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

[Teemu]

I didn't read the whole thread, but I think Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire had a really good solution for control effects and bosses. In a nutshell, if your ability would apply the most powerful debilitating debuffs on a powerful enemy, they downgrade the severity of the debuff by one step. This of course requires the entire system to work on the concept of debuffs working in degrees of severity. For example, in Deadfire, Stunned is the harshest of its category, followed by Dazed (can act but hindered power), and finally by Staggered as the least powerful (slightly penalized). If your ability would inflict Stunned, a resistant enemy would instead be Dazed. There's no usage limit on the enemy's ability to downgrade the debuff. Some enemies even downgrade by two steps within a particular debuff category.

If D&D worked the same way, there would be no issues with control spells feeling weak vs being too powerful. Even if the enemy couldn't be Stunned, you would still debuff them with your ability. You could of course adjust how this would work in a tabletop game. For example, maybe the enemies are resistant to the debuffs while they're at a certain HP value and once they're low enough, you could inflict even the stronger debuff on them.

 

[Minigiant]

I didn't read the whole thread, but I think Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire had a really good solution for control effects and bosses. In a nutshell, if your ability would apply the most powerful debilitating debuffs on a powerful enemy, they downgrade the severity of the debuff by one step. This of course requires the entire system to work on the concept of debuffs working in degrees of severity. For example, in Deadfire, Stunned is the harshest of its category, followed by Dazed (can act but hindered power), and finally by pStaggered as the least powerful (slightly penalized). If your ability would inflict Stunned, a resistant enemy would instead be Dazed. There's no usage limit on the enemy's ability to downgrade the debuff. Some enemies even downgrade by two steps within a particular debuff category.

If D&D worked the same way, there would be no issues with control spells feeling weak vs being too powerful. Even if the enemy couldn't be Stunned, you would still debuff them with your ability. You could of course adjust how this would work in a tabletop game. For example, maybe the enemies are resistant to the debuffs while they're at a certain HP value and once they're low enough, you could inflict even the stronger debuff on them.

That seems like another easy solution

Stunned becomes Dazed
Frightened becomes Startled
Charmed becomes Fascinated
Restrained becomes Slowed

The issue is that the fandom has a percentage who wants simple and you'd have to create a downgrade for each status effect and place it in the control spell making them more complex.

So you are running against the Simplicity Fans and the Lazy Fans.

Personally this would be one of my favorite solutions. Have Wizard cast these complex Spells with tiers of effect which bosses resist the main effect. While Sorcerers have simple Sorceries which they have to pay heavier point cost for effects to work on bosses.

 

[Teemu]

That seems like another easy solution

Stunned becomes Dazed
Frightened becomes Startled
Charmed becomes Fascinated
Restrained becomes Slowed

The issue is that the fandom has a percentage who wants simple and you'd have to create a downgrade for each status effect and place it in the control spell making them more complex.

So you are running against the Simplicity Fans and the Lazy Fans.

Personally this would be one of my favorite solutions. Have Wizard cast these complex Spells with tiers of effect which bosses resist the main effect. While Sorcerers have simple Sorceries which they have to pay heavier point cost for effects to work on bosses.

Yeah I agree that the complexity is the biggest hurdle if adapting the system to a TTRPG. It's fine in a video game since you don't have to do any of the gameplay tracking or resolving yourself. If used in a new version of D&D, it should definitely be relatively easy to keep track of. That's probably the biggest design challenge if you went this route.

 

[DEFCON 1]

And if anyone wants this more complex system of downgraded control effects depending on the number and size of the targets... then one can just make up a system themselves. And then sell it on the DMs Guild if they think other players might want it too. But they don't need to sit on their hands waiting for WotC to do it, especially since we already know WotC has no need or desire to design complexity like that because most of the player base doesn't even think it's an issue warranting those kinds of massive rules and strategy changes.

 

[Remathilis]

Yeah I agree that the complexity is the biggest hurdle if adapting the system to a TTRPG. It's fine in a video game since you don't have to do any of the gameplay tracking or resolving yourself. If used in a new version of D&D, it should definitely be relatively easy to keep track of. That's probably the biggest design challenge if you went this route.

It reminds me of Pathfinder and how conditions can have X severity, where X is the penalty for the condition (like skip x actions or -X to saves). In theory, you could have boss monsters reduce the penalty severity (bosses only take half or quarter of X) but it is still going to be the kind of system that needs a cheat sheet to use regularly.

 

[mearls]

You could wire up a specific debuff that the creature can use to knock out a status put on it. If you specify that if it has that debuff in place it can’t reuse it, you get a local version of a similar system. I’ve been working on something along those lines in my monster design.

 

[Minigiant]

And if anyone wants this more complex system of downgraded control effects depending on the number and size of the targets... then one can just make up a system themselves. And then sell it on the DMs Guild if they think other players might want it too. But they don't need to sit on their hands waiting for WotC to do it, especially since we already know WotC has no need or desire to design complexity like that because most of the player base doesn't even think it's an issue warranting those kinds of massive rules and strategy changes.

Not enough visibility on DM Guild to be worth it
Maybe Kickstarter.

Some systems require a lot of money in marketing to make a profit.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

D&D really suffers for its binary pass/fail, aside from critical hits in attacks. I like PF2's 4 tiers of effects on spells.
Critical Fail (10+ under DC), Fail, Success, Critical Success (10 over DC).

For example, the Slow spell has the following effects
Critical Success The target is unaffected.
Success The target is slowed 1 for 1 round.
Failure The target is slowed 1 for 1 minute.
Critical Failure The target is slowed 2 for 1 minute.

Slowed 1 reduces actions by 1, Slowed 2 reduces them by 2

In PF2, bosses automatically upgrade their success by 1 step. I'd probably design it where they spend resources to do so, as one common complaint is that casters feel useless against bosses.

 

[Staffan]

In PF2, bosses automatically upgrade their success by 1 step. I'd probably design it where they spend resources to do so, as one common complaint is that casters feel useless against bosses.

Not quite. They upgrade their success by 1 step specifically versus incapacitation effects (or, if the effect uses an attack roll or skill check, downgrade that by 1 step). Slow, which you used as an example, isn't an incapacitation effect, so it's great against bosses. Particularly if you're a sorcerer so you can re-cast it if they succeed on their save – trading two of your actions for one of the bosses might not feel great, but it's often one of the more efficient things you can do. Particularly since many monsters have various things going on where you really don't want them to be able to spend three actions doing nastiness to you (e.g. Strike + Grab + Constrict).

 

[Flying Toaster]

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.

This situation is indeed bad, but it reminds me of how much worse it was back in the day. The 1985 Unearthed Arcana book was rushed into print because TSR needed cash fast, so it contained even more errors than usual. In November 1985 Dragon magazine published an article of UA errata and rule clarifications, and in January 1987 the “Sage Advice” column was devoted entirely to reader questions about UA material. Apparently none of this material was ever incorporated into later printings of the book, so only some magazine readers and collectors would have had access to it even years later! Much of the UA content had first appeared in various articles Gygax wrote for Dragon, so if any of it was changed for publication in UA that would potentially make three different versions.

Computer game publishers now have it fairly easy, as they can just distribute updates over the Internet.