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

[James Gasik]

Having played this in 5e as part of the Yawning Portal, I can tell you that it does not matter if you rest or not.

I thought so too, until I was introduced to the horror that is Leomund's Tiny Fallout Shelter.

 

[Zardnaar]

I thought so too, until I was introduced to the horror that is Leomund's Tiny Fallout Shelter.

Until NPCs with dispel magic turn up.

 

[James Gasik]

Until NPCs with dispel magic turn up.

Except there aren't any in that adventure...*

And saying "well the DM has to modify the adventure" is all well and good, but why does the DM have to do that, anyways, exactly? If the game is built around this attrition model, why does it have things like Tiny Hut that you have to work around to enforce it?

Why do I have to seed NPC's with access to a specific spell just to foil the players options? And yes, of course, I could ban or alter the proud nails- but there are so many of them!

Let's be very honest here. 5e doesn't work the way it's supposed to out of the box. Saying "well, I, as an experienced DM can wrangle it into submission" is all well and good, but not every DM has that experience, and really, it's counterproductive to have a game that doesn't work unless you fix it yourself.

In this modern age where a major video game studio can release a game full of bugs and reap the benefits of having a modding community fix it for them, this may seem normal, but I assure you, it's not! Imagine if you bought a car and discovered in order to get it to work as advertised, you had to put in your own time and labor!

I don't think anyone would be happy with that, and yet it's ok for D&D to be that way?

*When I ran the 5e version, in fact, I couldn't modify the adventure in large ways, since I was running it for our local Adventure League. This is where I ran afoul of Crawford's "a hemisphere has a floor" comment.

Which I still contend is BS- that's only true if it's a solid sphere, and last I checked, LTH isn't.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Quite.

I disagree. My players have had enough constant pressure all day at work. They play D&D to relax.

That's not what I was saying.

What I was saying is that the GM does, in fact, need to apply pressure for there to be pressure. The way D&D--especially 5e, but all editions--is designed, it has to be the GM providing pressure, because the players functionally cannot pressure themselves, as they have no ability to articulate anything proactively, their behavior is inherently reactive. (Even in the most sandboxy sandbox!)

Even in a D&D played to relax, judicious application of pressure is appropriate. Otherwise, you could never ever have any challenge connected to any kind of time limit--because that would be some amount of pressure at some point, and thus unacceptable.

 

[Zardnaar]

Except there aren't any in that adventure...*

And saying "well the DM has to modify the adventure" is all well and good, but why does the DM have to do that, anyways, exactly? If the game is built around this attrition model, why does it have things like Tiny Hut that you have to work around to enforce it?

Why do I have to seed NPC's with access to a specific spell just to foil the players options? And yes, of course, I could ban or alter the proud nails- but there are so many of them!

Let's be very honest here. 5e doesn't work the way it's supposed to out of the box. Saying "well, I, as an experienced DM can wrangle it into submission" is all well and good, but not every DM has that experience, and really, it's counterproductive to have a game that doesn't work unless you fix it yourself.

In this modern age where a major video game studio can release a game full of bugs and reap the benefits of having a modding community fix it for them, this may seem normal, but I assure you, it's not! Imagine if you bought a car and discovered in order to get it to work as advertised, you had to put in your own time and labor!

I don't think anyone would be happy with that, and yet it's ok for D&D to be that way?

*When I ran the 5e version, in fact, I couldn't modify the adventure in large ways, since I was running it for our local Adventure League. This is where I ran afoul of Crawford's "a hemisphere has a floor" comment.

Which I still contend is BS- that's only true if it's a solid sphere, and last I checked, LTH isn't.

Yeah published adventures tend to suck.

Leomunds Vault Tech Secure Nuclear Bunker can be a problem.

 

[pemerton]

The problem, of course, is that constant pressure is absolutely exhausting.

Doesn't that depend a bit?

I mean, constant pressure in my real life is exhausting. But pressure - in the sense of being confronted by challenges/obstacles that I can't ignore - in a game seems like an aspect of playing the game.

Variation is important. But that thing is even harder to do, because when you take the pressure off, that's giving the classes designed around time pressure a massive leg up on the ones that are designed around consistency.

The (rough) uniformity of resource suites in 4e D&D certainly helps with this, in that it means there is no intraparty tension. It's players vs GM, not players vs one another.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Except there aren't any in that adventure...*

And saying "well the DM has to modify the adventure" is all well and good, but why does the DM have to do that, anyways, exactly? If the game is built around this attrition model, why does it have things like Tiny Hut that you have to work around to enforce it?

