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

[Crimson Longinus]

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).

Recently I did a two stage boss by just having an archmage instantly respawn as a lich once he was killed. (Both were 5.0 versions and the characters came prepared with aniticaster stuff, so it was not a very hard fight for them.)

 

[Zardnaar]

Greyhawk as its own setting book would likely not sell well enough to 5e's current audience and customer base for WOTC.

An Adventure sure. But a generic setting with many fill in the box areas doesn't have the exciting bits to pull the numbers a major publisher would want.


5e is in its Sunken Cost phase.

People want change and they know what changes they want (namely shifting the game to a 2-4 encounters base with rules to go longer for dungeons) but they don't want to lose access to their already purchased books.

6e in 2031

If I had to pick a year for 6E 2031 would be it.

 

[payn]

If I had to pick a year for 6E 2031 would be it.

Oh its 2031 now? A better guess than the 2026 folks were chirping about last year.

 

[Minigiant]

Like a warlock?

D&D "challenge" would absolutely work better if the warlock charge model was the standard.

Sorta.

The main combat abilities would be at-will and short rest.

Long rest stuff would be rare.

Power abilities would be "Extended rest" and be charged up by long term downtime in major town, havens, and personal bastions/strongholds/towers.

 

[James Gasik]

I was in a game once where a player was playing a thief(2nd edition) and over time we noticed stuff going missing from our packs and pouches, some of which disappeared when nobody outside of the party was around to be able to steal it.

Finally one day we had a meeting while the PC was away doing something in town. One of the party clerics decided to firetrap all of our bags, pouches, etc. and key them to us personally.

Some time later we had found our way into a dangerous elven ruins(we later found out it was Myth Drannor) that we hadn't gone very deeply into, because of that danger. As we were going down a hallway, we heard a whoosh and felt heat. I turned around to find said thief with his hand in my pouch, quite singed from the firetrap. I'm not sure why I didn't take the damage unless the DM just ruled that since I was attuned, it didn't hurt me.

The player whose thief just got burned, though, folded his arms across his chest and his character announced that he wasn't going a single step further unless we healed him. I just looked at him and said, "We're inside an extremely dangerous ruins. We are going that way. You are welcome to stay here all alone if you want." I'm not sure it took him even a full second to tell the DM he was going with us.

Ugh. I want to find the person who decided AD&D Thieves should be bastards who are always looking to rob or backstab other PC's and arrange for something horrible to happen to them. I had to put up with so much of this back in the day and it made zero sense than and now.

 

[FrogReaver]

Ugh. I want to find the person who decided AD&D Thieves should be bastards who are always looking to rob or backstab other PC's and arrange for something horrible to happen to them. I had to put up with so much of this back in the day and it made zero sense than and now.

That's just some peoples definition of fun. I know I know... but it really is. They find joy in your aggravation.

 

[payn]

Ugh. I want to find the person who decided AD&D Thieves should be bastards who are always looking to rob or backstab other PC's and arrange for something horrible to happen to them. I had to put up with so much of this back in the day and it made zero sense than and now.

Some of it is the freedom that comes with role playing. Folks are like, "I can haz rat bastards as PC?" You see it in video games a lot where open worlds begun and folks do awful things to NPCs. Part of it is simple guilty pleasure in engaging in things typically out of bounds by game design limitation or social contract. Once that initial experience is out of the way, people typically mature beyond it. ITs the folks that never get enough that is a different story...

 

[Maxperson]

Ugh. I want to find the person who decided AD&D Thieves should be bastards who are always looking to rob or backstab other PC's and arrange for something horrible to happen to them. I had to put up with so much of this back in the day and it made zero sense than and now.

We kicked the thief out of the party when we got back to civilization and it fell on me as party leader to let him know. That's when the player who was black accused me of racism and I came close to the only time I ever got into a fist fight over a game.

 

[Maxperson]

That's just some peoples definition of fun. I know I know... but it really is. They find joy in your aggravation.

I think it was the name. It went from commonly encountered by me to almost never encountered by me when we went from 2e to 3e. And every case I encountered in 3e was from someone who played ad&d.

 

[Zardnaar]

Oh its 2031 now? A better guess than the 2026 folks were chirping about last year.

Wasn't me chirping that.
I said you'll need to wait a year or two before you even guess.

Basically see if 5.5 does a 5E trajectory or traditional trajectory (early peak then decline).

Im not 5.5 is doomed or 5.5 is perfect rah rah.

Traditionally revisions have had diminishing returns. I dont think 5.5 will do 10 years.i could be wrong on that as well.