D&D 5E Dungeoncraft Interview with Mike Mearls

[Jaeger]

C&Cs interedting but lacks moving parts like say ACKs. ACKs AC system is weird.

ACKSII AC system is the easiest thing in the world to fix:

Subtract 10 from the classes attack throw to get a conventional Attack bonus.
Add 10 to AC to get conventional ascending armor class.


But I agree that it shouldn't require this fix; it's different for no reason...

 

[Zardnaar]

ACKSII AC system is the easiest thing in the world to fix:

Subtract 10 from the classes attack throw to get a conventional Attack bonus.
Add 10 to AC to get conventional ascending armor class.


But I agree that it shouldn't require this fix; it's different for no reason...

That's basically what I mean.

 

[Nicholas Reed]

You know, that's a great point. I've run games up to high levels with groups that had 3, 4, 5, and 6 players at the table. The 3 player table (and the 4 player table if one person was out) really didn't seem as bad at high levels. I guess that's the force multiplier, or whatever the correct term would be for it- I definitely underestimated that.

My ideal party size for all the years I've DM'd is 2-3. It makes the campaign so much more personal and high stakes. My peak 5E campaign was a 2 person Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign, and it was one of the best gaming experiences of my life. I've run for as many as 8, and it just turns into a completely different, chaotic beast.

 

[tetrasodium]

I wasn't even talking about magic items... my whole belief in the capabilities of the encounter building rules / challenge rating system is based on the number of PCs that can heal. As soon as you add a second healing-capable PC (and goodness forbid a 3rd or 4th in a standard party)... you basically should halve the challenge ratings of all the monsters.

For some reason the 5E14 encounter building rules will double the XP challenge value of the monsters as soon as they outnumber the PCs (so that a Medium fight jumps to like Deadly with the addition of like a single other monster to the fight even if that monster is like a basic goblin)... but yet does not take into account having two healers, and thus the party almost never seeing any healing downtime. PC goes down to 0, one or two other PCs right there to get them back up... rather than a 4 PC party with a single healer that has no way to mitigate things if that single healer is the one going unconscious.

Your point about magic items can indeed exacerbate the problem... but I still believe adding a 5th PC (that is a second healer) to a party will throw off the balance in their favor positively much more than introducing a handful of magic items. I'd take that 5th PC over magic items any day if I was only concerned about survivability and the ease of winning fights.

I agree with pretty much everything you wrote, especially the need for encounter building guidelines to better factor in number of PCs who can heal given death saves rather than trad ho-attrition, but my point was a slightly different one. The baseline itself is one that sets the stage to apply uncorrectable problem escalation when the various power scales start deviating from the baseline of

Spoiler: nonexhaustive power scales

• Number of PCs in the group : 5e's math assumed this is low
• Level of CharOp across the party: 5e math assumes this is self inflicted deliberately suboptimal wounds.
• Number of PCs who can heal others: 5e mechanics set this pretty high with a plurality or even majority of classes being capable of gaining healing abilities from base or subclass
• Risk of trad style HP attrition: 5e designs this for an expected scenario of a small group unoptimized with no healers to ensure that dropping to low/zero HP is a non concern and that recovery from there to full itself is a trivial all of nothing reset rather than a concern worthy bit of resource attrition
• Function and number of magic items the party has: 5e math assumes this is zero but d&d is & had always been a game swimming in magic items with good reasons

When past editions had Monster math that assumed magic items would be required it allowed the GM to use them to massage deficits the party has across those power scales (above and hypothetically unlisted ones) to bring inferior PCs up as needed and add missing capabilities they feel are critical to a party lacking in some(or healing dpr crunchiness etc). When it was a large group with lots of healing so and high CharOp some magic items were still expected and encounter scaling delayed rollout or just so it"hey guys let's talk" were all options the GM had solid footing to use.... All of that collapses under the assumption of small group with no healing no CharOp and no magic items the GM has few tools and a weak footing when trying to discuss/correct for the mismatch with players who have been given an expectation of guaranteed power in a world of cardboard.

