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Mearls On D&D's Design Premises/Goals
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<blockquote data-quote="Jay Verkuilen" data-source="post: 7760675" data-attributes="member: 6873517"><p>I don't have a disagreement with the <em>goal</em>; I do think the math is messed up and things could be better. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I think you're mixing two things up here... not sure. I'm trying to keep the latter without the former, although I do think the game starts to break down without using mob rules when you have hordes of lesser foes due to the grind. </p><p></p><p>Essentially I'm arguing that it's a good thing not to let save DCs get too high, although one might want to control bonuses too. The main reason is to maintain the ability to threaten characters without totally locking others out of being able to do things. </p><p></p><p></p><p> </p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>I agree, though, that many DCs are probably a bit too low, while urging people to be careful of very high ones. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>I'm not sure what's particularly contrived about having an effect like dragon breath attack multiple things. There are a number of spells (not enough IMO) that attack multiple saves or do multiple types of damage, e.g., <em>Hunger of Hadar</em>, <em>Ice Storm</em>, or <em>Flame Strike</em>. This is an elegant way of having effects that get around different kinds of defenses in a partial way. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>IMO the fact that the <em>strong save characters make it every time and the others fail every time</em> is <strong>exactly</strong> 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. </p><p></p><p>Challenging the strong save character by raising DCs very high is one reason why DCs have crept up, just as they did in previous versions of the game. It's the same with skills at high levels. Again, don't get me wrong, I want those great wyrms and liches to be tough! Hence having their attacks target multiple defenses. I don't see that being particularly contrived. It's actually playing to the features of the system of being pretty resilient against two attack types and relatively weaker against others and as I said previously there are a number of spells that use this; it's an underutilized approach. A number of spells in the book could be written this way, too, such as <em>Prismatic Spray</em>. </p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jay Verkuilen, post: 7760675, member: 6873517"] I don't have a disagreement with the [I]goal[/I]; I do think the math is messed up and things could be better. I think you're mixing two things up here... not sure. I'm trying to keep the latter without the former, although I do think the game starts to break down without using mob rules when you have hordes of lesser foes due to the grind. Essentially I'm arguing that it's a good thing not to let save DCs get too high, although one might want to control bonuses too. The main reason is to maintain the ability to threaten characters without totally locking others out of being able to do things. 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. 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. I'm not sure what's particularly contrived about having an effect like dragon breath attack multiple things. There are a number of spells (not enough IMO) that attack multiple saves or do multiple types of damage, e.g., [I]Hunger of Hadar[/I], [I]Ice Storm[/I], or [I]Flame Strike[/I]. This is an elegant way of having effects that get around different kinds of defenses in a partial way. IMO the fact that the [I]strong save characters make it every time and the others fail every time[/I] is [B]exactly[/B] 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. Challenging the strong save character by raising DCs very high is one reason why DCs have crept up, just as they did in previous versions of the game. It's the same with skills at high levels. Again, don't get me wrong, I want those great wyrms and liches to be tough! Hence having their attacks target multiple defenses. I don't see that being particularly contrived. It's actually playing to the features of the system of being pretty resilient against two attack types and relatively weaker against others and as I said previously there are a number of spells that use this; it's an underutilized approach. A number of spells in the book could be written this way, too, such as [I]Prismatic Spray[/I]. 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. [/QUOTE]
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