Mike Mearls, Dnd 5's lead designer has several youtibe videos going over his thoughts on the system. The most striking thing is that at his own table they dont play RAW"My goal was simple. If we were going to fail we will fail by being too user friendly rather than too crunchy." And the his videos are about how the game is neither user friendly nor crunchy
Odd looking fella
>>98760575It was very good at getting new players into the game. I think we just got overrun, 4e kind of bombed and there were too many new players for us to take in and filter out all the wierdos.
>>98760601if anything, it was too inclusive.just too many people at the table who really had no business being there; i don't know what they were looking for, but D&D wasn't it.
>>98760575It was just too easy. The game entailed no risk of failure, you couldn't lose. That was never the rule; the rule always was, "You can't lose if you don't give up."
>>98760575the bourgeois d&d people are weird. they are not from STEM, they don't have a math background, they think they can buy their way into the culture.
>>98760625I mean, I'm sorry, I don't care how much Dune merch you buy, I can't read the book for you.
>>98760575I mean, I'm sorry, but boardgame people really are boring people most of the time. I like em, but you can understand why they are not some people's speed.
>>98760638I like fucking with them I guess. I like to see them smile cause there a bunch of miserable fucks, and they are the ones who need to laugh.
>>98760575He looks like someone who uses the phrase "my wife's boyfriend" or my son's father.I am unsurprised he made 5thed
>>98760575I've been watching them because they're honestly not getting me hope for whatever 6e is going to be. Too many of the videos seem to be "in 5e we did <thing> and it was bad, so in Death Saves we're currently experimenting with <thing, but worse> instead." And every once in a while, he manages to come out with a pretty good idea. His alternative to Bonus Actions is actually really good and I'd like to see it used in more games .Having said that, there's a sliver of hope: the fact that he's finally grasped that <thing> is bad might at least mean that when they do test it they'll know what to look for. At this point them just making new mistakes instead of old ones would at least be refreshing.
>>98760575Actually I've quite enjoyed his takes on the system. Interesting to see where they were coming from. Are there any other 5e designers who spoke about this stuff too? >>98761621He's no longer involved, so who knows if the new team knows this. Though, I do suspect 6e will be essentially a 2.5e
>>98762504He's doing the videos to promote this new project that he and Joe Manganiello are doing for WotC called "Death Saves" that's supposed to be the WotC version of Shadowdark and compatible with 5 and 5.5, but I'm throwing in with the tin foil hat that what they're really planning to do is make it the very early days of 6e because the company has no plans to stand by 5.5 a moment longer than they have to.
>>98761621>His alternative to Bonus Actions is actually really good and I'd like to see it used in more games .Well? Share with the class.
>>98762652Instead of some set of actions like "take a movement action, then a standard action, then a bonus action but only if you have an item or class ability that grants you a bonus action to take, then any number of free actions that feels reasonable in the moment" you'd get one action per turn off the list of all actions you know.So everyone may have a "standard action" that's something like "move up to 30 feet and make one weapon attack" but Paladins would have something like "Smite Action: Move up to 30 feet and make one weapon attack. If it's successful, apply one of the following effects as well as its normal damage" whereas a Rogue might get "Backstab Action: place your character immediately behind a target within 30 feet without triggering movement penalties or allowing an attack of opportunity, then make one weapon attack. If successful, deal double damage" whereas a Cleric might get their choice of "Healing Action: Cast a normal spell, then heal a target within 30 feet for 1d8" or "Rallying Charge: place your character immediately next to an ally and a target within their melee range, moving other characters if necessary, and make a melee attack against the target. If it hits, grant that ally 1d12 in temporary hit points for one turn" depending on build.And then future feats or features could either enhance those actions *or* give a brand new action that is only affected by anything other than feats or features that *specifically* affect it.So a character might have a tricked out Backstab Action and a "Nothing Personal: teleport behind a target within 120 feet and immediately cast a cantrip that deals damage" but there'd be nothing in the rules that would suggest (nor allow) that the cantrip damage from taking the Nothing Personal action should be doubled thanks to the Backstab action, it's one or other.In practice, it's not that different than the current model it's just much clearer at the cost of repeating things like "move 30 feet and..."
