D&D 5E Mike Mearls' AMA Summary

[Mercule]

The Ranger is Batman?

I am confused. I feel like I'm reading one of those superhero fight arguments. "Sure, Batman would lose to that other Superhero straight up, but give him time to prepare ..."

No, silly.... Batman is obviously a Wizard. Everyone knows that Wizards are squishy, if you can surprise them, but an appropriately prepared Wizard is nigh-unbeatable.

 

[MichaelSomething]

My problem with this idea is that you can't cast spells in Wild Shape -- so you either have to make the ability a 'burn a spell slot to do this' thing like healing in Wild Shape, or you have to have the druid stay in non-animal form for one or more rounds to 'buff up' before actually getting to Wild Shape.

(I suppose a third option would be to specifically design the spells to have all-day durations, so the druid expends them at the start of the day and gets their benefit all day long, but that creates other issues, such as allowing more powerful buff spells but limiting them by use of the Concentration mechanic. Just saying that this issue is not necessarily a simple one, with the current design of the class. If the class had been solely designed as a shapeshifting class, there would be fewer of these kinds of issues, but it's too late to close the gate to the animal pen now.)

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Pauper

The rules used to implement the idea aren't really an issue to me. Once you figure out what you want to do, you can just make/adjust the rules to do it. I could detail this whole thing out but I honestly don't want to spend the time.

 

[Hussar]

That might be an artifact of playing Adventurers League versus home-brew -- AL games seem to always have some proportion of power-gamers among the tables (at least, in my experience -- more anecdotal evidence coming up!), while home-games tend to either be all power-gamers or very few if any, since it's easier to restrict access to only those players you want at the table.

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Pauper

What has power gaming got to do with it? Good grief, they're playing rangers. People didn't play the beast master ranger because the PHB BMR was poorly written and no one was interested. We've got one now because the UA version has caught someone's interest.

This is not a power gaming issue.

 

[Eubani]

What has power gaming got to do with it? Good grief, they're playing rangers. People didn't play the beast master ranger because the PHB BMR was poorly written and no one was interested. We've got one now because the UA version has caught someone's interest.

This is not a power gaming issue.

AL adventures tend to also focus more on combat so people build towards that. This is not a player issue but adventure design/format issue.

 

[Pauper]

What has power gaming got to do with it? ... Power gamers didn't play the beast master ranger because the PHB BMR was poorly written and no one was interested.

There, fixed that for you.

The only people I've ever heard who dislike the beast master ranger's design are power gamers.

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Pauper

 

[Pauper]

AL adventures tend to also focus more on combat so people build towards that.

True.

This is not a player issue but adventure design/format issue.

Not as true -- AL has published adventures that try to bend the mold of 'combat first, story second', and they tend to be polarizing. People who like story find them the most entertaining modules they've played in AL, but combat monsters find them dull, because they don't get to turn into a bear and hit things.

You could argue that it's a 'chicken and egg' thing, but Season One was (IMO) a much more story-focused season, and the campaign has moved away from that toward set-piece encounters largely as a way of satisfying the installed base. I'd even argue that some of the predilection toward set-piece encounters (edit: among the player-base; as noted, the campaign tried, at the start, to de-emphasize combat in favor of story) was inherited from the Living Forgotten Realms campaign and the structure of 4th edition adventure design. As the campaign has allowed third parties to write their own AL content for conventions, this trend has only accelerated (check out any of the non-DDEX/DDAL AL modules on the DM's Guild to confirm this).

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Pauper

 

[doctorbadwolf]

His thoughts on 4e always baffle me.

The DM pipeline was closed? Or the new player to DM pipeline was closed? Either way, false. 100% false.

I haven't seen so many players try out DMing in any other game, much less edition of DnD. As fairly easy as 5e is, I've seen 4e DMs stop DMing in 5e because they don't want the hassle or figuring out CR, especially since CR will never actually be accurate. And all the work they have to do to make things work beyond that. I've got a player who won't dm 5e, but loved DMing 4e, and the main thing for him is magic items, and improvising in a balanced way, both of which he felt he had more freedom with in 4e.

I can grok most complaints about 4e, but it definately was the most new DM friendly ttrpg I've ever played.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

My problem with this idea is that you can't cast spells in Wild Shape -- so you either have to make the ability a 'burn a spell slot to do this' thing like healing in Wild Shape, or you have to have the druid stay in non-animal form for one or more rounds to 'buff up' before actually getting to Wild Shape.

(I suppose a third option would be to specifically design the spells to have all-day durations, so the druid expends them at the start of the day and gets their benefit all day long, but that creates other issues, such as allowing more powerful buff spells but limiting them by use of the Concentration mechanic. Just saying that this issue is not necessarily a simple one, with the current design of the class. If the class had been solely designed as a shapeshifting class, there would be fewer of these kinds of issues, but it's too late to close the gate to the animal pen now.)

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Pauper

What? No, you just give them the ability to cast those specific spells while in animal form.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

There, fixed that for you.

The only people I've ever heard who dislike the beast master ranger's design are power gamers.

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Pauper

Nope. Your table isn't the general norm.

The BM ranger was badly written in the phb, and now it works fine. Nothing at all to do with power gaming.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*