Mearls On D&D's Design Premises/Goals

First of all, thanks [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] for collecting this. I generally avoid Twitter because, frankly, it's full of a$$holes.

That aside: this is an interesting way of looking at it, and underscores the difference in design philosophies between the WotC team and the Paizo team. There is a lot of room for both philosophies of design, and I don't think there is any reason for fans of one to be hostile to fans of the other, but those differences do matter. There are ways in which I like the prescriptive elements of 3.x era games (I like set skill difficulty lists, for example) but I tend to run by the seat of my pants and the effects of my beer, so a fast and loose and forgiving version like 5E really enables me running a game the way I like to.

 

[Maxperson]

It’s all over the combat section:

This chapter provides the rules you need for your characters and monsters to engage in combat, whether it is a brief skirmish or an extended conflict in a dungeon or on a field of battle.​

This tells you the purpose of the combat rules is for engaging in combat, not for interactions that don't fit that description.

A typical combat encounteris a clash between two sides, a flurry of weapon swings, feints, parries, footwork, and spellcasting.​

Again, this tells you what combat is, and by extension, what it isn't. If two sides aren't clashing then it typically isn't combat, so don't use the combat rules for that situation.

During a round, each participant in a battle takes a turn.​

This tells you that the characters taking turns in a combat round are participating "in a battle". They aren't standing around thinking about whether they want to talk to the other party. Someone is taking violent action against someone else.

Yep! Nothing says that has to happen before initiative or surprise is rolled. To groups sneaking around looking for people to attack can surprise each other before anyone ever attacks.

See, in language, words mean things. I bolded the part that says I'm right. It specifies typical for a reason. And that reason as that there will be atypical combat encounters that don't fit that mold. All of your quotes and explanations are brought to ruin by the one word. In an atypical encounter, two sides can be surprised and roll initiative before anyone moves to attack.

"Indirect opposition" isn't a category recognized in the rules, AFAIA.

Yes it is. By specifying "direct opposition", they automatically create "indirect opposition". You can't have one without the other.

If I'm trying to hit you with my sword before you cast a spell on me, I'd say my effort to do so is directly opposed to your effort to cast your spell before I hit run you through.

Cool beans. 1. Those are not ability checks, so they don't matter to a discussion on ability checks, and 2. they are not initiative.

I understand that Jeremy Crawford has said the initiative roll is not a contest, but I also think it's much easier for him to say that than it would be for him to talk about how it conforms to the contest rules while at the same time constitutes an exception in terms of how ties are broken. Just look at the pushback I've gotten from you on this subject. He probably doesn't want to deal with that sort of thing on Twitter.

This is a cop out. You don't get to assume motives for the game designer, especially when his answer doesn't even remotely indicate such a motive. Let me demonstrate.

I understand that Jeremy Crawford has said that the initiative roll is not a contest, but I also think Alf told him to say what he said, rather than just say it was a contest.

My answer quite literally has as much to back it up as yours does.

 

[Hriston]

Yep! Nothing says that has to happen before initiative or surprise is rolled.

By “that”, I assume you mean combat. Since determining surprise and rolling initiative are part of the rules for resolving combat, I wonder why they’re being used to resolve a non-combat situation. It seems like a blatant misapplication of those rules in an effort to prove they’re not what they are.

To groups sneaking around looking for people to attack can surprise each other before anyone ever attacks.

See, in language, words mean things. I bolded the part that says I'm right. It specifies typical for a reason. And that reason as that there will be atypical combat encounters that don't fit that mold. All of your quotes and explanations are brought to ruin by the one word. In an atypical encounter, two sides can be surprised and roll initiative before anyone moves to attack.



Yes it is. By specifying "direct opposition", they automatically create "indirect opposition". You can't have one without the other.



Cool beans. 1. Those are not ability checks, so they don't matter to a discussion on ability checks, and 2. they are not initiative.


This is a cop out. You don't get to assume motives for the game designer, especially when his answer doesn't even remotely indicate such a motive. Let me demonstrate.

I understand that Jeremy Crawford has said that the initiative roll is not a contest, but I also think Alf told him to say what he said, rather than just say it was a contest.

My answer quite literally has as much to back it up as yours does.