>>98762772So, 4e again?
>>98762814Yeah. The guy behind 4e is actively planning to 4e up a storm, but honestly, I kinda dig it. There's a lot of 4e I liked including Nentir Vale, AEDU timing, treasure parcels, and the "nested clocks" model of scene construction that grew out of "skill challenges" even if the implementation in the books themselves was awful, so I'd only be more interested if they got a little 4.5 action in there, too.
>>98762772>feats or features that *specifically* affect itGod, I hate this shit. Let me cobble together different character options to achieve my vision of what my character can do.
>>98760592He looks like Linkara and him were separated at birth and took very different life paths.But both grew up to be insufferable.
Nothing he does will be as bad as the paizo weapons cord thing
>>98763219I love how every D&D thread has this moment. It's like a variation on Godwin's Law. I don't even know what you'd name it. Just inevitably at some point every discussion about D&D always ends up at a point where people realize what they actually want to play is GURPS with a cleaner combat engine.
>>98764267No, GURPS also has you specifically put modifications on the trait itself.
>>98760575Who's worse? Monte Cook or this Mearls guy?
>>98760575>Threadly reminder Threadly reminder >Threadly reminder Threadly reminder that Mike said that 5e was designed so not because it was good, but because they couldn't iterate on 3.5e or 4e and needed to come up with something else to sell a product. The whole reason 5e and 5.5e exist is because of money, not because they wanted to make a good edition
>>98764519He said paizo already did the iteration of 3.5 and they would just end up copying them. They didnt want to do 4e iteration because it was unpopular.
>>98765298It would have been fine if they'd managed to make a 4th edition computer game.
>>98764519It *is* an iteration of 4e.
>>98764439Unironically, Monte Cook.
>>98766423This but unironically squared.
>>98766159The things it kept from 4e mostly were just half-baked there.
>>98762772That sounds fucking awful and pointlessly complex.
The enshitification continues...
>>98767708No, it's obvious that they took purposefully took several ideas from 4e, short and long rests and skill bonuses that scale with level being the two big ones. The big thing they jettisoned from 4e was the graphic design/rules language, which was the actual thing that people were buttmad about with 4e. People want the illusion of diegesis.
>>98764439Mearls.
>>98768731Short rests and hit dice (read: really bad healing surges) were butchered though, and scaling was not the same.
>>98768915The argument was that 4e was not being iterated on. You can disagree with the implementation, but it's obvious that they were iterating on mechanics from 4e.
>>98764267>GURPS with a cleaner combat engineok? so not GURPS? at least you're being honest for a GURPSfag
>>98768915>see short rests>"Oh, cool, martial characters will have features that they get back when they catch their breath, while casters will have features that they get back once per day.">keep reading>no consistent delivery of short rest resources to non-casters>short rest takes an uninterrupted hour, so people put off taking them until they can take a long rest anyway>instead of actually fixing this in the edition refresh, WotC puts out playtest materials moving even more resources to long restsFucking why
>>98760575>The most striking thing is that at his own table they dont play RAWWhy wouldn't he? He wasn't making the game he wanted to run, he made a product for the broadest possible audience.
>>98769156>he made a product for the broadest possible audience.Yep, and he made it palatable to a bunch of normalfags, roasties, trannies, and soi-slurping retards. Thanks to Matt Mercer and his dog-faced girlfriend, D&D has become a self-referential joke of a game, unable to do anything but pander to its own tropes, while the only new direction for the game is turning it into a multicultural polyamorous coffee shop dating simulator. But NONE of this would have been possible without Mike Mearls, who dumbed down the game trying to remove as much math from it as possible. And this isn't a surprise, since you now see the game flooded with trannies who are "tee hee bad at math" and literally count on their fingers to add up attacks. So yeah they need advantage / disadvantage to even be able to play.Mearls making the game easier to understand brought on a horde of normalfags. Simultaneously, he made it the LEAST punishing edition of the game ever. Get life-drained by a wight? You'll get over it after 8 hours sleep. Get hit by a medusa's gaze? You need to fail 2 saves to even have anything to worry about. The only monster left to deal ability damage is the shadow, and even then it's a measly 1d4. All the monsters are massively-reduced in Challenge Rating. The game is absolutely pussified. That's to make sure that nobody's special snowflake OC dies (as we saw with Shitical Roll, where they led an 8 month SJW campaign about how a black player's character dying was raycisst or some stupid shit).In fact there's barely any reason to roll to hit in 5e. The armor classes are so low that you're pretty much guaranteed to land a blow. It's just padded sumo combat, just like 4e was (which Mearls also helped design). It's not exciting at all. Matt Mercer and his crew might have ruined the D&D fanbase, but it wouldn't have been possible without Merals leading the charge. He caused all of this, and I'm glad he's finally getting blasted. 10 years too late though...
