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

[Minigiant]

Going back to the main topic, I again think 4e roles as a module would help. Here is the role ruling I use.

Role	Save with Advantage	Saves with Disadvantage	Additional Save with Advantage if Solo	Damage effect	AC effect
Artillery	Dex, Int	Con	Wis	Range damage dice increase by 2	-2 AC
Blaster	Con, Cha	Dex	Wis	AOE damage dice increase by 2
Bruiser	Str, Dex	Int, Cha	Con
Brute	Str, Con	Wis	Dex	Melee damage dice increase by 2	-2 AC
Controller	Int, Wis	Dex	Con
Healer	Wis, Cha	Str, Int	Con	Heal dice increase by 3	-1 AC
Leader	Wis, Cha	Dex	Con	Heal dice increase by 2
Lurker	Dex, Int	Con	Wis
Skirmisher	Dex, Int	Wis	Con
Soldier	Str Con	int, Cha	Dex	Range damage dice decrease by 3	+1 SC
Tank	Str, Con	Dex	Wis	All damage dice decrease by 1	+4 AC

 

[Zardnaar]

Wel my campaign ended. End boss was Fraz Urbluu. Boosted his HP to 500.

He died round 3 vs 5 lvl 13 PCs. He almost eliminated 1. Without buffing may have dropped 2 but heroes feast+aid some of them had 160 odd hp.

He was encounter 5 for the day. 3 high, 1 medium, 1 meteor swarm.

Marilih and Balor hit like trucks but once they over load legendary saves the Balor went bye bye to banish spell.

 

[Minigiant]

I can definitely see that modular means different things to different folks. For me modular meant that each major chunk of the game was a module. Magic for example would be a module that could be removed and another completely different magic system could be inserted in its place.

That's how I saw it.

Like weapon. Many people thought 5e's weapons chart is too simplistic for anybody but the newest of players. Once you get some experience with the game the four weapons chart is just too basic. And even Wizards eventually admitted to it and that's why they added Weapon Master properties

But the fundamental weighted the game works with weapons is you roll at to hit versus a AC and if you hit you deal damage to hit points. Game is built on the bolded items existing but you can always change the values of the bolded items via modules. You can swap in a 4E system where every weapon has their own attack bonus and so every weapon is unique because they both have a damaged value and a attack bonus along with properties that makes every weapon unique.

The problem is like what Mearls said

It's funny that the biggest pain point in the game - monsters - has the most instances of drawing too much from the rest of the system. For instance, monsters were not supposed to use proficiency based on their CR. They were instead supposed to have a skill rating that could change based on their story and nature.

The monsters kind of have fixed values and are tied to a module themselves when created so adjusting them with other modules on the player side creates issues because in a player side can do a lot with that modules. But on the monster side unless you designed them to do such a thing

Like he said Master should not have a proficiency bonus based on their CR. Monster should just have a ranking of what their good bonus and bad bonus are.

Like a CR2 monsters should have a total bonus for the attack rolls and their saving throws of about +5.

That could be a proficiency bonus of +2 and a strength bonus of +3 for some sort of animal. Oh I could be a proficiency bonus of +3 and a strength bonus of +2 for a knight's squire. Or it could be just a strength bonus of +5 via a zombified giant

But ultimately the problem This thread is based on is that spell casters get to attack monsters with spells that they get to add their proficiency bonus to and target monsters saving throws that they might not get to add their proficiency bonus.

But that's all besides the point

It became DC 10+ Prof mod + Ability mod vs d20+ Ability mod

That is a straight-up unfair roll. Legendary Resistance is a kludge to rebalance an unfair contest because there's no way to guarantee that you can drain all of the spellcasters slots in a Dungeon

 

[SkidAce]

Wel my campaign ended. End boss was Fraz Urbluu. Boosted his HP to 500.

He died round 3 vs 5 lvl 13 PCs. He almost eliminated 1. Without buffing may have dropped 2 but heroes feast+aid sone of them had 160 odd hp.

