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

[Cergorach]

You know what's funny about 2024 D&D? They used to make Legendary Resistance "cost" HP when doing calculations on the monster's CR. Now they are pretty much free. The difference between a normal and legendary monster is pretty much that a legendary monster has Legendary Resistances and deals 25% more damage.

Do you have links to the math for that? Not that I'm doubting you, but I really want to use that to 'upgrade' some 2014 monsters and NPCs to 2024.

 

[Remathilis]

What?

What you are stating here, is that Prison/Control, is the better play, than the multiple other avenues of gaining advantage and winning in Magic.

Is that what I'm to take away from this?

Control beats mid-range. Aggro beats control. Mid-range beats aggro. Paper-rock-scissors. (Combo mostly plays solitaire until one turn they declare they win and then explain for 5 minutes why).

D&D combat is designed to play mid-range as a default. But control magic easily shuts it down and force's the slog/stalemate. The counter is aggro (nova strikes) but it's considered bad form to quickly have a monster decimate the party before they can act, so most DMs play mid-range and thus smart PCs play control and we get the problems we have here.

Hope that clears it up

 

[Amphytrion]

I generally find Mike Mearls’ patreon very insightful, and I think he is much missed in thr D&D team.

I agree with him here. Some control spells’ very existence is detrimental to the game, so monsters that serve a narrative function need to override such spells easily. The result is Legendary Resistance.

I’m very curious about Mearls’ alt-D&D (Odyssey), and his recent suggestions of buff to damage spells but debuff to control spells is exactly what the game needs to work more fluidly at higher levels.

 

[Bae'zel]

I mean, I guess if the players are happy to totally nerf the big boss in a very anticlimactic way... I guess that's fine, but as a player I'd be a bit let down.

I remember it happening once in WFRP 2e, where our wizard spat fire at the villain while he was monologuing and one-shot him. There was a lot of lead up to that moment and I kind of felt annoyed at the DM for making it so easy.

I guess I will borrow from video games more and have "phases" for bosses (essentially a couple of stat blocks that switch out when one is defeated.

But I'll also limit control spells to making the boss lose 1 whole turn (not making them completely helpless, but still giving the players a chance to regroup or nova their ass).

During session zero, I'd communicate this sort of stuff though: that I want boss fights to be epic and challenging, more memorable. Just like in a video game, though, I'll make it clear when the game goes into "boss mode" so that they know what's up.

edit: one possible side effect of letting the players know that "control" spells will be less effective against bosses means that they might be less conservative in retaining spell slots and use such spells on other enemies that they encounter before. That could make other battles more satisfactory?

 

[tetrasodium]

Okay, that's not exactly what @mearls said. But here's an excerpt from the latest post on his Patreon.

Legendary resistance is a cheap hack, jammed into 5e because we didn't have a better solution to the broken control spells that we had to include in the game for tradition's sake.

How's that for an intro?

As incendiary as the statement might be, it's fundamentally true. D&D changed over the years, but its content remained the same. The spells that give DMs headaches today had counters in AD&D when they were first released. As the game shifted over time, those spells retained their core functionality while monsters lost their defenses against them.

It's an interesting post and worth a complete read.

What's your opinion on control spells and legendary resistance?

It's a pretty extreme deviation from the long post he actually wrote. I don't think that the selective quoting was deliberately malicious though since I wanted to post a thread about it but avoided doing so when I couldn't think of a way to easily do it without just copying the patreon post.

Spoiler: he ACTUALLY wrote

Legendary resistance is a cheap hack, jammed into 5e because we didn't have a better solution to the broken control spells that we had to include in the game for tradition's sake.

How's that for an intro?

As incendiary as the statement might be, it's fundamentally true. D&D changed over the years, but its content remained the same. The spells that give DMs headaches today had counters in AD&D when they were first released. As the game shifted over time, those spells retained their core functionality while monsters lost their defenses against them. What's a designer to do? First, let's take a step back into how things used to work.

Resisting Magic​

Roughly speaking, magic resistance was a flat percentage chance that a spell failed to function when it targeted a creature. Powerful creatures, particularly those from other planes, had magic resistance. Let's take the bone devil as a point of comparison.

In 5e, the bone devil is CR 9 and has a Wisdom saving throw of +6. Not bad! At 5,000 XP, we can expect it to face characters from 6th to 13th level. It probably has a save DC against PC spells that ranges from 15 to 18 or so, meaning it saves about 60% to 45% of the time. It also has magic resistance - the 5e version that gives advantage on saves - so it succeeds around 75% of the time on average.

In AD&D, the bone devil has 40% magic resistance. Target it with any spell, and there is a 40% chance that the spell simply fails to do anything. Its save against spells succeeded on an 11+ on a d20 roll. That means between magic resistance and a static save that it succeeds on a save about 70% of the time.

That's pretty close! Except there's one problem. 5e gives characters a LOT of ways to mess with saving throws. 5.5 in particular is rife with them. In AD&D, characters have few if any ways to alter a monster's saves.

