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

[EzekielRaiden]

Odd, in that the more dice you roll at once the less random (i.e. more predictable) the result is likely to be; the law of averages will trend the expected result closer to the middle of the bell curve with every added die.

Example: rolling a d16+2 will give an equal chance of any result between 3 and 18 while rolling 3d6 will give a result in the same 3-18 range but bell-curved around an average of 10.5, the most likely results being 10 or 11 and the least likely being 3 or 18.

I'm aware of the regression to the mean.

I have no confidence that Mearls knows about such a thing. Mostly because I have no confidence that anyone working at WotC knows more than the most fundamental baseline concepts of statistics. And WotC isn't alone in this, to be clear. Paizo is just as guilty, and their PF1e Gunslinger class is the living proof. A job that gets permanent harm from misfire effects...which occur when you roll low on the natural die (e.g. a weapon might have a misfire range of 1-2). But...because PF1e is built around making more and more attacks as you gain levels...this means your chance of misfiring on any given round actually gets higher as you become a more skillful gunslinger! No one at Paizo noticed this, and when it was brought up by critical playtesters...several such testers were banned from the forums and the whole issue was ignored until after publication.

So.....yeah. I'm well aware that the idea that throwing a fistful of dice doesn't actually lead to the hyper random results. I'm just of the opinion that Mearls either does not know that, or understands it incorrectly and perceives (or at least perceived) it to have much fatter tails than it actually has.