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

[Scott Christian]

It is a no win situation. If someone doesn't believe in the premise of the argument - which is LTH is overpowered and allows players to rest between every encounter. It doesn't matter how many crazy or ridiculous encounters from DMs you have, they've seen a DM do it. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how often someone points out intelligent enemies or possible reinforcements. Their game is Warhammer, and LTH is overpowered in Warhammer.

 

[James Gasik]

My stance is still that, regardless of whether or not you feel it's easy to mess with LTH (and similar magic) in your game, you shouldn't have to take those steps in the first place. If WotC wanted to force players to conserve resources and not rest whenever they wanted to, giving them tools that could, in fact, let them rest whenever they wanted to is crazy.

That having been said, this is far from a new thing with D&D. From very early on, it introduces problems (food, water, getting lost in the woods, safe camping, carrying lots of equipment and loot) then turns around and says "but hey, with create water, create food, goodberry, know direction, rope trick, tiny hut, alarm, wizard lock, secret chest, bags of holding, you can opt out of that"*.

*I know not all of these are still around, it's just an example of the sort of play/counterplay D&D has demonstrated over the decades.

Sure, you can nerf or simply remove stuff you don't like (or concoct "standard operation procedures" for NPC's in your world to eliminate their usefulness), but why should a new DM have to discover this the hard way? At least with DM facing stuff like bags of holding, ok, the DM generally controls the availability of stuff, but the player facing options can pretty easily make people think that it's intended for certain issues to just stop being issues.

Which is fine, I guess, right up until one of those things you're being told you can obsolete is a basic play loop of the game. "The game breaks if you rest too often/here's ways you can rest whenever" feels downright schizophrenic.

 

[Minigiant]

My stance is still that, regardless of whether or not you feel it's easy to mess with LTH (and similar magic) in your game, you shouldn't have to take those steps in the first place. If WotC wanted to force players to conserve resources and not rest whenever they wanted to, giving them tools that could, in fact, let them rest whenever they wanted to is crazy.

That having been said, this is far from a new thing with D&D. From very early on, it introduces problems (food, water, getting lost in the woods, safe camping, carrying lots of equipment and loot) then turns around and says "but hey, with create water, create food, goodberry, know direction, rope trick, tiny hut, alarm, wizard lock, secret chest, bags of holding, you can opt out of that"*.

*I know not all of these are still around, it's just an example of the sort of play/counterplay D&D has demonstrated over the decades.

Sure, you can nerf or simply remove stuff you don't like (or concoct "standard operation procedures" for NPC's in your world to eliminate their usefulness), but why should a new DM have to discover this the hard way? At least with DM facing stuff like bags of holding, ok, the DM generally controls the availability of stuff, but the player facing options can pretty easily make people think that it's intended for certain issues to just stop being issues.

Which is fine, I guess, right up until one of those things you're being told you can obsolete is a basic play loop of the game. "The game breaks if you rest too often/here's ways you can rest whenever" feels downright schizophrenic.

On thing I hope for in 6e is the concept of common and rare spells.

Rare spells can't be chosen on level up. You either need the DM to offer them as treasure or via a subclass.

An those obstacle skipper would be all rare.

So if a table wants to create instant camps and skip tracking food and ammo, LTH, Goodberry, and Create Arrows rare spells found in the first dungeon.

 

[James Gasik]

On thing I hope for in 6e is the concept of common and rare spells.

Rare spells can't be chosen on level up. You either need the DM to offer them as treasure or via a subclass.

An those obstacle skipper would be all rare.

So if a table wants to create instant camps and skip tracking food and ammo, LTH, Goodberry, and Create Arrows rare spells found in the first dungeon.

I see one problem with this. Clerics and Druids. You'd have to slay the sacred cow that allows them to prepare any spell that happens to be on their spell list, and get the "it doesn't feel like D&D" crowd on board with this change.

Certainly for Wizards, this was once pretty much how the game was- in AD&D for example, the DM had fairly large control over the spells a player got their paws on, and I believe Forgotten Realms Adventures has spells by rarity listed.

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I'll be frank, I honestly don't have a problem with magic existing that allows you to solve logistics problems. It would be strange if such magic didn't exist, because you'd have to answer "why not" on a setting level (if that sort of thing matters to you).

My issue really comes down to the fact that the game isn't designed with any expectation of such things in mind!

Like, without even talking about spells, let's look at some basic concepts. A Long Rest takes 8 hours.

But what if you have a party of Elves with Trance? Now it's 4 hours!

Characters need to eat and sleep? Better not allow Warforged in your game!

