Has anyone been reading the Mike Mearls design articles?

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Sun Jul 17, 2011 7:41 pm

On the WotC website Mike Mearls has been writing a column about redesigning the game. Here's the archive: http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Archive.aspx ... egendslore

So my question is, is he moving in the right direction? I'm not sure. He's got a list of "core D&D" abilities which includes such gems as alignment and +1 swords, an article claiming that everything can be broken down to ability scores, and a newer article discussing bringing back old racial classes and tacking on more complicated things later.

It doesn't, to me, seem he's going anywhere good. The whole "ability score only" thing, if I'm reading it right, is kinda dumb and really doesn't take training into account and I suspect we'd get the 4e problem of "you must be this race to play this class" if racial ability score mods are still around. There's the problem that the monsters probably outscore you, and getting around that is the entire point of class training.

His class article seems kinda weird (racial classes? Really) and I have a bad feeling any premade characters - "core fighter" "core wizard" etc would easily be outstripped by a smart dude customizing the system. The idea of having simple classes around doesn't seem like a bad one, I'm just not sure I trust Mearls to implement it. It also strikes me that if you somehow do balance the "core" (basic) classes, then customization has the potential to make things even worse.

Thoughts?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Jul 17, 2011 7:57 pm

Like everything that comes out of Mike Mearls' mouth, it makes a better sales pitch than it does a reality. Yes, stripping the skill system off and just making people make ability modified tests would work. That is how things worked in 2e, and that is one of the few places where the system worked. It would be like very low level 3e D&D, where the system also works.

But he actually doesn't seem to have clue one as to why this works. He's not making a numeric argument based on the limits of diverging bonuses on a fixed RNG. He's just flailing around.

His class article is a fucking joke. Anyone who thinks that 4e has more "complexity and detail" than 3e is just not thinking about things clearly. The "playable sample character" rant he has is fascinating, but it's not actually anything about the game. It's a piece of helpful presentation. And let's not put too fine a point on it: a lot of the things he thinks we need to keep are actually shitty relics that should go away. Like Alignment and Constitution.

Ultimately, if you strip down D&D to its minimal pieces in the way he is talking about, you have a board game. You have D&D that can compete directly against Runebound or Talisman. And that's not really a good thing. The minimum of D&D is cooperative storytelling in an open ended framework. Numeric reductionism can be an interesting tool, but it's not an end goal.

-Username17

K · Post by K » Sun Jul 17, 2011 9:39 pm

MM is just retreading the same discussions that have been going on in gaming circles for 20 years or more. The fact that he either can't decide on a solution or likes crap solutions is not encouraging.

echoVanguard · Post by **echoVanguard** » Sun Jul 17, 2011 10:47 pm

What's so bad about Constitution? This is the first I've seen of any condemnation of it.

echo

Captain_Karzak · Post by **Captain_Karzak** » Sun Jul 17, 2011 11:21 pm

Constitution often feels like a "survival tax."

Basically you have to throw points into some kind of durability stat, often labeled "constitution", in order to be able to tell your character's story for a long time. Otherwise your character may die really, really quickly.

Unfortunately that's about all the stat does for you. You just exist for longer, and to help fund this durability, you actually have to divert points away from stats that make you better at *doing* cool stuff.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Sun Jul 17, 2011 11:47 pm

K wrote:MM is just retreading the same discussions that have been going on in gaming circles for 20 years or more. The fact that he either can't decide on a solution or likes crap solutions is not encouraging.

Hmm. That's weird, because over on EnWorld they're citing this as valuable insight into the design process.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Mon Jul 18, 2011 12:03 am

I don't consider reading Mike Mearls to be worth giving up the time I could be spending looking at internet porn. But it totally *is* valuable insight into the design process - at least for those who haven't previously seen how this works. The single most important skill you can have as a "professional RPG designer" is the ability to make great sounding sales pitches. Actual design work and math skills are tertiary at best, coming in behind getting drunk with the right people at conventions and knowing decent artists. And apparently, Mearls's latest articles are nicely highlighting that.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Jul 18, 2011 12:08 am

enworld is full of retards sucking fellating mearls/4e, of course they think this is "valuable insight" when in fact it is nothing more than mearls stating self-evident truths as his own pearls of wisdom.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Jul 18, 2011 12:15 am

CapnTthePirateG wrote: Hmm. That's weird, because over on EnWorld they're citing this as valuable
insight into the design process.

