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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eclair~" data-source="post: 9800973" data-attributes="member: 7054492">I feel like there's one simple point that needs to be raised in this thread that somehow hasn't been brought up at all:Cthulhu by Torchlight.I feel it's very telling that Mearls wants to criticize 5e control spells, yet a book he helmed has spells that impose crippling effects on enemies—stuff from locking down an enemy's spellcasting, forcing enemies to automatically use weak attacks, outright insta-killing enemies—that completely ignore 5e's balancing mechanics for control spells. There's no saving throw. No form of resistance whatsoever. Cthulhu by Torchlight has a spell that kills literally anything after three turns—there's no way to any monster, even legendary monsters, to resist this effect.Mike Mearls wants to declare 5e balance bad, yet he's happy to purposefully break the balance of the game to sell his own product.Because "bloodied" isn't a mechanic. For 99% of PCs, it will never have any effect on them or mean anything for them. 5e simply acknowledged that any time such a "condition" was relevant, it was better to simply cite "when below half of your max hit points" rather than cite a "condition" that didn't actually impact anything at all for 99% of players.And as 2024 5e demonstrates, trying to make "bloodied" a mechanic leads to all kinds of stilted design choices, either in awkward (the UA Necromancer's "reaction when you become bloodied, but not if you already are) or overpowered (the FR feat that gives advantage on every attack you make while bloodied) features that run off an abstract game-mechanics concept rather than an in-universe rationale. "Ah, I am at 51% health and cannot use this feature! Thankfully a rat bit me and that 1 damage was enough to enable this power!"</blockquote>

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