>>98760575>they dont play RAWThat's bullshit. You don't just get to ignore rules. The rules are there for a reason and nobody who plays a game is allowed to just ignore them, any more than a person walking down the street is allowed to ignore the law and take anything that they feel like taking.
>>98768582>The enshitification continues...And always will. The only escape is not to play games at all.
>>98769061>>short rest takes an uninterrupted hour, so people put off taking them until they can take a long rest anywayThis is and always was fucking retarded.If you were to sneak into my home, you might manage to hole up in my bathroom for an hour without me noticing you. Fall asleep on the toilet, I'll more than likely find your ass.
>>98769343Or to play old ones that have the quality needed.
>>98769334I know that's a strawman but you don't get to ignore the rules when you fucking write the rules and sell them to the rest of us at a premium.Sell us the not-dogshit rules.
>>98770256Bu-but anon! Old games are old! You should only be interested in new ones!
>>98770379I mean, if this we're basically any other game you'd have a point, but d&d is focused grouped and market tested to absolute death in order to make it the blandest most palatable gruel possible.A funny example of this actually happening is Marc Miller and traveller. Apparently he still just runs a very stripped down version of classic, but he sold a bunch of super nerds T5, a fucking sprawling monstrosity.
>>98770256The old ones are just as bad or even worse, just in different spaces.
I don't believe anyone plays RAW for any TTRPG
>>98762772sounds neat and I can see why you like it but it does appear that I can't "move, shank, move, shank" in one turn any more, which kinda sucks
>>98772071>new ones are bad>old ones are bad tooObviously such a rotten creature doesn't have the creativity to brew his own so what are you doing here?
>>987721861 of 2 options:-He's a pathetic contrarian troll-He's Negative Nancy, Debbie Downer
>>98762772This reads like card games.
>>98762772Autism
>>98767708The things they too from 4e are what the memes say things in 4e do instead of what they are. For Instance, Hit Dice do exactly what the memes say Healing Surges (limited regeneration) do instead of what they actually do (cap healing).
>>98769251> In fact there's barely any reason to roll to hit in 5e. The armor classes are so low that you're pretty much guaranteed to land a blow.Lol, wut?
>>98760575Color me suprised, a mofo Looks Like a total sperg cannot design a fun Game. From now on I will Look Up lead Designer Pics and unless its some fat old neckbeard I wont even Pirate.
>>98772738You're barking up the wrong tree, I like Hit Dice for what they do (disemphasize the need for a cleric or druid to act as the party healslut as in 0e-3.x) and dislike healing surges (which are part of the edition's focus on pre-planned skirmish encounters).
>>98772154I' mean, I'd put forth that they may well give an attack that allows exactly that. A case could be made that if they had the ability to write these actions without worrying about how they'll interact together they may be more willing to write high-mobility tactics into some of the attack chains. I'd be more surprised if there wasn't some sort of split-fire/double charge/overrun/tumbling attack chain.
>>98772235>>98772533Yeah, that's how normie games are usually structured now. Because it works and it works well. Which is why we should probably think about adopting it. Because it works. That's why everyone does it now.
>>98772761"My DM doesn't follow the rule books then when the game sucks we blame the underlying rules and not how we changed them" remains undefeated.
>>98772976Baseline functionality is not the sole metric of quality.
