Mearls: The core of D&D

[TerraDave]

@ Axe


Everything? Really? On that list? They all actually are kinda the same, at least with me and my mostly pre 3E players. (we even had a good alingment argument a few sessions back). Maybe the last three, kinda.

Do you want to give examples?

EDIT: and who said same. The whole point of these articles is differences. But he may be saying it is still an axe.

EDIT EDIT: I mean, besides me...mearls...still an axe

 

[Raven Crowking]

Sure. But let's keep in mind my position here. I'm not arguing that a single combat system can't do them welll; in fact, my position requires that D&D do all three well enough.

Fair enough. I obviously differ somewhat, as I have gone out of my way to expand upon that system to make it do more things.....but the core is certainly exactly what D&D has done since Day 1.

I'm reading REH at the moment, much of it for the first time. (I got the collected reprints of Howard's Conan for Father's Day. Yay, kids!)

Enjoy them!

If you can find The Best of Robert E. Howard, Vols 1 & 2, the collected Solomon Kanes, or the collected historical adventures (Sword Woman), I'd buy them next. Or the collected Kull, Bran Mak Morn, or El Borak. Or the horror stories.

Really, I won't rest until I've collected them all!

I don't think D&D does a particularly good job of it, because we need various kludges to handle Tolkien: Bard killing Smaug with one arrow, an orc-captain "killing" Frodo with one spear thrust, until Frodo reveals his mithril mail, Legolas killing a fell beast in the dark with one arrow, Boromir fighting on while mortally wounded with countless arrows, Merry and Eowyn killing the Witch-King with two blows, etc.

For Howard, we need a system where Conan dispatches plenty of trained soldiers in a red haze, but he knows he can't face down a handful of archers, so he gives up, and where one good blow from behind knocks him out.

In my opinion, hit points do work as plot-protection points, which is great for PCs, but many tough opponents shouldn't necessarily have a predictable buffer of toughness -- and many weak PCs should have plenty of plot-protection. If anything, the insignificant hobbits should have more plot-protection points than their protectors, Gimli and Legolas, or their ill-starred foes, like the Witch-King.

Nice list. My hit-point based system can handle:

* Bard killing Smaug with one arrow -- Get the Drop; Magical Arrow
* an orc-captain "killing" Frodo with one spear thrust, until Frodo reveals his mithril mail -- Shake it Off, Armour as DR
* Legolas killing a fell beast in the dark with one arrow (Are we sure it died? Did we see the body?) -- Low-light vision, critical hit, all ranks to damage, falling damage
* Boromir fighting on while mortally wounded with countless arrows -- class feature (Fighter, Second Wind I, gained at 6th level)
* Merry and Eowyn killing the Witch-King with two blows -- Bane weapon for Merry; Intimidate to either increase damage or to Get the Drop for Eowyn; special circumstance modifier for prophesy (?), possibly a bonus to Eowyn's Intimidate.
* Conan dispatches plenty of trained soldiers in a red haze, but he knows he can't face down a handful of archers, so he gives up -- Class ability (Barbarian Rage at 1st level and Berseker Rage at 3rd level); using these abilities costs hit point damage, weakening him for the archers; Get the Drop mechanic.
* and where one good blow from behind knocks him out -- Sapping mechanic; attrition + damage, modified by Shake it Off.

My system considers, as does D&D, damage in two types: hit point damage and special effects. Special effects occur when hit points are inappropriate ("I throw sand in his eyes"), but without hit points, an all special effect system falls down under its own weight.

IMHO and IME. YMMV.

Unlike the term "hit points", which is commonly used in medical schools.

Or "hit dice", which has been used in zoological classification since the days of Linneaus.

When everything on that list has been re-defined and re-valued, what common ground really remains?

You know, I have this axe which has been in the family since 1750. Sure, its on its 4th head and 6th handle, but you know, its the same pre-American Revolution axe, right? According to Mearls, it is.

Identity does not need to follow conservation laws. That said, I agree that there is only so much change that can occur before I am unwilling to accept that identity itself has not changed.

I don't have any problem with 4e being D&D; I fully understand why some might reject that identity, and others embrace it. I've pulled my pony out of that particular show, in favour of something that is D&Dish.

I'm wondering what motivates a lead designer to write an article like that, actually.

5e.

I expect an announcement no later than next year's GenCon.

(But I could be wrong; Crom knows it wouldn't be the first time, nor the last.)



RC

 

[ShadowDenizen]

I'm wondering what motivates a lead designer to write an article like that, actually.

I'm a bit befuddled by Mearls’ article, actually. This sounds like something that R&D should have discussed BEFORE 4E came out, not as a postscript to it 3 years later.

So, in this article he lists the “Core Needs” for D+D, that have remained consistent, and promote unity and compatibility for the brand. And yet 4E has “reenvisioned” these terms so that they no longer bear any resemblance to his list.

Alignment (Law v. Chaos, Good v. Evil) as a personal ethos and a force in the universe.

Umm, how is this portrayed in 4E? In fact, isn’t it noted that most are “Unaligned”, and that only “exceptional” people have taken a stand on the good;/evil axis?