 

[Minigiant]

I agree with pretty much everything you wrote, especially the need for encounter building guidelines to better factor in number of PCs who can heal given death saves rather than trad ho-attrition, but my point was a slightly different one. The baseline itself is one that sets the stage to apply uncorrectable problem escalation when the various power scales start deviating from the baseline of

Spoiler: nonexhaustive power scales

• Number of PCs in the group : 5e's math assumed this is low
• Level of CharOp across the party: 5e math assumes this is self inflicted deliberately suboptimal wounds.
• Number of PCs who can heal others: 5e mechanics set this pretty high with a plurality or even majority of classes being capable of gaining healing abilities from base or subclass
• Risk of trad style HP attrition: 5e designs this for an expected scenario of a small group unoptimized with no healers to ensure that dropping to low/zero HP is a non concern and that recovery from there to full itself is a trivial all of nothing reset rather than a concern worthy bit of resource attrition
• Function and number of magic items the party has: 5e math assumes this is zero but d&d is & had always been a game swimming in magic items with good reasons

When past editions had Monster math that assumed magic items would be required it allowed the GM to use them to massage deficits the party has across those power scales (above and hypothetically unlisted ones) to bring inferior PCs up as needed and add missing capabilities they feel are critical to a party lacking in some(or healing dpr crunchiness etc). When it was a large group with lots of healing so and high CharOp some magic items were still expected and encounter scaling delayed rollout or just so it"hey guys let's talk" were all options the GM had solid footing to use.... All of that collapses under the assumption of small group with no healing no CharOp and no magic items the GM has few tools and a weak footing when trying to discuss/correct for the mismatch with players who have been given an expectation of guaranteed power in a world of cardboard.

Much like Metals said 4e focused too much on a subset of potential fans, 5e overly focused on a subset of potential fans

1. 4 PCs
2. Only playing D&D stereotypes
3. No optimization outside of playing stereotypes
4. No magic items
5. 0-1 class with healing
6. Casters only use damage and heal magic (Did we not learn from 3e)
7. No tactics
8. Assume everyone but the DM is too drunk, high, tired, unserious, or boisterous to plan
9. Only dungeon delving
10. No serious nods to modern media fantasy
11. Boring sack of HP monsters
12. Still running goblins and orc at level 11+

A game for 5 50-60 year old dudes to play on Saturday or after work over some beers and pretzels.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Much like Metals said 4e focused too much on a subset of potential fans, 5e overly focused on a subset of potential fans

1. 4 PCs
2. Only playing D&D stereotypes
3. No optimization outside of playing stereotypes
4. No magic items
5. 0-1 class with healer
6. Casters only use damage and heal magic (Did we not learn from 3e)
7. No tactics
8. Assume everyone but the DM is too drunk, high, tired, unserious, or boisterous to plan
9. Only dungeon delving
10. No serious nods to modern media fantasy
11. Boring sack of HP monsters
12. Still running goblins and orc at level 11+

A game for 5 50-60 year old dudes to play on Saturday or after work over some beers and pretzels.

Although to be fair... I would suspect that this quite possibly would cover more than half of all tables playing the game out there. Those of us on boards such as this really are such a small subset of the game, but yet we constantly think that our playstyles are more prominent than they probably actually are.

The designers of 5E set the foundation of the game at the most baseline level, as that is what most tables (especially tables of new players coming to the game for the first time) are going to experience. So everything is designed with the merely basics of gameplay in mind. With the understanding that folks such as us here on EN World would have the experience and knowledge of Dungeons & Dragons on the whole to understand that the foundation is just a baseline level and that we'd be able to adjust things on our own to what we all personally would need. So rather than WotC trying to figure out some way or some system that could account for and hit upon the thousands upon tens of thousands of different ways experienced players like us play the game in all its goofy-ass configurations... they just leave it to all of us to take the foundation and crank up those 10 thousands different parts that we need for ourselves by ourselves. Because we are the best ones to know what it is we actually need, rather than WotC just trying to guess.

 

[Minigiant]

[]

Although to be fair... I would suspect that this quite possibly would cover more than half of all tables playing the game out there. Those of us on boards such as this really are such a small subset of the game, but yet we constantly think that our playstyles are more prominent than they probably actually are

To be fair I don't think that's true because every change from right before Tasha's has been against that mentality.

Basically the designers designed the game for nostalgic people to play Bear and pretzels games.

However they made the game extremely simplistic for the people who would play the game building it completely for bare and pretzels old school gamers and newbies.

Unfortunately the old school players did not convert to 5e.

And the newbies didn't stay new.

So you ended up with a game designed for people who don't play the game.

And that's where Tasha's comes in with its

• Variable ability score adjustments
• high magic subclasses
• complex subclasses
• Blatantly Magical feats
• additional feat style options
• fantastical races
• support for non-traditional PCs
• more complex monsters
• more complex magic items
• more complex subsystems...

