D&D 5E 07/29/2013 - Legends & Lore It’s Mathemagical!

[GX.Sigma]

If it is what I would imagine it is... your save DC would be 10 + ability mod + slot level. That doesn't seem that complicated to me.

But it's still either a math problem you need to do while playing, or something you write down and need to refer to while playing. There is no way that's good for gameplay.

 

[billd91]

But it's still either a math problem you need to do while playing, or something you write down and need to refer to while playing. There is no way that's good for gameplay.

How? Do you think it's that disruptive?

 

[GX.Sigma]

How? Do you think it's that disruptive?

Players at my table already have trouble remembering their save DCs, and they only have one to worry about. Now they need to internalize that they have to remember their save DC, that each spell level has a different DC, and which DC corresponds to which spell level. And every time they gain a level or get a bonus, we have to do all this math again. Mike's earlier tweeted idea has literally none of these problems.

 

[Iosue]

Mearls writes:

our playtest data is showing that while people notice this issue, it isn't distorting the game as a whole​

I find this interesting, and a little surprising. I would have thought getting this stuff right is a big deal, and something you'd try and sort out early rather than late. How can you judge whether a fighter plays over- or underpowered, for instance, if you're not testing the real system maths which gives you a real sense of how often s/he hits and how often s/he saves. Mutatis mutandis for thieves and skill checks.

Mearls and Crawford have been saying for months now that to them, math fixes were the easiest thing for them to do, so rather than worry about that through the early part of the playtest, they focused on the "shape" of mechanics (my phrasing). Do people like Advantage? Do they like the Skill Die? Do they feel like they have enough interesting things to do as a fighter? The Barbarian is a good example, as it came out incredibly imbalanced, and the design team said this was on purpose, because they could always scale back the numbers, but they wanted people to get a clear take on the class features.

Now, the counterargument is that it helps to get a feel for a mechanic if the math is right. But the question is, does that apply to everyone? And just how close does the math have to be? I suspect the take of Blackwarder's group is not uncommon. "Okay, the math is a bit out of whack here. Note it in the feedback and move on."

4e has some of the tightest math in D&D since Moldvay, particularly in comparison to 3e, so I think math is a highly salient feature for many 4e fans. And the common refrain I see is, "Why didn't they work out the math first, and then fit the mechanics around it?" I think they did to an extent with bounded accuracy. And they expected to tweak it as things went on. Here's the thing though -- 4e has real tight math, and people understandably love it. But there seems to be this tendency to believe that 4e had it's tight math worked out from the beginning, and I'm not sure there's support for that. The designer notes for 4e note when the team broke through on certain mechanics, but not on the math. Given that the game was released with monster math still a bit out of whack, and Skill Challenge math still a bit out of whack, I'm inclined to believe that on 4e, like on Next, much of the design was done using approximate math, and the math was further tweaked and refined late in the design stage, like on Next.

I suspect that when the finished game is released, we'll have much tighter math than we've seen through much of the playtest. But I also suspect that the tightness will fall somewhere between 3e and 4e. While 4e has shown there's a big market of people who want tight math, the success of 3.x and Pathfinder show that there's another significant market of people who don't need it quite so tight. I think there's a fear there that making the math too tight will turn some folks off. I don't think that's how it should be, but unfortunately WotC has to design as much to perception as to execution. 4e showed them that you could make the math tight, and give folks tools to adjust it, but that's not how some folks want to D&D.

 

[jrowland]

If it is what I would imagine it is... your save DC would be 10 + ability mod + slot level. That doesn't seem that complicated to me.

I feel somewhat validated. If you follow the link, you'll see my approach was more complicated, but I think the fundamental results are the same (nearly enough). My formula had a (Caster Level - Target Level)/4 bit in it which is more math heavy. Seems in this proposed model, Caster Level/4 is analogous to slot level. Target Level/4 would be analogous the +1 to +6 they should have based on level, so that is baked into their save roll.

I like it.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

But it's still either a math problem you need to do while playing, or something you write down and need to refer to while playing. There is no way that's good for gameplay.

A valid point, but I think that's more a matter of presentation, and can be handled well enough.

 

[bogmad]

I like the spell DCs scaling by the slot it's cast in if there's a way to still make those lower level slots useful. Sure you can cast sleep at a higher slot, but then you've still wasted that slot and you still have all those low level slots sitting there unused.

There's two solutions I see.
1) have weaker monsters still be viable opponents for higher level characters so a caster can decide who to waste his high slot spells on instead of just blowing his high slots and being useless.
[So far this seems to be shaping up, except a lot of this depends on what the DMs style is and could vary a lot table to table]

2) Make sure there are a LOT of useful utility spells at lower levels so that while a caster may waste all his damage spells on higher slots he still has a reason to dip into the lower slots to cast a spell every now and then and he doesn't feel useless when those rarer, higher slots are spent

 

[Argyle King]

I think the problems with the ghoul could be easily fixed by making saves less binary -something I've said several times in other threads. Instead of the yes/no and live/die nature of the saves we have now, switch to something like 4th Edition's disease track. When initially hit with the attack, you start at a certain position on the track. If you make a successful roll, you get better; if you roll poorly, you get worse, and somewhere in between keeps you where you are on the track. More severe conditions and/or conditions imposed by more difficult creatures would start you on a worse position on the track.

So, paralysis from a third level ghoul might look something like this:

free from effect/cured <--- slower movement <---> half movement and -2 on dex checks <---> paralysis with an opportunity to save ---> paralysis until cured

The bolded part would be the starting position on the track. A paralysis effect from some kind of elite ghoul would start you further to the right.

 

[Warbringer]

Regarding spellcasters

Consider the 14th level Wizard today she has a +4 spellcasting bonus on every spell, so quite reasonably a +8/+9 bonus to all her spells. Under the proposed system, she only has that on her 4th level spells, but gains on her 5th,6th,7th (4 spells), loses on her 1st, 2nd, 3rd (10 spells). That's bit of a trade-off, especially with the "It's goes to 6" change actually exaggerating this as higher levels will probably see most of the change (in the goes to 6 model, this is likely now a +5 bonus, so only 6th and 7th spells get the benefit of the spell level system)

Yes, my big spells are harder to resist, but lower level spells start to fall well under the 50% chance of success.

Smart players will select lowest level spells to be utility spells, saving monster impacting spells for highest level; newer players are likely to get frustrated as they blow their big guns, or push for the 15 MWD.

On a different note, spells don't scale (that was 1e and 2e). Rather, you can elect to cast a lower level spell by consuming a higher level slot; what scales is the number of slots and the level. It's an important distinction because higher level spell resources are highly constrained, the scaling on fighters attacks are not (their resource is on a different refresh cycle).

This change is obvious, not hard on math, but there is a layer of complexity it will bring to the game in resource management.

But hey, it's just math(emagics)

 

[Warbringer]

Mearls has expanded a little on this on his Twitter.

It looks like all classes will progress from +1 to +6 at the same rate.

If you aren't proficient in something, you don't get the bonus. If you're somehow specialized, you get double the bonus.

Don't get what bonus, the stat bonus? So effectively, in easy mode, you are only proficient in your classes skills, can try anything else at +0. In standard mode, obviously ability to specialize in a skill and lose proficiency in one you had (or skill points or something). Again, you can always try something, but a +0.

Effectively, a dexterous cleric +3 is as useless at "Dex" checks as a clumsy one -3 ... hmmm, not liking. Could have major pain points in multi-classing.

But, just therory-craft; will wait and see