I posted this prematurely. I’ll respond to the rest of this in a separate post.

 

[Maxperson]

By “that”, I assume you mean combat. Since determining surprise and rolling initiative are part of the rules for resolving combat, I wonder why they’re being used to resolve a non-combat situation. It seems like a blatant misapplication of those rules in an effort to prove they’re not what they are.

Context my friend. Context. We've been discussing one side attacking the other. Context is your friend. "That" in the context of our discussion clearly meant your claim that one side has to be attacking the other before initiative is rolled. It doesn't.

 

[Jester David]

They're OK as long as you keep DCs to about 18 or under and for much of the game that's how they are. It's only when you start going into the upper reaches of DCs that it starts becoming a problem. I didn't really do the numbers until mid teen levels.

I agree, though, that many DCs are probably a bit too low, while urging people to be careful of very high ones.

It's probably not much of a problem until level 15 or 16. And even then it's one you can skirt around by using two to four lower CR foes.

Heck, I played in a handful of sessions at level 20 and the save problem wasn't *that* bad. Monsters saved against my attacks, and I saved against theirs.

You start running into those kinds of foes when you get above those levels. You can tell WotC didn't follow their own guidelines written in the DMG because many monsters in the MM have saves that lie quite far from them.

It's almost as if the DMG wasn't finished for a couple months after the Monster Manual.

IMO the fact that the strong save characters make it every time and the others fail every time is exactly the problem. That predictability for the DM is also predictability for the players. "A dragon, well I'm screwed...." I don't want to have players in that situation. More than once I remember a fight where the poor barbarian's player was reduced to rolling a save for three or four rounds in a row when facing something mind-affecting. That really sucks to be stun-locked for that long. The gap between a strong save character who makes it most of the time and the weak save character who nearly always fails is the issue. At lower levels this isn't nearly so determinative and various things like advantage or disadvantage actually help. When the probability of success or failure is extreme, advantage and disadvantage stop mattering. Have a point of Inspiration against a high DC foe? Why bother? It won't help you. Even many buffs won't help you unless, of course, you built the party to be strong at that. A lot of parties aren't good at buffing. IMO this should not be a requirement but if you want to get to high level play given the structure of the save system, it kind of is.

If you're playing at level 15+ and didn't skip ahead with pregens, you've likely spend a good hundred hours with that party. You should have an idea of their strengths and weaknesses, and maybe have stumbled over some tactics to negate their weaknesses.
Yeah, it sucks to be stun-locked as the barbarian. Thankfully this is a team based game and someone can maybe pump a lesser restoration or similar spell into you to get you back into the fight.

And as much as it sucks to be stunlocked, it sucks more to be dead. But I don't think I'd describe having the game potentially kill characters as a game breaking design flaw. It's so much worse when you spend an entire fight rolling 3s and 4s and unable to hit the side of a Huge object.

So my point in the original post is that WotC's math was not as good as it could be, or, to use my stronger word, crummy. WotC often makes math errors to keep things simple but which create a number of potential problems. They did it in 3.X with saves as well. One of the big goals of bounded accuracy was to keep DC creep in check, which is an admirable goal. Unfortunately in the areas of the game where they have binary success/failure, most notably skills (which they didn't spend much time on, or at least chose to leave quite thinly developed, as the case may be) and saves, they didn't really manage. A cure is to keep the DCs (and bonuses) down but have success or failure not be so binary.

It was a bit of a disconnect, but really unrelated to "the math".

Spell save DCs go up for players for the same reason attack bonuses go up: so accuracy improves and your chances of succeeding increase against the flat DCs. That makes sense there.
The problem is that monster saves go up as well and are tied to proficiency bonuses, like PC saves. Which was probably a mistake. Monster save DCs should increase at a different rate: monster saves need to be higher, but not increase at the same rate as PC saves.

 

[Jester David]

By “that”, I assume you mean combat. Since determining surprise and rolling initiative are part of the rules for resolving combat, I wonder why they’re being used to resolve a non-combat situation. It seems like a blatant misapplication of those rules in an effort to prove they’re not what they are.

