Chat stream with M. Mearls and M. Cook on D&D

[Prak]

Regarding using alternate stats, y'all know it says that in the 3e PHB too, right? At least for skills and stat checks, and feats for attacks, and so on; 4e is full of using your best stat to just automatically do everything.

You can take feats that let you attack using a better stat, and you can choose skills that play to your best attributes, and so on and so on, but I can't find the bit where it straight-up says "If you argue with your DM and win, you can use a stat of your choice for any roll." Is it somewhere other than the beginning of PHB Chapter 8 (page 133)?

DMG page 33. I was going to point this out as well.

[ModelCitizen]

Personally I don't mind the rolling of hit points too much. I'd prefer something like set hp + roll, or any of the dozens of other possible hp mechanics, that semi-normalize gains, so you don't have weird levels where the wizard gains more than the barbarian, but still have some RNG involved.

Part of the reason random HP rolls are terribad is that they make more work for the DM. Pretty much anybody who plays D&D can multiply [fighter HP] * [level] in their head while talking about something else, but if you use random HP you have to interrupt the game and roll dice. If the PCs unexpectedly decide to murder the city watch? Stop the game, roll 2d8 ten times, write each number down, and then keep track of which of ten different undamaged guards have which hitpoint total. Fuck doing extra work so some grognard can feel clever for rolling his hitpoints when I'm not looking.

Now this won't stop me from playing, I've been houseruling it for years in 3e too. I just can't imagine why they would consciously choose to return to that terrible mechanic.

Seriously? Seriously? Magic Teaparty to determine whether we use good stats or shitty stats to defend against enemy spells?

What the fuck?!

I vote we lock each member of the 5e team in a separate room and have them write down the difference between Wisdom and Charisma. When we show them that they all came up with wildly different things they'd have to shitcan this idea, right? Right?

[Username17]

Casting spells was a mishmash of 4e and 3e, opposed attacks vs rolled defense, with the attacker setting the DC with a roll and the defender rolling against that.

I'm hoping that's bullshit. I really can't believe they'd want to bog down play by adding an opposing roll to a single attack action.

This sounds like Bruce Cordell and the pile of shit that was the 3e psionics handbook. I can't imagine them wanting to bring that back.

Can you link the source?

Sure can.

Monte: Making a saving throw against something has become something that's really a part of D&D. So again, what we've done is tie those into the ability scores. For example you'll make a strength saving throw or wisdom saving throw against a certain effect and so far it's become a big part of some effects and abilities. The attacker makes a check and that sets the DC for your saving throw.

Now I can actually see where they are coming from here. No one likes to have their character killed without rolling dice. No one likes to have their attacks declared a failure without rolling dice. Both seem unfair even if they really aren't. This is where "Players roll all dice" variants are coming from. But that also has the problem of mechanics working differently in the hands of PCs and NPCs, which is weird. And it makes NPC attacks on other NPCs or PC attacks on other PCs not possible with the standard setup.

Having an attacker roll and a defender roll on each attack solves that problem nicely. The part that is bullshit is that they have an attack roll and a defense roll before determining effect level. They just made to-hit into a two-roll process. Which as we've seen from Shadowrun, is more than is needed. After that, they are still having a damage roll and rolled hit points. And before you leap in "but hit points aren't rolled during the attack!" I remind you that when you are Fireballing Gnoll Warrior #3-#7, that this is quite likely (though not necessarily) the first and last attack they will be hit with, so the correspondence of damage rolls to hit point rolls is still likely 1:1.

NWoD has insufficient rolls during an attack in that it only has one and can't distinguish between an accurate attack and a big one. SR4 has too many rolls to resolve an attack in that it has 3 and uses two rolls to determine whether you hit or not and could use only 1. These clowns are putting forward a four roll system to determine attack results. That is insane.

And the thing where they suggest that a major part of the game is having table arguments about what stat bonuses to apply to attack and defense rolls in the middle of attack resolution, that's double insane. Four rolls and separate table arguments about what numbers to use for both the attacker and defender? Lol Wut?

-Username17

[Vebyast]

DMG page 33. I was going to point this out as well.

I see three possibly-relevant bits there.
1) Variant Rules box lets you argue about which stat should be used for a skill check.
2) Checks that clearly need a roll but haven't been explicitly defined. These are up for interpretation and can be argued about.
3) What to use for a check - is falling off a ledge a Dexterity Check or a Reflex save?

Rob: Right now, Cha is linked to saves for fear and charm effects. However, if you describe it well, you could use different stat.

