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

[Zardnaar]

The problem i see is that barring organized play, their is no enforcement mechanism for balance patches. If you introduce Wish the PHB and it's broken, there is no way to replace Wish with Fixed Wish except by DMs to be aware Fixed Wish exists and manually enforce it at their table. The "making the DM aware" is the hard part because Gods know how many DMs bother to check that errata exists (I still have conversations with people who don't know Conjure Minor Elementals was nerfed) and publishing fixes in supplements creates confusion on which version is correct (i believe Goliath and orcs all got multiple versions printed in multiple books on their way to the 24 PHB).

The only way you can enforce incremental change like that is via a digital distribution (like Beyond) where you literally replace Wish with Fixed Wish. Other than that, I don't know how you make it work outside of wiping the slate every few years.

Im not going to use the CME errata until the spell becomes a problem.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The story wouldn't be any better if the end boss played weak so the characters could win easy.

That's why you as the DM wouldn't run the encounter that way either.

There are thousands of shades of grey between what actually happened and your statement of "boss played weak so the characters could win easy." Yours is a poor counterargument to my point because you've asserted that only the furthest other extreme is the only other option to be had and that's just not true.

 

[mearls]

Im not going to use the CME errata until the spell becomes a problem.

I think that's the key. Adoption isn't as important as having the option to adopt.

If someone runs the game using the core rulebooks and has no problems, they can just keep doing that. Ideally, if they have an issue there's a product or expansion that solves it for them.

If the boss monster issue is a big enough problem, Wizards can publish a book with boss monster stat blocks, advice on how to handle spells, and so on. The book solves your problem.

If you have never had an issue with it, the book might still be useful but you might not use as much of it.

Every 5 to 10 years, you could then have revised core rulebooks that take the best of the options and incorporate them, or versions of them, into the core. If the boss monster book is a massive hit that every DM has in their library, the next MM might use it to design dragons, demon lords, etc.

That's basically how Magic, Warhammer, and other ongoing games handle it. Abilities that showed up as special variants eventually moved into the core of the game (Haste or Lifelink in Magic, rapid fire bolters in 40k).

 

[Remathilis]

Is D&D ever allowed to go through enough play testing for the amount of times and tests needed to create the base structure that you would build off of without going years of poor profit and poor sales due to it openly advertising a new addition.

The problem now is D&D players have become impatient. The 5e Kernel is over a decade and a half old if you go though the Next play test, 10 years of 5e, and the One D&D play test, it's one of the most playtested versions of D&D ever. And people are now looking for the All New, All Different D&D game for 6e that is going to change the system yet again rather than keep refining 5e. The 2024 books were barely off the printer and Enworld was full of "how long till 6e" and "how different should 6e be" threads imaging a new edition that totally fixes all the problems they currently have and totally won't introduce new problems.

So as long as players keep demanding D&D reinvent rather then iterate, we're always going to be getting version 1.0a of the rules rather than let the system mature.

 

[Remathilis]

Im not going to use the CME errata until the spell becomes a problem.

Case. In. Point.

 

[Remathilis]

I think that's the key. Adoption isn't as important as having the option to adopt.

If someone runs the game using the core rulebooks and has no problems, they can just keep doing that. Ideally, if they have an issue there's a product or expansion that solves it for them.

If the boss monster issue is a big enough problem, Wizards can publish a book with boss monster stat blocks, advice on how to handle spells, and so on. The book solves your problem.

If you have never had an issue with it, the book might still be useful but you might not use as much of it.

Every 5 to 10 years, you could then have revised core rulebooks that take the best of the options and incorporate them, or versions of them, into the core. If the boss monster book is a massive hit that every DM has in their library, the next MM might use it to design dragons, demon lords, etc.

That's basically how Magic, Warhammer, and other ongoing games handle it. Abilities that showed up as special variants eventually moved into the core of the game (Haste or Lifelink in Magic, rapid fire bolters in 40k).

Isn't that basically what 5e did? Xanathar introduced updated encounter, treasure, and downtime rules. Tasha's gave patches to the base classes and new species rules. Monsters of the Multiverse revised every species except a handful and redid two books worth of monsters. Every background since Styrixhaven had a level 1 feat. 2024 went back and took the best of that and made it Core.

And people call it a new edition (or half edition).

 

[Zardnaar]

I think that's the key. Adoption isn't as important as having the option to adopt.

If someone runs the game using the core rulebooks and has no problems, they can just keep doing that. Ideally, if they have an issue there's a product or expansion that solves it for them.

