D&D 5E Mike Mearls' AMA Summary

[MechaTarrasque]

I could go for the mark-as-smite idea.

I am really surprised that hasn't shown up in a ranger subclass yet.

I am not sure I would be as good with that idea for druids (an ability that eats a spell slot to give your wolf form added cold damage).

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Interested in the "issue" with way of the shadows/ way of the element being an "artifact of two designers" with different expectations. It explains so much!

I found the answer to multiclassing interesting. It explains the lack of front loading at levels 1-3 (which is good).

"Never a big fan of grappling in D&D as a core concept to be honest." YES! Truer words have rarely been spoken...
...disagree about the warlock class design; for me, that makes it interesting (mix and match).

I missed the monk thing. What did he actually say?

The MC answer explains much of what I dislike about 5e class design. IMO, back loaded class design is strictly inferior to front loaded design. The core competencies of the class should all come online by level 4 at the very, very, latest. The rest should be "Mastery" concepts, improvements on the core stuff, etc.

I really hope Mike didn't work directly on the grappling rules, if that's the case. They still don't work great, and if he worked on it, I'm perfectly willing to blame the fact that a person who doesn't like the concept worked on realizing it in this edition.

Agree on warlocks. I'm glad he won't be able to change that short of a new edition. Also, some of his comments make me really, really, hope that if a 6e comes around, the playtest and feedback system remains in place, because I do not want him to have his way on a lot of this.

Shouldn't the obvious solution then be to get rid of the redundant nature cleric rather than killing the druid and stealing their stuff?

And yet the druids in Diablo and WoW are also essentially "full casters" with summons and nature spells. So it seems that the pop-culture idea of the druid still acknowledges them as powerful casters and not just shapeshifters with a smattering of spells.

Well, no, because there is absolutely nothing wrong with having both in the game. A Nature Cleric is just a cleric of a nature god, and is still very much a cleric. The Druid is it's own thing, and would be even if you replace Wild Shape with nature rituals, full talking to plants and animals, and upgraded nature themed summoning.
But it doens't need to have as much casting as it has to do the Druid things.

Same with the druid as a "nature caster." Clerics of the nature domain handle that perfectly well. Let the Druid shine!

How so? The nature cleric gets a handful of druid spells, and that is it. That's not a nature caster, that is just a priest of a nature-themed god. If there were a Nature school of magic, a Nature Wizard might do Nature Caster ok, but in 5e right now the only class that actually has all the Nature Caster spells is the Druid. If you try to expand the Nature Cleric to actually cover the concept, that domain will have far more spells than other domains, and it will still have a bunch of Cleric baggage that doesn't fit the concept. And their team mates will be confused when it doesn't have Mass Cure Wounds because they filled their prepared spells with actual nature spells.

Or make it a "full caster" in the same way as the Warlock (with a different way to progress).

I agree with the idea of warlock style casting for druids. Again, though, I'd take some of the cleric spells away from it, and put in more druid specific spells, and make a lot of them ritual spells. Possibly also give the Druid some rituals that aren't even spell options at all, in the fform of class features. The Druid should be very magical, and should be able to all out focus on shapeshifter if the player wants.

Iit should also be able to summon like crazy, command the land (whether it's through spells or not is irrelevant), heal, especially heal conditions and boost natural healing, speak with animals, plants, and even stones and such, without needing spells. The Druid should just speak their"language" as if itt were a normal language, andd should be the only class that can do so.

Leave the existing spells for that sort of thing as they are, with whatever limitations they have, but the Druid should be able to just walk up to a squirell and ask it for directions, and have a chat with the tree the squirrel is on, and ask the hawk to forgo eating the squirrel for right now and scout for her, please, just like the bard can do with people.

And none of that needs to involve full casting, but it certainly is easier to design using at least a warlock casting basis. It needs to have some significant level of casting.

Because the Druid also definitely needs to be able to call lighting, conjure stuff, etc, and there are already spells for so much of it that there is just no reason to not use spells to give those abilities to the druid.

I agree that the fighter is less interesting than 4e.

The 5e Fighter is less interesting than what's in the bottom of my dirty clothes basket right now. The 5e Fighter may be less interesting than the dnd Fighter has ever been, depending on how you look at the 3.5 "this is a class made up of feats" Fighter. The 5e fighter is the least interesting, engaging, worthwhile part of 5e. Any character type the Fighter wants to try to be can just as easily be made elsewhere, and it will have actually interesting abilities.

I'd rather have a 3.5 Paladin at my table than a 5e Fighter.