This isn't just deciding what kind of check to make, or about fleshing out things that aren't already defined. We haven't seen this written down yet, but it sounds like core rules telling players that they can argue to change a check that has already been defined and written down (Charm Person forces a Will save (class + wis + mods) versus save DC (spell level + cha + mods)).

Additionally, in 3.5e the burden of choice is on the DM; when choosing to define a check, the DM is clearly in charge. In this system, the players would be choosing to start the argument. That is a recipe for disaster. Especially since it'll be happening in the middle of combat.

I'm going to put one internet cookie on the 5e Monster Manual referring directly to this in save DCs: "Normally the DC is x because the monster has to use cha; if in special situation S, the DC is instead y because the monster gets to use int."

[Daztur]

My reading of the transcript is: attack rolls are attacker rolls only, stuff that requires a Saving Throw requires both sides to roll. I'm assuming that when they mean the defender and attacker both roll, they're not talking about attack rolls, since I'm assuming that they're not THAT stupid and giving them the benefit of the doubt.

I don't want to be wrong

[Korwin]

There are games out there where the attacker and defender rolls (attack and block).
Even ones where you do an damage roll afterwards, if you hit.
(The Dark Eye springs to mind).

[ModelCitizen]

Regarding using alternate stats, y'all know it says that in the 3e PHB too, right? At least for skills and stat checks, and feats for attacks, and so on

Hmm, I'd forgotten about that. It's possible this weird idea is going to be one sidebar no one cares about, like 5e's version of renaming your Move Silently to "Rice Paper Walk."

It really just comes down to editorial decisions. If the book gives clear defaults for every check then everyone will treat the defaults as the rule. The option to whine your way into rolling Charisma save vs fireball will simply never be considered. What worries me is that high level design discussions don't usually bother to talk about something if it's just going to be one little sidebar. They may just force the issue by not bothering to provide defaults, or making the defaults so wishy-washy that the option to change the stat is hard to ignore. "5d6 damage, save half. The save is usually Dex, but sometimes it's Wisdom and on Tuesdays it's Charisma!"

[ishy]

Have I been running the default rules of 3.5 wrong? I thought npcs always got average hit points? So you'd never roll the hit points of gnoll warriors?

Oh and has it been established yet if saving throws are going to work like 4e as in every round or more like 3e?

[Username17]

Have I been running the default rules of 3.5 wrong? I thought npcs always got average hit points? So you'd never roll the hit points of gnoll warriors?

In ADnD, monsters and players always have rolled hit points (aside from a few exceptions like unique monsters). In 4e, monsters and players always have fixed hit points. In 3e, monsters and players have both listed, with fixed hit points reccommended for monsters and rolled hit points reccommended for players.

4e is clearly the superior version here, but 3e is also pretty good on this issue. ADnD is by far the worst, as rolling for hit points for 80 Orcs is ten flavors of bulshit.

Oh and has it been established yet if saving throws are going to work like 4e as in every round or more like 3e?

Their examples of saving throw use include having the DC of a save to stop an incoming spell set by the casting check of the wizard; making a save to escape being grappled; and bullshitting a different test in for your save and having it turn into an attack that kills the enemy attacking you outright with pure magical teaparty bullshit.

So saves apparently do both what they do in 3E (keep you from getting Charmed) AND what they do in 4E (get you out of ongoing effects of variable duration). In addition, with all their sucking the cock of MTP, they will also serve as an opportunity for a player to start table arguments about story direction. Since it is your turn to roll dice and describe the action, you can attempt to hijack the narrative by claiming that you should be able to dodge out of the way of incoming magic and have it strike enemies like you were in a Saturday morning cartoon.

-Username17

[ModelCitizen]

A bit late, but I just noticed this:

Sounds like D&D Next puts a lot of work on DM. What are your thoughts on bringing in new DMs?

Monte: We want to work hard to provide actual meaningful guidance on how to be a good DM. We want to embrace the 4E idea of quick prep time. New monster, 5 mins. High level NPCs in 10 minutes. Lots of 4E ideas. Decoupling the idea that NPCs have to advance or be built in the same way as PCs.

4e does monsters the way it does because people thought doing them like PCs in 3e was too much work. The thing is 3e PCs are pretty complicated. The 5e designers have been talking our ears off about how default 5e characters are really simple. As I understand it you can play a 5e fighter who is basically just six attributes an attack bonus and a halberd. He can play right alongside an Options Fighter and he's totally competitive and blah blah blah. Whatever. But most importantly the Default Fighter is much simpler than a 4e monster. 4e monsters have powers and derived defenses and skills and crap that baseline 5e characters supposedly don't have.

