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

[TheSword]

I equate that to losing half a chessboard and deciding to play with 4 pawns, 1 rook, 1 knight, 1 bishop and 1 king to fix the issue.

Even if you believed sprawling dungeon crawls were half the game (which I very much don’t) it is still possible to combine the smaller dungeon model into larger dungeons. Most of the best dungeons do this anyway.

One of the DMs prime responsibilities is not offloading system issues onto the players.

"Hi I know there are no court lines but you must still find a way to play your tennis match in this situation"

You didn’t answer the question. How is the DM using tougher monsters, tactics or environments offloading system issues onto players?

 

[Parmandur]

From WotC's point of view, why do they care that some of the people who play D&D are not as satisfied as they might, ideally, be? They are a large commercial operation. Their goal is sales. Satisfying RPGers is a means to that end, but given the seeming commercial success of 5e D&D, they seem to be satisfying many RPGers to a sufficient degree.

It wouldn't be realistic of them to try to please literally everyone: even maximizing the percentage of people they can satisfy enough to make sales is a tall order.

 

[Staffan]

The funny thing is, there are so many ways to do supply tracking that doesn't require all this fiddly one arrow tracking stuff. There are any number of abstract inventory systems in various RPG's that do it. And it's not like this is a new idea. I think someone mentioned WAAAAAY upthread the old World of Darkness wealth pips system where if you wanted to have an object, you made a check, and if you succeeded, then you have that item.

First time I encountered a system like that was actually in a TSR game: Advanced Marvel Super Heroes. You wanna buy something, make a Resources check. If the item has the same Resources rating as you, you need a yellow result (fairly hard). If it is 1-3 ranks lower, you need a green result (easy), and if it's lower than that no check is needed. If it's one rank higher you need a red result (hard) and I think there were additional requirements but I can't be hedgehogged to check, and if it's more than one rank higher it's beyond your means (Steve Rogers ain't buying no private jets on an artist's income). And speaking of Marvel...

Spider-Man “hasn’t gone down well” in the sense that there is a lot of very vocal criticism of the set among fans, and unlike other Universes Beyond sets, it hasn’t broken records in terms of number of sales. However, despite looking like it’s going to be the worst-selling Universes Beyond set to date… it’s still selling better than the best-selling in-universe set. Which is terrible news for those of us who don’t like Universes Beyond, because if even a flop of a UB set sells better than an incredibly successful in-universe set, then in-universe sets are going to look like financial liabilities to the Hazbro Corpos.

My understanding is that it has sold fairly well but not to actual Magic players. While this works in the short term, it is bad in the long term because it leads to less in-store play which in turn can lead to lower sales in the long run.

Spider-Man has had some special challenges, though. Apparently the decision to make UB standard-legal came fairly late in the design process, as was the decision to change it from a small set to a medium one. This required them to come up with a bunch of new cards on short notice, which is why you have like 20-30 Spider-Men in the set. The upcoming "general" Marvel set next year will likely not have the same issue, as that one has the whole MU to play with which should be more than enough to fill out a set.

Spider-Man also has another special problem which it will be sharing with the Marvel set. Apparently the Marvel license didn't cover electronic games, which means they can't release Spider-Man on their online platform Arena (or Magic Online, but as I understand it that doesn't see all that much use anymore). Instead they are releasing "Through the Omenpaths", which is a set of mechanically identical cards but set in Magic's own IP. So there's a physical Doctor Octopus, Master Planner:

But online, there's instead Neach, Pinnacle Pariah:

This means that it's hard to practice drafting and such on Arena for Spider-Man cards, because you're not building up the knowledge base to be able to instantly look at an IRL card and know "Oh, it's that card, it does X."

Spells do not recharge (video game concept)
The character finds the necessary stamina to cast these spells once more.
And that's why it's weird to have HD and an exhaustion mechanic and fail to integrate the two for the casting of spells or any other activity that requires exertion.

D&D does not have a spell point system (unless of course you're playing with those optional rules), and casting spells does not cause exhaustion – at least not on a spell-to-spell basis (I personally rule that spellcasting is a moderately exhausting activity, mainly to discourage out-of-combat breaking the game with cantrip spamming – you can't break down a stone wall by continually casting fire bolt at it anymore than you can by hitting it with your sword). Spells are distinct things in the fiction. You can craft objects that hold a particular spell (scrolls). Wizards can scribe spells into books, and the time and effort this takes corresponds to the spell's level.

It is fairly easy to come up with a Watsonian explanation for how magic works that corresponds to how it works mechanically. Preparing a spell imprints a metaphysical pattern onto your mind/soul/spirit. This can either be a near-permanent imprint for classes like sorcerers ("spells known" classes in 5.0), or a more temporary measure for classes like clerics or wizards that can change their spell selection on the daily. Your mind/soul/spirit also holds a number of discrete charges of energy of varying quality/energy levels. When casting a spell, you use one of these charges to energize one of your spell patterns – this charge has to be at least of a quality that corresponds to the pattern's complexity, but you can "overcharge" a pattern. For most spells this just wastes energy, but certain patterns are sophisticated enough to gain greater effects when overcharged.

 

[Parmandur]

The problem isn’t bad behaviour from players, the problem is that having a long sequence of fights without resting makes little narrative sense outside of megadungeons and quickly gets repetitive.

The solution is to balance encounters around 1-3 encounters per day.

6-8 encounters is not exactly a "mega-dungeon", that's a pretty standard Dungeon size, again that represents 2.5 minutes of narrative time apread acroas a whole day...which ia the issue, if you make the balance point 1-3 Encounters, it becomes a problem to play a traditional Dungeon. But making a traditional Dungeon the point of balance, it ia easy to scale back a challenge to be easier.

