy and simple incremental restoration is a bit awkward to implement. It would be easier if characters had just hit points, spell points, and, eh, prowess points (for martial powers and things) and those would be the only attritional resources to track and then a rest would restore some increment of them.

 

[M_Natas]

In any case, long rests resetting everything is at the core of the problem. All or nothing nature of them makes it really tricky to balance. It sorta works if you use them to bookmark the narrative "chapters", like gritty rests that are extended downtime at the end of an adventure arc, but sometimes that does not flow so neatly either.

Rests restoring things more incrementally would be in a lot of ways be much better, and then we would not need to have two types of rests either. But with so many separate things and how spell slots work easy and simple incremental restoration is a bit awkward to implement. It would be easier if characters had just hit points, spell points, and, eh, prowess points (for martial powers and things) and those would be the only attritional resources to track and then a rest would restore some increment of them.

For gradual rest you just use the way of arcane recovery of wizards.
In my gradual gritty realism variant ( https://site.dmsguild.com/m/product/456636) Fullcasters regain spell slot, that have a combined level equal to the casters level (rounded up).
Half casters regain spellslots, that have a combined level of 1/2 the casters level (rounded up).
1/3 casters 1/3.
Warlocks gain all levels on a long rest.

A short rest just let you turn a Hit Die into temporary HP.

I haven't touched other things like KI points and other abilities that you get new uses at a short rest. But probably one can just put them all into a long rest and it could work fine.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

For gradual rest you just use the way of arcane recovery of wizards.
In my gradual gritty realism variant ( https://site.dmsguild.com/m/product/456636) Fullcasters regain spell slot, that have a combined level equal to the casters level (rounded up).
Half casters regain spellslots, that have a combined level of 1/2 the casters level (rounded up).
1/3 casters 1/3.
Warlocks gain all levels on a long rest.

A short rest just let you turn a Hit Die into temporary HP.

I haven't touched other things like KI points and other abilities that you get new uses at a short rest. But probably one can just put them all into a long rest and it could work fine.

Yeah, you can come up with something, but it will feel kludgy, And I'm sorry, but yours does. Not that it could be helped, the system obviously is not designed for this. The spell recovery in particularly feels inelegant. I can buy it as feature of arcane expert class, so that they can choose which specific slots to recover (and I don't really like it there either) but as general mechanic for all classes it just feels wrong. And of course then there are all sort of other resources to deal with.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I haven't seen them try to fix it. 5.5e did improve encounter difficulty, but the balance is still around resource attrition with large bags of hit points to fight against. Basically, it's a bit of mitigation, rather than an attempt to fix the issue.

The only fix that I can see is a new edition, because that can be built from the ground up around a different method of balance.

That's my point. Not admitting it and not trying to fix it for nearly a decade is their fault.

 

[Parmandur]

If a sizable portion of your player base is not playing the game to your settings

How sizable is ot...? WotC would know, we do not.

Either you need to accept that, and decide the game will work that way

I mean, isn't yhat what WotC has done...? They are continuing to publish Adventures with fully stocked Dingeons, as recently as a couple months ago Dragon Felves has full Adventure Day design...so they continue to support whatever percentage of players do play that way, and people who juat play it more mellow can do that. The 2924 DMG is way more chil about it, seems like thst is adapting to the breath of audience reception.

 

[nevin]

Only difference is, in 3e, leveling by xp was kind of still norm. In 5e, people switched to milestones for the most part. When you level by XP you are more incentivised to fight, to squeeze extra encounter or two in a day so you can hit those last few XP's you are short of level up (cause leveling characters mid game is waste of time). It punished you for creatively resolving problems without use of violence. Milestones puts story first. If you can hit your story objectives without fights, great, you still get level up reward.

Example: You had rolevplay heavy session resolving courtly intrigue to gain favor of local noble
3e - 0 fights=0 xp, depending on the mood, DM might give you some xp for "good role play". You are step closer to achieving story goals, but not any closer to gaining that sweet level.
5e - 0 fights. But you moved story forward in impactfull way. You are step closer to achieving your goal in story, but also step closer to gaining that sweet new level.

When milestones mean leveling. Far too many DMs these days just use Milestones to brake the leveling.

 

[Parmandur]

I haven't seen them try to fix it. 5.5e did improve encounter difficulty, but the balance is still around resource attrition with large bags of hit points to fight against. Basically, it's a bit of mitigation, rather than an attempt to fix the issue.

The only fix that I can see is a new edition, because that can be built from the ground up around a different method of balance.

But is it an issue for WotC...? They didn't intend for people to play on easy mode, but if a fairly significant percentage is happy doing so, there might nit be anything to mitigate as far as theybare concerned.

Yeah. We argue here and debate endlessly about how things are/should/best done, but at the end of the day, if your group is having a good time, you're doing it right.

True that.

 

[Staffan]

It is possible that with all of the testing WOTC did in the early days of 5e, they just did not know people played 1-2 encounters per day instead of 6-8. I think someone needs to question how their playtest data was so messed up that they didn't catch this, but I can relent that point.

I think one of the culprits is that much of the playtest was done with the Caves of Chaos dungeon, which feature almost no interesting tactical situations (e.g. archers on balconies, fire pits into which to push foes) or monsters with interesting abilities. It's all pretty much just "charge in and make attack rolls". And that kind of stuff is fairly low effort, particularly if you play it without a grid, so it moves fast, and you can quickly move on to the next fight. In an environment like that, sure, I can see 6-8 fights per day.

But if you're putting some effort in? Give some of the creatures bows and put them in a defensible position, have some other ones form a shield wall, have a boss that's either got some spells or some other cool abilities to use, and suddenly we have a much more interesting fight on our hands. But that's not going to be over in 10 minutes of dice rolling – it takes more effort both for the actual characters and for the players. And you might not want to deal with 6-8 of that kind of fight.

 

[Stalker0]

How sizable is ot...? WotC would know, we do not.

So this all goes back to the OP. Where one of the original 5e designers is saying "yes our assumptions about how players play was wrong".

If we are taking the OP at their word (and if we are not, then there is nothing to debate in this thread) that implies that a significant portion of the playerbase (if not the vast majority) play the game in a way that WOTC did not design for. High enough that one of the head designers of the system is saying "we did it wrong".