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

[Zardnaar]

Those are the 2024 versions. Which prove my point.

Most of The 2014 monsters (the ones designed with Mearls at the helm) had saving throw bonuses too low to make the save against control magic more than 40% of the time unless targeting their best score. This is because the spellcaster got to act their proficiency bonus to the roll but the monsters really did AND the spellcaster could always use their best abilty score.

This is why an actual play half casters were actually slightly better than the theory because they casted on a secondary score and added their proficiency bonus to their DC so as long as they didn't Target the monsters best ability score they had a very good chance of the monster failing their saving throw.

I don't know if this is because they wanted the ability check bonus and saving throw bonus to be the same in order to make improvisation easy or if they wanted to minimize the amount of numbers in a stat block. But an adverse effect of the design was that once you got past the very lowest levels of the game the spellcasters would be able to overtake the monsters with their DCs.

Legendary resistance was a kludge get around this.

2024 lesson this problem by giving most iconic or legendary monsters Proficiency in three to four saving throws



Hey

Both 2024 and 2014 liches have 11 Str and no save prof for a +0 to STR saves as a CR 21 Monster. Only +3 vs Cha. And the 2014 one has +2 vs Wis.

No spell resistance.

Legendary Resistance, Counterspell, or get wrecked, boney.

Think a Balor has +6 charisma save vs banishment. DC 18-21 range.

Even with advantage its not great. LR3 doesn't last long either.

Wonder if I should break down what I used as DM lvl 7+. I sampled a lot of the new monsters as well.

 

[Maxperson]

Those are the 2024 versions. Which prove my point.

Most of The 2014 monsters (the ones designed with Mearls at the helm) had saving throw bonuses too low to make the save against control magic more than 40% of the time unless targeting their best score. This is because the spellcaster got to act their proficiency bonus to the roll but the monsters really did AND the spellcaster could always use their best abilty score.

I don't have the 5.5e MM. Those were from the 5e MM.

Both 2024 and 2014 liches have 11 Str and no save prof for a +0 to STR saves as a CR 21 Monster. Only +3 vs Cha. And the 2014 one has +2 vs Wis.

No spell resistance.

Legendary Resistance, Counterspell, or get wrecked, boney.

Or, since you have infinite time and exceeding powerful magic, make yourself some Gauntlets of Ogre Power. Better yet, since you are essentially a legendary creature, make a Belt of Storm Giant Strength. +9 strength saves!

 

[tetrasodium]

There was no good bad and medium saves


It was a good saving through progression and a bad savings progression.

And you can have a good ability score in a safe or have a bad score to the save.

So you can have a good and a good
A good and a bad
A bad and a good
A bad and a bad

Then you get to how most monsters had at bad saving throw with a bad ability score associated with it.

Thus a 16 stat level 7 caster casting a level 3 spell DC 16 on a CR 7 with a +4 bonus.

This isn't that horrible for a standard monster but it is too easily anticlimactic for a boss. It's not as easy to set up as you have to hold that spell in that slot all day. But your DM has to bait out that slot all day.

But without layering something like SR or LR over saving throws, a caster has a 50-80% chance of royally hosing a monster. Because bad saving throw bonus is very bad with both bounded and unbounded accuracy.

See this is where you are getting lost in the weeds expecting one monster to do every. Yim almost posit you linked to the ivory tower game design thing if 3.x and are familiar with the way it sets up everything to have a situation where it is great even if it's bad in other situations. Your main complaint seems to be that if you ignore what situations one particular monster you seized onto is good at(the hill giant) that it is not also great at scenarios other monsters are great at. That and apparently 4e defined medium saves as a specific thing that is different from the kinds of numbers I've already showed to be quite common, I'm not talking 4e and never was so that second one is an irrelevant technicality.

Takeif you want a monster that can shrug off control spells instead of pasting a caster or bow user at range with a rock and having too high hp to not do much melee engagement where it's pretty darned dangerous you could change floors on the Ivory tower away from the cr7 hill giant. One example might be the cr6 Chain devilwith weaker attacks roughly half the hp and SR18 shielding+8/+8/+6 saves. If you don't like that and wanted to stick with a hill giant you could add a template

Spoiler: like these

templates that can add spell resistance to a monster are the Spellwarped template, the Spellstitched template, and the Pseudonatural template. The Spellwarped template gives a creature spell resistance equal to \(11+\) its Hit Dice, the Spellstitched template provides spell resistance equal to \(15+\) the creature's Charisma bonus, and the Pseudonatural template provides spell resistance equal to \(10+\) the base creature's Hit Dic

If those don't give you the SR you want for a specific scenario bovd & boed both had a feat to add +2/+4 SR or the mm itself had a behind the curtain sidebar explaining how you should & shouldn't eyeball it to particular goals& I linked to that sidebar earlier.

Once you understand that ivory tower design extended to monsters and accept that there are tools provided for the gm to metaphorically adjust the Overton window to a desired scenario the 3.x saves were objectively better.