On top of that, in the typical AD&D party only one character - the magic-user - had access to spells that could shut down a creature. The cleric could do it, but their offensive spells were weaker. The fighter and thief, barring access to a magic item, relied only on damage output. In contrast, the default in 5e is that every character can expend resources to shut down a monster.

If the party focus fires a creature and correctly understands that control effects are key to winning, they can shut down a creature through sheer volume of saves. That simply wasn't an option in AD&D.

In context, the math between 5e and AD&D lines up well. In practice, an AD&D creature saves maybe once per round, while a 5e creature might need to save at least once on every character's turn.

"Save me!" Cried the Mighty Balrog​

This design approach leads to bad tension in the game. The DM wants a creature to have a fighting chance. The players want to turn its action economy to dust. Legendary resistance is bogus because the PHB gives the players those options. What fun is there in giving someone toys and then taking them away?

Let's start with determining the scope of the problem. I don't care if chump monsters fall victim to spells or special attacks. They appear in large numbers, so taking out one or a few doesn't do anything.

Legendary actions are a giant, blinking, neon sign that says, "I'm a boss monster!" So, let's add this mechanic to replace legendary resistance:

Legendary Defense: When this creature makes a saving throw, it can expend a legendary action to gain a +5 bonus to all saving throws until its next turn.

I think this works as a get out of jail free card. A spell or effect slows down a monster, but doesn't grind it to a halt. It then provides a model for some unique effects, say for a mindflayer.

Spiteful Mind Lord: When this creature makes a saving throw, it can expend a legendary action to gain a +5 bonus to all saving throws until its next turn. If it uses this ability in response to an Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma save, the creature that created the effect takes 15 psychic damage.

There! Now we have some texture that helps shape how to deal with monsters. Here's another one for a devil. In this case, our boss monster devil struck a contract with some allies to help it out when it is in a pinch.

Diabolic Bond: When this creature makes a saving throw, it can expend a legendary action to gain a +5 bonus to all saving throws until its next turn. The first time it uses this ability and fails its saving throw, 1d3 barbed devils teleport to open locations within 30 feet of it.

How about stuff like forcecage? In theory the concentration mechanic is supposed to keep those in line. What if we did something like this to get PCs to burn through more spells:

Twisted Weave: At the end of this creature's turn, each active spell that affects this creature or an area within 100 feet of it is polluted by its corruption of the weave. Creatures of its choice that cast those spells take 25 force damage per spell they cast.

You could model that with different damage or introduce other effects to mess with PCs.

How about dismissal or similar magic?

Walker of Hidden Ways: If an effect would teleport this creature or send it to another plane, this creature instead teleports up to 500 feet to an open space of its choice.

Putting it All Together​

As you can see, there are plenty of ways we can counter the metagame presented by the PHB. The trick is being aware of what the characters can do and how we as DMs can counter them without simply saying no. Monsters need tools to counter the effects they see in play, the ones from the PHB, rather than potential hazards they might face.

Starting by putting my cards face up on the table WRT control spells... I never had a problem with control spells in adnd2e/3.x and quite liked the way 3.x spell resistance∆ encouraged control capable casters to shift from save or die/lose spells to battlefield control and save or suck spells that would turbo charge the other players in the party with reciprocity. IME the "god wizard" of 3.x was a self correcting problem for everyone at the table but players who had no interest in being part of a team they worked together in a group/party based game.

That bolded section you omitted even mentioning is pretty critical to the whole point that mearls was making though because the post was about how design changes result in 5e failing on this aspect even though the math is pretty similar.

Imo: The abilities he mentioned are an improvement over 5e's LR="no it saves, the duce lied" but fail at taking on the biggest sin of Legendary Resistance. That sin being combined with neovancian prep it removed the way SR:Yes/No spells influenced player choices both round to round encounter to encounter and all the way back to every time they had a chance to select spells or supporting build choices.



Between the shifting PC capabilities and shift from vancian to neovancian spell prep monsters frequently went from needing to save against something once maybe twice per round to needing to save against something encounter deciding every turn. That's not the only shift though, and a few posts have touched on it by mentioning different party sizes/party roles being impacted differently ranging from not at all to bring completely shut down, but the maybe more important (and unmentioned) part is that 3.x SR meant the monster would be saving against different spells than in 5e.

While vancian prep ensured that a caster would be specialized with a spell loadout and build setup to be the party's crank it to 11 dial but fairly useless when it came to personally killing foes. -OR- The caster was specialized for blasting and probably had some spell penetration feats/gear along with a spell selection balancing both monster melting SR:yes spells and less effective but reliable SR:no spells. Under vancian prep those two caster build choices needed to balance how many of each spell they prepared and as a result players would simply do their best not to waste a SR:yes save or lose/die spell on a monster even suspected of having SR because doing so often meant that the only copy of that spell available bounced off the monster's SR with less impact than a lucky sling or crossbow strike could have been. With neovancian prep & on the fly upcasting in 5e monsters face a scenario where casters don't face that same pressure choose one or the other during spell prep/build choices so the legendary resist monsters don't benefit from the shift in spell choices either when players of God wizard type builds know they could devote almost every slot to save or lose/die type spells rather than shifting to reciprocity fueled spell choices. Meanwhile those blasters can just call down whatever is going to be closest to calling down orbital bombardment in any given encounter without feeling an urge to down shift with less flashy spells that might give other PCs a chance to shine on trash mop up or boss monster juggling.



