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

[Maxperson]

The problem is the combination of per-attack fumble chance and representing the increased lethality at higher levels through multiple attacks. So it's not as big an issue in PF2, because higher-level characters in PF2 generally don't get more attacks. Instead, each attack gets individually more lethal through striking runes and weapon specialization. But in a game like PF1 or 5e where the biggest damage increases you get are from multiple attacks? Fumble-per-attack is devastating and turns fighter-types into the worst clutzes.

Yeah. Back in 3e it really bothered my group that fighters became more likely to fumble every round as they rose in level gaining extra attacks. So what we did was make it so that at levels 1-5, you fumbled normally. At levels 6-10, if you fumbled you got a DC 15 dex check that turned the fumble into a normal miss if successful. At levels 11-15 that DC dropped to 10. At levels 16-20, you could no longer fumble unless you rolled two 1's in a row.

 

[tetrasodium]

and it makes sense to me that trying to sculpt the wild energies of more complex and higher level magics would have a bigger chance of backfiring and in worse ways but magic rebound tables aren't exactly being made commonplace are they? wizards don't have a progressively better chance to reduce themselves to ash each turn as they become better spellcasters do they? so why is it so with weaponry and firearms?

Actually up until 5e casters faced a problem directly related to that. Specifically very low hp and the general inability to wear armor other than a few very specific magic/generally unavailable varieties like elven chain shirt & bracers of defense while still being able to succeed at spellcasting. The "rebound" was just outsourced to any nearby monster.

The blame for your complaint lies with 5e's decision to remove risk from casting in melee to roll out the red carpet for no meaningful opportunity cost low investment gish builds

 

[pemerton]

and you do not consider the wheels coming off on the highway a design flaw? What about not telling anyone that the car is only semi-safe in the city and closer to a deathtrap on highways?

I don't find the comparison of RPG design to the design of safe vehicles very compelling. I think it tends to distort rather than clarify the issues being discussed.

It's not just boss monsters, high level play is the issue, the issue is at least as much on the character / spell side of things

Overall from 2nd edition to 3rd edition to 4th edition to 5th edition all we've been doing is given the fan base less and less restrictions so it's no surprise that they voted for less restriction and end up with a situation where their low restriction spells can control the hell out of the boss monsters.

I don't think this is an accurate description of 4e - 4e has powerful control effects (including on fighters, as well as wizards and invokers), but I don't think they break the game.

The problem with this sort of design is, let's take Power Word: Kill.

If your DM tells you exactly how much HP a creature has left, then the moment a creature drops below 100, then if the situation is right to use that spell, every player will just ignore said creature because they know the target will get dropped automatically because of Power Word: Kill.

If you give that information to a player, when the balancing factor of such spells in 5e is "it works if below X hp, otherwise it doesn't", then you've completely defeated the balancing factor.

I don't follow this at all. If the balancing factor is a maximum hp threshold, then the players have to somehow reduce the monster's hit points down to that threshold before the spell can be used. That's where the balance lies.

And if the players have successfully reduced the creature's hp down to the threshold - as in your example - then what is the problem with leaving it to be finished off by the Power Word?

A balancing factor of you have to guess if a given spell will be effective or not is a completely different sort of thing.

 

[Minigiant]

don't think this is an accurate description of 4e - 4e has powerful control effects (including on fighters, as well as wizards and invokers), but I don't think they break the game

I didn't say that for ease control spells break the game.

I said that restrictions were removed.

The whole easily controlling the boss thing is a result of every addition removing restrictions on the spellcasting mechanics one by one.

 

[Lanefan]

and it makes sense to me that trying to sculpt the wild energies of more complex and higher level magics would have a bigger chance of backfiring and in worse ways but magic rebound tables aren't exactly being made commonplace are they? wizards don't have a progressively better chance to reduce themselves to ash each turn as they become better spellcasters do they?

You ain't seen my wild magic surge tables, have you?

Yes, spells can backfire; usually on interruption, but you can also fumble with an aimed spell.