Magic items such as +1 swords as a desirable form of treasure.

Except, (IMHO) magic items have lost their sense of wonder in 4E, being essentially an extended version of a players powers'.

Saving throws as a mechanic for evading danger.

Except saving throws are rendered virtually meaningless in 4E, relegated to a simple die roll to avoid ongoing damage.

“Fire-and-forget” magic, with spellcasters expending a spell when casting it.

And the biggest bone of contention amongst fans…

(As an aside, I shuold express that I'm not the biggest fan of Mearls' pre-4E work, either. I find "The Three Faces of Evil" [from the Age of Worms AP] to be quite unspectacular, and far too much of a meat-grinder for my tastes. One of the worst 3.x adventures in "Dungeon Magazine", IMO.)

 

[billd91]

I'm a bit befuddled by Mearls’ article, actually. This sounds like something that R&D should have discussed BEFORE 4E came out, not as a postscript to it 3 years later.

Maybe they did. We aren't exactly privy to their internal discussions. Of course internal discussions being what they are, particularly when dealing with NDAs that prevent general outside discussion, the potential for an echo chamber to develop and be diverted is significant.

 

[MrMyth]

On that point, I think Mearls may need to consider that it's about as much what he leaves out of the recipe, as what he puts into it.

It's a good point, that the presence of these elements doesn't 'override' all else in order to ensure a game is D&D. But, again, that isn't really what Mearls is looking at.

Mearls never says, "Anything with these elements is D&D". He is explicitly trying to find elements that, if they are missing, make a game feel less like D&D, and/or elements that, when they are present in other games, make you think of D&D.

Likewise, identifying the core components of a "universal D&D" isn't enough. Consider what may un-D&D a game to a large segment of players, such as through:

1) Disassociated mechanics like healing surges that break simulation and suspension of disbelief. I gather it is rumoured that healing surges are Mearls' favorite 4E rule, so may be in for inevitable disappointment there.

The problem is, at this point we're getting into much more subjective areas. For me, Healing Surges work fine... because they build on the already simulation-breaking coincept of hitpoints, which took me years to come to terms with. Those elements have always been abstracted (I hate the term 'disassociated', which has largely lost any real meaning in these discussions).

I think it is also an area where many of the fundamental objections are not what is actually put forward. Healing Surges as a concept is really just a new way of formatting hitpoints. Connecting them to magical healing might jar some folks because it is a new method, but is certainly not anti-simulationism. Instead, I think the real objection is the fact that all healing surges are restored each day - characters 'healing to full' with one night's rest.

And that might be an issue worth debating - but it also isn't tied to healing surges at all. It would be just as jarring, for the same folks, if you healed to full in 2nd Edition, without only hitpoints in play.

2) Including in the core mundane yet fantastic equipment like gluebags, absurd dual weapons and absurdly effective spiked chains that harm D&D's ability to model a pseudomedieval setting. Save it for the splatbooks, IMO.

3) Quirky and specific choice of core races and classes in the core PHB, and the resulting specific nature of the worlds they suggest, as I've already talked about.

This, again, is getting back to the argument about 'core elements'. D&D isn't, at its heart, about any one specific world. If it was, campaign settings just wouldn't exist. There may be a specific default setting you prefer - such as low fantasy - but there is a big difference between claiming it as a preference, and insisting everyone else who likes a different setting simply isn't playing D&D.

I like Hackmaster, but Hackmaster isn't an "everyman fantasy" game which is a good basis to build worlds on in the same way D&D used to be. Not every world I want to make has these specific elements that Hackmaster pushes. 4E has made that same mistake, IMO - in attempting to stay current with fantasy fashion, they've traded in the game's utility as a fantasy toolkit. If Mearls is casting around for ideas as to supplements for 5E, maybe add a "High Fantasy Handbook" and a "Dark Fantasy Handbook" for those who want to take the game in different directions. That way, the dragonborn spiked chain wielders and gluebags can sit in the high fantasy book, and whatever low magic people want can sit in the other.

I'm not sure it really counts as undermining the 'fantasy toolkit' just because the default has more high fantasy elements - after all, you can always take them out and run a low fantasy campaign, just as you can do the reverse in a game that starts from a low fantasy default.

Still, I do get your point about presenting both as options. And, apparently, so does WotC - have you checked out Essentials? We've got two books of player's options. Book #1 gives us humans, dwarves and elves, along with the cleric, fighter, thief and wizard. Book #2 gives us tieflings, dragonborn, and drow, and the warlock, druid, ranger and paladin.

One for the classics, one for the more fantastic elements, making it relatively easy for a DM to tell players to only go with one or the other. Though I don't think the spiked chain got specifically targeted as 'high fantasy' for that purpose... and, honestly, I can't find it any more absurd myself than many of the other weapons D&D has seen over the years.

One of the reason why I think some of the 'flavor elements' can't really define D&D - they are far too tied to personal preference.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Unlike the term "hit points", which is commonly used in medical schools.

Or "hit dice", which has been used in zoological classification since the days of Linneaus.

Or "disassociated" which doesn't mean what its adherents seem to want it to.