Characters need long rests to heal? Nah, just have everyone take a level of Fighter and Second Wind on a short rest. Or print a Warlock subclass that lets you cast healing magic with your Pact slots!

And hey, why not create a spell that lets you take a short rest inside of 10 minutes that affects up to three targets? Why not?

You could practically create the Energizer Bunny (tm) party that laughs at the concept of long rests!

But somehow, the game is balanced around resources and set numbers of encounters?

 

[Minigiant]

I see one problem with this. Clerics and Druids. You'd have to slay the sacred cow that allows them to prepare any spell that happens to be on their spell list, and get the "it doesn't feel like D&D" crowd on board with this change

Well that's easy. The rare spells are not on their list.

Clerics and Druids are granted spells. Perhaps for them, Rare spells are on subclasses or from relics. More reason to take Knowledge and Arcane domains.

 

[pemerton]

I see one problem with this. Clerics and Druids. You'd have to slay the sacred cow that allows them to prepare any spell that happens to be on their spell list, and get the "it doesn't feel like D&D" crowd on board with this change.

Well that's easy. The rare spells are not on their list.

Clerics and Druids are granted spells. Perhaps for them, Rare spells are on subclasses or from relics. More reason to take Knowledge and Arcane domains.

In classic D&D, clerics as well as MUs can undertake spell research, and thereby create spells that only they know (unless they choose to share them).

So there is precedent, all the way back to 1974, for cleric spells that are not able to be memorised/prepared by all clerics just by dint of being cleric spells.

 

[Zardnaar]

In classic D&D, clerics as well as MUs can undertake spell research, and thereby create spells that only they know (unless they choose to share them).

So there is precedent, all the way back to 1974, for cleric spells that are not able to be memorised/prepared by all clerics just by dint of being cleric spells.

That and god specific spells.

I added some of them back into the game. Player actually cast 1

 

[tetrasodium]

Giving all your goblins Venom Strike because the goblin alchemist hands out vials of poison, some of your goblin warrior pull the great swords off the sacred alter to become Darkaxes, and having the goblin shaman get Summon Mephit 1/day as they prepare spells for battle over daily maintenance is a quick and easy way to enhance monsters.

Yes it's easy enough to simply add stuff to monsters like that but templates gave newer GMs the feeling of the system having their back with a safety net when it came to mucking with stat blocks or hearing & moving past "wait what!? [Base monster] doesn't normally have the ability to do [thing]" so the session could continue on with the other players jumping to support the gm simply using the rules when there are so so many templates just among those known to them rather than the other players avoiding the whole thing or agreeing where the statblock rnded. That's quite a bit different from what (IME) happens when a player makes that sort of comment on monster observations.


I don't think that "omg ze statblock AKSHually SEZ" gm footing erosion & pointless session diverting dilemma that templates shielded from is a me thing though and recent posts commenting on the idea of giving hypothetical goblins various ranged weapons nicely demonstrates the fact that fielding customized monsters absent credible gm support from the system can play out in ways that feed into an erosion of gm trust often enough to proactively discuss the road leading there.

Also games didn't get to high levels back in the day and older editions forced spells into slots. So preparing escape and shelter spells to rest was a preplanned uncertainty.

I dunno, low teens wasn't too unusual for my groups back in the day. More importantly is that players were already in the habit of treating whatever town/region they called home base as an important place where all their valuable stuff was stored and useful npc contacts with built up very much lived in ways impacted by the world. Putting one or more of the many useful templates on almost useful monsters & thematically lacking monsters kept the stakes local to the general area the players knew their PCs depended on. Even beyond monster templates 5e also ditched the many many many monster feats that often allowed a small but incredibly impactful twist to a skilled or otherwise unique monster with a once more effortless but impactful +1-2 bab and +1-2 feats plus some other stuff from adding or two of fighter levels

 

[UngeheuerLich]

In 2024' monster manual, they do. Daggers can be melee or ranged (it states that in statblock).

Otherwise I'd just give them shortbows.

Or slings. They are cheaper. Fo d4 damage and have unlimited ammunition.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Can do that but also xan go under cheesing the CR system.

Yeah. Total cheesy..

I can give a CR2 xaster fireball and RAW at higher levels throw 40 of them at PCs.

No. That does not work.

5.5 specifically says not to do that.

As I said in the previous post, give them a sling. Same damage. More ammo. 5.5 has no problem with that.

16 goblin minions RAW with shortbows is leaning towards tpk.

Yes.

See previous comment about cherry picking certain monsters and abusing them.

See comment about cherry picking certain spells as players and abusing them.