ENWorld is the Mike Mearls fanclub. They line up to suck his dick, over there.

K · Post by K » Mon Jul 18, 2011 12:28 am

CapnTthePirateG wrote:
K wrote:MM is just retreading the same discussions that have been going on in gaming circles for 20 years or more. The fact that he either can't decide on a solution or likes crap solutions is not encouraging.
Hmm. That's weird, because over on EnWorld they're citing this as valuable insight into the design process.

Considering that Enworld seems to be populated by 15-year-olds, I'm sure this is valuable insight into the design process for them.

That doesn't mean that this stuff hasn't been bouncing around gaming tables for decades (I mean, I've had the "who's going to be the cleric" discussion dozens of times over the years). It just means that this is the first exposure for people who are otherwise ignorant of the history because of a simple lack of experience.

For me, it actually reinforces why so many decisions in 4e are bad. You can see Mearls wrestling with the issues, but he's not coming to real answers.

I do understand why he gets jobs. He obviously has a gift for sounding like he knows his stuff. You have to actually parse it to realize that most of the articles end with him throwing up his hands in failure, with a few proposing old ideas that have been proven failures. He even ignores some of the obvious solutions to the problems that appear in the various editions, a failure I find especially troubling.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Mon Jul 18, 2011 12:54 am

K wrote:He even ignores some of the obvious solutions to the problems that appear in the various editions, a failure I find especially troubling.

Like what?

K · Post by K » Mon Jul 18, 2011 2:03 am

fectin wrote:
K wrote:He even ignores some of the obvious solutions to the problems that appear in the various editions, a failure I find especially troubling.
Like what?

For example, there was the problem that no one wanted to play clerics because they were simple healbots.

3e has a partial solution with the idea of domain spells where the cleric couldn't be forced to memorize 100% cure spells and let clerics convert regular spells into cure spells, meaning that in the middle of the adventure you might be using non-cure spells to do things. The Healing Domain watered down this solution, but for a lot of people domain spells was the most fun part of their cleric and the convert mechanic occasionally let them do interesting things.

The Cure Light Wounds Wand also mitigated heal duties quite a bit, even if it turned it into a out-of-combat action.

Mentioning that would have taken a paragraph and illuminated the issue far more, but he doesn't seem likely to say "you know, 3e handled this issue way better than 4e."

souran · Post by **souran** » Mon Jul 18, 2011 2:10 am

K wrote:
fectin wrote:
K wrote:He even ignores some of the obvious solutions to the problems that appear in the various editions, a failure I find especially troubling.
Like what?
For example, there was the problem that no one wanted to play clerics because they were simple healbots.

3e has a partial solution with the idea of domain spells where the cleric couldn't be forced to memorize 100% cure spells and let clerics convert regular spells into cure spells, meaning that in the middle of the adventure you might be using non-cure spells to do things. The Healing Domain watered down this solution, but for a lot of people domain spells was the most fun part of their cleric and the convert mechanic occasionally let them do interesting things.

The Cure Light Wounds Wand also mitigated heal duties quite a bit, even if it turned it into a out-of-combat action.

Mentioning that would have taken a paragraph and illuminated the issue far more, but he doesn't seem likely to say "you know, 3e handled this issue way better than 4e."

Actually that is completely disengous bullshit.

The "convert" mechanic seems to make a lot of sense but in the end the better solution was to play a cleric who could convert their spells to something that did damage or could make you more powerful and then to expect/demand that somebody else play a regular cleric or that the party buy you wand of CLW.

Speaking of which, the purchasable CLW wand is a TERRIBLE solution. It basically is admiting that you need healing to make the game work but that even more than healing what the game needs is a quick recoverty method to get the party back to fighting condition after each combat.

