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

[Eric V]

I think it's possible that a lot of these issues are addressed by putting hp thresholds on spells...matches a lot of narratives as well (Having to weaken your powerful enemy before the spell can snare him or some such).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think it's possible that a lot of these issues are addressed by putting hp thresholds on spells...matches a lot of narratives as well (Having to weaken your powerful enemy before the spell can snare him or some such).

Personally, I preferred 13A's Escalation Die.

You can take the risk of going nova on the first round....but it's a big risk and a bunch of your most powerful stuff probably won't land. Or, you can wait to deploy the big guns for when you have the big bonuses...when things will be less efficient and an AoE being party-unfriendly is actually a concern.

I see that as being both more engaging and more tactical than "ope, sorry, the boss had one hundred five hit points, so I'm afraid your disintegrate did nothing, better luck next time!" Even outside of that relatively pointed example, it's just kinda dull to have entirely-arbitrary integer "you must be at least this dead to Save or Die" thresholds, while the Escalation Die actually acts as an incentive to change behavior--on multiple axes, even. If you want the die to increase, you have to actually escalate, for example; you can't just turtle up and pop in and out of Total Cover to accomplish your goals.

 

[Lanefan]

I don’t know, if you designed a car where the wheels come off at high speeds, I don’t think the defense ‘but only 10% or so ever get to those speeds, this is good design’ would get much traction…

Perhaps fortunately, I'm not designing cars.

The inherent problem with any open-ended and complex progression system is that there's always going to be phases where it works really well (i.e. as designed) and phases where it doesn't due to accumulated glitches. To give another car example, most cars get their best gas mileage at about 40-45 mph (60-70 kmh for those who use such) with mileage getting progressively worse as your speed increases or decreases from there.

Wise RPG designers try to make that "works really well" phase be the earlier part of the game as that's where most play takes place.

 

[Lanefan]

Nah, I'm going to disagree with this because it's somewhat reliant on the assumption of correlation equals causation where the wheels come off the system after the gm runs out of steam with no allowance for the possibility that the campaigns themselves break down at about the same level ranges simply because the gm burns out keeping them attached while players grow more and more frustrated with all the duct tape and chewing gum their gm is using. The good design would have been accepting that the math starts breaking down beyond level 7-12ish and condensing PC classes down to fewer levels or inserting a cultivation style bottleneck that requires a second step in chargen with a slightly different set of rules/options that allow continued progression without overwhelming the base system and monsters.

The DM running out of steam and-or duct tape is a symptom of the underlying loss of wheels, not the cause.

For me, all it needs is a great big warning along the lines of "While the game as presented goes to 20 levels, the specific intent is that most if not all actual play will occur in the 1-12 range; the higher levels are presented primarily to assist you in designing high-level NPC foes, mentors, and so on and to give an idea of how things progress beyond 12th."

 

[mamba]

The inherent problem with any open-ended and complex progression system is that there's always going to be phases where it works really well

20 levels aren’t exactly open ended though

Wise RPG designers try to make that "works really well" phase be the earlier part of the game as that's where most play takes place.

they are also the easier ones to balance. I just don’t think a ‘we tried’ gets you much when the game falls apart around level 10 or 12 despite having 20 of those things.

 

[tetrasodium]

The DM running out of steam and-or duct tape is a symptom of the underlying loss of wheels, not the cause.

For me, all it needs is a great big warning along the lines of "While the game as presented goes to 20 levels, the specific intent is that most if not all actual play will occur in the 1-12 range; the higher levels are presented primarily to assist you in designing high-level NPC foes, mentors, and so on and to give an idea of how things progress beyond 12th."

I agree. Likewise with the comment someone else made about designing it to avoid the wheels falling off or whatever. The fact that they didn't do that --AND-- didn't include a notice like that sets the GM up for a. Uphill battle where they need to convince players to work with them willingly to fix patch ever expanding cracks that most players don't even consider until they start blaming the gm when they as players get brained by flying wheels

 

[Minigiant]

Personally, I preferred 13A's Escalation Die.

You can take the risk of going nova on the first round....but it's a big risk and a bunch of your most powerful stuff probably won't land. Or, you can wait to deploy the big guns for when you have the big bonuses...when things will be less efficient and an AoE being party-unfriendly is actually a concern.

I see that as being both more engaging and more tactical than "ope, sorry, the boss had one hundred five hit points, so I'm afraid your disintegrate did nothing, better luck next time!" Even outside of that relatively pointed example, it's just kinda dull to have entirely-arbitrary integer "you must be at least this dead to Save or Die" thresholds, while the Escalation Die actually acts as an incentive to change behavior--on multiple axes, even. If you want the die to increase, you have to actually escalate, for example; you can't just turtle up and pop in and out of Total Cover to accomplish your goals.

Runic Wards: The monsters adds their initiative result to their saving throws. At the start of each turn, this value lowers by 5.

 

[Minigiant]

I agree. Likewise with the comment someone else made about designing it to avoid the wheels falling off or whatever. The fact that they didn't do that --AND-- didn't include a notice like that sets the GM up for a. Uphill battle where they need to convince players to work with them willingly to fix patch ever expanding cracks that most players don't even consider until they start blaming the gm when they as players get brained by flying wheels

I don't think it was on purpose.

I said that D&D 5e leaned heavily to the whims of the old school crowd due to the Playtest and they don't much care about high level play outside of the monsters.

 

[tetrasodium]

I don't think it was on purpose.

I said that D&D 5e leaned heavily to the whims of the old school crowd due to the Playtest and they don't much care about high level play outside of the monsters.

It's been over a decade. Not including so much as a sidebar setting an expectation of need for GM action in a UA or ALPH/ALDMG in all of that time is a choice highlighting priorities by now. 745 phrased it well

 

[Minigiant]

It's been over a decade. Not including so much as a sidebar setting an expectation of need for GM action in a UA or ALPH/ALDMG in all of that time is a choice highlighting priorities by now. 745 phrased it well

The initial design was a miscalculation.
The continuation was a corporate strategy.

5e was so popular, WOTC didn't want to fix it until they got a financial excuse.