He was encounter 5 for the day. 3 high, 1 medium, 1 meteor swarm.

Marilih and Balor hit like trucks but once they over load legendary saves the Valor went bye bye to banish spell.

In my very Odd opinion, I think Banish is fine against other worldly/extra planar creatures, such as demons/devils.

But it should not work AT ALL against "natural?" creatures...

 

[Minigiant]

In my very Odd opinion, I think Banish is fine against other worldly/extra planar creatures, such as demons/devils.

But it should not work AT ALL against "natural?" creatures...

Banishment should be like Charm/Hold/Dominate Person/Monster

Charm Person 1st level spell
Charm Monster 4th level spell
Hold Person 2nd level spell
Hold Monster 5th level spell
Dominate Person 5th level spell
Dominate Monster 8th level spell

So...

Banish Extraplanar 4th level spell
Banish Monster 7th level spell

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The idea that players will optimize the fun out of a game is an old one. For a TTRPG, the design challenge comes in finding ways to give DMs the tools to keep their games fun. If the DM is bored, the game probably ends.

Competitive games have solved that adjusting the environment. A video game might introduce a balance patch. In a card game like Magic, a new set comes out and strategies shift to account for the new cards.

D&D is really weird compared to other games in that the company publishing it has never acknowledged the metagame. Instead, we get new editions that throw out the old game and replace it with a new one. On balance, a new edition usually introduces as many problems as it solves. Sometimes it solves more than it breaks, or vice versa.

I think it would be a lot healthier for D&D, and probably a lot better for its business, if the game evolved slowly, rather than asking its audience to dump its old content in favor of new stuff every few years.

I mean, thats what they are doing now, and it seems to be working.

But the design team, i imagine, will always have to actively fight the desires of suits, so i doubt they will keep doing things this way for that much longer.

 

[pemerton]

Liches are normally intelligent(often very much so) and very driven by a desire to stay alive. Kinda how something becomes a lich. Playing one as less then very smart is setting up a participation trophy scenario. If the thing has a powerful effective spell, not using it so the players can win is being a poor GM in my opinion. This was described as an end of campaign mega boss fight. The GM should have provided MANY clues about the thing's abilities, possible defenses and such. Smart players would do a pre fight planning session and have ways to counter expected lich spells and abilities. Such as NOT being all grouped up and subject to the AOE burst that stripped away much of the party's magic.

@Remathilis, in their post about the climactic fight against the arch-lich, was talking about the design and the play of the game. I don't think it's any real answer to that post to just assume the status quo for the fiction and the game play.

What I mean by that is that the way spells and magic work (both in general, and in the particular case of this NPC), the way turn-taking works in combat, the way that fleeing in fear is resolved, etc, are all matters of game design. They can be done differently from how 3E D&D happens to do them, and that can change the play experience.

Different game design can also change the importance of planning. I've done a lot of planning-oriented RPGing (mostly in Rolemaster) It's one way to play a game, But it's not the only way, and these days I wouldn't advocate it as the most interesting way.

And when we look at fantasy fiction of fighting arch-liches - and I've got in mind mostly REH Conan stories - they don't really focus on careful planning and prior deployment of spells and other magic. They tend to focus on in-the-moment toughness, insight and heroics. A RPG can be designed so that it produces fiction more like that, and a play experience closer to that also.

Said it before and I'll say it again... a "Boss Monster" is a NARRATIVE conceit, not a board game one. If a DM wants and needs a monster to "last a long time in a fight because the fight needs to be dramatic"... then you as a DM have a STORY you are trying to help get across to, with, and for your players. And at that point... there is no reason not to use NARRATIVE methods for keeping the "Boss Monster" alive... rather than continually trying to tweak the board game rules to somehow accomplish it.

