D&D 5E Dungeoncraft Interview with Mike Mearls

[TiQuinn]

Love high level play. I can just put my foot to the floor as a GM.

One time I almost TPKd a table of seven. The wizard with 2 HP left cast wish to bring everyone back and lost access to casting it ever again!

I had a group flickering in and out of several different planes at the same time, then the fighter, who had black razor, got took over by a lowly intellect devourer that they were ignoring! I asked that player to run him, he looked at his friends and uncorked “special” dice and smiled saying “payback time”!

I had a group of players falling through the plane of air towards the boarder of the plane of fire, The City of Brass on the horizon, Winged Azers and Fire Giants flying off the sea of fire to meet them in mid air combat! The fighter sounded his Horn of Valhalla and decided to die fighting!

Yeah, I got to admit Mike's comments about high level play having players smoke the monsters really didn't reflect my experiences. There were certainly encounters where we did dominate, but that was also because we were using cool powers and spells that we had gained. That's something that should happen for some fights. You've earned it! You are now the bad@$$es of the game world! But we always came down to a few of those last fights against BBEGs and their main lieutenants and those were some of the most nail-biting fights I can remember because were pulling out all the stops, and the monsters and villains had abilities that could also wipe us out.

So yeah, really can't agree with Mike on that perspective.

 

[darjr]

There can absolutely be some fun moments, but for me I'd rather play something lighter and easier all around if we're going for that epic fantasy superhero demigods kind of action. It's not high-level D&D as the idea I take issue with, it's the kludgy mechanics of high-level D&D I have a problem with.

It wasn’t cludgy for us. I do admit all of those games players knew their characters well.

I have also run other games where players didn’t even know their subclass, if I find they don’t have an appetite for the details, those I run differently. Ignoring many rules and adjusting and adjudicating in the fly, keeping consistent. I admit that a lighter game would serve better, but many folks wanna play D&D.

 

[mamba]

Inspiration does not require things actually look alike in the end. it means that creatures of thing B considered thing A as they designed/wrote/drew/whatever.

sure, it shares some design goals and Matt likes 4e, so nothing wrong with calling 4e an inspiration. I just pointed out that despite that inspiration they are pretty different games mechanically

 

[mamba]

Space saving.

Unless you go full MINIs, Keywords, or 4e layouts, writing out the full abilities of interesting high level monster will take a lot of page space

I understand the rationale, I just think space saving does not trump usability, and there probably is a decent shorthand they can use. There also still is so much overly verbose redundant text in stat blocks that I am not even sure it would not be about on par and a lot more usable if they tried that.

Do we really need the first entry in each Legendary action block tell us how they work rather than just giving us the number the monster has?

And ‘using the same spellcasting ability as Spellcasting’ must be the least helpful and considerably too long way to say INT or WIS…

Well the Archmage is calculated around having time stop.

the 2024 Archmage does not list Time Stop?

 

[Minigiant]

Do we really need the first entry in each Legendary action block tell us how they work rather than just giving us the number the monster has?

And ‘using the same spellcasting ability as Spellcasting’ must be the least helpful and considerably too long way to say INT or WIS

What percentage of DMs do you think don't read chapter 1 of the MM?

My guess about the percentage of DMs who don't read the 2014 DMG.

Which would be too many to expect them to pick a legendary or spellcasting monster and know how it works

Many RPGs get bad reps because too many buyers don't RTDM.

 

[mamba]

Which would be too many to expect them to pick a legendary or spellcasting monster and know how it works

and you assume they are familiar with the spells when they cannot even remember one simple sentence about how legendary actions work?

 

[Zardnaar]

I always find it weird when folks go out of their way to talk about how "we" (ENWorld, I presume) are not representative, then immediately go on to talk about how they, individually, are.

I'm not representative though. I do DM a lot and gave run at level 30, mid 20s, 19-21, 15+ and multiple times.

I can do it but I don't enjoy it.

 

[Zardnaar]

The issue is how many want to play high level D&D if it worked .

Epic fantasy, mythic fantasy, and high power fantasy are all very popular genres of fantasy. D&D's mechanics just doesn't work well to support them because we can't agree on how again is played after level 10 or so.

But it's not like those genres aren't popular.

It's the opposite of MMOs. Low levels in MMOs were notoriously unfun for a decade or more. But you can't say no one wanted to play low level. Most players have to and many of the quests were interesting. But your character was often to limited in ability to enjoy the gameplay nor fully function in any party role.

MMOs the computer takes care of the hard work.

 

[tetrasodium]

100%.

Which is why I've always made the point when people would constantly complain about 5E's encounter building rules that they would be perfectly serviceable and balanced when used for a default 4-PC party with one fighter, rogue, cleric, and wizard. But as soon as you added a 5th character (let alone a 6th or more)... and you began adding in second and third and fourth PCs that had healing capabilities... none of the math would work anymore. Because as soon as you can keep any healer on their feet (by one healer bringing the other healer who got knocked out back up from 0)... you rarely ever drop the number of total participants on the heroes side (and all their attack rolls) down enough to make fights potentially spiral out.

Lose your cleric in a party of 4 and they are the only healer? Party is in trouble. Lose your cleric in a party of 5 and the bard is right over there with their full suite of spells available to them? Cleric will be back on their feet in a matter of moments... probably not even losing a round of actions.

I think that's a bit off the mark wrt the smaller groups being "in trouble. Magic items exist for a reason. One of those reasons is mitigating that "trouble" around the group's needs so that the challenge can remain for both small and large groups. Designing so monsters are fit for small unoptimized groups without magic weapons just makes a mess when any one of those three conditions start changing

 

[Minigiant]

MMOs the computer takes care of the hard work.

That my friend isn't the issue I was taking about.

Simplify the mechanics and high level D&D would still be unfulfilling.

The problem with low level 00s MMO play and high level D&D play is the same. As Meals said, spreadsheet design. The numbers are there but it's not fun.

Because like another poster said, there is a lot of romanticism of D&D and having it look a certain way. There is little thought on how it would be played at that level.

The 4-9 sweet spot in most editions is due to having just enough options to have fun tactically and strategically for most PCs.

Below level 4, you don't have enough resources to think strategical and too many bad options to use tactics. Above 10, you have too much that you can lean too hard on tactic or strategic and suck the fun out the game.

One game that attempted to fix this was 13th age. As you level you replace lower level abilities with higher level abilities so your total number abilities at a certain point caps out and all you do is just upgrade them. This keeps your high level play from being a ton of options with slowdown play and a ton of resources that trivializes play.