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

[mamba]

The gun doesn't get 4 iterative attacks. The user does.

yes, but the chance of misfire is for the gun. You use it more, you misfire more

A PF1e gunslinger who is supremely skilled (level 16+) makes four attacks per Full Attack, because they are extremely skilled with gunslinging.

As a result of this thing--arising out of their skill with gunslinging--they now encounter dozens of misfires every day. They are in no way even slightly better at preventing misfire than they were when they first trained to use a gun.

yes, because the chance of misfire is tied to the gun, not their skill level

Same as rolling a 1 on a d20, the more often you roll, the more often it will come up, even though you get more skilled with your sword or whatever

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

yes, but the chance of misfire is for the gun. You use it more, you misfire more


yes, because the chance of misfire is tied to the gun, not their skill level

Same as rolling a 1 on a d20, the more often you roll, the more often it will come up, even though you get more skilled with your sword or whatever

This line of reasoning really only holds up when dealing with something where your level of expertise and familiarity with a weapon does not reduce the chance of something going wrong when trying to use it.
It is shaky even when considering something as cantankerous as a musket, where shoddy construction of the firearm or powder are some of the only sources of misfires that cannot be ruled out by knowledge and experience when using it.

When considering something like a melee weapon, the idea that a skilled master of the weapon will be accidently stabbing their teammate four times as often as a rank amateur over any given minute of fighting seems a bit more ridiculous doesn't it? Its not like the novice is only swinging their weapon ten times over an entire minute of fighting.

 

[mamba]

This line of reasoning really only holds up when dealing with something where your level of expertise and familiarity with a weapon does not reduce the chance of something going wrong when trying to use it.

agreed, which means it probably is less acceptable for a sword than for a more complex and less reliable weapon like an early gun, and yet no one complained about the chance of rolling a 1 per round increasing with your number of attacks, but somehow for a gun that is a problem

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

agreed, which means it probably is less acceptable for a sword than for a more complex and less reliable weapon like an early gun, and yet no one complained about the chance of rolling a 1 per round increasing with your number of attacks, but somehow for a gun that is a problem

No one complains about the chance of rolling a 1 increasing with number of attacks.
However I can assure you that there are complaints when people try to change rolling a 1 from just "automatic miss" to "fumble with potentially "hilarious" results like damaging your weapon, teammates or yourself".

 

[EzekielRaiden]

agreed, which means it probably is less acceptable for a sword than for a more complex and less reliable weapon like an early gun, and yet no one complained about the chance of rolling a 1 per round increasing with your number of attacks, but somehow for a gun that is a problem

I absolutely 100% complain about crit fumble tables.

If all nat 1 does is miss, I could not care less.

Misfire breaks the weapon, and a second misfire MAKES IT EXPLODE.

That should not be happening four times as fast when you have become one of the greatest gubslingers alive.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes. They aren't casting 1st level Magic missiles or Mage Armor anymore. They could, but the lowest slot they might have is, say, 3rd level, so if they cast Magic missile or Expedtious Retreat at all, they will likely cast it at least upcast to 3rd level.

Sorry, but this makes no sense.

I'm coming at this from the basis of there being no upcasting; if they've got any 1st-level slots left then they can cast Magic Missile but if they're out of 1sts then no MM's for them. Flip side: the spells auto-scale with level.

A Wizard in this scenario might have only 5-8 spell slots to use per [time unit of spell recovery]. Each such spell is a big deal, a great responsibility, and needs to be carefully weighted. They might still be able to prepare all those many neat utility spells and combat spells they can prepare now, but for example, they can't start dominating both combat and out-of-combat situations with spells, because there are no cheap utility spells they can throw around while reserving the higher level spell slots to defeat enemies.

So in effect their low-level slots fall off as they acquire higher-level slots? This means the whole system is kinda based on upcasting, the exact opposite of what I'd be after.

Oh, and the other thing I'd like to see is an end to at-will cantrips and anything resembling ritual casting. Their spell slots should be all the casting power they have, meaning a cut like you're proposing would really hammer them hard.

 

[Lanefan]

The gun doesn't get 4 iterative attacks. The user does.

A PF1e gunslinger who is supremely skilled (level 16+) makes four attacks per Full Attack, because they are extremely skilled with gunslinging.

As a result of this thing--arising out of their skill with gunslinging--they now encounter dozens of misfires every day. They are in no way even slightly better at preventing misfire than they were when they first trained to use a gun.

The user can be as skilled as you like but if the gun itself is unreliable all that skill ain't gonna help.

 

[Lanefan]

As for spell scaling:

I am not of fan of this, nor am I a fan of decreasing types of saves. If you are going to stick with the narrative that cantrips can be blasted all the time, I think the best thing to do is rethink:

• The resources (not just components) it takes to cast spells, and/or
• the amount of spells able to cast, and/or
• the uniqueness of the spell.

I'm not trying to stick with the idea of cantrips being blasted all the time. Quite the opposite, in fact.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The user can be as skilled as you like but if the gun itself is unreliable all that skill ain't gonna help.

So every military professional working with a gun 150 years ago was getting a misfire about once every twelve seconds, causing an outright explosion which injured themselves and their allies every 24 seconds?

Really, Lanefan? Really?

This is absolutely ridiculous. This is not realistic. It is not how learning to use a gun works. You can, in fact, mitigate sources of misfire by learning to use it better. Which is what being Gunslinger 16+ means: you are one of the most skilled gunslingers to ever live.

 

[Eric V]

I wish people would just imagine seeing this in a movie, or reading it in a book...there's no way they'd conclude "Well, the reason he's misfiring so much is because he's so good, one of the best ever actually!"