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

[payn]

Minor point of order:

3E wasn't balanced the way 1E and 2E were, that's where the issue started.

It was and it wasnt. The issue with 3E is they built "life hacks" into the system to allow you to opt out of it working that way.

 

[Stalker0]

D&D makes a ton of money. There is no problem to be fixed.

Ford's Model T once made a lot of money. I'm glad they never fixed anything or improved upon it.

 

[Stalker0]

didn't (most methods of) healing in 4e burn your healing surges to function? so while most encounters are self contained ultimately they ARE grinding down your resources, as well as any dailies you burn.

There was a minor amount of attrition in 4e based on what you described, especially around the dailies.

But the healing surges was more of a binary element. Losing surges wasn't a big deal, it did not stop your ability to go "full out" in a fight. But once your surges got low or to 0, that was the indicator "ok we REALLY need to back off and take a break".

 

[Parmandur]

It was and it wasnt. The issue with 3E is they built "life hacks" into the system to allow you to opt out of it working that way.

Having started with 3E, it was pretty shocking the first tine I checked out what came before, and how 3E muddied the waters IMO.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think the core of what was done is the correct approach. Again, the game should be encounter based, not attrition based on a day of time. Now maybe 4e got some things with that model right and so things wrong, but that shift in the focus is what is important and should be reiterated on. 5e tossed that out the window to its determint imo.

I think as a game, it might better for my taste, but it might not be better for a lot of other people for which spells as daily resource is such a core conceit of D&D, that they would accept it as a worthy successor or viable game without them.

Maybe in hindsight it wouldn't have mattered because DnD 5 had an influx of new gamers that seems unprecedented. But maybe it would have hurt by old players telling new players the newest game isn't any good anymore? I don't know.

 

[zakael19]

Yep, cause 4e was designed excellently. Just presented in a way that turned a lot of players off.

And to your previous point, most 5e players have never really heard of 4e or have negative opinions of it; or if they have it’s probably rose tinted stuff via the Colvilles of the world. I think the changes in 5.24 from the original encounter guidelines are an acknowledgment of that along with the way that a preponderance of tables the company has seen actually play their game.

 

[Parmandur]

And to your previous point, most 5e players have never really heard of 4e or have negative opinions of it; or if they have it’s probably rose tinted stuff via the Colvilles of the world. I think the changes in 5.24 from the original encounter guidelines are an acknowledgment of that along with the way that a preponderance of tables the company has seen actually play their game.

I have struggled to explain to my players how 4E was different from other editions and what the hubbub was even about...and they played 4E!

 

[Stalker0]

It was and it wasnt. The issue with 3E is they built "life hacks" into the system to allow you to opt out of it working that way.

Case in point, the 3e cure light wound wand.

Playing 3e without access to that wand (or some equivalent of it) is a NIGHT AND DAY different experience.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I will quote myself from earlier in this thread.


"In a nutshell, the dnd encounter model is backwards.


The model should assume that a party is at 100% juice for every encounter. And the system should be designed so that abilities mostly reset per encounter. 4e did it right in that regard.

And then....attrition is a function of the encounter itself. Take the mummy for example. You get cursed, and now you can't heal. Oh no...suddenly hp attrition goes from a non-factor into a major deal. Aka attrition should be the spice a DM can throw in, they can set an encounter with the idea "ok today I want my players sweating about hp over the day", and they can add in encounter elements that create those attrition effects. But the core game should assume minimal attrition, because that is the only way to balance the game for 1 fight a day or 10 fights a day. Make that the core....and give the DM the tools to add in attrition when they want that to be a factor in their encounters."

So you can have attrition, it just becomes a lever that the DM consciously chooses to pull, rather than the expectation they have to use all the time. Also the nature of an encounter is fairly easy to define. You could leave it nebulous if you wanted to, but a lot of people the notion of a "5 minute rest". Ok whatever happens right now is the encounter. Once I get a chance to take a 5 minute breather, the encounter is over. Its as simple as that.

Yeah, I'm not convinced. "Let's remove attrition but then if we want the fights not to be meaningless we can add it back case-by-case basis," does not to me seem like particularly functional or desirable design.

 

[Stalker0]

I think as a game, it might better for my taste, but it might not be better for a lot of other people for which spells as daily resource is such a core conceit of D&D, that they would accept it as a worthy successor or viable game without them.

What 4e tried to do was divide the "combat spells" and the "non-combat spells" into two different buckets.

The combat spells were at-will/encounter/daily powers. And most were your old trusties like "fireball". They did make some of them encounter powers, and it mostly worked fine.

The non-combat ones they created a ritual system for, where you could spend X time and some gold and cast things like teleport or speak with plants or XYZ. I think the ritual system was the weak spot. The idea was good but the mechanics just didn't quite work. I think using gold cost was just the wrong idea, its not thematic, it balances horribly across different groups etc. Probably better was to use healing surges as a form of ritual currency. That thematically works (spellcasting is taxing), it balances well (we expect wizard at table 1 and wizard at table 2 to have roughly the same amount of surges). Some version of that would have made the system more elegant imo.