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

[dave2008]

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

are youe unfamiliar with mythic monsters from WorC?

 

[dave2008]

This is just a more sophisticated version of the "sales are proof that design is good" argument, which I don't accept.

No, they said nothing about good design. There argument is that there is not a strong reason to change course if what you are doing is successful.

Success =/= good design

They should do this thing because it would make a better product--one they don't need to keep issuing revisions of because it wasn't broken in the first place.

I mean, folks talk all the time of the (alleged) benefits of a truly "evergreen" edition. Wouldn't this kind of testing be precisely what does that, so that they never need to do the hard-overhaul work again, and can instead do light-touch stuff, compendium-style collections of previous publications, etc.?


Evidently you do, because WotC has shown--multiple times--that they're incapable of foreseeing things like this. The "ghoul surprise" is just one prominent example. I mean, remember when they thought Fighters getting extra feats was balanced with the crapload of powerful high-level spells because, from what reports I've heard anyway, they never bothered testing wi

 

[Maxperson]

Which makes the warts of 5e even more obvious and annoying to look at. Its a "you could have fixed this WOTC, you had feedback for years...but you didn't do it"

It was the anchor of backwards compatibility that they hung around their own necks. Without it, they could have made those changes.

 

[Parmandur]

Which makes the warts of 5e even more obvious and annoying to look at. Its a "you could have fixed this WOTC, you had feedback for years...but you didn't do it"

But consider the possibility that they did follow a decade worth of feedback, hence the 2024 rules we got.

It was the anchor of backwards compatibility that they hung around their own necks. Without it, they could have made those changes.

Maybe being careful to maintain backwards compatibility was part of listening to the aforementioned feedback. Certainly at this point, with the weight of material and the Beyond platform, backwards compatibility seems like a continuing longterm guiding principle.

 

[Maxperson]

Maybe being careful to maintain backwards compatibility was part of listening to the aforementioned feedback. Certainly at this point, with the weight of material and the Beyond platform, backwards compatibility seems like a continuing longterm guiding principle.

I'm sure it was. With a player base as large as D&D has, every single rule will have 20+ different versions of feedback, some contradictory.

My point is that maintaining backwards compatibility meant that they couldn't fix a lot of things, because they could only really make minor changes.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm sure it was. With a player base as large as D&D has, every single rule will have 20+ different versions of feedback, some contradictory.

My point is that maintaining backwards compatibility meant that they couldn't fix a lot of things, because they could only really make minor changes.

True, and that pressure to maintain compatibility isn't going to get any lighter with tine: releasing the rules fully into Creatice Commons means that they are also 100% committed to either maintaining compatibility or empowering a new Pathfinder in the future (kijd of funny that Tales of Valiant initially tried to present as the 5E PF, but ended up being less conservative than 2024 rules).

 

[mamba]

Looser design and looser maths makes it easier for the system to drift, and creates more room for GM injection of control over the direction of play. Both these things seem fairly central to a lot of mainstream D&D play.

I don't know, to me looser math just means it is harder to predict the outcome, that to me is the opposite of a DM being able to control things.

Another effect of tighter maths is to make play more intense and demanding

That is a choice, no one is forcing the DM to go for a dangerous to deadly encounter every time. It just means when they do it, the encounter actually is that instead of an easy encounter accidently turning deadly or a deadly one being a cakewalk because the math is borked

 

[mamba]

It was the anchor of backwards compatibility that they hung around their own necks. Without it, they could have made those changes.

yeah, their level of adherence to backwards compatibility basically killed 5.5 for me, along with me not actually liking the general direction

 

[mamba]

But consider the possibility that they did follow a decade worth of feedback, hence the 2024 rules we got.

I doubt that, the first half of the playtest showed that they were more willing to experiment than they would have been if the 10 years of conservative feedback were a factor / existed. What killed it was somewhere between them getting cold feet and feedback to the UA. More the former though

Certainly at this point, with the weight of material and the Beyond platform, backwards compatibility seems like a continuing longterm guiding principle.

it's what made me drop 5e, so there is that

 

[Zardnaar]

I doubt that, the first half of the playtest showed that they were more willing to experiment than they would have been if the 10 years of conservative feedback were a factor / existed. What killed it was somewhere between them getting cold feet and feedback to the UA. More the former though


it's what made me drop 5e, so there is that

Well 5E popularity has locked in D&Ds design until the fan base organically gets sick of it en masse.

I expect that to take around 17-26 years.