 

[Staffan]

Ranger knows all the rangers spells?

If I were to do a minor re-design of the ranger, I would:

* Slightly expand their spell list with some more niche spells.
* Make them prepared casters.
* Have some of the sub-classes give bonus spells like the paladin oaths.

This would put them in a position where they would be able to adapt to different circumstances by swapping out prepared spells, and thus reward them for scouting an area before going into a dangerous situation. Need to go somewhere with sheer cliffs or otherwise vertically problematic terrain? Prep spider climb. Going into a swamp known for its poisonous snakes? Protection from poison. Looking for a particular thing? Locate object. Need to be extra sneaky? Pass without trace.

I'd probably also make hunter's mark a class feature instead of a spell (or maybe that could be a higher-level ability, like the paladin's Improved Smite) and remove most "special attack spells" (e.g. hail of thorns or ensnaring strike) from their core spell list and put them on one of the sub-classes' bonus list. This would change their feel from being a combat-caster to someone using mystic techniques to solve specific problems.

 

[Aldarc]

But the Druid's lack of popularity may very well be part of the design. Monks, for example, are what they are. With the exception of the Elements monk, most people think that the 5e monk is well-designed. Most people also agree that the Bard and Cleric are well designed. Maybe too well-designed in the case of the Bard.

But that's the point though, isn't it? These classes are well-designed in 5E. The 5E druid can be poorly designed without the solution being to gut and kill the druid concept. Instead, the more sensible approach would be to look at the druid and say, "Okay, perhaps we did something wrong with how we went about designing it (e.g. core chassis, subclasses, wild shape, etc.) and maybe there is a simpler set of fixes we can do that still preserves the druid." If there is a problem, for example, with how Wild Shape is designed, then that should be addressed before turning the druid into a full-blown shapeshifter-centric class with reduced spellcasting.

I COMPLETELY AGREE! Let us subsume the Paladin into the Fighter ... and then kill the Paladin off. See, when you talk enough, you always find areas of agreement.

And the ranger? If not, then it's again the problem of consistency.

But that's just, your opinion, man. Don't take it personally that I disagree with you, and agree with Mearls. There are people that HATE the sorcerer as designed, as others that like it. That's fine. Life goes on.

Fair enough! You like the Druid as is. I would prefer that the Druid as nature-caster gets put into the Cleric Domain (and, perhaps, more work gets done for domains). And that the Druid isn't just the old "Cleric, but with nature-y spells, and weird weapons and armor" that we saw in 1e. Different strokes, different folks.

Okay, but don't act surprised when there is push back against your opinion or Mearls's. That said, I would not say that I am content with the druid "as is," as I do think that there were critical problems with the design of the 5E druid. My contention is that I do not agree with the proposed "solution" or design alternative that Mearls has put forth, as I regard it as shifting the problem (no pun intended) of the 5E druid and not actually addressing them.

 

[Pauper]

Curious about the degree of Ranger/Druid commentary in this thread. I think in retrospect, the Druid and Ranger could have encapsulated different mechanical foci, and thus avoided the problems we got in the 5e PH.

Speciifcally, the Druid should have been the 'pet class' and the Ranger the 'solo class'.

This gives Druids three obvious paths -- the shapeshifting druid where the druid herself is the focus of the class's combat effectiveness, the beast-companion druid where the druid spends her resources making her companion as effective as any other party member (but doesn't contribute herself), and the hybrid class where the druid and the companion combined are as effective as a single other party member, or perhaps slightly less with the bonus of having a broader spell list than the other two subclasses (via a bonus spell list to incorporate things like healing magic).

Rangers, meanwhile, would be focused on weapon combat (the archery or two-weapon ranger we have, which people seem to like) with little to no spell ability, a spell-focused ranger with little to no weapon ability (which would probably look a lot like the current Circle of the Land Druid), and a hybrid which blends some of the weapon capability of the first subclass with some of the spell potency and flexibility of the second subclass.

Instead of having two classes where you have to balance the effectiveness of the character alone versus the effectiveness of the character with a beast gimmick, you'd put all the beast gimmicks in the same bucket (making them easier to balance with one another, because you're comparing apples to apples, and conversely freeing you up to do more interesting things with the beast gimmicks, because you no longer have to worry about broken synergies in multiclassing). I think that structure is more sound as a basis for building and expanding those character tropes.

--
Pauper

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[doctorbadwolf]

If I were to do a minor re-design of the ranger, I would:

* Slightly expand their spell list with some more niche spells.
* Make them prepared casters.
* Have some of the sub-classes give bonus spells like the paladin oaths.

