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

[GobHag]

Of course the players have to "choose to care," Player engagement is absolutely key in any gaming experience. System design can certainly help in rewarding players engagement. But you seem to be saying it can force it? That the system can force the players into better system engagement and therefore force a "better" experience?

Edit: Or are you saying that the system should be designed around the fact that players "don't care" and should be designed around their lack of engagement with the fiction?

D&D isn't Monsterheart where engagement in the fiction is a baseline for the rules to even actually work so maybe they should--I have played games and sessions in PF2 and ICON where the the underlying world just didn't matter to my enjoyment; playtest sessions, pure 'run through this gauntlet of fights', locking in for a hard boss fight.

 

[SkidAce]

Without ithe gm invoking fiat or players simply choosing to care, tell us what you think makes that sacrifice actually matter enough to make another rest not be the most optimal choice and it's almost certain that it really won't matter as much as implied

Villian gets away and kills prince/princess?

 

[tetrasodium]

Villian gets away and kills prince/princess?

And? Skip to the part going into why it matters after she's dead?

 

[tetrasodium]

Yes, as I originally said, For the players to be properly challenged (assuming that's what the group actually wants, many don't), the DM must (and must know how to) control the pace of play. This isn't railroading or fiat, it's running the game and game management.

Your position seems to be that this is a BIG weakness of 5e, because it puts to much on the DM without giving them the proper mechanical tools to do so.

My position is, the weakness is in 5e not really explaining how this should be done and letting DMs flail about until they learn/figure it out. But once understood (and 5e/5.24 really DOES need to be much more explicit about it and what it entails) the system works fine in this regard.

Yes it absolutely is railroading by way of fiat, blatantly so. Even worse is that the system & class design is designed in ways that actively encourage it while providing only rest/recovery mechanics that are designed to allow players to override the GM with a successful rest through simple no cost no risj persistence. 5e fails on too many levels when it comes to empowering overtuned nova capability & wotc has shown themselves actively hostile to the ide of providing gm support. I say actively hostile because they have actively undercut them with claims like how they didn't design 5e to have encounter expectations or that encounter could be anything to degrees of broadness that makes the term meaningless, despite obvious design and rules to the contrary.

You keep pinning blame on players for not raising above the urge and doing better, but wotc has spent over a decade undermining that too. "Tell your story"..... Well myyyyyy character dgaf because I'm a RoLePlAyEr and myChArEcTeR...". As GobHag said, there are games that require players to engage with the fiction for the rules to work, but d&d is not billed as one of those games.

 

[Mort]

Yes it absolutely is railroading by way of fiat, blatantly so.

The DM is IN NO WAY blocking player action/limiting player agency. The group can rest if the wish, but there are logical consequences for doing so. When they rest, time passes. Are you honestly advocating that the PCs operate inside some kind of time stop where, when they rest, the world freezes?

Even worse is that the system & class design is designed in ways that actively encourage it while providing only rest/recovery mechanics that are designed to allow players to override the GM with a successful rest through simple no cost no risj persistence. 5e fails on too many levels when it comes to empowering overtuned nova capability & wotc has shown themselves actively hostile to the ide of providing gm support. I say actively hostile because they have actively undercut them with claims like how they didn't design 5e to have encounter expectations or that encounter could be anything to degrees of broadness that makes the term meaningless, despite obvious design and rules to the contrary.

You keep saying "at no cost..." Time passing is a cost. Often a fairly significant one. The players can choose to take the cost, or not.

You keep pinning blame on players for not raising above the urge and doing better, but wotc has spent over a decade undermining that too. "Tell your story"..... Well myyyyyy character dgaf because I'm a RoLePlAyEr and myChArEcTeR...". As GobHag said, there are games that require players to engage with the fiction for the rules to work, but d&d is not billed as one of those games.

I'm not blaming players for anything, I've just never met players who don't understand that time is a cost. And I absolutely reject the notion that players will not engage with the fiction unless mechanics force them to do so.

 

[SkidAce]

And? Skip to the part going into why it matters after she's dead?

Bad guy takes over kingdom, outlaws adventurers. Hunts characters with full resources of kingdom.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The DM is IN NO WAY blocking player action/limiting player agency. The group can rest if the wish, but there are logical consequences for doing so. When they rest, time passes. Are you honestly advocating that the PCs operate inside some kind of time stop where, when they rest, the world freezes?



