D&D 5E (2024) Mike Mearls explains why your boss monsters die too easily

[Parmandur]

rules changes did prove fruitful, after the prior edition had fizzled out they reliably resulted in large sales until they too invariably declined and fizzled out.

The only difference is that 5e has not fizzled out (yet?), once it does I expect drastic changes, until then they would be stupid to have them

We are talking about a company that has Monopoly as one of their basic moneymakers.

They do update the rules from time to time, but it remains Monopoly even when they release a fresh box with new art.

 

[Minigiant]

Would all that testing result in a game that would make WotC even more money, enough to compensate for the time lost to development? Becsuse if not there's no way they would do it. And they would have to be pretty sure it would increase profits, because they've been shown to be pretty risk-averse IMO. And said profit increases wouldn't happen in the short term even if they happened at all, which means the whole thing is IMO a no-go.

The issue is that until about 2020 the prevailing wisdom was "I don't need no more stinking rules I know how to run this game".

So playtesting after a certain stage never got to heavily change anything nor be a monetary benefit unless it is cancelled a very very very poorly received design aspect.

 

[GobHag]

If the goblins are in a castle, with lots of arrows, cauldrons of boiling oil, etc, then they might pose a serious threat, but CR does not take tactical situations into account any more than it does player skill.

Or the goblins in a field might run away and alert the goblin army.

Or maybe the goblins surrender, and offer th lead the party to a great treasure. Maybe they are telling the truth or maybe they lead them into a trap.

D&D has too many options to reduce it to a single number.

I did say 'on a barren field' as the baseline assumption.

1. You could have certain traps or hazards to have their own CR rating, but with a good Challenge Level system a GM can relatively understand how much that challenge adds to this encounter.

2. It works just fine with the added goal of 'If you don't kill this easy fight fast enough, you'll have to fight a Deadly fight'. So while budgeted as an easy fight, it rewards as if it's a medium fight.

3. Then it's just an easy fight that leads to another situation or rewards larger than normal

 

[mamba]

We are talking about a company that has Monopoly as one of their basic moneymakers.

because it keeps making money…

When 3e stopped doing that we got 4e, when that stopped we got 5e. In neither case did we get a minimal update the way Monopoly does.

They will not continue to churn out 5e stuff when its sales drop to 10-20% of whatever they are now (and 2024 falls into the ‘5e stuff’ category)

 

[GobHag]

And I do not think this is a viable or sensible way to do things in a tabletop RPG. Yes, a lot of computer games work like this. But do you know what happens in WoW when the party gets killed in a fight? They respawn at the nearest graveyard and get to try again. But this really cannot happen in an RPG. In WoW the full resource fights can be scaled to be challenging, as you can just try them many times until you succeed. In a RPG, this is not the case, so in full resource approach either leads to insanely deadly game, or to a game where the fights really do not matter as the PCs just win and any resource costs do not matter as there is no attrition.

Seems like people already do this anyway.

PF2 is the former--sorta--with only the Casters really having much attrition* while other classes have 'opt-in' attrition from their feats or only a smallish part of their power budget, and it's pretty liked. Here we see that in absence of low-threat encounter 'draining' resourcs, mid to low fights end up becoming just a simple pacing mechanism.

* Death to vancian. **
**A personal opinion. However, it is a big complain by the playerbase that despite casters being good balance-wise, their need to stay on the game on when and where to use their flashy spells is a major stress for all but the most

 

[Bae'zel]

I'm warming up to the idea of bosses with "stages". Like in video games?

Any guidance on doing that sort of thing?

Eg; One solo boss has 3 stat blocks, one after the other. When the PCs defeat one, the next stat block "activates" and so on.

Seems like a good idea to me and could solve some issues, especially if the environment changes a bit too (again, think of epic video games).

 

[GobHag]

I'm warming up to the idea of bosses with "stages". Like in video games?

Any guidance on doing that sort of thing?

Eg; One solo boss has 3 stat blocks, one after the other. When the PCs defeat one, the next stat block "activates" and so on.

Seems like a good idea to me and could solve some issues, especially if the environment changes a bit too (again, think of epic video games).

More or less the same as having a reinforcement. Go a bit meta though, once a health threshould is reach either just end the round immediately or make the boss invincible but unacting so that the players have a turn to patch themselves up or re-apply buffs/

 

[GobHag]

Actually, you know what? It is a bit of a cliche on saying 'PF2 fixes this' when 5e problem comes out but in this situation where we're discussing attritional gameplay, PF2 gives a great case study(not necessarily a solution ofc) on how a mostly attritionless modern DnD game would look like instead of only referring to 3e and before DnD.

 

[Maxperson]

Need to be? No. I've run a variant of one-week long rests and the major benefit is for narrative purposes. It's often irrelevant as the PCs might take 3-7 days to travel from point A to point B and then spend a few days in town. Maybe more. Some of the PCs in my current party (we're playing Level Up) have abilities that only really function in towns or cities so being forced to spend time there is not really seen as a negative.

The long rest variant isn't about recovery. It's about the adventuring day.

Day 1: 1 encounter.
Day 2: 2 encounters.
Day 3: No encounter.
Day 4: No encounter.
Day 5: 2 encounters. Arrive in the city at dusk.
Day 6: No encounter.
Day 7:1 city encounter. Rest after having your 6 encounters for the "adventuring day."

 

[Parmandur]

because it keeps making money…

When 3e stopped doing that we got 4e, then that stopped we got 5e. In neither case did we get a minimal update the way Monopoly does.

They will not continue to churn out 5e stuff when its sales drop to 10-20% of whatever they are now

I'm not saying they won't do refreshes, similar to 2024: they do that with Monopoly, Risk, and Clue as well.