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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iosue" data-source="post: 7671647" data-attributes="member: 6680772">In the D&D Next design process, Mearls and Jeremy Crawford were the designers.  They set the direction of the game, and devised objectives, which they would give to the development team.  Thompson led the development team, which included Peter Lee, Robert Schwalb, Bruce Cordell, and others.  The development team's job was to turn the design team's objectives into actual mechanics and rules.For a very clear example of Thompson's contribution, at one point in the playtest characters had a Weapon Attack Bonus, which differed by class.  Casters also had a Spellcasting Bonus, which again differed by class.  Skill advancement occurred through scaling skill dice, which players would roll and add to their skill check.  Rogues, though, needed something more to represent their skillfulness, so they had feats that gave them more skills, or advantage on skills, or a guaranteed roll of 10 on one of their skills, depending on the rogue scheme. The design team was also aware that saving throws needed some kind of scaling, so that higher level characters could get better at saves.  (Mearls at one point suggested something like a half-level bonus to saves.)  All of this was meant to work within bounded accuracy.  So, at one point in 2013, the design team gave Thompson, Lee, and Schwalb the assignment of going through the game and cleaning it up of all the various bonuses.  Mearls noted that he expected they would make an incremental step forward.  Instead Thompson and Co. came up with the proficiency bonus.  One bonus for weapon attacks, spell attacks, spell save DCs, and saving throw advancement.  It also cleaned up the Rogue class, because they could key off of it for Expertise (originally a +5 that turned into double proficiency).  This was a huge jump forward that allowed the game to be what they aiming for.</blockquote>

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