You keep saying "at no cost..." Time passing is a cost. Often a fairly significant one. The players can choose to take the cost, or not.



I'm not blaming players for anything, I've just never met players who don't understand that time is a cost. And I absolutely reject the notion that players will not engage with the fiction unless mechanics force them to do so.

Not all players, certainly, but some folks, like I said above, mostly only care about the power fantasy and showing off. These folks don't want to be below strength and, yes, don't care about the consequences.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Bad guy takes over kingdom, outlaws adventurers. Hunts characters with full resources of kingdom.

Some people would find that an excellent excuse for a bunch of awesome fights.

 

[Eric V]

Bad guy takes over kingdom, outlaws adventurers. Hunts characters with full resources of kingdom.

So...hopefully the DM wants to run this. Hopefully the DM is ok with tossing out a bunch of his ideas into the trash and now, come up from scratch, a whole new campaign theme of "PCs on the Run!"

 

[pemerton]

tighter math still lets you manipulate the situation, and you still can fudge die rolls too.

You might actually have to do that less because you could better predict the outcome. If you vibe your encounters instead of giving them some thought, you might have to do it as much as before however, at least if you do not just manipulate the tough ones but also the ones that turned out too easy

tight rules do not mean things have to be challenging, it just means they are pretty predictable

As I wrote it is not just about that anyway. While I would prefer somewhat tighter math, there definitely is a limit to that, esp. with an attrition model, and I prefer that over an encounter based one.

The real goal is to not make rests the obvious best choice every single time, and to achieve that through mechanics rather than because the DM finds a way to have negative story impacts to counter the players innate desire to constantly rest, i.e. the players want to push on rather than the DM having to twist their arms for them to do so

As DM, I prefer tight math, so that I can better plan combat outcomes. If something goes awry, I can narratively explain the unpredictability as "verisimilitude" and even narratively intervene if necessary.

But I still prefer solid math.

5e makes an effort to be very player friendly. But it also needs to be easier to DM. Probably 4e is the best edition for DMs to run.

My favourite version of D&D is 4e D&D. It's maths is tight, it's game play is pretty intense, and it does not require the GM to "balance" the "adventuring day", because all classes are (more or less, and setting aside some Essentials classes) on the same recovery schedule.

I also find it very responsive when GMing. For instance, suppose that I think an encounter is stalling a bit, or is a bit of a cakewalk - I can easily introduce a new element (eg a terrain hazard, or a new creature, or whatever). And the system picks that up in a pretty seamless network of feedback and interlocking systems: the additional challenge yields additional XP, which affects the progress towards the next level and thus the placing of treasure parcels. If it tips the encounter over the level +4 mark, it also means that the single encounter counts as a milestone.

The resilience of PCs, especially from the upper part of Heroic tier, means that the likelihood of an inadvertent TPK is low. And if there is an inadvertent TPK, that is easily changed to (say) all the PCs being captured, and then the skill and skill challenge rules make escape easy to adjudicate. If a PC dies, it's even easy to have a patron deity intervene and Raise them - just dock the appropriate amount of gold for that ritual from the next treasure parcel.

It's also eas, in 4e,y to do minor rests - like spend one healing surge, or regain one encounter power - and easy to do medium rests - like recover one healing surge, or one daily power. The uniform resource suites and clear relationship between abilities and recovery times enables this.

But the overwhelming evidence is that most of the people who want to buy D&D products from WotC do not want to play a game with this sort of tightness. They want the "balancing" of classes, of encounters, of rewards, and of incentives - including incentives to rest or to push on - to be in the hands of the GM. They want classes to have differentiated recovery suites - a fighter can swing their sword all day, and the idea of player-controlled abilities to deliver blows that really count (ie 4e D&D martial dailies) are seen as too "metagamey" or "unrealistic".

Once all this stuff is punted to the GM, I think the idea that the system will nevertheless dictate an appropriate adventuring day by dint of sheer mechanical structure is gone. WotC, in the design of 5e classes, have built on the legacy of 4e Essentials to provide classes with differing suites that will nevertheless be roughly balanced, at least in combat, under a certain set of parameters (ie the right number and difficulty of encounters, punctuated by two short rests). This has not caused uproar, because it is just a natural extension of the increasingly intricate dimensions of PC build that have been a part of the D&D legacy for a long time. (Beginning with classes like MUs, clerics, paladins and rangers.)

But the stuff about pacing, rewards, etc has been left sitting outside of the mechanical framework. It's "GM empowerment".