The dwarf champion fighter and elf evoker wizard isn't the top picks for the average 5e player on their 3rd campaign UNLESS they are only playing with free rules.

I mean how many dwarf champions were played on Stanger Things, Critical Role, or Dimension 20?

And you DO NOT design your business model around people who refuse to spend money.

 

[DEFCON 1]

[]

To be fair I don't think that's true because every change from right before Tasha's has been against that mentality.

Basically the designers designed the game for nostalgic people to play Bear and pretzels games.

However they made the game extremely simplistic for the people who would play the game building it completely for bare and pretzels old school gamers and newbies.

Unfortunately the old school players did not convert to 5e.

And the newbies didn't stay new.

So you ended up with a game designed for people who don't play the game.

And that's where Tasha's comes in with its

• Variable ability score adjustments
• high magic subclasses
• complex subclasses
• Blatantly Magical feats
• additional feat style options
• fantastical races
• support for non-traditional PCs
• more complex monsters
• more complex magic items
• more complex subsystems...

The dwarf champion fighter and elf evoker wizard isn't the top picks for the average 5e player on their 3rd campaign UNLESS they are only playing with free rules.

I mean how many dwarf champions were played on Stanger Things, Critical Role, or Dimension 20?

And you DO NOT design your business model around people who refuse to spend money.

But that's the point, isn't it? The core rules are baseline and then they add new books later that up things for those that want them. But a lot of material they release is useable by both groups (like the adventures, the miniatures, DM screens, tiles, DDB) so they don't need to forsake one group for the other.

Now perhaps the disagreement between us might come down to how many "old school fans" took up 5E. You said that the "old school players did not convert to 5E"... to which I would disagree. I think sure, a certain percentage of old school players did not convert to 5E and remained with whatever AD&D or like game they were playing as you suggested... but I do think absolutely that a large percentage of older players did indeed pick the 5E game up. Either by returning to D&D after a long absence, or because they wanted to introduce the game to younger friends and family and went with the current version because it's the easier way to maintain a currency to what they would be seeing in stores and shelves.

But regardless of those numbers (to which neither of us can make any claims of certainty)... to me the design and balance of the 5E game in both its iterations was to start at a foundational and basic level, and then add to it later with new products for those players / tables that wanted it. But WotC has never given me any indication that they designed their core books towards a specific subset of experienced player. I just don't think that's true. But YMMV.

 

[Minigiant]

But that's the point, isn't it? The core rules are baseline and then they add new books later that up things for those that want them. But a lot of material they release is useable by both groups (like the adventures, the miniatures, DM screens, tiles, DDB) so they don't need to forsake one group for the other.

Now perhaps the disagreement between us might come down to how many "old school fans" took up 5E. You said that the "old school players did not convert to 5E"... to which I would disagree. I think sure, a certain percentage of old school players did not convert to 5E and remained with whatever AD&D or like game they were playing as you suggested... but I do think absolutely that a large percentage of older players did indeed pick the 5E game up. Either by returning to D&D after a long absence, or because they wanted to introduce the game to younger friends and family and went with the current version because it's the easier way to maintain a currency to what they would be seeing in stores and shelves.

But regardless of those numbers (to which neither of us can make any claims of certainty)... to me the design and balance of the 5E game in both its iterations was to start at a foundational and basic level, and then add to it later with new products for those players / tables that wanted it. But WotC has never given me any indication that they designed their core books towards a specific subset of experienced player. I just don't think that's true. But YMMV.

I believe the age ranges have been posted here on ENworld and over 50% of the 5E player base is under the age of 45.

5E is mostly a millennial and zoomer game and the majority of current players and DMs started with 5e, 4E, or 3E.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Much like Metals said 4e focused too much on a subset of potential fans, 5e overly focused on a subset of potential fans

1. 4 PCs
2. Only playing D&D stereotypes
3. No optimization outside of playing stereotypes
4. No magic items
5. 0-1 class with healer
6. Casters only use damage and heal magic (Did we not learn from 3e)
7. No tactics
8. Assume everyone but the DM is too drunk, high, tired, unserious, or boisterous to plan
9. Only dungeon delving
10. No serious nods to modern media fantasy
11. Boring sack of HP monsters
12. Still running goblins and orc at level 11+

A game for 5 50-60 year old dudes to play on Saturday or after work over some beers and pretzels.

I really wish I could disagree with this, but...

Now I wonder what subset of fans 5.5 is designed for?