Seriously the 5 minute rest of 4E is superior in EVERY WAY to the CLW wand.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Mon Jul 18, 2011 2:19 am

souran wrote:
K wrote:
fectin wrote:
Like what?
For example, there was the problem that no one wanted to play clerics because they were simple healbots.

3e has a partial solution with the idea of domain spells where the cleric couldn't be forced to memorize 100% cure spells and let clerics convert regular spells into cure spells, meaning that in the middle of the adventure you might be using non-cure spells to do things. The Healing Domain watered down this solution, but for a lot of people domain spells was the most fun part of their cleric and the convert mechanic occasionally let them do interesting things.

The Cure Light Wounds Wand also mitigated heal duties quite a bit, even if it turned it into a out-of-combat action.

Mentioning that would have taken a paragraph and illuminated the issue far more, but he doesn't seem likely to say "you know, 3e handled this issue way better than 4e."

Actually that is completely disengous bullshit.

The "convert" mechanic seems to make a lot of sense but in the end the better solution was to play a cleric who could convert their spells to something that did damage or could make you more powerful and then to expect/demand that somebody else play a regular cleric or that the party buy you wand of CLW.

Speaking of which, the purchasable CLW wand is a TERRIBLE solution. It basically is admiting that you need healing to make the game work but that even more than healing what the game needs is a quick recoverty method to get the party back to fighting condition after each combat.

Seriously the 5 minute rest of 4E is superior in EVERY WAY to the CLW wand.

The five minute rest? I thought that was "there's downtime between fights. You can use your healing surges now."

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Mon Jul 18, 2011 2:24 am

Seriously the 5 minute rest of 4E is superior in EVERY WAY to the CLW wand.

No, it's merely a halfhearted formalization of such.

In 3rd ed, you could pass a CLW wand around and be fully healed in N rounds, where N is a random function of die rolls and how much total damage the party has taken. In 4th ed, it takes exactly 50 rounds for you to use Second Wind again or for the Cleric to get two more Healing Words. In that time in 3rd ed, you can blow through an entire CLW wand, healing an average of 275 damage -provided you have the wand with charges left and someone who can use it. In that time in 4th ed, you can heal 25% of your max HP regardless of who's in the party or magic items, plus you can heal additional HP based on the number of leaders in the party.

Thus in 3e, the partial retreat or "barricade the door, it'll take them a few rounds to tunnel in and we can heal" strategy is viable, in 4e it's an excuse for the MC to arbitrarily deactivate your encounter-long buffs without giving you a chance to recover.

The "you're going to take damage so combat healing is a must" trope of OD&D was "solved" by like a dozen different systems in various ways before we even saw 2e. If you've read other games, you know about soak rolls, stun damage, normal/lethal/agg, temporary HP, fast healing for everyone, forced recovery, post-phase-12 recovery, death checks, docwagons and gold cross clones - and any discussion of where D&D is or should be going should address why combat healing is a better option than things like that.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Jul 18, 2011 2:30 am

uh as much as 4e is shit, the five minute rest is far superior to the CLW wand. both in terms of flavor (how many fantasy stories have characters spamming wand charges) and mechanics

CLW wand: track charges, roll HP for each cast, spend gp to heal
rest: okay five minutes have passed, we're healed and ready to go

If you've read other games, you know about soak rolls, stun damage, normal/lethal/agg, temporary HP, fast healing for everyone, forced recovery, post-phase-12 recovery, death checks, docwagons and gold cross clones -

please go into more detail especially on "gold cross clones"

Swordslinger · Post by **Swordslinger** » Mon Jul 18, 2011 2:41 am

Psychic Robot wrote:uh as much as 4e is shit, the five minute rest is far superior to the CLW wand. both in terms of flavor (how many fantasy stories have characters spamming wand charges) and mechanics

CLW wand: track charges, roll HP for each cast, spend gp to heal
rest: okay five minutes have passed, we're healed and ready to go

CLW wands were a very annoying game mechanic, because you bogged the game down rolling a d8 for each of those CLWs, and had to track charges and all that crap.

The 4E method is much simpler, and doesn't require making a bunch of rolls for healing.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Mon Jul 18, 2011 2:47 am

Weird, my party rollled all the time for healing during 5 minute rests.

