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  1. EzekielRaiden

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

    Indeed, the edition everyone accuses of requiring "lockstep" fights or the like says, explicitly, multiple times, in multiple places, "DO NOT exclusively run combats exactly matching the party's level, because that would be boring." But, as I've said previously, responses to a game often have...
  2. EzekielRaiden

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

    An undiplomatic, but fairly accurate and very pithy, summary. PF1e is much the same way. When all are trying to address the same set of problems, one should expect the solutions to look similar, but not identical.
  3. EzekielRaiden

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

    If what I said made you or others feel that way, then I apologize. That was a crappy thing for me to do. I still do think that it is quite possible for folks to hold beliefs about what is "correct" in design or execution which are built on a flawed foundation. Both because I've experienced that...
  4. EzekielRaiden

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

    I agree that you cannot design by committee. But having someone on staff who, y'know, is actually a professional at designing surveys for data-gathering...would probably be more useful than the flagrant push-polling we saw from "D&D Next". Do you remember the poll--I no longer remember what...
  5. EzekielRaiden

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

    Do remember that calling 4e "some other game" is, for a lot of us fans, straight-up fighting words. "Your game is awesome but it doesn't belong in MY D&D" is not a particularly friendly or positive attitude to take--it is gamer NIMBY.
  6. EzekielRaiden

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

    Well, I mean, I cited the example in part because it effectively is a (mild) sacrifice, but it also functionally costs nothing, and yet also adds almost nothing either. Dante (the half-hellhound in question) only shows up very late. If folks were inclined to experiment just because they felt...
  7. EzekielRaiden

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

    People literally cheered when WotC told them Vancian casting was being removed. "What people think of it" was wildly variable. People got HUGELY HUGELY mad about Such a playtest would have revealed such a problem, yes, so then it wouldn't be one. That's...literally the point of real...
  8. EzekielRaiden

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

    I do not "realize" that, no, because I don't agree with that position!
  9. EzekielRaiden

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

    I mean, it pretty clearly was for PF1e. Or did you not hear about the Gunslinger fallout?
  10. EzekielRaiden

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

    This is just a more sophisticated version of the "sales are proof that design is good" argument, which I don't accept. They should do this thing because it would make a better product--one they don't need to keep issuing revisions of because it wasn't broken in the first place. I mean, folks...
  11. EzekielRaiden

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

    Perhaps there are still two kinds of rest, but how long they take is based on what kind of play you're engaging with? A short rest while on military campaign is a lengthy time because you're binding wounds, attending the sick, assessing supplies (and possibly foraging to replace them), setting...
  12. EzekielRaiden

    D&D 5E (2024) Rank 5e skills from most useful (1) to least useful (18)

    It has plenty of other uses. It shouldn't be over-used by any means, but it has plenty of uses. Nah. It's not nearly that terrible. You're just doing as many, many, many GMs out there do, and only noticing it when it's been done in the terrible "instantly make consequences you'll regret" form...
  13. EzekielRaiden

    D&D 5E (2024) Rank 5e skills from most useful (1) to least useful (18)

    Perhaps, for your experience, it is overstating things. You can ask other folks around here--I've been pretty open about how terrible my experience has been with 5e GMs (my current GM being a notable, and refreshing, exception), and the only thing I've seen worse results with than...
  14. EzekielRaiden

    D&D 5E (2024) Rank 5e skills from most useful (1) to least useful (18)

    My interest is on what I can actually achieve at a table when I'm making my characters. When 9 out of 10 GMs is going to view Intimidate as the Screw Yourself Over Even When You Succeed With Flying Colors skill, then yes, I'm going to say "oooookay, never ever ever take that skill; the chance I...
  15. EzekielRaiden

    D&D 5E (2024) Rank 5e skills from most useful (1) to least useful (18)

    Then the simple problem is that D&D, with the exception of 4e in my experience, has taught GMs not to run this way. My current (5e) GM ran and enjoyed 4e during its day, so he's just as much part of that despite us using 5e for the two-ish years I've been in the group. Blame it on the...
  16. EzekielRaiden

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

    It is worth noting that, consistently, statistics from video games indicate that, for most games, players overwhelmingly (like more than 4:1) favor "good" options over "evil" ones when they're put to the choice. Good example, there's a dog in the Dragonfall campaign of Shadowrun Returns, and he...
  17. EzekielRaiden

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

    I have already said I don't think they want to do this. But this is just the goalpost shifting, no? First it was questioning whether the path even made sense at all. Then it was whether the path would have even a hope of making money. Now it's whether there's any interest on their part in doing...
  18. EzekielRaiden

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

    Two attacks, claw-claw. But yes, two attacks. If both hit, each had a chance to inflict the save.
  19. EzekielRaiden

    D&D General Refresher Course D&D Edition Numbers. AKA Modern D&D Is a Self Inflicted Problem.

    Minor caveat: I think it would be dramatically more accurate to say, "That's not what the original community wanted." Because 5e's community now has almost nothing to do with the successful edition warriors doing their wardance over the corpse of 4e. Turns out that ceding all of your important...
  20. EzekielRaiden

    D&D 5E (2024) Why doesn't D&D have fire arrows?

    Neither. The hatred of gunpowder, but fetishization of plate. I wasn't talking about the magic. I was talking about how gunpowder is utterly unacceptable, despite cannons predating plate armor by a full century. The first cannon appeared in Europe sometime in the early 14th century (e.g. we...
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