Why do I have to seed NPC's with access to a specific spell just to foil the players options? And yes, of course, I could ban or alter the proud nails- but there are so many of them!

Let's be very honest here. 5e doesn't work the way it's supposed to out of the box. Saying "well, I, as an experienced DM can wrangle it into submission" is all well and good, but not every DM has that experience, and really, it's counterproductive to have a game that doesn't work unless you fix it yourself.

In this modern age where a major video game studio can release a game full of bugs and reap the benefits of having a modding community fix it for them, this may seem normal, but I assure you, it's not! Imagine if you bought a car and discovered in order to get it to work as advertised, you had to put in your own time and labor!

I don't think anyone would be happy with that, and yet it's ok for D&D to be that way?

I've called this out myself, very recently, within the last couple weeks at most. I was dismissed with, in brief, "It's in our imaginations, so that doesn't matter." I found that an unproductive, thought-terminating response, but I didn't see much point in digging further on that specific thing.

*When I ran the 5e version, in fact, I couldn't modify the adventure in large ways, since I was running it for our local Adventure League. This is where I ran afoul of Crawford's "a hemisphere has a floor" comment.

Which I still contend is BS- that's only true if it's a solid sphere, and last I checked, LTH isn't.

Depends on exactly what definition of "hemisphere" you're using. The usual definition--as a special case of the "spherical cap"--actually does include a flat floor. Because a spherical cap is defined as all of the surface bounded by a sphere on one side of a flat plane which intersects the sphere, along with that plane itself. If that flat plane contains the sphere's center, then the spherical cap is a hemisphere. (It is also a special case of a spherical wedge, which is likewise defined as a spherical lune between two congruent semidisks, which are an angle a apart from each other; when a is π radians, the two semidisks are parallel and thus become a single disk.)

 

[pemerton]

Yeah I can see that a long campaign which features a deadline often enough with every storyline/quest could feel contrived.

This is one reason why I don't really advocate a "quest" approach to FRPGing.

As per the posts I linked to, rather than a deadline caused by something the GM thinks the players should care about (eg the hostages will be sacrificed in 3 days time), I think it makes more sense for the GM to impose pressure directly. Frame the PCs into challenging situations. When the players have their PCs go somewhere or try and do something, make it exciting! (And in D&D, exciting should also mean requiring players to expend their resources.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Doesn't that depend a bit?

I mean, constant pressure in my real life is exhausting. But pressure - in the sense of being confronted by challenges/obstacles that I can't ignore - in a game seems like an aspect of playing the game.

I would not say that, as I presented it, it does.

Some people are going to be good with lots of pressure almost all of the time. Some are going to be good with extreme pressure in bursts. Some, a slow and irregular oscillation. Some, a fast oscillation.

But I think it's reasonable to say that, because pacing is of vital importance to the play experience, there do need to be some moments without pressure. Hence, the pressure cannot be truly constant. There need to be moments where it ramps up, and moments where it ramps down--occasionally to zero. But just as extreme pressure is a sometimes food for most people, zero pressure is a sometimes food for most people. It's extremely useful to have the ability to genuinely just stop and smell the roses every now and then.

If there are people out there who can truly handle 100% constant pressure all the time that they're playing, I would be very surprised. That doesn't mean it can't happen! But I'm not really sure what to make of "no, I definitely actually need to be experiencing consistent pressure in every moment of play".

The (rough) uniformity of resource suites in 4e D&D certainly helps with this, in that it means there is no intraparty tension. It's players vs GM, not players vs one another.

Sure. And one of my constant frustrations with discussion of 5e is folks adamantly refusing to consider that that tension could ever exist in 5e--or, worse, that it couldn't ever be the case that the people who don't have the Phenomenal Cosmic Powers might be the ones who want those who have them to be recharged, y'know, so that they don't die (or, at least, don't stay dead).

 

[Not a Decepticon]

I have. Met them in droves when running 5E. It‘s one of the many reasons I quit running it. The players pushed to rest as often as possible and refused to push through. Town invaded? Don‘t care. Prince sacrificed? Don‘t care. If they couldn‘t start every fight as close to full as possible they‘d simply shrug and wait. They had zero interest in risk or challenge of any kind.

Sounds like bad players or poorly set expectations. And, as I have said many times, you could simply tell them no.