The cleric's healing word was vastly superior to straight burning off healing surges. So, the party would wait 5 minutes, go through a few healing words (roll a handful of dice), then wait 5 more minutes to repeat the process.

Granted, "roll a handful of dice" is arguably superior to rolling a single die multiple times, but it's not that much different, really.

talozin · Post by **talozin** » Mon Jul 18, 2011 2:52 am

Psychic Robot wrote: please go into more detail especially on "gold cross clones"

Gold Cross is a company in the Car Wars/Autoduel universe that will grow one (or more) clones of you for a large but somewhat reasonable amount of money. If the current you dies, and is recoverable, they will zap your memories and personality into one of the clones and you live again, with all your legal rights as if you were the original person.

For another large but reasonable amount of money, you can make a tape of yourself at a given point, so that if you die in a non-recoverable way, they can upload the tape into one of your clones instead. This allows more certainty in returning from the dead, at the price of not having up to date memories (and, in an RPG context, stats -- you have your skills at the time you made the tape, even if you've improved them a ton since then). You will probably not be too surprised to learn that updating the tape also costs a large amount of money.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Jul 18, 2011 2:56 am

forced recovery, post-phase-12 recovery, death checks, docwagons

okay then what's this bit about.

echoVanguard · Post by **echoVanguard** » Mon Jul 18, 2011 3:01 am

Captain_Karzak wrote:Constitution often feels like a "survival tax."

Basically you have to throw points into some kind of durability stat, often labeled "constitution", in order to be able to tell your character's story for a long time. Otherwise your character may die really, really quickly.

Unfortunately that's about all the stat does for you. You just exist for longer, and to help fund this durability, you actually have to divert points away from stats that make you better at *doing* cool stuff.

Ok, what are some ways a constitution stat could be made interesting?

echo

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Jul 18, 2011 3:04 am

What I want to know is why Mike Mearls or anyone thinks that anyone should be healing in combat in the first place. That mechanic is the crown jewel in health/damage asymmetry for a system that uses levels. I would have thought that Final Fantasy made this obvious, but apparently not. If I had my druthers, healing in combat would be a last-ditch supermove trump card rather than just another expected parameter. The current system creates grind or rocket-launcher tag (no one can do this correctly), requires too much bookkeeping, and frankly is rather anticlimatic. When people start drawing straws in order to see who is going to play the cleric you know something or someone done fucked up. You'd think that being the guy who pulled everyone's fat out of the fryer when all hope seemed lost would be the role everyone would be clamoring to get, but apparently not. It's because of 'expected healing' crap.

echoVanguard wrote: Ok, what are some ways a constitution stat could be made interesting?

It's a fool's errand. It's an almost completely passive stat and one that doesn't even make much sense. I mean, seriously, how many monsters do you know that have a noticeably mismatched STR/CON ratio in 3E? And of course from a powergaming standpoint it's always been the most problematic stat, even in 4E.

If it and Charisma went away the game experience would be much improved.

talozin · Post by **talozin** » Mon Jul 18, 2011 3:17 am

Psychic Robot wrote:
forced recovery, post-phase-12 recovery, death checks, docwagons
okay then what's this bit about.

forced recovery: don't remember.

post-phase-12 recovery: this is a Champions-ism. Rounds have 12 phases, after phase 12 characters all recover some health (yes, I'm aware of how badly I'm butchering the actual mechanic, it's not important for purposes of this discussion).

death checks: don't remember.

docwagons: this is a Shadowrunism, where you can buy a contract with medical personnel to come out and fix you up when you suffer injury.

JDSorenson · Post by **JDSorenson** » Mon Jul 18, 2011 3:23 am

I've read the last couple articles, and they're interesting in that the seem to be heading in a direction that I like (Basic D&D, with modern unified mechanical structure and hopefully lessons learned from 4E's shortcomings).

I'm not actually a huge fan of having 80,000 little customizable widgets for each character, so I like the idea of D&D being broken down into a simple core structure whereupon rules modules can be plugged in to add complexity to certain areas. I'm just not sure if it would actually work in practice.

