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

[mamba]

LR worjs.

in which way? by allowing for the spells to be resisted instead of having to address the underlying issue? sure, but that also is what makes it a cheap hack

Problem is everyone casts spells and disabling sells start at level 1 now.

so there is a problem then, why not address it?

Caster damage basically sucks so stunlock sonething and let the martials deal with it.

address caster damage then, instead of trying to bury flaws under a pile of kludges because you could not be bothered to actually address them

 

[Azzy]

Nah. You're not his supervisor. He doesn't owe you anything; you're just a random guy on a message board. He's not trying to get an academic paper published, either. He is making a claim, doesn't have the citation on hand at the ready, but knows what one can use as a search if they are so inclined. If one is not inclined, fine...but that's just because one wants to be right; has nothing to do with the truth.

Things exist even if no one cites them.

Then I don't owe him (or whoever) credulity. ¯\(ツ)/¯

 

[Staffan]

A lot of fans from previous editions did switch. But based on the age and starting demographics, most of those concerts are under 45 years of age and started with 3e, 4e, or started in late stage 2e.

I'm sad to tell you, but 3e was released 25 years ago, and 4e 17. People who started with those games are oldtimers.

You are splitting the hair a bit too finely there. The days of players being forbidden from reading the DMG are a long way past & it didn't even work out that well as an expectation way back then. The exact line I was referring to from dmg141 is "Use common sense to determine whether more than one of a given kind of magic item can be worn. A character can't normally wear more than one pair of footwear, one pair of gloves or gauntlets, one pair of bracers, one suit of armor, one item of headwear, and one cloak. You can make exceptions; a character might be able to wear a circlet under a helmet, for example, or to layer two cloaks."
The 2024 rules seem even worse in this regard with "You can’t wear more than one of certain magic items. You can’t normally wear more than one pair of footwear, one pair of gloves or gauntlets, one pair of bracers, one suit of armor, one item of headwear, or one cloak. The DM might make exceptions." where character was switched to a very much player facing "you".

Sure, no-one's stopping players from reading the DMG. But players shouldn't expect to be able to hold guidelines from the DMG over the DM's head. And those guidelines are based on physical limitations, not some metaphysical chakras like in 3e (I don't think chakras was used in the 3e core books, but I've seen devs refer to item slots with that term, and it eventually migrated to Magic of Incarnum which was heavily based around the concept. Can you have two amulets? Sure, why not. Wear all the bling, man. The meaningful limitation is intended to be attunement anyway, not body slots.

 

[Staffan]

LR worjs. Problem is everyone casts spells and disabling sells start at level 1 now.

Unlike the old days, right? And if we go way back, charm person used to be usable in combat and was a much more reliable mind control spell, with 3e nerfing it something fierce.

 

[Minigiant]

I'm sad to tell you, but 3e was released 25 years ago, and 4e 17. People who started with those games are oldtimers

I know.

But the designers and reign holders of D&D until THIS year were even older.

Todays 50-75 year olds had a 40 year stranglehold on D&D design.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Unless you're his boss, he has no burden to prove anything to you. Or any of us.

Acctually, it's called burden of proof - if you make a claim that is not just your opinion, like claim that you know exactly what was the mindset and aim of creators of the game like if you were there or can read their minds,

Okay...how about, y'know, the whole "we literally licensed out books to others" thing? Because that's a literal actual business thing they did. We have it on record. That's why we got the Acquisitions Inc. book. That's why we have the Humblewood book. That's why there's a whole book full of official, WotC-approved Exandria content.


Will you listen to a list of licensed products officially made for D&D 5th Edition....and not, as far as I'm aware, in any way written by WotC?

The idea of opening the license to 3rd party is not in itself a proof of intentionally designign the game with the assumption other peopel will fix it. A ton of games are working on an open license and yet you'd be laughed out of the room if you made a claim like that about Draw Steel, for example.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

I'm sad to tell you, but 3e was released 25 years ago, and 4e 17. People who started with those games are oldtimers.

Honestly at this point if you played 5e at launch, you're also an oldtimer.

Problem is everyone casts spells and disabling sells start at level 1 now.

There has been "save or die" disable spells at level 1 since oD&D. If anything, it was worse in the TSR era with Sleep than anything anyone can do in 5e.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm sad to tell you, but 3e was released 25 years ago, and 4e 17. People who started with those games are oldtimers.

Sure, no-one's stopping players from reading the DMG. But players shouldn't expect to be able to hold guidelines from the DMG over the DM's head. And those guidelines are based on physical limitations, not some metaphysical chakras like in 3e (I don't think chakras was used in the 3e core books, but I've seen devs refer to item slots with that term, and it eventually migrated to Magic of Incarnum which was heavily based around the concept. Can you have two amulets? Sure, why not. Wear all the bling, man. The meaningful limitation is intended to be attunement anyway, not body slots.

Your arguing a completely irrelevant point using hair splitting focus on where the only real mention is found to paper over the fact that 5e stripped a set of gm tools from the gm toolbox by remove the mechanical hooks they delendedyonIt doesn't matter that it's described in player facing language that fails to provide GM's with the structural mechanical hooks in the DMG. What matters is that matters that the mechanical hooks required to structurally support a selection of gm tools that once occupied meaningful pace in the GM toolbox no longer exist . That overly split hair didn't even hold up in the pre 3.x days when people actually tried banning players from reading the DMG.

No matter if you look at the 3.x way of high but restricted∆ player CharOp options with expected magic item churn the gm was supported through a risk that blends lethality with excessive consumable needs that cut into the expected churn progression or the pre-3.x low CharOp high danger, they are both gone. Instead 5e has extreme CharOp with minimal hurdles, characters that have the benefits of full on Christmas tree from the base pc granting no real need for magic items, almost no lethality, and no structural support for them to collaboratively get players to put their finger on the scale for the gm

∆ prerequisites that took actual investment with opportunity cost. 5e's "OpTiOnAl" footnote attached to things most consider required for the d&d experience is just shifting blame for the resulting problems not a restriction to CharOp.

 

[Minigiant]

The idea of opening the license to 3rd party is not in itself a proof of intentionally designign the game with the assumption other peopel will fix it. A ton of games are working on an open license and yet you'd be laughed out of the room if you made a claim like that about Draw Steel, for example.

Opening the license after you previously close the license and then mentioning things that you ultimately didn't publish strongly hints that you want other people to make those things that you mentioned with the license that you opened up.

 

[Eric V]

Acctually, it's called burden of proof - if you make a claim that is not just your opinion, like claim that you know exactly what was the mindset and aim of creators of the game like if you were there or can read their minds,

Sure, if he was trying to get published or whatever...this is just a message board, there's no burden. You can look it up yourself, but you won't because you might discover he's right.