 

[TerraDave]

SNIP...
So, in this article he lists the “Core Needs” for D+D, that have remained consistent, and promote unity and compatibility for the brand. And yet 4E has “reenvisioned” these terms so that they no longer bear any resemblance to his list.



Alignment Umm, how is this portrayed in 4E? In fact, isn’t it noted that most are “Unaligned”, and that only “exceptional” people have taken a stand on the good;/evil axis?



+1 sword as valuable treasureExcept, (IMHO) magic items have lost their sense of wonder in 4E, being essentially an extended version of a players powers'.



save Except saving throws are rendered virtually meaningless in 4E, relegated to a simple die roll to avoid ongoing damage.



fire and forget magic And the biggest bone of contention amongst fans…

SNIP

Alignment: Unaligned makes it easier for charecters to play they always did...but plenty of charecters still have alignment, and fighting evil is still very much part of the game, if you want it to be. Still, that point was seen over in the 4E forum as a concesion that maybe they had gone too far.

Treasure: In terms of his actual point...a +1 sword is still just that, and magic items are very much valuable treasure (4E is actually pretty stingy otherwise). You could argue that items lost there wonder some time ago. In 4E there has also been a big push to give DMs control over magic items again (with rule changes last year) and make them feel less like a comodity. But sure, its an issue. A D&D one.

saves Have been split into defenses and the one save mechanic, but actually making your save can still be a big deal.

fire and forget magic 4E gives it to everyone! And on this point, never the twain shall meet...though WotC has tried with their "essentials" classes.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Clearly there can be feedback, where setting informs mechanics, and mechanics informs setting, but when one of these mechanisms is much stronger than the other what counts as "D&D" can rapidly diverge depending on beholder. These feedback mechanisms might work in surprising ways. For example, I think it is likely that most D&D players identify most strongly with their first campaign as the image of D&D...

I agree with down to that point, but disagree about the likely consequences from mechanics or settings. I think D&D players might identify strongly with the emergent mix of mechanics and settings as it happen to emerge at those early tables.

That doesn't mean that we can't talk about the mechanics and settings separately, or tease them out, or even that said players can't separate those impressions from later ones. It just means it is complicated.

 

[Umbran]

And yet 4E has “reenvisioned” these terms so that they no longer bear any resemblance to his list.

That seems a drastic overstatement to me.

In such discussions, we often quickly slip to expressive, but hyperbolic, statements that tend to polarize the discussion. Having said them, we tend to have to defend them, and that drives our positions to ever greater extremes. A wedge gets driven between sides, so that no common ground can be found.

We might all want to reconsider use of absolutes like this, and whether they really serve our cases and causes well.

 

[mmadsen]

IME, the elements of D&D that are the biggest impediment to using D&D to emulate different genres are:

1. Hitpoints, Healing, and the need for Clerics as healers.

There are multiple subtle issues that intersect here.

First, hit points don't break suspension of disbelief too badly in the "sweet spot" around, say, fourth level, but they become jarring as hit dice increase -- unless all the low-damage enemies drift away to be replaced by higher-damage enemies, in which case we've got a bit of a Red Queen situation, where we're ramping up damage to match increasing hit points, which seems pointless.

So we get into the canonical litany of complaints against hit points: Wait, this guy can take nine sword strokes that get past his armor? Well, they're just glancing blows, because he almost dodges them. Really? So he should feel better after a few days? Um, no. It'll take him months to heal. So we need a cure light wounds spell to cure all those light wounds? Um, no. It'll take eight or nine cure light wounds spells to cure him. Etc.

That's why we've moved further and further away from hit points representing physical wounds in recent editions of the game. But a slowly ablating counter needs to be replenished if not-really-hurt characters are going to seem not-really-hurt for their next fight, whether that comes via magical healing or morale-boosting speeches. A combat system where not-really-hurt characters simply weren't really hurt wouldn't rely on that. (It might have other flaws, of course.)

Anyway, this need for healing, in previous editions, combined with the oddball notion of a Cleric, which is not a classic archetype. If Gygax hadn't created the armored, mace-wielding, quasi-Christian priest, the whole thing might have worked out better. The wizard -- that is, the guy with a pointy hat, long beard, and staff -- could have applied healing magic, or the ranger or the elf could have applied healing herbs, or the warm-hearted girl in the party could have tended to the wounded with her magic healing elixir, or whatever. It still would have made Conan or Robin Hood hard to play, but it wouldn't've shoved a strange archetype into the setting.

2. The reliance on equipment to improve armor class.

I can't count how many characters had magical studded leather in our old games, so that they'd have a decent armor class but still look like Robin Hood or Captain Blood...

3. The dramatic increases in PC power inherent in the leveling system.

I used to think it was the power-level that was a problem, but now I think it's more an issue of how that power manifests itself. For instance, I wouldn't have any trouble with high-level characters wielding political power or leading armies. I wouldn't mind the greatest samurai in the land being able to cut down merely great warriors with a single stroke, or the greatest elf archer routinely shooting enemies through their eye-slits. I wouldn't mind the master of offencing and defencing being untouchable with blade. So, it's not just their incredible competence that strains credibility.