If the boss monster issue is a big enough problem, Wizards can publish a book with boss monster stat blocks, advice on how to handle spells, and so on. The book solves your problem.

If you have never had an issue with it, the book might still be useful but you might not use as much of it.

Every 5 to 10 years, you could then have revised core rulebooks that take the best of the options and incorporate them, or versions of them, into the core. If the boss monster book is a massive hit that every DM has in their library, the next MM might use it to design dragons, demon lords, etc.

That's basically how Magic, Warhammer, and other ongoing games handle it. Abilities that showed up as special variants eventually moved into the core of the game (Haste or Lifelink in Magic, rapid fire bolters in 40k).

I blame you for returning to old D&D. Playing AD&D 2E/clones in 2025 is different than 2012-14 vs 2000.

CME with changes to cloud of daggers i wonder if +2D upcast was intended fix for damage spells.

 

[Minigiant]

The problem now is D&D players have become impatient. The 5e Kernel is over a decade and a half old if you go though the Next play test, 10 years of 5e, and the One D&D play test, it's one of the most playtested versions of D&D ever. And people are now looking for the All New, All Different D&D game for 6e that is going to change the system yet again rather than keep refining 5e. The 2024 books were barely off the printer and Enworld was full of "how long till 6e" and "how different should 6e be" threads imaging a new edition that totally fixes all the problems they currently have and totally won't introduce new problems.

So as long as players keep demanding D&D reinvent rather then iterate, we're always going to be getting version 1.0a of the rules rather than let the system mature.

It's half and half really. Or thirds.

One third of the community is impatient and won't let WOTC iterate the system and accept that some stuff might be off and it is allow for a router and people can adopt a router as time goes on and buy new books that replace older "worse" stuff.

The other third does not want to lose access to any of the content they had before so they refuse to run out for any major arrada or iteration of the game that is not simply cosmetic in nature.

And the last third don't pay attention enough to really care the direction and mostly just follow the content of those of the other 2/3 and think positively or negatively towards the process and schedule of DnD based on what their social media algorithm shows them.

With this situation Wizards is never in a good financial position to make a choice unless the game or edition completely dies on its own allowing them to restart. 5e is too good to fall that hard right now

For example the control spell issue that this thread is about could be fixed with a couple fundamental tweaks and keeping much of the same base system in place but the responsible opportunity to do so it's not coming anytime soon for WOTC nor what they ever want that position to appear anytime soon.

 

[Alzrius]

The 5e Kernel is over a decade and a half old if you go though the Next play test, 10 years of 5e, and the One D&D play test

Um, no. The D&D Next playtest began in May of 2012, according to an interview with some guy named Mike Mearls.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

In the final game of one of my DMs epic years long campaign, we fought the lich who was behind most of the campaigns machination. We were all 20th level (3.5) and the lich was built using the Epic Level Handbook. He also has a death knight bodyguard. It was supposed to be epic.

It went like this:
Lich: first round, wins initiative (some epic feat) and casts Mordenkainen's Disjunction. The fight is derailed for over half an hour as everyone who can't make a DC 30 Will save watches their entire collection of magic gear and buff spells disappear and redoes their entire character sheet to account for the loss of permanent magic items like weapons and armor. Then the rest of us get to act but the lich has a fear aura that forces the rogue (me) to flee for 10 minutes. I cannot make a DC 30 Will save as my bonus is now +6. It's roll a 20 or nothing. The lich later hold persons our ranger who also cannot make that save except for a 20. Neither of us do anything for the whole fight. The majority of the combat came from the two wizards using Summon Monsters (celestial elephants) to do trample damage and the cleric healing the fighter round after round so that the fighter could kill the lich with the cleric's magical sword (one of the only magic weapons the group has left).

My grand contribution in the finale? I kept track of intitative. For four hours. My PC showed back up after the fight was over.

That fight changed a lot of my opinions on D&D. About magic items and Christmas trees. About combat math and saves About summons (you know how many attacks 8 celestial elephants get per round?!) and about save or suck/die/cc. A very different Remathilis (literally and figuratively) walked out of that session. But the thing that stuck out to me the most was being in the finale of a decade long campaign my character being taken out before he even got to act against his archenemy.

Another point to be made here: that was some very weak sharing of spotlight going on there by players and DM alike. Some of those summoned elephants should have been given to you and the Ranger player to control so you had something to actually do in the fiction.

Sorry you had to experience it the way you did.