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

[Minigiant]

In other words, steepen the power curve. That's what 3e did, and it didn't work out so well other than at very low levels.

My take is that WotC needs to admit that D&D is not - and doesn't work as - a supers game, and come at design from a much more gritty and grounded angle

Not steepen the curve.

1. Choose what you want to increase with level
2. Choose what you DONT want to increase with level
3. Have those first things increase just enough that every level something goes up that matters.
4. And don't have any of those things stack with anything else.

Heck to me. I'm almost to the point were Ability mods don't appear until 16. Before 16, just ability score for feat prerequisites.

Just to hit, AC, saving throws, and class DC increase.

 

[Zardnaar]

Not steepen the curve.

1. Choose what you want to increase with level
2. Choose what you DONT want to increase with level
3. Have those first things increase just enough that every level something goes up that matters.
4. And don't have any of those things stack with anything else.

Heck to me. I'm almost to the point were Ability mods don't appear until 16. Before 16, just ability score for feat prerequisites.

Just to hit, AC, saving throws, and class DC increase.

Im leaning towards capped at 18 and used the old BECMI stats.

Hell maybe 2d6 for reaction checks

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'd agree, but the base ideas of combined XP chart, ascending AC, intiutive saves, etc. would have fixed most of that. I think it would have been a much better game if they had applied that to the 2E 'math' and not created a whole new untested system with absurd bonus escalations built in*. Stats alone were much more reasonable in 2E. Strength didn't give a +4 to hit till 21 for example.

*Probably why I really bounced off of Castles a& Crusades, the kept the worst parts of 2E and 3E as far as I was concerned with the new system and making it more complicated with messed up XP charts.

In doing those things, you precipitate having to rewrite:

• How attacks work, how much damage they do, and how much HP creatures have
• Functionally all spells that negatively affect enemies
• Any actions dependent on the above things, e.g. spell-like abilities, or special attack stuff like Bull Rush
• At least to some degree the action economy
• The classes which use the above elements, since they work so differently

At which point, you've functionally rebuilt the whole game, mechanically speaking. You can't replace the building's foundation while keeping the building above it perfectly the same.

 

[Flying Toaster]

Personally, what I think this means is that we need to drill down on how to demonstrate to the players that they have, in fact, "scaled up". Break the treadmill, not by removing the slope, but by making it so players can SEE that they're on a higher point now than they used to be. I don't think 5e's approach is quite right, but it has (again) a kernel of a good idea that can be teased out. Namely: We need monsters that are distinctive to tiers of play. Things that you genuinely "grow out of", and things you genuinely "grow into". Stuff that really, truly is too hard to fight when you're level 3 or 4, unless you've got some miracle--both because that's realistic (there are almost always things too strong for any given combatant!), and because that sets signposts.

Something like 2/3 of 4e's scaling, rather than half, plus progression signposts like this. Clear, identifiable, graspable things that you can say "Look! We did it! We beat <X>!" or "Wow, we just cleared out a room full of <Y> without breaking a sweat, we really have gone far." Non-combat signposts should also get attention, but they're best handled by advising GMs on how to construct them well, rather than trying to artificially create universal ones, which wouldn't fly.

Once again we see the essential conflict over what D&D is and should be. In this thread we have posters saying that D&D is a high fantasy game, so the problems come from trying to make that game appealing to fans of low fantasy, while others say that the problem comes from trying to make a dungeon crawl game into a superhero game. Both sides can support their preference with evidence going all the way back to the days of little brown books and white boxes, because D&D has always supported different play styles at different levels. The “zero to hero” dynamic may be intrinsic to levelling game designs, as opposed to skill-based systems where your character learns lots of new stuff but stays squishy and combat-averse.

I think the best way to split the difference and keep more people happy is to emphasize differences between tiers of play, not smooth them out so everything feels the same. I like the low levels where your gear is second-hand ring mail and a homemade morning star, and you definitely need to worry about what is behind that locked dungeon door. But I also like the high levels when your party soars across the sky on their pegasus steeds, ready to battle dragons, as the soundtrack blasts “Ride of the Valkyries”. Early editions acknowledged that low and high level play were different by urging PCs into semi-retirement at name level, although domain play has always been a tough sell and not really supported much by official materials.

D&D is of course the overwhelmingly dominant force in the TTRPG market, and a corporate IP owned by a toy conglomerate. There is strong pressure on the designers to make the game be all things to everyone, and as always that approach risks making something that is not much to anyone - “everybody’s second favorite RPG”. It is a tough nut to crack. I think the best solution would be to let the different tiers be different, so people who only like the gritty lower levels can just stop at level 10 or 12, but have more high power options available for those who want to start at level 3.

 

[Flying Toaster]

Im leaning towards capped at 18 and used the old BECMI stats.

Hell maybe 2d6 for reaction checks

The BECMI bell curve ranging from -3 to +3 was very clean design, easy to learn, and did not require rolling fistfuls of dice in order to get a viable character. Whereas AD&D had this bizarre mishmash of bespoke ability scores, no two remotely alike, that did not give any bonuses except at very high scores. This created perverse incentives to get high scores at any cost, particularly since there were no ASIs and very few other ways to increase your scores at all (no, the random magic pools found in module B1 and the dungeon tables in the back of the 1979 DMG were not acceptable substitutes! ).

A BECMI PC with 13 across the board might make a great jack of all trades, whereas an AD&D character with all 13’s might as well stay in town and see if they are hiring bartenders at the Drunken Derro. When 2E came out our group switched immediately and mostly loved it, but we scoffed at the 2E PHB’s thoroughly mediocre sample character Rath the Fighter, whose best score was a 14 STR. We did not notice at the time, but that flat-out contradicts EGG’s advice that AD&D characters needed at least two high scores (and indeed they did).

 

[mixmastashizz]

In my exploration of old school dnd gaming over the past decade, I found in my groups the one fundamental thing that prevented the LFQW issue was spell interruption, and then later coupled with casting time.

Magic users play and position very differently when a stray arrow can ruin their spells. In my tables there's a felt balance between the fighter and the MU up through about 9th level so far (where our game is now).