The Default Fighter is supposed to make AD&D/BECMI grognards happy. AD&D and BECMI had much, much simpler baseline monsters than 4e, and by default they worked off standardized HD/level scaling more or less like PCs. An orc chieftain was "an orc with 4 hit dice" and almost just off that information you could put him into play. Roll HP, put an axe in his hands, good to go. In 4e that same monster would require you to make 20 or so independent decisions in a writeup about a third of a page long. When PCs are simple it is much faster to build monsters off of PC-like progressions than it is to pull numbers out of your ass.

So if Monte thinks PC creation can be simple enough for grognards, but he also thinks monsters need to work like 4e to make them simpler than PCs, something is seriously wrong. My guess is one or more of the following:

• The default PCs are a lot more complicated than they're telling us.
• They're using the 4e monster rules without really understanding why.
• They don't have much confidence in their core mechanics, so they're planning to try to kludge everything piecemeal in the Monster Manual.

[Username17]

I think the primary reason they are using 4e Monsters is that they don't have solid PC mechanics. So each of the monsters is just a whacky kludge and a unique pile of numbers because there is nothing set in stone or even slightly foundationish to base any of the monsters off of. I think we need to go look at this quote from Geek Girl about Monte's explanation:

Monte said that because of these factors they’ve been focusing on the story of D&D. What is a fighter? What is a wizard? What makes the D&D wizard different from say, Gandalf or a spellcaster in Skyrim? Figuring out whether you get a +2 or +3 is the easy part, he said. Making a D&D ranger that feels like a D&D ranger is harder. Is that class more Aragorn or more Drizzt?

The monsters are just unique piles of numbers and unique abilities because even the raw numbers fighter is currently 100% vaporware. Everyone is being asked to magic teaparty everything with the hope that actual numbers will shake themselves out of these meetings of the Midnight Society by magic. In the mean time, all the rules, all the monsters, and all the character sheets are completely ad hoc.

For the DDXP, they didn't roll out a finished ruleset or even a vaguely playable ruleset. Remember this gem (also from Geek Girl):

On that topic, your next move isn’t on your character sheet. You don’t go paging through all your stuff thinking, “Well, I could Bluff this guy.” Nope. We were doing what we thought our characters should do, even if that involved our very NOT charismatic half-orc fighter trying to be a charismatic leader of a band of skeptical savage orcs. Multiple times. In other games, it’s “Okay, who has the highest Charisma? You? Okay, you go talk to those orcs and get them to help us.”

Got that? Wrap your mind around it, and chew slowly. At the table they weren't even using the abilities that had actually been written down. They were playing Munchhausen, occasionally interrupted by being asked to roll twenty sided dice. No fixed abilities, no set DCs, just raw force of personality and storytelling ability. There is no crunch, and in fact at this point there basically isn't any game at all.

5e is Vaporware.

-Username17

[hogarth]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/31749 ... cores.html

Do you like magic tea party?

This sounds stupid to me. But it made me ask myself: "Why do I like 3E skills so much better than the skill systems in other games?"

After some reflection, I think the answer is this: In 3E it's clear to you that there are easy and hard skill tasks and it's clear whether your PC is an expert or a klutz.

This may sound obvious, but the idea that skill tasks could have multiple, pre-determined taget numbers was revolutionary. Every other game I played before 3E had the basically the same skill system -- there's a single target number for any task and the GM adds an arbitrary penalty if he feels like it. So a skill entry like "Climb Walls 99%" means "you can climb 99% of all walls that the GM says you can climb", which is actually worse than Magical Tea Party (where you can climb 100% of all walls the GM says you can climb and you don't have to futz around with skill points and so on). But in 3E, I know that the average Joe doesn't have to worry about climbing a ship's rigging and that an expert climber doesn't have to worry about climbing a dungeon wall. That's progress!

There are a variety of things from the 3E skill system that are worth throwing out, but not the idea of skill ranks and pre-determined target numbers.

[Midnight_v]

I downloaded the kingdom of amular demo on X-box. . . and I think that where they found the vertical/horizontal scale thing for feats.

If you look it up you'll see. The way they'll keep it in reign is you can only add so much numbers per level.
Watch... I'm almost certain thats where they're getting that cause it is pretty much EXACTLY what they describe as far as leveling.

