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

[Minigiant]

That's not the read I'm getting. One group wants attrition of offensive power throughout the day*. You use a fireball on those 8 orcs – great, that made that encounter easy, but now you're down one fireball. You need to carefully ration when and how you use your magic (because it's mostly spells that are affected by this). This also needs to be weighed against hp loss: if you didn't blast those orcs out of existence, how much damage would they have done? And would that damage require more resources to heal than the fireball cost? In this model, each encounter is mostly a foregone conclusion – the question is whether you're ahead or behind on expected resource use, not whether or not you'll win that fight. And later in the day, that's when encounters become threatening for real, because you've used up your reserves

What I was saying is that you can have a system where you have 100% of your offense for three fights guaranteed. However if you would have dungeon that has 8 vibes you only have that 100% for 3 of them.

You still have your three fireballs but you have eight rooms to use them.

Group B will only ever use three rooms with three fireballs.

Group A uses eight rooms and you'll have to ration your three fireballs.

Group C uses six rooms and you get a fireball back after 5 rounds of combat.

 

[GreyLord]

I mean, bounded accuracy is for my money the best decision WotC made with D&D since they bought the game. I don't see much criticism of it by and large, and it works great in practice. So I am very willing my to believe that WotC detailed feedback was positive in the same way that discourse about it has been for the past decade. What reason is there to think otherwise...?

Bounded accuracy restored the statistical bell curve from AD&D, fixing the central mathematical mistake of 3E design, while keeping the more intuitive "high number good" aspect of 3E. What's not to love, it serves both math and casual fun.

I'm not saying it wasn't loved...nor that it was. I'm saying we don't have enough information to know what the choices were except...

That there WERE complaints. They actually changed the numbers during the playtest. However, the changes were actually not that major and really didn't change that much if you really look at it from a numbers viewpoint.

Which means...they basically ignored the complaints.

I have no idea how many complaints there were, I have no idea what they said. They didn't tell us. Our singular source didn't really expound.

It wasn't like they gave us any other options either.

That's what I mean. They weren't really willing to actually change things, they would tweak them. BA is a prime example of that. They had their idea and stuck with it. If it was a central conceit, that was going to be in the game no matter what. They were not willing to examine the foundations of the game and tear it down, or present multiple options that deviated all that much from it as a proper full on Q&A and testing sometimes requires.

PS: I've seen multiple complaints about BA (and yes, I've been one of those occasionally). I haven't seen a ton of praise. I know some praise it, but I've seen enough elsewhere to know that some think it is far too limiting and doesn't do the game any favors. I think the most recent thread on this that could be seen criticizing BA popped up talking about modern game design and how that causes number inflation of HP and damage (from this forum).

On 5e itself...

Most of the time people will say it gets the job done, but 5e isn't the best game ever. It's adequate. That's probably the most often heard statement I hear about 5e. It's not bad, it's not great, it's adequate enough to get the job done.

 

[Parmandur]

Which means...they basically ignored the complaints.

If your survey shows 99% enjoy something and 1% complain...then the complaints would tend to be ignored.

I've seen multiple complaints about BA (and yes, I've been one of those occasionally). I haven't seen a ton of praise.

Nah. The praise for BA specifically is pretty widespread, it really fixes what was wrong with the 3E/4E engines, of constant number inflation.

 

[Parmandur]

I know some praise it

A quick search tons of threads over the past decade praising Bounded Accuracy specifically, this poll here from 10 hrars ago to "chose 3 favorite things in 5E" stands out, the top 3 results 3 include Bounded Accuracy (alongside Advantage/Disadvantage and rules light approach):

S

D&D 5E (2014) Post in thread 'The Official Poll! What THREE things do you like most about D&D 5th Edition?'

Oct 14, 2015

Difficult to limit to just 3. It was nearly "all of the above" except "I like nothing about D&D 5th edition".

Agreed. When I saw it was pick 3, I thought "that's somewhat of a cop-out," but after seeing the list I thought "crap... only three?" Shows how great 5E has been

• Shiroiken

 

[Staffan]

What I was saying is that you can have a system where you have 100% of your offense for three fights guaranteed. However if you would have dungeon that has 8 vibes you only have that 100% for 3 of them.

You still have your three fireballs but you have eight rooms to use them.

Group B will only ever use three rooms with three fireballs.

Group A uses eight rooms and you'll have to ration your three fireballs.

Group C uses six rooms and you get a fireball back after 5 rounds of combat.

Yeah but what I'm talking about is that you have one and only one fireball available at a time, but you'll have it in each room. Smaller tank, so you don't get this situation, but free refills.

 

[payn]

And yet....

Here is the thing: a lot of people find 5E super fun.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm afraid I can't see whomever you quoted, @payn.

But my point was that, for all the effort they poured into (allegedly) making the thing everyone wanted, they openly admitted to several things they considered blunders, and 5.5e happened specifically because they failed to nail several classes and subclasses.

 

[M_Natas]

Except they literally haven't done what I'm talking about.

They literally don't do actual, statistical testing. If they had, the "ghoul surprise" could not happen, because they would have already known, from doing simulations, that saving throws fail far too often and need to be bolstered.

This is why I say we need ACTUAL testing, not the garbage they keep floating. 4e came closest to doing it--but didn't quite make it.

Nobody, not WotC, not TSR, not Paizo, nobody actually does TESTING. They do vague touchy-feely surveys.

A bunch of this stuff really isn't hard to do. You just need to actually do testing, which means putting things through rigorous situations. It means actually DOING "white room theory" because you are literally in the white room, the design place before the rubber hits the road.

Sorry, I must have missed that, what was the ghoul surprise?

 

[GreyLord]

A quick search tons of threads over the past decade praising Bounded Accuracy specifically, this poll here from 10 hrars ago to "chose 3 favorite things in 5E" stands out, the top 3 results 3 include Bounded Accuracy (alongside Advantage/Disadvantage and rules light approach):

S

D&D 5E (2014) Post in thread 'The Official Poll! What THREE things do you like most about D&D 5th Edition?'

Oct 14, 2015

Difficult to limit to just 3. It was nearly "all of the above" except "I like nothing about D&D 5th edition".

Agreed. When I saw it was pick 3, I thought "that's somewhat of a cop-out," but after seeing the list I thought "crap... only three?" Shows how great 5E has been

• Shiroiken

Until they do away with it and then for some reason, you'll have everyone saying that they always hated it.

Funny thing with things like this...people always say they love it...until they don't and never did.

That aside though, this forum is a very anecdotal place. If we went by the forum, I'd imagine we'd find out that the majority find AD&D one of the best D&D's ever, and 5e is not (And 4e was a crime). The audience tends to be older.

5e works and is played, but I think this forum would consistently rank another older D&D version higher due to who this forum is composed of.

 

[Parmandur]

Until they do away with it and then for some reason, you'll have everyone saying that they always hated it.

Funny thing with things like this...people always say they love it...until they don't and never did.

At this point, I don't expect that Hasbro will pursue rule changes more significant than 2025 ever again, same as their other evergreen games. Minor rule changes here and there, primarily new packaging.

There is no ROI on radical edition change.

But, if I see Bounded Accuracy as excellent, I see tons of conversations about people feeling the same eay...stands to reason that WotC received similarly good responses overall.