The board game rules are not designed to create NARRATIVELY-FULFILLING fights and encounters. They are designed to be what all board games are... two sides playing against each other TRYING TO WIN. To get one side down to zero and removed from the fight. And if that is what you want... encounters where you use the D&D tactical combat rules to try and "win"... then it does not matter how quickly the encounter ends. If you as a party can stun-lock the most powerful monster in the encounter and kill it in a single round or two... then you've done exactly what you wanted and what the rules are designed to do. You've beaten your opponent and won the fight. That's the way the board game has been built to play.

But as soon as you as the DM say "I want the most powerful monster to last at least six rounds, and for at least a couple members of the party to get knocked down to 0 HP and have to come back from that, and for there to be ups and downs in the fight where the players don't know if they are going to win"... in other words you want the encounter to be "more dramatic" or "more memorable"... you are wanting a narrative result. Not a board game one. So stop trying to get that by just using the rules of the board game!

There's no reason why the rules of a RPG - what you call "the board game" - can't be written so that, in play, they produce an experience that has a certain dramatic/narrative rhythm. There are lots of examples out there. Even without looking beyond D&D, there is the example of 4e D&D, where the framework for encounter building together with the combat resolution rules pretty reliably provides a "heroic rally" narrative - the basic underlying mechanical design that supports this is that monsters/NPCs have more-or-less all of their "oomph" built into their hit points and attacks; whereas PCs have a lot of their oomph built into abilities that they need to "unlock" (eg healing surges; party synergies; etc).

And you know what your story actually upholds of my opinion? That the D&D board game can be really stupid sometimes and being beholden to the board game rather than the story means a whole lot of crap happens that never should have. Your experience here highlights that.

That was a bad end to an epic story... resulting from a DM thinking they needed to play the board game "to win" since it was the grand finale. Because what else would a person who puts the board game ahead of the characters and their stories supposed to do? Well... we now see exactly what happens when people focus on what I personally believe is the exact wrong thing. People's memories of their time forever tainted because people were too busy "trying to win" rather than merely just experiencing a truly epic climax.

I am sorry you had to go through that. I wish your DM thought about their game a little differently.

Just do it. If you want your Boss Monster encounter to play out a certain way so it is dramatically interesting to you and your players... then you rig the game so it does. There is nothing wrong with that! Especially if you can do it in such a way that the players can't tell when you are. "Boss Monster" on its turn fiddles with a ring on its finger to crack it open and suddenly a wash of healing magic flows over them and they regain 50% of its hit points and thus can now last another two rounds in the fight? Huh. Did the "Boss Monster" always have that ring on? Did the DM have that ring listed on their monster sheet statblock as an item at their disposal? Was that merely a "quantum healing ring" that only showed up because the party wailed on the "Boss Monster" so quickly the fight was going to end in a round and a half and thus be massively anti-climactic as a so-called "final fight"? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe the DM just pulled that out of their ass to help create the narrative tension in the fight they were hoping for. But it doesn't actually matter. If you are wanting that "final fight" or "Boss Monster" encounter to be narratively interesting and not just a board game fight of "finding out who wins?"... then it's perfectly fine. A narrative action taken to bring about a narrative result.

My response to this is pretty similar to @AnotherGuy's above.

And I think the dichotomy that you are putting forward - either follow the game rules, or have the GM "just do it" and make up and narrate fiction, perhaps retroactively constructing some mechanical rationale - is a false one. It's possible to have a RPG where following the rules will produce a dramatically meaningful experience. That RPG will need to have rules differently from (say) the classic D&D rules found in the original booklets, B/X, and Gygax's AD&D: but in the 40 to 50 years since those rules were published, there's been a lot of design work done.

 

[pemerton]

in 1E&2E, saves just got better from 1st level on. So everybody should have saved except on sub 5 rolls without bonuses. Save or Suck spells existed and flew, but usually they just didn't do anything, but in that small chance laid a risk worth taking and to be feared. Seems the design of the new system in 3E was to be 50/50 against an equal opponent., and worse against a challenging one. Then at that level, non good saves sucked even more.

