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

[Zardnaar]

You had two 20th-level wizards in your group, and that was the best they could do? No one cast vision ahead of time to try and figure out what they needed to be wary of? No one had a contingency spell with greater dispel magic set to counterspell? No one was willing/able to cast wish after the fact to try and make the lich, say, re-roll his initiative ("undo misfortune")?

Freedom of movements/free action spells as well.

 

[Marc17]

Ironically in 2E you woukd have most likely made the save and chewed the lich to pieces. As DM i would have let you control the summoned elephants. And wouldn't set up a 4 hour combat.

I dont remember summons as bad in 2E. PCs used them.

Ya, in 1E&2E, saves just got better from 1st level on. So everybody should have saved except on sub 5 rolls without bonuses. Save or Suck spells existed and flew, but usually they just didn't do anything, but in that small chance laid a risk worth taking and to be feared. Seems the design of the new system in 3E was to be 50/50 against an equal opponent., and worse against a challenging one. Then at that level, non good saves sucked even more.

I really wish they had taken the inovations of 3E, ascending armor, more intutive saves, combined XP chart, multiclassing, etc and just applied that to the 2E "math" and balnaced classes. However, that would have required the designers to consider balancing classes, and that just wasn't in their project scope.

 

[Zardnaar]

Ya, in 1E&2E, saves just got better from 1st level on. So everybody should have saved except on sub 5 rolls without bonuses. Save or Suck spells existed and flew, but usually they just didn't do anything, but in that small chance laid a risk worth taking and to be feared. Seems the design of the new system in 3E was to be 50/50 against an equal opponent., and worse against a challenging one. Then at that level, non good saves sucked even more.

I really wish they had taken the inovations of 3E, ascending armor, more intutive saves, combined XP chart, multiclassing, etc and just applied that to the 2E "math" and balnaced classes. However, that would have required the designers to consider balancing classes, and that just wasn't in their project scope.

I dont think they considered things that much.

In effect they nerfed the fighter outside of very stingy DMs.

 

[Koloth]

And you know what your story actually upholds of my opinion? That the D&D board game can be really stupid sometimes and being beholden to the board game rather than the story means a whole lot of crap happens that never should have. Your experience here highlights that.

That was a bad end to an epic story... resulting from a DM thinking they needed to play the board game "to win" since it was the grand finale. Because what else would a person who puts the board game ahead of the characters and their stories supposed to do? Well... we now see exactly what happens when people focus on what I personally believe is the exact wrong thing. People's memories of their time forever tainted because people were too busy "trying to win" rather than merely just experiencing a truly epic climax.

I am sorry you had to go through that. I wish your DM thought about their game a little differently.

The story wouldn't be any better if the end boss played weak so the characters could win easy. Pretty much a meaningless participation trophy at that point. The risk of a true boss fight at high level is bad things can happen. With no clue as to the tactical situation of the battle, second guessing is rather pointless.

But agree that summons are the bane of high level combat. That 5 v 1 boss fight suddenly turns into 15 v 10 as summoned critters rapidly spawn on both sides.

 

[MichaelSomething]

If you don't want a single control spell to end an encounter, just give your boss monster an army of underlings to accompany them during the boss fight!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That's our fundamental disagreement, as I say that when the game state denies your involvement for however long then so be it.

And I say a game which is designed to make this happen even a tenth of the time is a badly-designed game. Like it is literally, objectively bad at being a thing you play. Because you literally don't play it a large portion of the time. You just sit there, completely disengaged, until you're allowed to start doing things again.

Can you imagine if any other entertainment medium were like that?

Your TV show stops at random for 20-minute intervals. Congratulations! You're getting the real-life fact that sometimes things are boring or disengaged for no reason!

Your music gets interrupted by a five-minute interlude of high-pitched static. Because it's a Real Life Fact that sometimes you don't get to hear the whole song.

You go to a play, and after the intermission, a third of the audience is told they are not allowed back in until the final 20 minutes of the second act, because it's a Real-Life Fact that sometimes you don't get to see everything you wanted to see.

If you're going to be pulling the "entertainment" card, forcing people to sit there doing nothing, completely disengaged, for long stretches of time is precisely the antithesis of entertainment.

Sure it's maybe not fun for those inactive at the moment, but I'm in no way pretending or trying to claim the game will be fun for everyone all the time. There'll be highs and lows and everything in between, with the aggregate in the end being (I hope) an enjoyable experience.

But this is again the exact same rhetorical trickery I called out. You are using "It is a fact that some things won't involve you" as though that were identical to, and justifying of, "You need to be okay with being completely excluded for long stretches of time."

The reasoning does not follow. The argument is not valid. The fact that some positive integer number of moments will occur during which your participation is not relevant (or perhaps even not possible!) has nothing, whatsoever, to do with whether it is good or bad to have frequent, lengthy periods where you don't get to participate in the game while others do, especially when that's purely the result of randomness.

A player not paying attention while their character is also unable to pay attention is actually good in-character roleplaying!

I think you're trying to make a flippant joke here? I don't personally find it funny. At all.

Besides: if the character in question is even conscious, they aren't going to be bored, they're going to be many other, much more relevant emotions. Like fearful, or anxious, or enraged, because they're in a dangerous situation and unable to act. That's how real people actually respond to being put in danger and

More seriously, I think it was @guachi just upthread who said - and I completely agree - the number one job of a player is to be entertaining and the number two job is to be entertained. Well, if the other players and the DM are doing Job One right, I should still be entertained as a player by what they're doing even if I myself am not actively involved at the moment.

Then the GM is doing their job outright wrong if they are regularly making one or more players completely disengaged. That is, literally, being the exact antithesis of entertained: being bored out of your mind and unable to do anything, desperately seeking something to keep you occupied while you wait to participate again.

It should. We skip over such things in play but still assume they occur.

Ah-ah-ah! No. Your argument specifically depends on never skipping over this sort of thing. Otherwise, you would have to admit that some Real Life Facts aren't actually justification for specific actions or events being included in play. Your argument's structure is:
P) Some mechanics can cause players to frequently be disengaged for extended periods.
Q) It is a real life fact that some events do not involve you.
{Unstated premise R: Things that are real life facts need to be included in the game.}

C: Mechanics that cause players to frequently be disengaged for extended periods need to be included in the game.

Your unstated premise--the thing which allows you to move from your "real life fact" to an obligation of game design--is very specifically that something being a Real Life Fact needs to be included in play. It cannot be "skip[ped] over...in play but still assume[d to] occur."

Otherwise, you actually need...some other reason why this Real Life Fact should be included in the actual gameplay, but the Real Life Fact that people need to pee and poop does not need to be included in the actual gameplay.

Again, it's assumed as part of the established SOP for making camp; and actually becomes relevant if the party is trapped in a confined space for any length of time.

Then why can't "the moments where you aren't involved" also be an assumed part of the established world, where two out of five party members have a private conversation, or one person goes off to pray alone, or whatever, without needing to be included in the actual gameplay process? Why does this Real Life Fact NEED inclusion in the actual, active gameplay space, but that Real Life Fact can be glossed over in silence?

But it sure makes design a lot easier (and IMO a lot better) if you just think "What would the characters do?" and design around the more obvious answers, with minimal or even no regard for the metagame.

Needless to say, I don't consider this to be a particularly effective way to design a game.

It is an important consideration once you have gameplay that actually feels good and rewarding to play. Prior to that, this is like designing a cake by piping all of your icing onto acetate sheets first, and then deciding what kind of cake you want to put underneath.