D&D is in a unique position, because it has to serve a lot of different demographics. It has to sell to everyone who had previously given up on D&D, the people currently playing D&D, the veteran gamers who've never really given D&D a shot int he first place, and the average joe who's never played any kind of TTRPG in his/her life. Rolemaster doesn't really have this problem, because the writers really only have to make sure that it appeals to fans of rolemaster.

I like the idea of basing everything off of Ability scores, particularly if it's implemented correctly. As it stands now, the ability score structure all but dictates that all fighters be strong, all rogues be dexterous, all clerics be wise, etc. By removing derived stats and focusing on ability scores (especially if each score effected a different vital tactical game function BESIDES attacks, defenses, skills, etc.) you could actually open things up a bit more than they are now.

I'm looking at d20 moderns structure of Strong Hero (STR), Fast Hero (DEX), Tough Hero (CON), etc. and how each of these things could support certain character archetypes...

So for fighters you could have simple build options that support:

Myrmidon (STR)
Swashbuckler (DEX)
Berserker (CON)
Marshall (INT)
Swordmaster (WIS)
Gladiator (CHA)

The key here is making sure that each is viable, and that there are compelling reasons to play each one over the other.

The part where this breaks down is the math. Mearl's proposed system of adding ability modifiers to everything, and using ability scores as the target numbers doesn't really work out. If you've got an 18 STR fighter trying to push another 18 STR fighter, and there are no derived stats, then fighter's only got about a 35% chance of succeeding, whereas it should logically be about a 50/50 chance.

Of course, if you made ability modifiers more granular, like if there was an ability score modifier for every point above 10 (so 18 STR fighter has an ability modifier of +8, rather than +4) then THAT problem would be alleviated. I still think that something would have to be done to address size categories.

Back on the subject of character customization, I would be happy if character options were all modular decision points. Assuming the Heroic, Paragon, Epic tiers from 4E, characters start by choosing class, race, and Heroic Theme, which gives them crap throughout heroic tier, then a paragon path which gives them crap throughout paragon tier, and epic destiny, which yadayadayada.

You could further apply this modular design to monster creation...keep monster roles and give each a uniform mechanic that helps them perform the function they are designed to perform, then have benefits for each monster types...so orcs each get their own mechanical benefits, as do hobgoblins, dragons, aberrations, magical beasts, fey creatures, etc. Then have a bunch of different templates that you can graft on, and all of this with an easier system than 3rd editions ECL/CR system.

talozin · Post by **talozin** » Mon Jul 18, 2011 3:26 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:What I want to know is why Mike Mearls or anyone thinks that anyone should be healing in combat in the first place. That mechanic is the crown jewel in health/damage asymmetry for a system that uses levels. I would have thought that Final Fantasy made this obvious, but apparently not. If I had my druthers, healing in combat would be a last-ditch supermove trump card rather than just another expected parameter. The current system creates grind or rocket-launcher tag (no one can do this correctly), requires too much bookkeeping, and frankly is rather anticlimatic. When people start drawing straws in order to see who is going to play the cleric you know something or someone done fucked up. You'd think that being the guy who pulled everyone's fat out of the fryer when all hope seemed lost would be the role everyone would be clamoring to get, but apparently not. It's because of 'expected healing' crap.

I haven't played WoW for a while, but when I did, I was heavily healing focused (priest, main spec Disc, offspec Holy). I quit not too long after they introed the new healing mechanics pre-Cataclysm, and some of the stuff they did was interesting. Disc, in particular, had a special move where you charged it up by doing damage to the enemy and then got extra healing benefits out of it. Holy had ... something similar.

Fundamentally it didn't help much because healing in WoW was still essentially a game of whack-a-mole where you never actually look at all the fantastic graphical spectacular that is a boss fight, because if you take your eyes off the health bars of everybody else in your raid they're basically fucked. I don't know, maybe it's more interesting now.

But at least they were trying. At least you got to do something other than spam Power Word Shield and Flash Heal. And if healing is supposed to be a niche that people are actually going to want to fill, it has to be something like that, where you get to throw down damage just like anyone else, only you give your group some benefits as well in the process.