I really wish they had taken the inovations of 3E, ascending armor, more intutive saves, combined XP chart, multiclassing, etc and just applied that to the 2E "math" and balnaced classes.

I think once the "more intuitive" saving throw categories of 3E are adopted, it's hard to avoid the push towards further rationalisation/simulation. Eg if one category of saves is about willpower, and that is traditionally associated with WIS, and fighters are not a class known for high WIS, then fighters "naturally" end up with low will saves.

The good saves for high level fighters in classic D&D are really about a type of Conan-esque toughness. So it probably makes sense to either have just a single saving throw bonus - and high level fighters get a good bonus! - or else to overlay something else (like indomitability) that will reflect the fighter's toughness.

 

[Remathilis]

Liches are normally intelligent(often very much so) and very driven by a desire to stay alive. Kinda how something becomes a lich. Playing one as less then very smart is setting up a participation trophy scenario. If the thing has a powerful effective spell, not using it so the players can win is being a poor GM in my opinion. This was described as an end of campaign mega boss fight. The GM should have provided MANY clues about the thing's abilities, possible defenses and such. Smart players would do a pre fight planning session and have ways to counter expected lich spells and abilities. Such as NOT being all grouped up and subject to the AOE burst that stripped away much of the party's magic.

Without more info, we are all guessing at what happened prior to the party in question entering into the final conflict.

Bottom line - victory is NOT assured. Otherwise, why are you wasting time playing out the combat?

Hi, let me help.

I'm not going to pretend I remember all the details of a game that happened over a decade ago. But let me give what I can recall.

We had encounters with the Lich over a decade of adventures. Each time was (retconned) into dealing with a simulacrum with a fraction of his power, which is how we scored victories against him. This, at 20th level, was us finding his REAL lair and phylactery. So the DM designed a final form for him. We were aware of what he was capable of in general, but he designed this final form to especially challenge us. We were freaking 20th level and had enough powerful magic items to choke a demon lord! We learned of the chamber (a small chamber underneath a major tower of magic), buffed up all our best magics, went into the chamber, and immediately was ambushed. The room was small enough we had no option to spread out of Disjunctions 40 ft radius burst (the room wasn't larger than 80 by 80 ft). It was opening (surprise) round.

So we took all the reasonable defenses, both in terms of spells, charges, and potions we could upon entering the final battle arena. There was NO prep we could have made differently, save for perhaps rebuilding our characters to be a char-op wet dream (full disclosure, this game was orignally 2e and converted to 3.5. There was some legacy design issues in PCs, like a Rogue with a 10 Wisdom).

So to be perfectly honest, your post feels like victim blaming. "Oh, you didn't have a good time? Must have been because you weren't playing smart". We ALL knew we were walking into the final battle of a decade-old campaign. We knew the lich was going to be a hard fight. We came in expecting there might be deaths. And the DM knew we were going in loaded to the teeth, which is why he opened with Disjunction. No one, DM or Player, expected the cascade of effects that came from that move. The DM didn't expect to cripple two players off the jump to the point of unplayability. The players didn't expect that 20 minutes of buffing math would not only be wiped out, but our "permanent" magical benefits would go too. We wasted nearly an hour buffing, and the stripping, our PCs of the mechanical buffs our spells and gear gave. AN HOUR.

And the best you offer is "Play smarter?"

It was a failure pure and simple of 3.5's mechanics. FULL STOP.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Mordenkainen's Disjunction found its way to Faerun and was in Sammaster's Tome of the Dragon which he distributed to cells of the Cult.

Very useful to a GM who is around a dozen sessions away from the finale of Tyranny of Dragons...

Thanks @Remathilis for that and sharing your experience. I will endeavor though not to make the same mistakes your DM made. I'm in a similar boat in that this is a decade long campaign.