D&D General Mike Mearls says control spells are ruining 5th Edition

[AnotherGuy]

As per Enworld's Level Up I use CHA for dragon fear and WIS for undead fear. CHA also works for battling sentient magical items with overpowering egos.
DEX is and WIS in general have enough uses and CON is there for poison and the body alterations.
STR is pretty useful for grapples and forced movement - one can add proficiency for monsters that would inherently be grapplers (nevermind what WotC did) or advantage due to the size or shape or number of tentacles/limbs of the monster. STR should also become common place as PCs rise in level and the monsters become ever larger - where pushing, knocking prone and being thrown about increase in frequency.

INT I find becomes more useful as PCs increase in levels with lore, memory and deciphering checks - as well as saving throws with attacks that scramble brains.

We have also thrown SANITY into the mix for the weird and wonderful - Cuthuluesque-like.

Overall I'm happy with the options available.
Add in Degrees of Success and Failure, Advantage and Disadvantage and you have quite the tool kit.

 

[Minigiant]

No, I am not saying a stun spell doesn't stun. I am saying the condition stun could be a condition where you can still do things.

Then it's not a Stun.
That's the whole issue.

There was an uproar after WOTC changed to allow you to have movement while you're Stunned.

 

[Maxperson]

Hi, let me help.

I'm not going to pretend I remember all the details of a game that happened over a decade ago. But let me give what I can recall.

We had encounters with the Lich over a decade of adventures. Each time was (retconned) into dealing with a simulacrum with a fraction of his power, which is how we scored victories against him. This, at 20th level, was us finding his REAL lair and phylactery. So the DM designed a final form for him. We were aware of what he was capable of in general, but he designed this final form to especially challenge us. We were freaking 20th level and had enough powerful magic items to choke a demon lord! We learned of the chamber (a small chamber underneath a major tower of magic), buffed up all our best magics, went into the chamber, and immediately was ambushed. The room was small enough we had no option to spread out of Disjunctions 40 ft radius burst (the room wasn't larger than 80 by 80 ft). It was opening (surprise) round.

So we took all the reasonable defenses, both in terms of spells, charges, and potions we could upon entering the final battle arena. There was NO prep we could have made differently, save for perhaps rebuilding our characters to be a char-op wet dream (full disclosure, this game was orignally 2e and converted to 3.5. There was some legacy design issues in PCs, like a Rogue with a 10 Wisdom).

So to be perfectly honest, your post feels like victim blaming. "Oh, you didn't have a good time? Must have been because you weren't playing smart". We ALL knew we were walking into the final battle of a decade-old campaign. We knew the lich was going to be a hard fight. We came in expecting there might be deaths. And the DM knew we were going in loaded to the teeth, which is why he opened with Disjunction. No one, DM or Player, expected the cascade of effects that came from that move. The DM didn't expect to cripple two players off the jump to the point of unplayability. The players didn't expect that 20 minutes of buffing math would not only be wiped out, but our "permanent" magical benefits would go too. We wasted nearly an hour buffing, and the stripping, our PCs of the mechanical buffs our spells and gear gave. AN HOUR.

And the best you offer is "Play smarter?"

It was a failure pure and simple of 3.5's mechanics. FULL STOP.

I'm not going to say you did it wrong, because as you say it was 10 years ago and I have even less to go on since all I have is your post. However...

What my group would have done, and we've played many high level 3e/3.5 games, is that we would have scryed out the room. Done auguries, divinations, communes, contacted some other planes and asked questions about what would happen if we all appear in the room. What could we expect? Are there other rooms nearby? And so on. And if we got back results of, "Everyone going into small room is very bad," we'd have gone to a different room. Gone in with actions readied so as to avoid surprise. Gone in a few at a time so not everyone gets toasted by the opening spell.

Maybe some of that would have worked, and maybe not. I wasn't at that game or playing with that DM, so who knows.

 

[Maxperson]

3e only had Good saves and Bad saves. Then only involved 3 ability scores in bonuses.

That's bad design unless you warp all effects around that.

No. The problem with 3e wasn't the save system. The problem with 3e was how unbounded bonuses were. It's okay to have one good save and two bad ones if you aren't looking at a bad +8 vs. a DC of 32.

 

[tetrasodium]

We are talking about the monster side.
That's the issue.
Most monsters had 1 good save and tilted heavy that way.

No it's not the issue because monsters had sr ac and sometimes hp. Take the dragon as an example . It ranged from sr- ac 15 5/4/4 saves & 30 hp then scaled up to sr25 ac42 28/20/25 saves and 536 hp. The difference between knowing what to target if you can and if you must is huge. All of those defenses were relevant to casters just like accounting for flat DR by keeping a backup weapon that could at least partially sidestep it was super relevant to martials even when that weapon might not be as nice as their main weapon.


@SkidAce my recollection was also pretty normal that knowing when sr would be a factor more often than not

 

[Minigiant]

No. The problem with 3e wasn't the save system. The problem with 3e was how unbounded bonuses were. It's okay to have one good save and two bad ones if you aren't looking at a bad +8 vs. a DC of 32.

So bounded +0 vs DC 20 (8+5+6) is better?

 

[Minigiant]

No it's not the issue because monsters had sr ac and sometimes hp. Take the dragon as an example . It ranged from sr- ac 15 5/4/4 saves & 30 hp then scaled up to sr25 ac42 28/20/25 saves and 536 hp. The difference between knowing what to target if you can and if you must is huge. All of those defenses were relevant to casters just like accounting for flat DR by keeping a backup weapon that could at least partially sidestep it was super relevant to martials even when that weapon might not be as nice as their main weapon.


@SkidAce my recollection was also pretty normal that knowing when sr would be a factor more often than not

Dragons were the exception to the rule.

 

[Maxperson]

So bounded +0 vs DC 20 (8+5+6) is better?

By 20th level you shouldn't have 0. There are too many spells that give bonuses, magic items that raise stats and give bonuses, resistances, and so on. 5e isn't 3e and can easily handle three saves. 1 good and 2 bad. In fact, 5e does that right now. You get proficiency in 2 saves, so you have 2 good saves, and then you have 4 bad saves. 2/6 is reduced to 1/3. Going to an actual 1/3 with three saves changes very little.

 

[Minigiant]

By 20th level you shouldn't have 0. There are too many spells that give bonuses, magic items that raise stats and give bonuses, resistances, and so on. 5e isn't 3e and can easily handle three saves. 1 good and 2 bad. In fact, 5e does that right now. You get proficiency in 2 saves, so you have 2 good saves, and then you have 4 bad saves. 2/6 is reduced to 1/3. Going to an actual 1/3 with three saves changes very little.

But again. With 6 saves, you are guaranteed that your primary and secondary ability scores go to a save.

With 3, you need to go the 4e route and deal with the issues that brings

 

[tetrasodium]

Dragons were the exception to the rule.

A hill giant had 16/6/10
An ogre had 6/0/1 or 12/2/2
The base skeleton had 0/1/2 or lots of other options depending on which skeleton you picked
A kobold had 2/1/-1

On and on and on. Good save bad save medium save was very much the norm and the trend continued as cr scaled to a higher percentage of SR yes monsters before using the monster manual behind the curtain spell resistance sidebar or a template that gave it