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

[Maxperson]

Vol 5.

I also remember another system where you only checked % if you rolled a 20 or a 1, i.e. a confirmation roll. we didn't like that system because it sucked to roll a nat 20 and then not confirm it.

Yeah. We didn't like 3e's system of confirmation as it stood, either. So if you rolled a 20 and didn't confirm, you did max damage for the normal hit. That way it was still boosted by the 20. Also, if you did confirm it was base weapon damage + max, instead of rolling base weapon damage twice, that way a crit was strictly better than a normal hit. Nothing was worse than rolling two 1's on that d8 for the longsword crit and seeing a crit be a quarter of the max damage from a normal hit.

 

[SkidAce]

Yeah. We didn't like 3e's system of confirmation as it stood, either. So if you rolled a 20 and didn't confirm, you did max damage for the normal hit. That way it was still boosted by the 20. Also, if you did confirm it was base weapon damage + max, instead of rolling base weapon damage twice, that way a crit was strictly better than a normal hit. Nothing was worse than rolling two 1's on that d8 for the longsword crit and seeing a crit by a quarter of the max damage from a normal hit.

We tried solving the "low damage" crit roll by having a rider on crits, like a wound system, so you always got some special effect.

But I dont remember the details, and dont have the time to look through a filing cabinet of actual typed notes.

 

[Upper_Krust]

given that most adventures end around level 12, that does not appear to be an issue

Tell that to the marketing department.

 

[tetrasodium]

Tell that to the marketing department.

Gestalt

 

[Marc17]

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.

Naw, I see it as keeping the foundation and retrofitting the house above. Ascending AC from 2E is purely cosmetic. So are saves if you say all saves succeed on DC20 and covert the charts to bonuses (before you start making other changes). Even combined XP chart, most classes except for thieves were functionally level equivalent and the changes from old charts would give indication where tweaks might be needed. There's an argument for giving high str scores to large monsters, but otherwise no reason any of them have to have non-average stats as that is all taken into account with HD. Haven't even addressed adding feats and skills into the 2E system but those pretty much needed to be rethought anyway. I have all my work and notes on the subject saved to a folder called "YetAnotherFantasyHeartbreaker" on my computer.