I'd probably also make hunter's mark a class feature instead of a spell (or maybe that could be a higher-level ability, like the paladin's Improved Smite) and remove most "special attack spells" (e.g. hail of thorns or ensnaring strike) from their core spell list and put them on one of the sub-classes' bonus list. This would change their feel from being a combat-caster to someone using mystic techniques to solve specific problems.

I'd do 1 and 2, certainly. The revised ranger already does 3. I'd go the opposite way on Hunter's Mark. Maybe even get rid of it entirely, if not for the secondary benefits. Maybe change it from a damage boost to something else, like ignore resistence when attacking that creature, or advantage to ability checks and saves involving that creature. +1d6 damage is the most boring possible thing a spell could do. Change it to something like I just described, and I'd be fine with making it a class feature, or leaving it as a spell.

Instead, I'd expand the list of spells like Hail of Thorns to include some include some melee options, and different kinds of damage and secondary effects, feeling free to steal ideas from the 4e Seeker and Warden class powers.

I would also delete Smite and Improved Smite from the Paladin, and give it more Smite spells, because again, Smite is one of the most boring things in the game.

I also don't see the point of such abilities when you can cast the same spell over and over again for as long as you have spell slots, you have spells that add damage to your attack, and the smite feature eats you spell slots. Improved Smite at least does something, but Smite just...gives you a boring spell that isn't called a spell. Why would I ever choose that over Wrathful Smite?

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Instead of having two classes where you have to balance the effectiveness of the character alone versus the effectiveness of the character with a beast gimmick, you'd put all the beast gimmicks in the same bucket (making them easier to balance with one another, because you're comparing apples to apples, and conversely freeing you up to do more interesting things with the beast gimmicks, because you no longer have to worry about broken synergies in multiclassing). I think that structure is more sound as a basis for building and expanding those character tropes.

--
Pauper

I would 100% not even want that called a Ranger.

What core class chassis would allow that Ranger, anyway? Full on weapon guy with little to no magic in one sublcass, and full caster with no weapon stuff in another? The class would be 95% subclass!

Add to that, the Ranger shouldn't be choosing between utility magic and fighting, nor should it have to multiclass druid to have a companion. It's part of the class identity.

Conceptually, the two classes are right as they are. The revised ranger is also mechanically really good as it is. The ranger needs no further work in 5e, IMO. Even my thoughts in my last post are just ideas on if I were rebuilding the class from the start without going too far from how the 5e ranger works, and even then it's just "as it is, but with more unique spells"

 

[doctorbadwolf]

1.
What was the design reason for having Way of the Shadow spells be more ki efficient than the Way of the element spells?

It's probably an artifact of two designers working from slightly different expectations than anything else, or the way of shadow having a stronger, more easily grokked concept (ninja) to draw upon.

2.
Agreed that I prefer frontloading. However, you can't have frontloading AND easy multiclassing.

3.
I never liked grappling, so ...

4.
Yep.

1. Thanks. That explains a lot. I'd love to see a redesign of the elements monk by someone who easily groks the concept and has the design direction of "make it more like the shadow monk", in that case. Although honestly, I think it works fine if you reduce the ki cost by 1 (minimum 1), and give it either the wu jen disciplines, disciplines based closely on them, or more spells from Elemental Evil, including the elemental cantrips. And more known disciplines.

2. Right. I'd rather have less full multiclassing. 4e MC would have been excellent, if it didn't require extra feats to get the other class' powers, for instance. MC feats the size of 5e feats would work great.

3. And that's fine, it just means you shouldn't have a hand in the design of grappling, if it can be avoided. Or the Paladin, Gnome, rapier, and I should probably be kept away from the Cleric. I really don't like that class, even as a concept. Figthers and Wizards I have ideas for, because I appreciate their place in the game and the fiction, but Clerics I just do not like at all. So don't let me design Cleric stuff!

4. Well at least we agree on the Warlock! I mean, you'd still hate the warlock I'm going to play next time I get to play, but that has nothing to do with the Warlock. Out of curiosity, what do you think of the Avenger concept? My wife is playing a Vengeance Paladin/Hexblade as an Avenger-type character, and it's really fun. I wonder if your Paladin hatred is like my Cleric hatred, where I can't even imagine using Cleric mechanics to build a non-cleric using reflavoring, because I dislike the Cleric so much.

I built a Priest in a game last year, and used a Bard, because I just couldn't even read through the cleric to build one without rolling my eyes.