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

[Zardnaar]

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

Internal work began 2011. Playtest packets didnt generate themselves.

That's 14/+5 years ago as 2025 is almost done.


Im not going to nitpick 1 year for a decade and a half claim.

You could use the basic 5E engine for 6E and pick a direction.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So...a +7 bonus (level 14-15 is mid-level) is now "wildly scaling"?

Yes. It is larger than the +5 bonus from being trained.

But 5e's stuff doesn't "wildly scale".

Indeed. It explicitly does not, that was kinda big deal, they called it "bounded accuracy."

Kinda strange how that works...

Not at all strange.

 

[tetrasodium]

But wouldn't it be a better design if you managed to have the best strategies also being the most fun to play? And just like there is no guarantee that players find the best strategies, nor that they find the most fun strategy. Maybe they stumble upon something that works, and realize it's unfun,but how are the supposed to discover that the worse options will be more fun in play? Once you know certain tactics or abilities work well, it's hard to consider the worse options, because they look worse, no reason to believe that they could somehow be more fun.
Only in the aggregate of something like a forum where gamers of different gaming groups meet and exchange their experience they might discover ways to make the game more fun.

Especially since it might require an understanding between player and GM that the opposition will be built around the players not using the best options - if not, they might just experience more character deaths, failed adventures or TPKs because the DM - after having seen what they can do once, or because he saw the same potential - expects them to hide in Secure Shelters and strip off legendary resistance to stun-lock the big bosses or whatever the game in question has as its most effectice strategy.

Yes it very much would, but the design of 5e walls off too many required mechanical rules subsystems from relevance and new players are almost certain to view gm imposed changes as unjust unfun nerfs. Once that happens it doesn't matter how fun players could find the result because that fun is going to be found at the bottom of an impossible self fulfilling prophecy because the players have already decided that such an unjust unfun nerf can't be fun & they play to prove that true with every poison laced choice they make.

Spoiler: good & relevant video

Knocking down those walls with official enough rules subsystem replacements to make room for the kind of slow evolution @mearls seems to be talking about in 313 is too high of a bar for the gm to meet on there own while still claiming to be running d&d, but I've been desperate for drop in rules subsystem replacements for years now to reopen walled off pathways of fun and their absence from core or optional/variant was pretty much the single deciding factor in giving 5.024/the new forgotten realms books. Hard pass.

Even if it's just an optional pdf from wotc that was printed off & got Kinkos to spiral bind it would be light years more credible than anything I could homebrew or house rule into existence. That credibility is critical for halting the "this can't be fun" self fulfilling prophecy where the players reluctantly play in ways that prove it true& only then because the alternative means stepping up as gm.

 

[SkidAce]

But wouldn't it be a better design if you managed to have the best strategies also being the most fun to play? And just like there is no guarantee that players find the best strategies, nor that they find the most fun strategy. Maybe they stumble upon something that works, and realize it's unfun,but how are the supposed to discover that the worse options will be more fun in play? Once you know certain tactics or abilities work well, it's hard to consider the worse options, because they look worse, no reason to believe that they could somehow be more fun.
Only in the aggregate of something like a forum where gamers of different gaming groups meet and exchange their experience they might discover ways to make the game more fun.

Especially since it might require an understanding between player and GM that the opposition will be built around the players not using the best options - if not, they might just experience more character deaths, failed adventures or TPKs because the DM - after having seen what they can do once, or because he saw the same potential - expects them to hide in Secure Shelters and strip off legendary resistance to stun-lock the big bosses or whatever the game in question has as its most effectice strategy.

This reminds me of this meme....their dilemma seems to be is it right or is it effective?

 

[Alzrius]

Im not going to nitpick 1 year for a decade and a half claim.

You don't have to, I will.

For instance, the claim was "over" a decade and a half old, when it's not even exactly a decade and a half old.

 

[Zardnaar]

You don't have to, I will.

For instance, the claim was "over" a decade and a half old, when it's not even exactly a decade and a half old.

You dont get out much do you? (Ducks).

 

[mamba]

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.

I’d be fine with iteration if one iteration didn’t take 10 years and actually got us somewhere. As it stands that means we never really get anywhere. What’s worse, I don’t think this iteration is overall any better than the 10 years old one. They fixed some things, they broke some things, and much of it is lateral moves.

 

[mamba]

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.

kinda

2024 went back and took the best of that and made it Core.

very debatable, on some things it went backwards rather than forwards relative to the books in between, whether you consider this a ‘best of’ or ‘dropping the ball’ is in the eye of the beholder, I certainly see some of it as the latter at least

 

[Lanefan]

The post you're referencing was in direct response to the idea that "Life isn't fair" gets the response "Deal with it."

It went outside the bounds of discussing the game, and highlighted Lanefan's philosophy, which I characterized as "Mean".

Perhaps and understandably unclear in my post to which you refer, I was speaking about the game (both at-table and in-character) rather than the real world.

Trying to pull that back into game theory and ask if people getting knocked out in a fight and not having anything to do is "Mean" is thus a mischaracterization of my position.

@billd91 seems to have read me bang-on.

Which is that control effects, as implemented, are an impediment to fun.

Is getting reduced to 0hp fun? No, not really. But that typically takes time wherein you're playing the game and having fun, and the dropping to 0hp is an interesting consequence to a chain of events that you are invested in rather than an instantaneous "You don't get to play, anymore" right at the beginning of an encounter.

"You don't get to play any more" is Chick-level hyperbole. This isn't Black Leaf dying and her player getting tossed out of the game because of it.

"You don't get to play for a while" would be accurate, and maps nicely to a hockey player taking a penalty or a rugby player going off injured: sure they get to play again, just not right now.

And trivializing encounters due to poor rolls on the DMs part is, similarly, not particularly fun.

Here, as a player, I wholeheartedly disagree. Knocking off the BBEG with one lucky roll is great! We live to fight another day and still have all our resources - high fives all round!

Why is it so much fun? Because we as players know - or should know - that had luck run equally hard the the other way we'd be hosed, with maybe some characters dead and the rest fleeing for our lives.

As a DM, losing in one shot less fun; but then the DM expects to lose anyway. The only thing that changes here is the manner and speed with which this loss is inflicted.

That's why Legendary Saves were invented as a kludge.

Big monsters acting alone do need some beefing up, for sure. That's been more or less the case in every edition.

 

[Zardnaar]

kinda


very debatable, on some things it went backwards rather than forwards relative to the books in between, whether you consider this a ‘best of’ or ‘dropping the ball’ is in the eye of the beholder, I certainly see some of it as the latter at least

Class design is quite nice. Books are very nice in use.
With the power creep however the "improved" monsters are roughly on par with the 5.0 equivalents. Anything with a bad wisdom save is really 1/3rd of its CR. If youre lucky it gets 1 turn and is stunlocked assuming your PCs know what theyre doing.

5.75 would be 5.5 phb with the monsters redone. Same naughty word different day.