[Prak]

I think the primary reason they are using 4e Monsters is that they don't have solid PC mechanics. So each of the monsters is just a whacky kludge and a unique pile of numbers because there is nothing set in stone or even slightly foundationish to base any of the monsters off of. I think we need to go look at this quote from Geek Girl about Monte's explanation:

Monte said that because of these factors they’ve been focusing on the story of D&D. What is a fighter? What is a wizard? What makes the D&D wizard different from say, Gandalf or a spellcaster in Skyrim? Figuring out whether you get a +2 or +3 is the easy part, he said. Making a D&D ranger that feels like a D&D ranger is harder. Is that class more Aragorn or more Drizzt?

The monsters are just unique piles of numbers and unique abilities because even the raw numbers fighter is currently 100% vaporware. Everyone is being asked to magic teaparty everything with the hope that actual numbers will shake themselves out of these meetings of the Midnight Society by magic. In the mean time, all the rules, all the monsters, and all the character sheets are completely ad hoc.

I now very much wish I could have taken part and said "Yeah, to me, the quintessential D&D Fighter is Duke Nukem." and proceeded to shotgun monsters to death, rip off npc heads, and shit down throats. ...5e may have wound up looking very similar to FATAL if I could have trolled like this...

For the DDXP, they didn't roll out a finished ruleset or even a vaguely playable ruleset. Remember this gem (also from Geek Girl):

On that topic, your next move isn’t on your character sheet. You don’t go paging through all your stuff thinking, “Well, I could Bluff this guy.” Nope. We were doing what we thought our characters should do, even if that involved our very NOT charismatic half-orc fighter trying to be a charismatic leader of a band of skeptical savage orcs. Multiple times. In other games, it’s “Okay, who has the highest Charisma? You? Okay, you go talk to those orcs and get them to help us.”

Got that? Wrap your mind around it, and chew slowly. At the table they weren't even using the abilities that had actually been written down. They were playing Munchhausen, occasionally interrupted by being asked to roll twenty sided dice. No fixed abilities, no set DCs, just raw force of personality and storytelling ability. There is no crunch, and in fact at this point there basically isn't any game at all.

5e is Vaporware.

-Username17

Ugh. The thing is... there's a certain amount of sense to it, but it's a terrible way to design. I can see a Half-orc pc going to diplomatize a bunch of savage orcs. The thing is, he isn't using Diplomacy or Charisma to do it. He's doing it by being a genius compared to them, and smacking them around, saying "Repeat after me, 'I will do what I told - otherwise I get my goohuloog head kicked in'."

Designing off of what is right for a given character leads to Bards being designed to be charge-fighters, because my bard charged unthinkingly into melee the other night when his gryphon was killed.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Okay.

[*] Just because something sounds/actually was cool in one instance doesn't mean that it should be a general rule for a game. Oftentimes the coolness isn't something that's universal; rather, it derives its coolness from context or the zeitgeist of the particular story.

[*] Even if something is cool and would be a worthy addition to the game, it still needs to be specific and self-existing in order for its coolness to be potentially spread to other games.

If mean, you'd think those two things would be obvious, but apparently they're not. Otherwise you wouldn't get idjits thinking that it's a good idea to have a general rule where a paladin to ignore a vampire's mind control by dint of a really good speech about justice and loyalty.

[RobbyPants]

Seriously, who said "I want to have an argument with the MC about what my defenses are every single time my character is attacked." ?

The only way I could see this working is if it wasn't MTP and you didn't do it during combat. If their actual goal was "make it easier to get your top two or three stats in your saves to make the RNG sane", then it could work, but it'd all have to be handled at char-gen and level-up. So it'd work like:

1) Set base stats:
Choose Str or Con for Fort.
Choose Dex or Int for Reflex.
Choose Wis or Cha for Will.


2) Set by race:
Each race gives you an additional choice. Maybe orcs let you use Con for Will. Elves let you use Dex for Fort.


3) Set by class:
Each class (might) let you change another ability or so. So, Barbarians can use Con for Will and can use Str for all three while raging. Rogues can use Dex for Will. Paladins can use Cha for all three.


I don't know that this is a terribly good idea, but I think it could work in terms of keeping the RNG predictable while saving time at the table. Really, the "barbarians use Str while raging" is the worst part in that you'd have to quickly recalculate on the fly or write them down next to the ability, or something.

[Username17]

1) Set base stats:
Choose Str or Con for Fort.
Choose Dex or Int for Reflex.
Choose Wis or Cha for Will.