 

[Lanefan]

It ironclad should be what you look at.

Because that controls the player's experience of misfire.


Absolutely not. Because if you misfire, you literally can make your weapon EXPLODE.

So...no, it really really really is not that it doesn't matter. For more complex weapons (misfire 1-2, even 1-3 or 1-4!), at 4 attacks per round, you would literally misfire more than once every other round.

This faulty logic is precisely what leads to the problem here, Lanefan. When you only misfire 5% of attacks and you only make one attack a round, it's no big deal. When you misfire 10% of the time and you make four attacks per round? It could not matter less that your per-attack chance remains unchanged, you are going to experience misfires at an incredibly accelerated rate.

Why does the misfire rate double from 5% to 10% here?

For me, if you misfire 5% of the time per attack at one attack per round you should also misfire 5% of the time per attack at 4 attacks per round. Ditto if the misfire rate is 1% or 10% or whatever.

And if this means you're going to misfire more often per round, so what? It's the price you pay for getting to attack more often per round; and nobody complains on the flip side where you also get more criticals per round even though the per-attack odds of critting remain the same.

Fumbles are a bad rule in the context of a game where you're definitely going to be making more and more attacks per round for most of the same reasons. Doubly so if you have one of those incredibly wrong-headed "you can outright hurt yourself if you fumble" rules.

Again, if you don't want to fumble (or crit) as often then don't attack as often. The per-attack fumble/crit odds never change.

And yes, a fairly common fumble outcome is that you hurt yourself or an ally, usually not for much (most often just d4 damage) but critical fumbles are possible and do occasionally occur.

 

[Lanefan]

Ummm....Fumbles are bad mmmkay.

If you are gonna have Fumbles but all PCs are not equally likely to fumble then that fact should be upfront or their should be mitigation to lessen the frequency or seriousness of fumbles.

Any use of a weapon or aimed spell has the same chance of fumbling in our system, usually* 1/d20 confirmed by 1/d6. This applies to everyone: PCs, NPCs, monsters, the whole lot.

* - some effects e.g. Bane or anything that gives you a net minus to hit can increase these odds case by case.

 

[Mecheon]

Again, if you don't want to fumble (or crit) as often then don't attack as often. The per-attack fumble/crit odds never change.

"Just don't use your class's features while the other classes get to throw out spells all day" is not a good selling point for including fumbles. It just incentivises avoiding rolling dice entirely

There's a reason fumbles have never been part of official D&D rules, what with the turning the fighter-equivalent from 'Competent weapon user' into "bumbling idiot' due to how they're inevitably written

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Why does the misfire rate double from 5% to 10% here?

Because there are many PF1e guns which have a higher misfire rate, and if you attempt to use a gun with which you are not proficient, the misfire range increases by +1.

For me, if you misfire 5% of the time per attack at one attack per round you should also misfire 5% of the time per attack at 4 attacks per round. Ditto if the misfire rate is 1% or 10% or whatever.

Which means that, when you become a more proficient gunslinger, you have more misfires each day, not less.

Do you think the most skillful gunslingers to ever live should be misfiring about once every twelve seconds? Does that make any sense? Is that reasonable or realistic or appropriate?

And if this means you're going to misfire more often per round, so what? It's the price you pay for getting to attack more often per round; and nobody complains on the flip side where you also get more criticals per round even though the per-attack odds of critting remain the same.

People are unlikely to complain about positives, so that entire argument is kind of a non-starter. Like...yes of course.

But on the flipside, when someone becomes MORE SKILLED with using a particular style of fighting, yes, we expect them to do a difficult positive thing more often. We also expect them to have fewer accidents, not more accidents.

Again, if you don't want to fumble (or crit) as often then don't attack as often. The per-attack fumble/crit odds never change.

...

Lanefan, you don't get that choice. If you want to do actual damage, you HAVE to make all your attacks. The game is designed around that. Just as 5th edition is designed around Fighters making four attacks per round at high levels, and Barbarians/Paladins/Rangers making two attacks per round with bonus damage.

