D&D General Mike Mearls says control spells are ruining 5th Edition

[Velderan]

"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of the game." Paraphrasing.. who was that? Matt Colville maybe?

I know I've seen that quote in the World of Warcraft community, so it's been around for awhile.

 

[billd91]

I'm not sure if we're thinking of the same thing, but Star Wars: Saga Edition had a little track where you'd deteriorate as you got wounded. I guess you could think of it as exhaustion, in 5e terms. I don't recall how it applies here, though.. it's been decades since I looked at my SWSE books so I don't remember everything about it. But to be fair it was a pretty solid game.

Yes, you could deteriorate down the condition track and that imposed an increasing penalty on attacks, defenses, and skill checks as you moved down the track until you got KOed. You usually got moved down the track for taking damage greater than your damage threshold which was based on your Fortitude Defense (with some minor mods) in a single hit. A stun-setting blaster and some Force powers could push you down the track further than basic damage would.
The biggest problem was probably that relatively few hits would exceed your damage threshold and, if they did, you were probably in hit point trouble anyway. So it didn't act as a very effective second track for taking a target out of a fight without killing them. It ended up being more of a death spiral modifier if something had a lot of hit points and people could regularly exceed its damage threshold.

 

[mellored]

The solution i like is something like...

The boss creature takes an additional turn at initiative -10.
The legendary creature takes 2 additional turns at initiative +10 and initiative -10.
The epic creature takes 3 additional turns...

Beholder takes turns at initiative +10, +5, it's roll, -5, -10. And shoots 1 ray per an eye ray each turn.

So "stunned until the end of it's turn" comes up more often, and it makes more saves against stuff.
It also would make individual turns a bit shorter and battles more dynamic.

 

[James Gasik]

Damage was also much lower in 1e and 2e. 3e brought in an increase in damage and hit points.

Ehhh....static damage actually could rise higher in AD&D for martials due to increased Str damage bonuses and specialization. The difference is that while you can assume a 20 stat eventually in 5e, it's hard to say what a "normal" character could achieve in AD&D, since "stat goes up" is pretty rare.

But if I dust off my high level 2e character's sheet, I see that he has:

Attacks:

(MH) Scimitar of Speed +4 (specialized, 19 Str): +8 to hit, 1d8+13 damage, 3 attacks at Thac0 4 (-4).
(OH): Short Sword of Quickness +2 (specialized, 19 Str): +6 to hit, 1d6+11 damage, 1 attack at Thac0 4 (-2).

Then with Enlarge (cast using custom item with CL 10) he increases his damage rolls by 100% (doubled), so his one round of attacks deals something like 134 damage on average only needing a 6 (or 8 for his short sword) to hit the best AC the game supports. Vanishingly few enemies have that kind of hit points.

Now if he were a 5e character, it would be (MH) Scimitar of Speed +2 (20 Str) +13 to hit, 1d8+7 damage, 2 attacks+1 bonus action attack/(OH due to Nick): Short Sword +2 (+13 to hit, 1d6+7 damage). Enlarge would add 1d4 damage to all his attacks, so his 1 round damage is now 55 (93.5 w/ Action Surge...I think) needing a 8 to hit AC 21. Most things he fights have 2-3 times that many hit points.

 

[James Gasik]

I've seen that in every genre in some way or another for years, I'd be shocked if that was his originally.

Sid Meyer (of Civilization fame) I think originated the quote.

 

[Charlaquin]

Huh. Having not switched to 5.5e, I didn't realize that healing had been buffed. I thought the whole point of increasing monster damage was to bring them more in line as level appropriate challenges so that folks didn't have to throw deadly+++ encounters at the party to challenge the PCs.

All healing spells had their dice doubled in the new rules.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The spell list -really- needs to have a lot of the tradition cut out of it...

The tripod of 5e's design hindrances

1. Adherence to Tradition
2. Simplicity for new players
3. Not using the subsystems

Aka building the whole game around a simple, new user, version of Vancian casting and ignoring anything else.

I know "tradition" is a popular scapegoat 'round these parts, but honestly it's just differing priorities.

