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

[Charlaquin]

5.5 best balance out if one is would want to play.

5.0 probably in 3rd or 4th place.

I’m counting both under the 5e umbrella.

B/X would be higher.

My understanding was that TSR editions had no real notion of game balance, at least in the sense we’re talking about here, of level-appropriate combat difficulty.

 

[Zardnaar]

I’m counting both under the 5e umbrella.

My understanding was that TSR editions had no real notion of game balance, at least in the sense we’re talking about here, of level-appropriate combat difficulty.

Not really. They usually gave practical advice. Eg don't use creatures who require magic weapons to hit if half the party lacks them.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You have a task to do, do you sit for 24 hours before taking a break and then doing it?

Me? I will procrastinate to the last minute! But yeah, if the characters are hurt, exhausted and missing some magic, I would expect them to wait to those things to recover before undertaking a dangerous task if there is no pressing need to not to do so.

Unless the character is Deadpool, I expect they do not know rules of the game, nor can they epxploit them, for them it is life and an adventure.

So you do not think the rules represent thing known to the characters? They do not know they are hurt, they do not know that some of their magic is spent and by waiting they can recover it? That seems like an utterly bizarre approach to play, where the rules are completely disconnected from the fiction.

 

[BenjaminPey]

But yeah, if the characters are hurt, exhausted and missing some magic, I would expect them to wait to those things to recover before undertaking a dangerous task if there is no pressing need to not to do so.

But if the characcters are hurt, exhausted and missing some magic, the attrition did its job. Tension is there. Resting is fine as soon as it will be narratively possible. Things can come up, though.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I agree with dr Jawa. I find 5.24 to be fairly well balanced, too. Noticeably better than 5.14.

Well, at least for me, the big thing was the word "amazingly".

I don't think any game fully backwards-compatible with 5.0 can be "amazingly" balanced. I think it's quite possible to improve the balance, and I completely agree that 5.5e did that. I believe I've even said as much on this forum, some time back--and got pushback from some folks here who claim that the designers don't care at all about balance.

I just see it as...well. A building that is one story tall is not "amazingly tall", I think we can agree on that. A building which is two stories tall is, relatively speaking, significantly taller--double, perhaps more than double because of infrastructure differences. But I am fairly sure nobody would call a two-story building "amazingly tall".

Now, this is extreme for effect. 5.0 was, for example, significantly less broken than any version of 3rd edition ever was. So that would be more like the one-story building, and 5.0 would be perhaps a three- or four-story building. An eight-story building is, certainly, a tall building. It is not "amazingly tall". Even if every building in (say) a given reasonably-sized US state (like Nebraska or Colorado) is eight or fewer, that's not really a reason to call such buildings "amazingly tall" when there are other buildings in other places that have several dozen floors, and the tallest buildings in the world are over 120 floors.

5.5e is better-balanced than 5.0. Anyone who disagrees with that is, in my opinion, being pretty silly. But "better-balanced than 5.0" is not a particularly high bar to clear, just as 5.0 being "better-balanced than 3rd edition" was in no way a difficult bar to clear, considering it's beneath the floor.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You have a task to do, do you sit for 24 hours before taking a break and then doing it? Unless the character is Deadpool, I expect they do not know rules of the game, nor can they epxploit them, for them it is life and an adventure.

So they don't know that spells recharge with a rest? That seems like an odd thing for nobody to know.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Rereading it now dont miss the system, tge fluff was great. Best edition conceptually perhaps (or 2E its 50/50).

But this is precisely my problem with much of this stuff.

"The concept is so good! We should keep playing it!"

Concept is easy. Anyone can produce cool conceptual ideas.

A system exists in order to perform a function. Systems are inherently teleological. They are designed to fulfill some purpose, whatever that purpose might be--it's free for the designer to pick. But if that system fails to perform its function, then no matter how cool the concepts are, it fails to achieve this.

It just amazes me that we have this perception in TTRPGs, when in literally all other gaming media, indeed arguably all other media, flaws like this are never patched over with "but the concept is so good!" Video games? Hell no. Board games? They'll get skewered--consider the hate Monopoly gets. Card games? People are quite unafraid to savage any, whether collectible or not, if they think the design has gone wrong, regardless of how good the lore/concepts might be. Toys? God, if the toy itself is defective, the hue and cry could be heard from the ISS. And I wasn't joking about other media. How many movies have you heard of or seen, where you fully believe that the concepts and lore were super interesting, but the actual execution is garbage? How about a song, or a TV show, where the idea was good but it just failed to land?

Yet in TTRPGs, if the system puts awesome ideas in your head, it couldn't matter two figs whether the rules are actively harmful to the experience or not. They'll be papered over with gusto. It's incredibly irritating and I genuinely do not understand why this phenomenon occurs.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Yet in TTRPGs, if the system puts awesome ideas in your head, it couldn't matter two figs whether the rules are actively harmful to the experience or not. They'll be papered over with gusto. It's incredibly irritating and I genuinely do not understand why this phenomenon occurs.

I'll give you one potential perspective and possible reason why this phenomenon could occur:

Because at the end of the day... roleplaying games at their core are more improv theater than they are board game. Despite so many people wanting to deny it.

And improv doesn't require "systems", it just requires people working together to create stories. So any issues people might have with the tacked-on board game rules can be glossed over as necessary should the story creation otherwise be good.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'll give you one potential perspective and possible reason why this phenomenon could occur:

Because at the end of the day... roleplaying games at their core are more improv theater than they are board game. Despite so many people wanting to deny it.

And improv doesn't require "systems", it just requires people working together to create stories. So any issues people might have with the tacked-on board game rules can be glossed over as necessary should the story creation otherwise be good.

If that is the case, then why do we need to stick to a system, despite its flaws?

Why wouldn't we just go freeform, and ditch the problematic system entirely, just keeping the cool ideas?

It's not like that's that hard--nor is it alien to TTRPGing, since that's what the Free Kriegsspiel folks are all on about.

Yet folks do not do that. They specifically preserve the system, even when they know the system is getting in the way, even when they know something could be done. DSP's Spheres system is the only attempt I've ever seen at actually fixing 3e's structure, and while it has its defenders, it isn't the primary way folks play 3e (that is, PF1e), and (to the best of my knowledge) wasn't such even before 5e came along. It was just a fairly popular alternative, like psionics or Bo9S stuff--niche, but a relatively large niche.

 

[Maxperson]

I never thought "Druid + Natural Spell" counted as being "out to break the game with super uber combos."

Having both done it and DM'd it, no it's not. It was always taken and it was very good, but it didn't break the game in any way.