 

[tetrasodium]

Then they are NOT aware that they can benefit from long rest every 24 hours and thus will not think of waiting 24 hours to take another long rest. Because that is the exact minutia of the rules, that we're aware as players and it is for us players to take care of. Rest of your strawman is irrelevant.

Why do you think they are unaware of their own capabilities? I personally can 100% feel the difference between being recovered already, being in a state where I will be recovered in the morning after I wake up, and knowing I need to wait an extra day based on how my body feels.

Literally from Player's Handbook page 186 or you can look in the SRD:

I do not know where you got the "real world time table", sicne I was still taking of tame in game. but the 5-minutes adventuring day is directly forbidden by the rules.

Now you are looping back to the beginning of topics already covered and the rest takes as long as is required for the players to say "ok .. so we setup camp and complete our rest after tomorrow". The rule you keep quoting does nothing to stop that behavior and the rules overall encourage it while leaving the gm little beyond absolute fiat. Of course invoking fiat at that level has consequences when the players in question are certain that they are engaging in reasonable expected. RAI behavior & that topic too has been covered completely with a chat log of an example.

You may have forgotten covering this too but... remember... this is behavior multiple posters have attested to seeing players engage in.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

I think they must know something like it. They know that their powers restore by resting, but that it cannot happen repeatedly right after they've already done so. So chilling and waiting a bit makes perfect sense.

"I am not yet tired and thus trying to rest will be wasted" is sufficient. And there is a sea and a mountain of difference between "chilling and waiting a bit" and "waiting 24 HOURS to take an 8 HOURS rest for total 32 HOURS of doing nothing". This is ridiciluous and if you cannot find me an explanation that exist in unvierse, does NOT rely on knowing a rules exploit of the game mechanics like if you can break the fourt wall, or requires you to manipulatively minimize the magnitute of time spent doing nothing, I refuse to acknowledge this as valid thing a character could do.

Also, who said the characters are aware these are powers they use? I do not thin ka Fighter is conciously aware that he is capable of making exactly 4 times or twice a day 8 times, I think when he uses action surge, he just thinks "I pshed myself even beyond my limits, my blade moving faster than before". And that's enough.

And this is still ridiculous, demandign the characters think in game terms. Are you telling me you also expect Ruy from Street Fighter to not think of in-universe ways to perform Hadouken, but instead be aware of exact combination of buttons he has to press to use it? Because that's what this feels like to me, this whole line of argument. It reminds me of these godawful "rational" fanfics spawned by (equally godawful) Harry Potter and Methods of Rationality, where characters are supposed to act "rational" but in reality the writer just beamed into their head foreknowledge of setting rules and exact event that will happen, so they always act "optimally". It's ignorign that people don't really act rational nor do they think entierly in terms of what is the most optimal couse of action. It's like saying massacre of Finn's village in the Force Awakens was stupid because "rational" villagers would all rush the stormtroopers shooting them with lasers and flamethrowers, overwhelm them with pure numbers (despite them being actively dwindled by said lasers and flame throwers), take over their lasers, flamethrowers and ships, fly to the main ship and take it over too. It strips any resemblance to thinking beings from the characters and turns it into number crunching.

 

[Staffan]

From WotC's point of view, why do they care that some of the people who play D&D are not as satisfied as they might, ideally, be?

Because long-term, satisfied customers lead to more customers. The questions then become: how many more customers? And how much effort (=money) does it take to provide said satisfaction? And is the result worth the effort?

There's also the matter of personal pride on part of the designers. While my understanding is that Wizards pays more than pretty much all other RPG companies (except maybe MCDM), you still don't become an RPG designer for the fat paycheck. You do it because it's a thing you love doing. And when doing a thing you love doing, you don't want to do a naughty word job. You might sometimes have to do a less than satisfactory job because of outside factors (bossman says deadline is in a week and fixing the issue you found would be a month's work so you scrap that bit and fill it in with something that takes less effort), but you likely won't be happy about it.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Why do you think they are unaware of their own capabilities? I personally can 100% feel the difference between being recovered already, being recovered in the morning after I wake up, and knowing I need to wait an extra day based on how my body feels.

Tell me exact number of hit points you have right now, as well as remaining number of spell slots, short and long-rest depended class features and your carrying capacity. You should be able to do that immediatelly, if you are aware of your body's capability at all times.

Now you are looping back to the beginning of topics already covered and the rest takes as long as is required for the players to say "ok .. so we setup camp and complete our rest after tomorrow".

And I explained why I find it stupid.

You may have forgotten covering this too but... remember... this is behavior multiple posters have attested to seeing players engage in.

Then the solution is to play with actual people who want to play, not "optimize" the fun out of the game.

 

[Zardnaar]

From WotC's point of view, why do they care that some of the people who play D&D are not as satisfied as they might, ideally, be? They are a large commercial operation. Their goal is sales. Satisfying RPGers is a means to that end, but given the seeming commercial success of 5e D&D, they seem to be satisfying many RPGers to a sufficient degree.

Eventually people will get sick of it. But thats any edition. 6E will land one day (by that I mean something different than revised 5E)

 

[Azzy]

I am playing other games but until D&D is left crippled enough that it isn't the undisputable biggest game in the entire TTRPg industry then I can spare some times sending feedback and critique to them. I'm advocating for what I like, if that means infringing an dpushing away things other people like then it's unfortunate but not something I really care.

That's not a a particularly healthy view.