>>98774664Popularity is the most important metric of quality, as mentioned here:>>98774741
>>98772761If you roll for stats it's not hard to start with a +6 to hit a lot of the time. But +5 is the standard at level 1. A lot of monsters even in the CR 3 range still have an 11 to 13 Armor Class. So a group fighting a group of several lower-CR monsetrs (WHICH IS AN EXPECTED PART OF THE GAME) will be basically auto-hitting, especially with buffs like bless, Barbarian reckless attack giving advantage, etc.. Even without it, a 60% BASELINE chance to hit from the system, is pretty high. It feels higher than it sounds as a number.
>>98760575https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-blGAjzL3yIThis is the best thing I've ever seen Mearls do
>>98776988From what Ive seen, enemy ac outstrips character to-hit really fast
>>98772976>>98774845Does it work? Because it doesn't sound like it.And if we're talking about popularity, quite literally nothing is more popular than the current system considering 5e is still king in that respect.
>>98760575>The most striking thing is that at his own table they dont play RAWListen, I'm not opposed to shitting on this fag, but this sentence doesn't actually mean anything without context.Are you trying to imply he doesn't use the rules? Like, at all? Because that sounds like horseshit. Does he house rule a few things? Because that's incredibly common. And to what degree?It's like trying to say BG3 wasn't actually a 5e game because it has critical successes and failures for skill checks. If you're trying to paint Mearles as a shit designer who can't be assed to play his own game, then you need specifics.
>>9877698811 and +5 is only 75% and there are low CR enemies like hobgoblins with 18 AC. It is one of the reason why spellcasters have a shitload of these stupid cantrips that hit not via AC but saving throw. Why are you talking bullshit?
>>98777515>From what Ive seen, enemy ac outstrips character to-hit really fastEnemy AC is rarely higher than 18.By mid-levels a PC has a +8 or +9 to hit NOT counting magic weapons. Most mid-level monsters have a 15 or 16 AC. HOWEVER if you use lower level monsters in groups (which you need to to prevent ganking) then their ACs are even lower. Meaning PCs end up hitting on like a 5 or sometimes even a 4.
>>98781028>Enemy AC is rarely higher than 18.This was not my experience, at least in the games that I've played in. Entirely possible that our gm upped acs and difficulty, though.
>>98777864Hobgoblins are an outlier though.>>98781370>This was not my experience, at least in the games that I've played in. Entirely possible that our gm upped acs and difficulty, though.Most likely, yes. The other thing is that the VAST majority of 5e's monsters are lower-CR, and many don't have "advanced" versions, so you need to use them in groups of 3 to 4, especially to prevent the whole "action economy" problem.
>>98760592He looks like someone did a small-face-edit on Cameron Fry from ferris bueler’s day off.Anyway 5e is still the best edition. It’s what 4th should have been, but 4th went off-track by responding to criticism, which is understandable. It’s just nice when hasbro allows a good thing to happen even if it only happens every 15 years or so.
>>98776988>Even without it, a 60% BASELINE chance to hit from the system, is pretty high.Ok retard.I personally count bounded accuracy as a flaw, there should be situations where you have no chance or where the enemies have no chance, it diminishes the value of player decisions to say otherwise (and it leads to players who just keep throwing them bones and leaning into the bumpers when they should be using their heads).
>>98776988>Even without it, a 60% BASELINE chance to hit from the systemNo, it's not. It's not actually normal at all outside of wargames, the usual track is people starting off less accurate and becoming super ultra mega accurate as they progress.
>>98781455A regular gnoll warrior of the same CR has AC 15, a simple skeleton with half of CR has AC 14. These are 55% and 60% with +5 to hit. Why are you talking bullshit?
it's most likely because my DM boss tend be homebrew, but being a level 5 fighter (sword and shield) with 20 AC fighting some boss with a +10 to hit sucks hard (and some SRD monsters have it at CR6), even non homebrew monster at that level having some +7 to hit is crazymy lvl 5 barbarian I had in an other campaign same DM has 17 AC and it felt like I wasn't blocking shitThe AC being a joke is less about the monster's AC against the to hit of the PCs, but hte PCs AC against the monsters' to hit
