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

[Campbell]

That's all without even getting into New School Renaissance games like Into The Odd, Black Hack, The Nightmares Underneath and Worlds Without Number which are deliberately questioning the value of number go up and do we even need checks.

 

[GreyLord]

Flat math is here to stay. When you look at how designs are trending, games designed after 5e have even flatter math. Draw Steel, Fabula Ultima, The Stormlight Archive Roleplaying Game, the explosion of Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark games, Year Zero Engine game, newer 2d20 games, etc. All have flatter math than 5e, some much flatter. Also, in the case Legend of the Five Rings, Warhammer - The Old World and most iterations of existing games they tend to have much flatter math than their predecessors.

Flatter math is easier to design around, easier to balance and often easier to teach to players. It's also just more resilient to a variety of situations.

The only game that really breaks the trend that comes to mind is Pathfinder Second Edition, but that is a little misleading in that it's fairly flat within the scope of play since almost all the gains in accuracy are level based and you are expected to keep play within a -4 to +4 level band of the characters.

Are we talking about WFRP 4e (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e)?

I'm not so certain that version has flatter math. (same would go for the new 40K versions).

The older versions of Warhammer only let you go up to 100 in general (though that meant, 100% which is pretty darn good) as a maximum (rarely could you get that high, normally highest would be mid 70s to high 80s, maybe into a 90).

The new Warhammer math allows you to go above 100 if you advance that long.

The flattest math may have actually been with WFRP 3e which used a dice system (similar to the gensys system now). You rolled multiple dice (similar, but not quite like the Wrath and Glory system in ways).

The Wrath and Glory system uses a more multiple dice type idea, so I suppose you could say that is flatter math, but the other Warhammer 40K games sort of...can go rather gonzo.\

I'm not sure Warhammer is really following suite of lower and flatter numbers, but maybe I'm missing something with that.

I'd add Dragonbane to your game systems which have a flatter scale of acceleration or advancement to your systems that have a scaled back form of advancement.

 

[Campbell]

Are we talking about WFRP 4e (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e)?

I'm not so certain that version has flatter math. (same would go for the new 40K versions).

The older versions of Warhammer only let you go up to 100 in general (though that meant, 100% which is pretty darn good) as a maximum (rarely could you get that high, normally highest would be mid 70s to high 80s, maybe into a 90).

The new Warhammer math allows you to go above 100 if you advance that long.

The flattest math may have actually been with WFRP 3e which used a dice system (similar to the gensys system now). You rolled multiple dice (similar, but not quite like the Wrath and Glory system in ways).

The Wrath and Glory system uses a more multiple dice type idea, so I suppose you could say that is flatter math, but the other Warhammer 40K games sort of...can go rather gonzo.\

I'm not sure Warhammer is really following suite of lower and flatter numbers, but maybe I'm missing something with that.

I'd add Dragonbane to your game systems which have a flatter scale of acceleration or advancement to your systems that have a scaled back form of advancement.

Sorry. I was speaking to Warhammer - The Old World which uses a relatively flat dice-pool based system with escalating advancement costs. Granted it is not billed as a new edition.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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

TL;DR: Mearls and other design team members were doing a game (recorded for a livestream or podcast, can't remember which) as a promo for 5e. They had a basic but decent party and took on like three ghouls vs their IIRC five characters.

The ghouls absolutely slaughtered them, completely taking all of the designers by surprise. They somehow had not figured out that ghouls inflicting a save-vs-paralysis with every single attack could, possibly, be a problem. Again IIRC, they genuinely got a TPK during a game that was supposed to be showing off what the system was like.

The end result was that they hastily added saving throw proficiencies to every class. Because prior to that surprise, your saving throws were just your ability score mod, no other bonuses.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Of course you can design it, no one is saying otherwise. What you can’t do is make people like it.

People will like it or hate it completely without regard to how you've designed it, so I see little point in caring about that part.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Would all that testing result in a game that would make WotC even more money, enough to compensate for the time lost to development? Becsuse if not there's no way they would do it. And they would have to be pretty it would increase profits, because they've been shown to be pretty risk-averse IMO. And said profit increases wouldn't happen in the short term even if they happened at all, which means the whole thing is IMO a no-go.