You are very literally saying, "It's fine! Just choose to suck at the thing your class was designed to do well!"

And yes, a fairly common fumble outcome is that you hurt yourself or an ally, usually not for much (most often just d4 damage) but critical fumbles are possible and do occasionally occur.

You...really shouldn't make comments about game systems you don't know.

In PF1e, which is what I explicitly said I was talking about multiple times, when a gunslinger gets a misfire, the weapon gains the Broken condition (-2 to hit and damage, can only crit on 20 regardless of the weapon's normal crit range, only deals 2x damage on a crit regardless of the weapon's usual crit effect), and the misfire range increases by 2 (or 4, for someone not trained with that weapon type). Then guess what? If you misfire again--which is now dramatically more likely because the weapon is Broken--the weapon, as I specifically said, EXPLODES. It deals its normal damage to you and everyone within some range of you, varying based on the weapon (usually a 5' or 10' radius around you).

So, no. It is not "rarely when you crit-fumble you might take d4 damage, or deal that to an ally". It's "between a quarter and a third of the time, you make the weapon an active liability that can hurt your friends and yourself pretty nastily".

Does that help make sense of why this is a bad rules design choice? It's not just the disagreement I know you and I have about the whole "random chance" thing. It's the combination of two pretty basic statements: (1) If someone becomes much, much more skilled at doing a particular thing, they should have fewer complications and more great successes, not horrible failures that remain proportionally frequent; and (2) because of the specific way PF1e misfire mechanics work, they are particularly punishing if you attempt to fire a weapon that has already misfired, and when critics pointed out that this would happen, instead of listening, Paizo outright banned some of the people who pointed this out in their public playtest boards.

Nobody is coming to take away your personal crit-fumble tables. But crit-fumbles are not a widely-used game design choice for three very good, very clear reasons: players don't particularly like them because the everpresent risk of horrible punishing failure sucks and poisons the enjoyment most players feel for amazing success, an enemy crit-fumbling doesn't compensate for most players' negative feelings about crit-fumbling themselves*, and it is difficult to justify the logic of "your increased skill with firearms never causes any change to your misfire rate, so you will experience more misfires per round specifically because you are better at using guns".

*That is, the bad feels from personally crit-fumbling are, for almost all players, more bad than the good feels from seeing an enemy crit-fumble.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Any use of a weapon or aimed spell has the same chance of fumbling in our system, usually* 1/d20 confirmed by 1/d6. This applies to everyone: PCs, NPCs, monsters, the whole lot.

* - some effects e.g. Bane or anything that gives you a net minus to hit can increase these odds case by case.

Again, this is you entering a discussion about PF1e and 5e, and then acting like folks are being weird or not listening when your responses about your game don't settle.

I know the thread is categorized "D&D General", but the title says, "Mike Mearls says control spells are ruining 5th Edition", emphasis added. I know the thread is categorized "D&D General", but when I made my post, I said "PF1e" and used terms from that game ("Gunslinger", "misfire", etc.) because I was referring to the mechanics of that specific game.

Is it possible to design crit-fumble tables that are tailored to Lanefan's specific table, where he's had a stable group for some 20-30 years and can thus slowly change, modify, or tweak those things until they're pretty much pitch-perfect and guaranteed to work, having had essentially all plausible edge-case scenarios already tested by the group at some prior point? Sure, I completely believe that--hell, to call it "possible" might even be damning with faint praise, so I'll call it supremely believable, if you like. I have no qualms accepting that you've done precisely that. Spending two to three decades with the same people doing the same (sorts of) things over and over again is bound to result in context-specific intuitions that would enable that sort of thing.

Is it reasonable to then assert, "Well, because I, Lanefan, did this for my stable group I've had for 20+ years, absolutely everyone should also do this in every D&D-like game"? Absolutely the hell not. But that's a required premise of your argument--that because it worked for you, at your table, where you spent a decade or more sharpening those rules, then clearly it must work for everyone, at every table, everywhere, in every game. That's ludicrous.