∆my memories of the ad&d2e equivalent mearls mentioned are too fuzzy and I think our games tended to be too low level for it to factor much at the time

Edit: I decided to include the full post from Mearls because it seemed like without it the discussion was really veering off to hammer on aspects of something that he wasn't quite writing about.

 

[Remathilis]

I guess I will borrow from video games more and have "phases" for bosses (essentially a couple of stat blocks that switch out when one is defeated.

I don't think that would work any better. I know from years of MMO play that boss fights with mechanics often end up relying on "invincibility phases" to stop players from burning past mechanics. I don't find that any better or worse than legendary resistance. And I think the vast majority of options used (summoning adds, invincibility phases until some mechanic is reached, one shot attacks that must be countered, etc) would be absolutely mauled by the community.

Unfortunately, the only way to make boss monsters work is to take away a lot of the PCs ability to nova or control out the fight, and players are very resistant to either.

 

[Sulicius]

Do you have links to the math for that? Not that I'm doubting you, but I really want to use that to 'upgrade' some 2014 monsters and NPCs to 2024.

Sure thing. I trust Blogofholding's math when it comes to this. He did a pretty in-depth look at the monster math, and when I use his table of stats per CR, I don't see meaningful differences between legendary and nonlegendary monsters except gaining Legendary Resistance and 25% damage.

 

[Sulicius]

What do you mean? The 5.24 DMG doesn't have any CR calculations, so I don't know how you are arriving at that conclusion.

Blogofholding has done a pretty good job at mathing it out.

 

[Staffan]

I'm sure there are other ways to address it, but I think PF2e addressed it well in their own way- but importantly, I have little practical experience with PF2e. If someone here plays or runs it regularly, it'd be nice to hear from you on this topic!

I think PF2 overcompensated somewhat. The problem is the rapidly escalating numbers combined with the Incapacitation rules. Let's say you have a 5th level caster trying to do something against a 7th level creature. Your save DC is probably going to be something like 21 (level 5 + trained 2 + stat 4 +10), and the creature will have a good save of +18, medium of +15, and poor of +12. So the medium save gives the creature 5% chance of a critical failure (which will likely take it out of the combat), 20% chance of a normal failure (strong penalty, like losing a whole round), 50% chance of a success (mild inconvenience, like losing one of its three actions or having a penalty for a round), and 25% of a critical success (no effect). If you manage to hit its poor save, the normal failure becomes 35% and critical success 10%. These numbers seem fine on their own, because you're fighting something that's supposed to be a moderate encounter all by itself, or becomes a severe encounter if accompanied by a lieutenant that's 2 levels lower (so same level as the party) or two minions 4 levels lower (so 2 levels below the party).

But! To this, you add the Incapacitation effect rule: Incapacitation effects (tagged as such, but covering most hard CC) when used on an opponent whose level is more than the source's level (either the user's level if it's a normal ability, or spell level x2 if it's a spell) automatically improve the result of the save by 1 step. So the normal save now becomes 5% of normal failure, 20% chance of normal success, and 75% chance of critical success. 75% chance of "no effect" is not my idea of a good time, which is why my go-to spell against strong opponents is slow which is about as good as it gets without getting the incapacitation tag (slowed 2 for 1 min/slowed 1 for 1 min/slowed 1 for 1 round/no effect).

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

I think PF2 overcompensated somewhat. The problem is the rapidly escalating numbers combined with the Incapacitation rules. Let's say you have a 5th level caster trying to do something against a 7th level creature. Your save DC is probably going to be something like 21 (level 5 + trained 2 + stat 4 +10), and the creature will have a good save of +18, medium of +15, and poor of +12. So the medium save gives the creature 5% chance of a critical failure (which will likely take it out of the combat), 20% chance of a normal failure (strong penalty, like losing a whole round), 50% chance of a success (mild inconvenience, like losing one of its three actions or having a penalty for a round), and 25% of a critical success (no effect). If you manage to hit its poor save, the normal failure becomes 35% and critical success 10%. These numbers seem fine on their own, because you're fighting something that's supposed to be a moderate encounter all by itself, or becomes a severe encounter if accompanied by a lieutenant that's 2 levels lower (so same level as the party) or two minions 4 levels lower (so 2 levels below the party).

But! To this, you add the Incapacitation effect rule: Incapacitation effects (tagged as such, but covering most hard CC) when used on an opponent whose level is more than the source's level (either the user's level if it's a normal ability, or spell level x2 if it's a spell) automatically improve the result of the save by 1 step. So the normal save now becomes 5% of normal failure, 20% chance of normal success, and 75% chance of critical success. 75% chance of "no effect" is not my idea of a good time, which is why my go-to spell against strong opponents is slow which is about as good as it gets without getting the incapacitation tag (slowed 2 for 1 min/slowed 1 for 1 min/slowed 1 for 1 round/no effect).

The Incapacitation tag is working as intended then. You simply aren't meant to be able to use control effects against higher level foes.