Statistical testing isn't any more expensive then the incredibly time-wasteful process they went through with 5.0.

"D&D Next" wasted nearly two whole years just figuring out the "core four" classes. They proffered only ONE iteration of Warlock and Sorcerer during the entire public playtest, and then trashed them completely, crapping out the mediocre drek of the final Warlock and Sorcerer only in the final six months of non-public design effort.

Your concerns about costs are not particularly correlated with the amount of effort and expense they're clearly willing to waste on utter dead ends. Like Mearls resisting for some four or five playtest packets in a row, trying to preserve his beloved Proficiency Dice mechanic because he loves slinging tons of dice.

Six months' lead-up using professionally-made surveys to get good data and setting initial design goals. Two years public playtesting plus internal simulation and analysis. Six months final polishing and tweaking before publication. Three years' effort--and dramatically more efficient than the profligate and wasteful "D&D Next" process, despite being functionally the same time frame.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Statistical testing isn't any more expensive then the incredibly time-wasteful process they went through with 5.0.

"D&D Next" wasted nearly two whole years just figuring out the "core four" classes. They proffered only ONE iteration of Warlock and Sorcerer during the entire public playtest, and then trashed them completely, crapping out the mediocre drek of the final Warlock and Sorcerer only in the final six months of non-public design effort.

Your concerns about costs are not particularly correlated with the amount of effort and expense they're clearly willing to waste on utter dead ends. Like Mearls resisting for some four or five playtest packets in a row, trying to preserve his beloved Proficiency Dice mechanic because he loves slinging tons of dice.

Six months' lead-up using professionally-made surveys to get good data and setting initial design goals. Two years public playtesting plus internal simulation and analysis. Six months final polishing and tweaking before publication. Three years' effort--and dramatically more efficient than the profligate and wasteful "D&D Next" process, despite being functionally the same time frame.

Again, do you think a complete redesign of D&D is likely to increase WotC's profits over where they are now, without any significant drop in the meanwhile? That's IMO what would need to happen for WotC to do as you suggest, and they'd have to be pretty darn sure it would break that way.

 

[Nebulous]

I don't know the "fix" for this, but assuming groups across the board would fight X amount of times, and you use that X as a balancing factor puts way, way too much emphasis on an assumption that can change group to group and session to session.

 

[Koloth]

TL;DR: Mearls and other design team members were doing a game (recorded for a livestream or podcast, can't remember which) as a promo for 5e. They had a basic but decent party and took on like three ghouls vs their IIRC five characters.

The ghouls absolutely slaughtered them, completely taking all of the designers by surprise. They somehow had not figured out that ghouls inflicting a save-vs-paralysis with every single attack could, possibly, be a problem. Again IIRC, they genuinely got a TPK during a game that was supposed to be showing off what the system was like.

The end result was that they hastily added saving throw proficiencies to every class. Because prior to that surprise, your saving throws were just your ability score mod, no other bonuses.

I find this hilarious. 1e ghouls were always one of those monsters that low to mid level characters hated fighting just for the paralysis reason. Especially in close quarters where the party had trouble with ranged attacks. More then once we ran from them and a couple times had to launch a better prepared lost character recovery mission. Full elves were the common answer due to immunity to ghoul paralysis.

I think that there should be some lower level monsters that demand respect and special handling. When everything is a big bag of hit points, the game becomes predictable and boring.

 

[mamba]

Rule changes did not prove fruitful for them in the past, the 2024 rules sales success on the other hand stands out in contrast (we already know that as of the end of last year that the 2024 PHB had outsole the lifetime PHB sales for 3E, 3.6 or 4E...). Evergreen rules, sell people on the platform and mwrch for profit. Revolutionary rules changes are just...not good for their business.

rules changes did prove fruitful, after the prior edition had fizzled out they reliably resulted in large sales until they too invariably declined and fizzled out.

The only difference is that 5e has not fizzled out (yet?), once it does I expect drastic changes, until then they would be stupid to have them