While nuking traditional disabling effects would certainly tighten up the combat loop, it would weaken other areas of the game, and those areas are vital, too. D&D is destined to do its best to serve many chefs, because the broadest possible appeal of the game is not necessarily the one with the tightest possible combat engine. This will always be a bee in some folks' bonnet. Which is why everyone has their Fantasy Heartbreaker, more tuned for what they personally want out of D&D, while dropping things that make D&D broadly appealing.

Simplicity and the modularity of the subsystems are similar: these two elements make parts of the game stronger, as much as they compete with, say, folks who really want to lean into strategic min/maxing. Tradition - including traditional disabling effects - has a constructive role to play in actively making the game more fun for some players.

Wow, that is the most elegant expression I've ever seen of the core tension in 5e.

Having played a lot of AD&D and B/X (via OSE) in the past couple years, I think that the main failing of 5e (and that's relative - the game obviously has done very well) is the mismatch between AD&D play patterns with 3e/4e mechanical conceits.

The core math of 5e comes from 4e, yet the game play loop is far older. I think one of the big issues is that the iconic adventures tended to look and play like AD&D ones, even 3e stuff like Forge of Fury. Those adventures all emphasized the dungeon as the opponent, yet I think DMs these days tend to focus on specific encounters.

Oddly enough, when AD&D tried to do the boss monster thing it didn't work great IME. Lolth was supposed to be the boss monster of the GDQ series, but her measily 66 hit points - even when backed with AC -10 - weren't enough to survive a round against a reasonably equipped 14th level party.

Thanks, man! Means a lot coming from you.

I would love D&D to get better at designating different kinds of encounters mechanically (boss encounters definitely being one of the biggest things).

Though, I'm a little skeptical of the idea that DMs these days tend to focus on specific encounters. There might be a bit of design leading play here, where a DM might want something with a bigger scope, but the game's design clearly leans into encounters, so the DM does, too. There's not much ink spilt in the core books about how to make an interesting and balanced dungeon, or how to use game systems to branch and fork your narrative and challenge your party with a story-based loss that has some teeth but isn't a fun-stopper. There's a lot about how to make an interesting and balanced encounter, though. Complaints about "grind" feel like complaints about an encounter focus to me. About stopping the rest of the game to engage with the combat loop that's not super engaging to you for an hour.

For instance:

I see this said often "buckets of hp". Were monsters deal in 1 turn in older editions? Because in my experience, even monsters with "buckets of hp" die in 3 rounds of combat. Less, usually. PC's also deal buckets of damage (which is fun). Is this an actual problem in 5e?

For some groups it really is a problem! 3 rounds of combat is a long time to spend in combat when combat is as detailed as it is in 5e. And when you're in combat, some of the more impactful decisions you can make as a character in a narrative are on pause while you make smaller decisions about how to whittle down enemy resources when you know the system is set up to help you win.

Just wanted to specifically call out that this actually gets to the heart of the matter that Mearls, unfortunately, doesn't actually reach with his analysis. He stops short, and stays focused on band-aids, rather than trying to address the problem itself. You are quite right that this is a friction point. It's one D&D's designers have only once recognized, and unfortunately even then they balked at solving it and instead just hoped folks would be happier with a system that stuck to one lane and did it well.

I honestly don't think folks (overall) were happier with a system that stuck to one lane. The broad attempt to serve enough playstyles "well enough" is part of why I think D&D is the thing that it is. Focus on any one playstyle might make a tighter game, but it would be a less popular one.

 

[Incenjucar]

I'm a fan of the track methods and the like. A solo might escape Force Cage but be slowed, etc. Enough focus fire of hard control should eventually land, but it's dull to one-shot a boss without any special planning.

When I ran 4E games I converted all monster stuns to daze+something to avoid giving players a non-turn.

 

[Zardnaar]

‘Buckets of hp’ seems off as I have it on good authority that combats are over in 3 rounds. They can’t have too much hp if that’s the case.

Its because they also cranked up player damage.

Anything with a bad wisdom save paralyze it. Double damage.

Most/all of the warrior types have nova abilities.

 

[Zaukrie]

I'm a fan of the track methods and the like. A solo might escape Force Cage but be slowed, etc. Enough focus fire of hard control should eventually land, but it's dull to one-shot a boss without any special planning.

When I ran 4E games I converted all monster stuns to daze+something to avoid giving players a non-turn.

I generally agree that a track that makes the effect stronger over rounds is better than pure shut down spells and effects.