 

[Zardnaar]

See this is where you are getting lost in the weeds expecting one monster to do every. Yim almost posit you linked to the ivory tower game design thing if 3.x and are familiar with the way it sets up everything to have a situation where it is great even if it's bad in other situations. Your main complaint seems to be that if you ignore what situations one particular monster you seized onto is good at(the hill giant) that it is not also great at scenarios other monsters are great at. That and apparently 4e defined medium saves as a specific thing that is different from the kinds of numbers I've already showed to be quite common, I'm not talking 4e and never was so that second one is an irrelevant technicality.

Takeif you want a monster that can shrug off control spells instead of pasting a caster or bow user at range with a rock and having too high hp to not do much melee engagement where it's pretty darned dangerous you could change floors on the Ivory tower away from the cr7 hill giant. One example might be the cr6 Chain devilwith weaker attacks roughly half the hp and SR18 shielding+8/+8/+6 saves. If you don't like that and wanted to stick with a hill giant you could add a template

Spoiler: like these

templates that can add spell resistance to a monster are the Spellwarped template, the Spellstitched template, and the Pseudonatural template. The Spellwarped template gives a creature spell resistance equal to \(11+\) its Hit Dice, the Spellstitched template provides spell resistance equal to \(15+\) the creature's Charisma bonus, and the Pseudonatural template provides spell resistance equal to \(10+\) the base creature's Hit Dic

If those don't give you the SR you want for a specific scenario bovd & boed both had a feat to add +2/+4 SR or the mm itself had a behind the curtain sidebar explaining how you should & shouldn't eyeball it to particular goals& I linked to that sidebar earlier.

Once you understand that ivory tower design extended to monsters and accept that there are tools provided for the gm to metaphorically adjust the Overton window to a desired scenario the 3.x saves were objectively better.

Im leaning towards elements of 3.5 returning.

Overhauled saves would be one of them though. Going in a more 4E/OSR direction though.

In hindsight starting to think 3.5 is a nice median between OSR glass cannon and 4E+ hp bloat.

 

[Lanefan]

It's rare to see an adventurer proficient with a sewing kit, but then again I feel all that is taken into account with lifestyle expenditure.

This actually came up in our game a year or two back: the party had to very carefully disassemble a valuable tapestry in order to access the piece of cloth hidden within it, and then reassemble it afterwards.

And so we all rolled d10 to see, on a 1-10 scale, how good we were at sewing and-or how much instruction we'd had at it when we were kids. Fortunately enough characters rolled well enough that we were able to get done what we had to do.

 

[Lanefan]

No, I am not saying a stun spell doesn't stun. I am saying the condition stun could be a condition where you can still do things. Maybe not all of them, or only for a price. Maybe you cannot do the fancy cool stuff, like reactions, bonus actions, casting non-cantrips and making multi-attacks, in 5E parlance.

Then invent that condition and give it a name other than 'stun' which can then continue to mean what it already does: that you're stunned, standing there defenseless and incapable of attack or (coherent) movement.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Then invent that condition and give it a name other than 'stun' which can then continue to mean what it already does: that you're stunned, standing there defenseless and incapable of attack or (coherent) movement.

Dazed

 

[Lanefan]

Dazed

...and confused?
For so long it's not true?

 

[Minigiant]

See this is where you are getting lost in the weeds expecting one monster to do every. Yim almost posit you linked to the ivory tower game design thing if 3.x and are familiar with the way it sets up everything to have a situation where it is great even if it's bad in other situations. Your main complaint seems to be that if you ignore what situations one particular monster you seized onto is good at(the hill giant) that it is not also great at scenarios other monsters are great at. That and apparently 4e defined medium saves as a specific thing that is different from the kinds of numbers I've already showed to be quite common, I'm not talking 4e and never was so that second one is an irrelevant technicality

No.

My argument again is.

90% of monster have a weak save.
But spellcasters always progress in a strong progression and usually use their best ability score.

So every spellcaster can target a monster's week save with their strong DC. This lets on the base map spellcasters control boss easily.

The drawback of a three-save system is that more of your spells Target one of those three.


Aka

You only need to prepare a fortitude control spell, a reflex control spell, and a will control spell.

Vs

A control spell prepared for strength, dexterity, Constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma.

Going back to a 3 save system means it'll be less costly to prepare a control store for each. Especially since we're not going to ever go back to Old School fancy and Magic where you prepare spells into individual slots

 

[Zardnaar]

No.

My argument again is.

90% of monster have a weak save.
But spellcasters always progress in a strong progression and usually use their best ability score.

So every spellcaster can target a monster's week save with their strong DC. This lets on the base map spellcasters control boss easily.

The drawback of a three-save system is that more of your spells Target one of those three.


Aka

You only need to prepare a fortitude control spell, a reflex control spell, and a will control spell.

Vs

A control spell prepared for strength, dexterity, Constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma.

Going back to a 3 save system means it'll be less costly to prepare a control store for each. Especially since we're not going to ever go back to Old School fancy and Magic where you prepare spells into individual slots

If youre smart you only need to prepare two.

Intelligence and wisdom. Intelligence is best one to target the spells are rare.

Wisdom has the most spells and powerful effects and monster wisdom saves are generally bad.