D&D General The Beautiful Mess of 5e

[Charlaquin]

The judgement in these posts is strong. People make mistakes all the time.

Of course people make mistakes all the time. I’m saying I don’t understand the nature of the mistake he’s saying he made. If I bake a cake, and immediately after baking it, I say, “notice how moist it is? That’s because I added an extra egg above what the recipie called for,” and then 10 years later, after losing my job at the bakery, I went on a podcast and said, “I did some math that proves I actually never added an extra egg to that cake 10 years ago,” I think people would be right to be confused. Like, did you or did you not actually add an extra egg? If you didn’t, why did you say you did? If you did, what the heck is this math even showing?

 

[bedir than]

"There are mathematical mistakes in the game," @mearls in this presentation.

 

[Charlaquin]

I'll say this, it is clear his new work is soundly math based, if that matters to you (or others).

Yeah, I was taking @darjr at his word that it was, and giving Mearls the benefit of the doubt that the math was correct. That’s why I find the situation confusing though. Like, did he somehow have the wrong math when he first claimed to have made fireball stronger on purpose? How did that happen?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Code for A.I.

This is gnome erasure and it will not stand.

 

[Umbran]

Hey, @darjr? Can you put some discussion of what the thing is about, why it is important or interesting, and so on in the OP?

Morrus is trying to reduce the number of posts that just link to outside media, but don't actually give context or stuff to talk about themselves. Thanks.

 

[AnotherGuy]

That

• They (and the playerbase) currently do plug and play from 5e adjacent systems which is also a great thing for the playerbase;
• The D&D player base is primarily split in 2 and I would imagine it be quite concerning for WotC;
• That the entire history of the game, particularly adventures of any edition are very easy to integrate;
• The Twilight Cleric is ridiculous and the Light Cleric did not need Fireball;
• They did not integrate 5e systems purposefully so (HD comes to mind); as well as
• Mearls admitting the 5e Fireball is not great given the hit points of monsters (which is something that was intuitive to me early on), and that some other math in the game needs work...

These are personally my biggest take-aways as they serve as confirmations of my own thoughts.

 

[Scribe]

The D&D player base is primarily split in 2 and I would imagine it be quite concerning for WotC

What are the camps?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What are the camps?

The Crips and the Bloods. It's been a weird few years.

 

[Staffan]

Huh… weird. I don’t understand how it’s even possible for him to have been wrong about that, since IIRC the original claim was that they had a formula for how much damage a spell of a given level should do, and then for a few iconic damage spells they wanted to feel extra powerful, they went a few dice above what that formula suggested. Did he just… hallucinate doing that?

His main argument is that after seeing the game in action blast spells, particularly AOEs, are underpowered in general and that fireball is closer to where they ought to be. That's not the stance they had when designing 5.0, but over time at least Mearls has come to that conclusion. Part of the reason they got it wrong is, I believe, that they hadn't accounted for how many hit points 5e monsters have, so they didn't really realize that you had to go down to like CR 1 monsters for a fireball to actually start clearing out monsters and thereby reduce the incoming damage from them.

 

[darjr]

His main argument is that after seeing the game in action blast spells, particularly AOEs, are underpowered in general and that fireball is closer to where they ought to be. That's not the stance they had when designing 5.0, but over time at least Mearls has come to that conclusion. Part of the reason they got it wrong is, I believe, that they hadn't accounted for how many hit points 5e monsters have, so they didn't really realize that you had to go down to like CR 1 monsters for a fireball to actually start clearing out monsters and thereby reduce the incoming damage from them.

It's a really good point and in a lot of ways was right in front of us the whole time. Focus fire is better than spreading out damage in the short run, and combats tend to be all in the short run.