I occasionally slip into Initiative for other reasons, such as when navigating a trap filled hallway or performing a complicated task. Anytime when it's important to know who acted first and in what order (and/or location) people are.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

I occasionally slip into Initiative for other reasons, such as when navigating a trap filled hallway or performing a complicated task. Anytime when it's important to know who acted first and in what order (and/or location) people are.

That's a good example of how initiative can be important outside of a "pure" combat.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

It's probably not much of a problem until level 15 or 16. And even then it's one you can skirt around by using two to four lower CR foes. Heck, I played in a handful of sessions at level 20 and the save problem wasn't *that* bad. Monsters saved against my attacks, and I saved against theirs.

The fact that you need to skirt around it is a sign the high level math is messed up. You don't start really noticing it until about levels 15 or so, but it's around even before that. There are characters with save numbers that are too high as well.

It's almost as if the DMG wasn't finished for a couple months after the Monster Manual.

That was when it was published. If they didn't actually make a "here's how the numbers work" bible until after the Monster Manual was finished....

If you're playing at level 15+ and didn't skip ahead with pregens, you've likely spend a good hundred hours with that party. You should have an idea of their strengths and weaknesses, and maybe have stumbled over some tactics to negate their weaknesses.
Yeah, it sucks to be stun-locked as the barbarian. Thankfully this is a team based game and someone can maybe pump a lesser restoration or similar spell into you to get you back into the fight.

By construction it's very hard to boost up things like that---and to be clear, preventing this kind of stacking is something the game was designed for explicitly and is, IMO, a good thing. For example, if you have a weak save and have a bonus of, say +1 vs a DC 23 threat, it's exceptionally hard to dig out of a net 12 hole. Bless adds about +2, which gets to you to needing to roll a 20. Inspiration not quite doubles the chance of getting a 20, to 19/400, which is a bit under 10%. Bardic Inspiration (bad WotC for naming a class feature for something else!) is one of the few actual adds and that certainly helps, if you happen to have a very high level bard in your party. Many parties do not. Given that most combats last about five or six rounds, this is a recipe for the player to hand sit for the fight. Finally, Lesser Restoration does nothing to help against something like stunlock.

Just because it's strongly noticeable at that point doesn't mean it's not emerging at lower values, though. Furthermore, one of the design goals of the game was to try to help ensure that certain classes weren't necessary.

And as much as it sucks to be stunlocked, it sucks more to be dead. But I don't think I'd describe having the game potentially kill characters as a game breaking design flaw. It's so much worse when you spend an entire fight rolling 3s and 4s and unable to hit the side of a Huge object.

I'm not sure I follow this. I think you're getting at the fact that ACs shouldn't get too high, which is indeed a feature of the Bounded Accuracy approach. By and large they do not. So what I'm saying is that saves and skills (which we haven't talked about much) start to violate BA in the levels past 10 but certainly by the mid teens. This tempts DMs and WotC back into DC creep.

What makes BA work for combat is that success is rarely all-or-nothing and making things in those realms less all-or-nothing would help keep DCs lower.

It was a bit of a disconnect, but really unrelated to "the math".

Nope, it's the math. While people keep focusing on holding the weak save numbers down much of the problem IMO is caused by the fact that strong save bonuses get large too fast. IMO the math would work much better if for saves proficiency gave you advantage on the save rather than adding your proficiency bonus on top of your stat bonus, though that's just a hunch on my part.

Spell save DCs go up for players for the same reason attack bonuses go up: so accuracy improves and your chances of succeeding increase against the flat DCs. That makes sense there.

I'm not arguing with that. My issue is with bonuses being set with too much range between non-proficient characters, who essentially stay at 0 their entire career and proficient characters with strong stats, who essentially become immune to the vast majority of challenges. You can't even fail on a 1 anymore.

This tempts WotC into setting DCs too high to challenge the high level bard, sorcerer, or warlock facing a Charisma attack (let's say). While this is makes it threatening to the bard, it makes it overwhelming to the other PCs. You could, of course, have the same thing happen with some other save, I'm just picking the stunlocked barbarian as a vivid example.

That is to say, high level characters develop a glass jaw with respect to the threats they face, which they really didn't have before. The main buff most PCs will have access to and control themselves is Advantage (via Inspiration) but when the probability of success is very low, Advantage has essentially no effect. The buffs available to most PCs actually had an effect.

