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

[Minigiant]

Some of it is the freedom that comes with role playing. Folks are like, "I can haz rat bastards as PC?" You see it in video games a lot where open worlds begun and folks do awful things to NPCs. Part of it is simple guilty pleasure in engaging in things typically out of bounds by game design limitation or social contract. Once that initial experience is out of the way, people typically mature beyond it. ITs the folks that never get enough that is a different story...

There's money left on the table of somebody creating an entire book of each of the griefing more annoying versions of PCS as NPCs that DMs can sic on players as rival parties.

Grief Thief
Fireball First Wizard
Clericzilla Foreverturn
Cheesy McFeatcombo
Humanslayer Kthe Ranger

 

[Bae'zel]

...That being said, my go to option would be the mythic / elite (as it is called in Level Up) as it is the simplest to implement and is very effect 90% of the time IMO.

Thanks for the reply. I don't really understand what this part means, but I will look up Level Up to find out.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

What evidence do you have that WotC is at all interested in doing the sort of rigorous design and playtesting needed to make the game you want? It's not a matter of can the designers do it. It's a matter of will their corporate masters see the short-term profit they require to change course in any significant way.

I have already said I don't think they want to do this. But this is just the goalpost shifting, no? First it was questioning whether the path even made sense at all. Then it was whether the path would have even a hope of making money. Now it's whether there's any interest on their part in doing so.

I've made my case. I think I've done more than enough to show the value of the approach. That you can continue to come up with ever higher hurdles is not something I'm interested in engaging with, so...I won't.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I have already said I don't think they want to do this. But this is just the goalpost shifting, no? First it was questioning whether the path even made sense at all. Then it was whether the path would have even a hope of making money. Now it's whether there's any interest on their part in doing so.

I've made my case. I think I've done more than enough to show the value of the approach. That you can continue to come up with ever higher hurdles is not something I'm interested in engaging with, so...I won't.

For the record, I think a game company other than WotC (virtually any other game company) could make a very fine RPG using your suggested techniques. Cut the gorilla out of the equation and I'm on board.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Some of it is the freedom that comes with role playing. Folks are like, "I can haz rat bastards as PC?" You see it in video games a lot where open worlds begun and folks do awful things to NPCs. Part of it is simple guilty pleasure in engaging in things typically out of bounds by game design limitation or social contract. Once that initial experience is out of the way, people typically mature beyond it. ITs the folks that never get enough that is a different story...

It is worth noting that, consistently, statistics from video games indicate that, for most games, players overwhelmingly (like more than 4:1) favor "good" options over "evil" ones when they're put to the choice. Good example, there's a dog in the Dragonfall campaign of Shadowrun Returns, and he belonged to the PC's friend who perished in the opening. He sometimes comes to you for comfort, as a dog missing his human would do. You can choose to be mean to him or nice to him.

For about 2/3 of the game, that's all it is, the occasional scene where you can be nice to a dog. Then, when your home base is under attack....it turns out he's half-hellhound and can kick some butt. If you were more nice to him than mean to him, he'll help fight. He's not particularly strong and can't wear most equipment, being both magical (which makes augmentation difficult/harmful) and not humanoid. But he is helpful. The efficient option, for min-maxers, is to be mean to him so you can fight him and get more XP. Something like ten times as many people have the achievement for recruiting him than those who have the achievement for killing him, even though a single game can easily accommodate doing both things without restarting.

That's far from the only example, it's just one where I've seen the data with my own eyes. Every time data of this kind gets reported, the pattern remains strong.

Yes, some people see the freedom of the TTRPG space as a chance to "cut loose" and do all the hedonistic, violent, selfish, horrible things they can't do IRL. But the vast majority, backed up by actual statistics and analysis, genuinely strive to be good people, perhaps even better people than they are/have been IRL.

"People" is a distribution, there will always be some in the extreme tails, and the bigger the population, the more extreme outlier examples you expect to see. But it turns out, video games actually reveal that most people want to do good by others, even when the rewards actually do favor being evil.

 

[Autumnal]

It took me a long time to fully grasp the phenomenon across very different venues, but…griefing is fundamentally parasitical. Yeah, there are groups that have fun preying on each other repeatedly over time. But it seems that for a lot (most?) people inclined to play rat bastards, it’s most fun to mess up the play of those who aren’t doing it and aren’t really equipped to respond effectively to protect their fun. So the fans of rat bastardry find themselves needing to seek more others as the last group give up and go away or figure out how to drive the rat bastards away.

Conversely, the folks who are at least not deliberately sabotaging each other have the possibility of playing together a long time without needing to expand or modify their group.

So there’s a biasing effect. Outsiders are more likely to encounter the rat bastards on the prowl. I already knew there are a lot of groups the rest of us never see or cross paths with. I just hadn’t realized how much I was more likely to see the bad actors in the gaming world for the same reasons they stand out in a lot of social media places, and why their efforts to create their own places free of our “censorship” and such. They need the rest of us in a way we really don’t need them

 

[nevin]

Perhaps doubling the amount of rests is a solution

A 5 minute
A 1 hour
A multiple hour rest
A multiple day rest

Then some resources could only be restored in downtime, meaning bosses have downtime as well.

if you are doing that why not just do away with them? You'll have to adjust classes that count on 5 min rests but it wouldn't be hard to simply do away with rests and go back to x-times a day per each ability depending on how powerful it is. The problem is no matter how you spread out the rests the players are rewarded for resting and punished for not resting. Just remove the mechanic.. I suspect the reason that causes so much push back is because 5 minute rest abilities and 1 hour reset abilities were the answer to needing magic items. But magic items are far more granular and easier to control once the GM has some experience than rests.

 

[Minigiant]

if you are doing that why not just do away with them? You'll have to adjust classes that count on 5 min rests but it wouldn't be hard to simply do away with rests and go back to x-times a day per each ability depending on how powerful it is. The problem is no matter how you spread out the rests the players are rewarded for resting and punished for not resting. Just remove the mechanic.. I suspect the reason that causes so much push back is because 5 minute rest abilities and 1 hour reset abilities were the answer to needing magic items. But magic items are far more granular and easier to control once the GM has some experience than rests.

The points is that that different styles of play would assume different amounts of restfulness.

Dungeon Play would only assume starting the dungeon with the resources of a 1 day rest and only being able to do 1 hour rests while down in the dungeon.

Casters would start with all their slots and the Recoveries/Channels. Fights assume all PCs are have at least 1 of the Short Rest feature and either Most of the spell slots in the first X fights. After the Xth encounter, PCs are assumed to be half power.

Wilderness Play assumes only 1 encounter per 12 hours. PCs are assumed to be fully stocked on 1day, 1hour, and 5 minute resources every fight.

Urban Play assumes large gaps between encounters. PCs are assumed to be fully stocked on 1day, 1hour, and 5 minute resources every fight.

War Play assumes assumes no rest. PCs start with all resources: 3 day, 1day, 1 hour, and 5 minute. No rests can be assumed outside of magic pick-ups simulating rest.