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

[Minigiant]

Yes, that is why it was the best selling TTRPG of all time.

No. That could be easily ruined 5th edition and had it go down as a worse failure as 4th edition.

5th edition was the best selling RPG of all time because the first few levels of it is easy to teach to a new player and Wizards of the Coast spent more marketing to D&D then every company to every other RPG combined.

Hot take: if the issues in Tier 2 5th edition happen in Tier 1, 5e sells less than 4e. 5e is lucky that most of the criticisms arrive with it happen around the time most campaigns end.

 

[Minigiant]

So make up a huge amount of new spells vs cutting to 3 saves?

Or more effective SR/MR.

Monsters can still be simple. +20 on all saves fixes and lot.

D&D needs a huge amount of new spells (and a lot of spells cut or rewritten). There really should be a lot more banishment and binding spells (Charisma saves). Fantasy series deal heavily with binding and banishment. Then you have the mental attack spells (Intelligence).

But yes, most monsters that are iconic should have Proficiency in at least 50% of their saving throws. And that should be more options for defenses against Magic and Martial attacks.

 

[Zardnaar]

No. That could be easily ruined 5th edition and had it go down as a worse failure as 4th edition.

5th edition was the best selling RPG of all time because the first few levels of it is easy to teach to a new player and Wizards of the Coast spent more marketing to D&D then every company to every other RPG combined.

Hot take: if the issues in Tier 2 5th edition happen in Tier 1, 5e sells less than 4e. 5e is lucky that most of the criticisms arrive with it happen around the time most campaigns end.

I suspect most editons end around then.

I suspect 3.5 big issues were mostly theory craft. The cure was worse than the problem.

 

[Minigiant]

I suspect most editors end around then..

Chicken or Egg

I suspect 3.5 big issues were mostly theory craft. The cure was worse than the problem

3.5 biggest issues were not theorycraft. The theorrycraft issues were just the most discussed.

1. 3e's move + attack sucked. Bad BAD.
2. Designing or making anything higher than level three was a absolute chore
3. Ivory tower design meant a ton of content was useless traps
4. Classes were so restrictive that you end up needed a feat or PRC to do anything not stereotypical.
5. Way too many Modifiers to calculate in regular play

5e either copied for his fixes for these or created its own new fixes. But like any solution, it created its own problem. For example this thread.

 

[tetrasodium]

6 saves works just fine.

People just too set in their ways to make Strength, Intelligence, and Charisma spells.

No it really does not. You keep asserting that it's great but never expound on the reasons why without contradicting your earlier posts about how easy it is to target weak monster saves.

I'm not saying any of the simplicity should be seen as improvement

Personally I think "hard control" spells should be either 2 checks like 3e

1. 2 saving throws
2. Attack roll then saving throw
3. HP check then saving throw

The benefit of pure damage spells should be that they deal with damage on a fail or success and they only require one check.

This would give sorcerers and school specialists a boon because in special situations they be able to either sway one of the roles in their favor or bypass them.

It also could make level 9 magic feel even more special because those spells when targeting people could be only one save and cause extreme debilitarizing effects or death on failure. But you would only have one shot and wish would not be able to be used to copy them.

But IMHO

6 Saves > 3 saves

I just love all of the harmful binding or banishment spells to be charisma saving throws. It's just so interesting where you're pretty much using your own force of personality to push the spell and say "no I am HERE!".

This is straight up ROLEplay vrs ROLLplay and to make matters worse it's using a pure fluff vut if roleplay to assign value to a purely mechanical design that provides even less roleplay at the table than armor class

 

[tetrasodium]

Chicken or Egg



3.5 biggest issues were not theorycraft. The theorrycraft issues were just the most discussed.

1. 3e's move + attack sucked. Bad BAD.
2. Designing or making anything higher than level three was a absolute chore
3. Ivory tower design meant a ton of content was useless traps
4. Classes were so restrictive that you end up needed a feat or PRC to do anything not stereotypical.
5. Way too many Modifiers to calculate in regular play

5e either copied for his fixes for these or created its own new fixes. But like any solution, it created its own problem. For example this thread.

3.5's move and attack did not have individual players spending multiple minutes dragging out their attack xhain in drips and drabs pumping the gm for information about how the monster is doing so they don't potentially make an attack that is overkill or whatever. It was objectively better for everyone else at the table to have move action and attack action or full attack action. Since it's common to have multiple players who could do that it was ultimately better for everyone including the players who individually benefit.

 

[Stalker0]

3.5's move and attack did not have individual players spending multiple minutes dragging out their attack xhain in drips and drabs pumping the gm for information about how the monster is doing so they don't potentially make an attack that is overkill or whatever. It was objectively better for everyone else at the table to have move action and attack action or full attack action. Since it's common to have multiple players who could do that it was ultimately better for everyone including the players who individually benefit.

No. Letting the players break up their movement and attacks was one of the greatest changes 5e made. It’s more intuitive, it creates more mobility in combat, it’s just plain more fun.

It’s one of the main reasons I would not want to play 3.5 again (even if it was epic 6 3.5 which is my favorite form)

 

[Minigiant]

No it really does not. You keep asserting that it's great but never expound on the reasons why without contradicting your earlier posts about how easy it is to target weak monster saves

Thought I did

6 saves is better that 3 saves because if you actually design spells targeting all six saves, a spellcaster would have to prepare six spells in order to properly Target a weak save.

If you only have three saving throws then a spellcaster only needs to prepare three spells in order to always Target the weak save.

AKA Preparing

Watery Sphere
Ice Storm
Cone of Cold
Synaptic Static
Charm Monster
Banishment

Vs
Ice Storm
Cone of Cold
Charm Monster

Targeting a monster's worth save would be more costly when you have six saves to worry about.

This is straight up ROLEplay vrs ROLLplay and to make matters worse it's using a pure fluff vut if roleplay to assign value to a purely mechanical design that provides even less roleplay at the table than armor class

Nah it's really just that fans want some really strong control or control effects and making them only 1 roll Save or Suck is too much.

Since D&D is not going to go with tiered levels of success. It might have to go with "Fail Twice and Suck".

It's actually easier than it look because you're just rolling against the same DC twice most of the time.

Roll twice vs spell DC.
Succeed twice, no effect.
Faill once, minor effect.
Fail twice, major effect..
Roll 2 1s, Roll a new PC.

 

[Minigiant]

No. Letting the players break up their movement and attacks was one of the greatest changes 5e made. It’s more intuitive, it creates more mobility in combat, it’s just plain more fun.

It’s one of the main reasons I would not want to play 3.5 again (even if it was epic 6 3.5 which is my favorite form)

Cough

4e did it. 5e copied.

 

[Minigiant]

3.5's move and attack did not have individual players spending multiple minutes dragging out their attack xhain in drips and drabs pumping the gm for information about how the monster is doing so they don't potentially make an attack that is overkill or whatever. It was objectively better for everyone else at the table to have move action and attack action or full attack action. Since it's common to have multiple players who could do that it was ultimately better for everyone including the players who individually benefit.

Instead it had every Warrior attempting to gain out a full attack action against a monster.

Either everybody stayed in one spot and full attack each other. Or everybody chased it one another making only one main attack and one AoO.

This is where the Control Wizards eventually started showing up because it became a lot more tactically sound to paralyze or slow enemies so that your warriors could walk up to them one turn and in the next turn full attack them down to sliced mild cheddar