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

[Minigiant]

Gard to say. If I was designing 6E I would poll about spell DC scaling and briefly explain it in nice simple terms. Eg old D&D you made your save 75-95% of the time. New D&D higher level you can fail 95% of the time versus a bad save.

Also point out monsters are in the same boat. You foukd skip that part I suppose but if it blows up in your face.....

Personally I'd reintroduce 4e Roles as Monster Traits.

Most monsters would be standard monsters.

But some monsters would have Monster traits that display their focus.

And you as a DM could switch Combat Role, Social Role, or Spotlight role freely between them.

Like a Legendary monster gets Legend Points.
So you can swap a Adult Dragon from a Legendary Soldier who can spend a Legend point on Resistance to save on a failed saving throw to a Legendary Striker who uses Deadly Strike to make a hit into a crit or Legendary Controller who can cast Counterspell via Countermagic or Debilitate to give the target disadvantage on a save

 

[Minigiant]

I see the problem by looking at the examples in the last paragraph of your post, none of them apply to what I was talking about when you first quoted me. Back in 509 you partially quoted my post and ignored everything else in order to dismiss what was being said. The rest of that post explains it when read in the context of the post or two back that I had responding to at the time. Now your asking me to repeat what was being discussed absent context. The "Christmas tree" was part of a toolset given to the gm in every edition prior to 5e and at least from ad&d2e on those editions provided the gm tools I previously elaborated on as well as ample advice on important aspects of using the tools they included. 5e turned that on its head and stripped those tools from the gm while simply giving their player facing results to base PCs and claiming it was done to make it easier for the gm.

Unfortunately this kind of selective reading is par for the course why the gm cannot be expected to fix so many of 5e's problems and rough edges.

Or in simple terms.

Older editions of D&D assumed that both the PCS and the Monsters had magic items after a certain amount of magic enters play. This allowed DMs to artificially boost underpowered PCs and monsters if the play at the table was unsatisfactory to the table. And because the magic items were assumed that certain level, it didn't greatly unbalance your game if the party killed their monster and took their items. And those editions came with some sort of advice on how you hand out said items so that eventually a party would have the style of play that they would want once they get to the magical levels.

Or shorter terms.

Instead of legendary resistance you would give a boss monster a cloak of resistance. And you didn't care because if they killed the monster everybody in the party already had a magic cloak or was looking for one.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

You'd think I'd actively fabricate the quotes after being asked for them. That would be idiotic.

Not gonna lie, when someone is speaking the way as if they were in the room when decisions were made or can read designer's minds, I feel justified wanting links to sources of their claims.

And that was my point. That 5e was designed with the assumption that there would be modules.

But they never produced them.

So there was a point when the strategy was to produce internal modular rules "in house"

Then there was a decision to no longer produce modular rules.

So... who want supposed to make the modular rules if they weren't gonna?
Who was supposed to create the rules variants that keep the boss monster from being extremely vulnerable to control spells and requiring DM to grind out a party's magic before inducing a legendary monster?

So you make assumptions based on your gut feeling and guesses, yet you present it as if you were having factual evidence. You were not there to witness the design process, so you do not know what decisions were made and how.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Want a fixed version of 5E? Go buy Level Up. Available on this very website!

 

[mamba]

I scratch my head when I see this nebulous claim. What is the “direction” that WotC is moving that you don’t like?

even more overpowered, high fantasy, consequence-free classes (respec on long rest) and species (spectral wings, because god forbid they could be inconvenient in some cases).

To me they did not really address anything substantial, made some things slightly better and others slightly worse, with the general direction being the opposite of where I would prefer it to go.

 

[mamba]

Want a fixed version of 5E? Go buy Level Up. Available on this very website!

there are different ways to fix things, but yes, basically, don’t wait for WotC to do something, switch to something else instead

 

[Zardnaar]

Want a fixed version of 5E? Go buy Level Up. Available on this very website!

That's the one with a 6d6 fireball because the 8d6 one is OP right?

 

[Distracted DM]

That's the one with a 6d6 fireball because the 8d6 one is OP right?

And the martial maneuvers a la 3.5e Tome of Battle
Though I don't imagine they dropped Fireball's damage to 8d6 because it's OP, rather that it makes it a flat-out better choice than similar aoe spells (lightning bolt).
Just guessing there.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Personally I'd reintroduce 4e Roles as Monster Traits.

Combat roles was one of the really good concepts from 4e that should have carried into 5e. It provides a tactical direction to a GM. When they saw an encounter with a Defender, a Striker, a Controller and three Minions, it was pretty clear how they should run the fight.

To your point, a given creature/class could be run in different roles. Its totally plausible for a cleric to be a controller, a striker or a defender all based on the spells prepared.

There was 10 pages from the 3e DMG on demographics, communities, power centers, NPCs, etc that combined with the 4e combat roles/uses would have provided the kernel of world building and combat tactics to have leveled up so many newbie GMs. And most of it was totally version agnostic. Sure, different power curves, but that's a simple bit of formula tweaking to fit the "default" setting. (are PC-classes 1% or 0.1% of population? Are there 2x as many 4th level characters than 6th level, or 3x as many? What's typically the highest level person in a country of 1 million? What about an empire of 50M, like Rome or China?)

The other part of 4E I wish had survived was more of the Ritual Casting. 5.5 really hates Ritual Casting, but it should have been made more prominant, like a background feat, IMO. The idea of the fighter having Unseen Servants clean their armor, the rogue learning Identify so they didnt need to involve a wizard with their loot, the Barbarian able to summon a ghost horse, all that just felt more like what d&d should be. Fewer people with high power magic, more with things that are almost useless in combat.

 

[Minigiant]

Not gonna lie, when someone is speaking the way as if they were in the room when decisions were made or can read designer's minds, I feel justified wanting links to sources of their claims

Sure. But when someone does speak that way, one should think that the information is very easy to find.

Most of the written information was old.
But Mearls talks about it in like every interview and con panel.

I'd be a massive jerk to link hour long videos and podcasts. But it would take me days to listen to them and get timestamps.

So you make assumptions based on your gut feeling and guesses, yet you present it as if you were having factual evidence. You were not there to witness the design process, so you do not know what decisions were made and how

Hey if someone goes on and on about a game feature to the point that other game designers on the outside also parrot it, then doesn't produce, but opens up the means for others to make the thing you hyped up...

well...

1+1+1=3

Easy to make a strong hunch.

I mean ask the 4E fans about the hyped 4e tactical features for 5e. Open that can I worms.

A5E is practically built off the hype never put to paper by WOTC for 5e.