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

[Micah Sweet]

I'd have kept the art and bastions. Greyhawk is obviously completely unnecessary in such a book.

Would have better IMO to make a separate Greyhawk book.

 

[M_Natas]

It has been explained several times. Yes, video games in theory could have robust fiction/rules connection. They rarely don't. And because they don't, they can do all sort of things a tabletop RPG can't. Like in WoW you can just respawn on the graveyard and retry the battle if you die. So you can scale a start-at-full-resources fight to be challenging, as you can try it several times. In a tabletop RPG which needs to maintain at least some sort of connection between the fiction and the rules you cannot do that without the game becoming insanely lethal.

Also even the best open World sandbox videogames are limited in what they can allow you to do.
Like, even in Baldurs Gate 3, you pretty fast feel the limit of what is programmed in as options and what not. Like, the first chapter with the druid grove, I had so many ideas of what could be done about the refugee crisis and the goblin danger, but they were not programmed in.
They are great computergames, but they are computergames and not TTRPGs, which are way superior on player agency, graphics (it runs on imagination!), adaptability ...
Computergames are basically only better in handling a lot repetitive tasks at a very fast time and everything math related.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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

Of course, as I said back when it was still the incredibly stupidly-named "One D&D" playtest, 5.5e won't have the longevity 5.0 had. Revisions are always diminishing returns. 3rd edition got three of them (3.5, PF1e, PF1e "Unchained"), and none of them lasted more than ~5 ish years. That does mean that they managed to squeeze like 15 years of continuous active development out of iterations on a single theme....but it also means that 15-ish years is about all you can expect out of a single game. Contra Zardnaar's position on this, I don't think iterating on a flawed engine actually makes much progress, for the very reason you cite--major changes will always be resisted, no matter how useful or even necessary they might be.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

I do, yes.

Because I genuinely believe that a competently-designed game can actually deliver on the real, practical version of the airy-fairy "modularity" that they talked up all througout the "D&D Next" playtest, which then was 90% DOA when the books finally arrived.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Also even the best open World sandbox videogames are limited in what they can allow you to do.
Like, even in Baldurs Gate 3, you pretty fast feel the limit of what is programmed in as options and what not. Like, the first chapter with the druid grove, I had so many ideas of what could be done about the refugee crisis and the goblin danger, but they were not programmed in.
They are great computergames, but they are computergames and not TTRPGs, which are way superior on player agency, graphics (it runs on imagination!), adaptability ...
Computergames are basically only better in handling a lot repetitive tasks at a very fast time and everything math related.

And yet what do we so often actually see?

Incredibly cookie-cutter worlds, incredibly cookie-cutter player options, incredibly over-used tropes and themes and such.

For all the talk of the potential infinitude that TTRPGs offer, the GMs who actually run them, on average, have absolutely no interest whatsoever in exploiting it. They want the same old, same old, over and over and over and over and over.

Oh, cool. I didn't know that story. I started D&D way after the 5e playtest.

Yeah, I can totally imagine, without saving throws, 3 Ghouls (DC 10 paralyse) would paralyse approximately 1,4 PCs per turn. That would get nasty very quickly.

Yep. They also changed ghouls, worth noting. Back then, their multi-claw attacks still inflicted paralysis. Now it's only the bite attack that does that, and they can only attack with the bite once, rather than twice like they can with claws.

 

[Zardnaar]

Of course, as I said back when it was still the incredibly stupidly-named "One D&D" playtest, 5.5e won't have the longevity 5.0 had. Revisions are always diminishing returns. 3rd edition got three of them (3.5, PF1e, PF1e "Unchained"), and none of them lasted more than ~5 ish years. That does mean that they managed to squeeze like 15 years of continuous active development out of iterations on a single theme....but it also means that 15-ish years is about all you can expect out of a single game. Contra Zardnaar's position on this, I don't think iterating on a flawed engine actually makes much progress, for the very reason you cite--major changes will always be resisted, no matter how useful or even necessary they might be.

Think we basically agree. Revisions are diminishing returns.

People will want change eventually. That can rak a while though. Consider.

1. Pre 3E they Revised OD&D over 26 years.
2. 3.x lasted 17 years
3. Basic line lasted 17 years.

If 5.5 tanks hard its still gonna last 14 years.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Think we basically agree. Revisions are diminishing returns.

People will want change eventually. That can rak a while though. Consider.

1. Pre 3E they Revised OD&D over 26 years.
2. 3.x lasted 17 years
3. Basic line lasted 17 years.

If 5.5 tanks hard its still gonna last 14 years.

Yes--but my point is that there are (many) ways to get folks on board with the new thing....