And I want to reiterate: I'm not saying make high level threats weak. What I'd really like to avoid is the "I can't make this save" situation, which I think is really frustrating for the player and starts necessitating particular kinds of parties. I believe this was explicitly a design goal for 5E to avoid.

The problem is that monster saves go up as well and are tied to proficiency bonuses, like PC saves. Which was probably a mistake. Monster save DCs should increase at a different rate: monster saves need to be higher, but not increase at the same rate as PC saves.

That's an interesting point, though it wasn't what I was thinking of per se. I think WotC just sets DCs arbitrarily. This is OK in the sense that "it works" as long as you don't get past about 18 because the math works out there. However, the very lack of a basic set of underlying math is why they have these kinds of more common that you'd like corner cases.

Admittedly, I am certainly more strongly bothered by math that's not as elegant or clearly thought out as it could be than most people. However, usually when the math isn't worked out right, there's going to be exploits or undesirable side effects to be had.

 

[cmad1977]

I’ve found the high DCs to be a feature, not a bug, of high level play.

Characters at high levels usually have an array of abilities/items to help them. Also... god forbid they be challenged a bit.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

I’ve found the high DCs to be a feature, not a bug, of high level play.

Characters at high levels usually have an array of abilities/items to help them. Also... god forbid they be challenged a bit.

Oh I want those high level characters to fear encounters.

I guess what I'm saying is that there are ways of challenging high level parties without raising DCs to astronomical levels. Bonus and DC creep is bad. It really hurt both 3.X and 4E and was something that WotC tried (not entirely successfully IMO) to avoid in 5E. Motivational psychology suggests that once the probability of success gets lower than about 25% helplessness ("too hard") sets in and about 75% boredom ("too easy") sets in. A well designed game should endeavor to keep probabilities in that range most of the time and only rarely let them drift outside. By and large, 5E does this but there are spots, such as very high DCs in skills and saves, where they violate it, either by letting bonuses get too high or DCs being too low or too high, or both.

An attack that requires multiple saves is good because chances are you can get through to some weak spots, as an example. If you have dragon breath requiring multiple saves for multiple effects, the chances that every party member is affected by something is much higher, whereas what you have with only one very high DC is that strong save types can often avoid the effect entirely while weak saves just take it. In the context of skills, one way of keeping DCs be lower is to require multiple successes to do something such as open a lock or disarm a trap. Of course, this would require reworking the numbers in the game so I'm not pretending it would be a totally off-the-shelf change.

 

[Numidius]

Oh I want those high level characters to fear encounters.

I guess what I'm saying is that there are ways of challenging high level parties without raising DCs to astronomical levels. Bonus and DC creep is bad. It really hurt both 3.X and 4E and was something that WotC tried (not entirely successfully IMO) to avoid in 5E. Motivational psychology suggests that once the probability of success gets lower than about 25% helplessness ("too hard") sets in and about 75% boredom ("too easy") sets in. A well designed game should endeavor to keep probabilities in that range most of the time and only rarely let them drift outside. By and large, 5E does this but there are spots, such as very high DCs in skills and saves, where they violate it, either by letting bonuses get too high or DCs being too low or too high, or both.

An attack that requires multiple saves is good because chances are you can get through to some weak spots, as an example. If you have dragon breath requiring multiple saves for multiple effects, the chances that every party member is affected by something is much higher, whereas what you have with only one very high DC is that strong save types can often avoid the effect entirely while weak saves just take it. In the context of skills, one way of keeping DCs be lower is to require multiple successes to do something such as open a lock or disarm a trap. Of course, this would require reworking the numbers in the game so I'm not pretending it would be a totally off-the-shelf change.

Smells like modularity to me, your solution.
Very interesting.
Keeping numbers low (so basicly the same % chance thru the levels), while increasing, instead, the tiers of power/influence/effect of the pc vs the world and viceversa.
(Like: on an enemy inferior by two/three tiers, you just deal damage/crit; one tier below: roll to hit with automatic advantage, same level: no change; and viceversa)

I think this kind of approach could lead to getting rid of levels and DCs altogether, in favor of a more spread out growth and resolution mechanic, with more emphasis on situational, narrative bonus/malus, extended contests, multiple successes and the like.

Maybe...