...and that that's actually one of the reasons to do the performative side of playtesting!

Like...if they actually had a real expert on staff to help them design good, well-made surveys, and an actual statistician (or at least someone who's taken college-level statistics courses!) on staff to crunch the numbers for them, there's an enormous amount of data they could collect before even dreaming of starting a new edition. Once you have that data, you start asking probing questions about the design of D&D. You genuinely interrogate it, without disparaging it. Some things are what they are purely by coincidence, or by inertia, rather than because they need to be that way. Some things are what they are because we haven't considered different ways. And some things are what they are because tried and true really does matter some of the time.

We cannot distinguish the difference without real, actual testing.

And I'm very, very much of the opinion that, if you actually drill down to the fundamental design goals that players want out of D&D, there are elements and systems in it that are not doing the job they've been assigned, and thus should be revamped or replaced--or, in a few cases, just straight-up removed. Testing your current design is how you find those weak points. Testing your proposed design is how you avoid permitting weak points in your future products.

And, naturally, there needs to be other data collection along the way. 4e @#$%ed up its presentation, that's simply an objective fact at this point. It probably needed another 6-12 months in the oven; even the developers themselves said they were pressured into publishing sooner than they would have liked, as I recall. And even then, even with all of that, there were still flawed areas that probably would have been preserved despite that extra work, because they were merely better than any previous edition for rigorous testing....which is just a bit like saying that the Chevy Corvair (the primary subject of Ralph Nader's Unsafe At Any Speed) was safer than the Model T because the Model T used pane glass and the Corvair did not. (Seriously, look up the Model T sometime, it was incredibly unsafe to drive.)

I've previously given 5.5e a lifespan of 4-7 years. I stand by that statement.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yes--but my point is that there are (many) ways to get folks on board with the new thing....

...and that that's actually one of the reasons to do the performative side of playtesting!

Like...if they actually had a real expert on staff to help them design good, well-made surveys, and an actual statistician (or at least someone who's taken college-level statistics courses!) on staff to crunch the numbers for them, there's an enormous amount of data they could collect before even dreaming of starting a new edition. Once you have that data, you start asking probing questions about the design of D&D. You genuinely interrogate it, without disparaging it. Some things are what they are purely by coincidence, or by inertia, rather than because they need to be that way. Some things are what they are because we haven't considered different ways. And some things are what they are because tried and true really does matter some of the time.

We cannot distinguish the difference without real, actual testing.

And I'm very, very much of the opinion that, if you actually drill down to the fundamental design goals that players want out of D&D, there are elements and systems in it that are not doing the job they've been assigned, and thus should be revamped or replaced--or, in a few cases, just straight-up removed. Testing your current design is how you find those weak points. Testing your proposed design is how you avoid permitting weak points in your future products.

And, naturally, there needs to be other data collection along the way. 4e @#$%ed up its presentation, that's simply an objective fact at this point. It probably needed another 6-12 months in the oven; even the developers themselves said they were pressured into publishing sooner than they would have liked, as I recall. And even then, even with all of that, there were still flawed areas that probably would have been preserved despite that extra work, because they were merely better than any previous edition for rigorous testing....which is just a bit like saying that the Chevy Corvair (the primary subject of Ralph Nader's Unsafe At Any Speed) was safer than the Model T because the Model T used pane glass and the Corvair did not. (Seriously, look up the Model T sometime, it was incredibly unsafe to drive.)

I've previously given 5.5e a lifespan of 4-7 years. I stand by that statement.

Im leaning towards the 7 side of tgat but otherwise yeah.
. Coukd be wrong im not fanatic about it. Wouldn't mind seeing some year 1 and 2 figures eg bookscan.

 

[Minigiant]

Would have better IMO to make a separate Greyhawk book.

Greyhawk as its own setting book would likely not sell well enough to 5e's current audience and customer base for WOTC.

An Adventure sure. But a generic setting with many fill in the box areas doesn't have the exciting bits to pull the numbers a major publisher would want.

I've previously given 5.5e a lifespan of 4-7 years. I stand by that statement

5e is in its Sunken Cost phase.

People want change and they know what changes they want (namely shifting the game to a 2-4 encounters base with rules to go longer for dungeons) but they don't want to lose access to their already purchased books.

6e in 2031

 

[M_Natas]

Yep. They also changed ghouls, worth noting. Back then, their multi-claw attacks still inflicted paralysis. Now it's only the bite attack that does that, and they can only attack with the bite once, rather than twice like they can with claws.

So 3 attacks per ghoul per round that had like a 50% Chance to inflict paralysis?
Damn.