That is what 4e did. And it was bad, because characters who are strong and tough are a lot less resilient than people who are smart and pretty - and that is fucking retarded.

-Username17

[Mask_De_H]

1) Set base stats:
Choose Str or Con for Fort.
Choose Dex or Int for Reflex.
Choose Wis or Cha for Will.

That is what 4e did. And it was bad, because characters who are strong and tough are a lot less resilient than people who are smart and pretty - and that is fucking retarded.

-Username17

Swapping Con for Wis would fix that; there's no good reason outside of derp for each save not to have a physical and mental counterpart.

When you look at 5e as vaporware/the designers throwing out ideas, it gets a lot less terrible; this may be one of the few times a product not existing in a meaningful form is a net benefit.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If you're going to do that, then why even tie stats to defense bonuses?

The whole reason why attributes can asymmetrically boost your combat attributes is because you actually want an asymmetric defense. If you don't want that it's fine; I can totally understand people not liking the fact that Slay Living was less likely to work against a Titanic Toad then a epic-level cleric just because the Toad was big or for monsters to have a 'That's Super Effective!' weakness for certain save-or-dies.

However, if you don't want asymmetric defeneses then friggin' don't do that. All that does is just add extra complication to the game and extra failure points. And it also makes the game extra lame, because tightly controlling attribute bonuses creates situations where a paragon-tier wizard is better at sneaking than a mid-heroic tier rogue and/or makes it so that epic-level fighters can barely bench press Olympic weights.

[Username17]

1) Set base stats:
Choose Str or Con for Fort.
Choose Dex or Int for Reflex.
Choose Wis or Cha for Will.

That is what 4e did. And it was bad, because characters who are strong and tough are a lot less resilient than people who are smart and pretty - and that is fucking retarded.

-Username17

Swapping Con for Wis would fix that; there's no good reason outside of derp for each save not to have a physical and mental counterpart.

That just moves the problem around. Now someone who is Strong and Wise is low resilience and someone who is smart and pretty is high resilience. It's the whole "Crossed NADs" thing from 4e no matter how you slice it. You have a prime stat and a secondary stat, and if those are arbitrarily classified in the same defense, you are an eggshell and if they are arbitrarily classified into different defenses then you're a tank.

Let's go with some common characters with the Str or Wis == Wil, Int or Dex == Ref, Con or Cha == Fort paradigm.

• Ranger (Dex, Wis) Tank
  Bard (Cha, Dex) Tank
  Illusionist (Int, Cha) Tank
  Cleric (Wis, Str) Vulnerable
  Rogue (Dex, Int) Vulnerable
  Warlock (Cha, Con) Vulnerable

Does that make any sense to you?

When you look at 5e as vaporware/the designers throwing out ideas, it gets a lot less terrible; this may be one of the few times a product not existing in a meaningful form is a net benefit.

Well, yes. Once you realize that it's vaporware, most of the weird evasiveness about ability interaction stops being as big a problem. There's still a pretty big problem though: the open beta is in 3 months and right now they haven't come up with a mechanical implementation for Fighters to Talk. Right now, the ability of your Fighter to convince people to do things has 100% to do with the force of personality of the actual player, and 0% to do with what is actually written on the character sheet. I don't think they can solve this in three months.

-Username17

[Seerow]

Personally I don't mind the rolling of hit points too much. I'd prefer something like set hp + roll, or any of the dozens of other possible hp mechanics, that semi-normalize gains, so you don't have weird levels where the wizard gains more than the barbarian, but still have some RNG involved.

Part of the reason random HP rolls are terribad is that they make more work for the DM. Pretty much anybody who plays D&D can multiply [fighter HP] * [level] in their head while talking about something else, but if you use random HP you have to interrupt the game and roll dice. If the PCs unexpectedly decide to murder the city watch? Stop the game, roll 2d8 ten times, write each number down, and then keep track of which of ten different undamaged guards have which hitpoint total. Fuck doing extra work so some grognard can feel clever for rolling his hitpoints when I'm not looking.

I agree with that for NPCs. For a general NPC just take average or whatever, you don't need to roll each one out unless you really want to.

PCs however I think shouldn't all be more or less identical, and rolling for HP, while creating small differences, does make characters feel a little different. It's not so much about balance or mechanics as feel there (and that's why I advocate hp rolling systems that weight things in favor of a tighter rng, just a still existant one).

[RobbyPants]

1) Set base stats:
Choose Str or Con for Fort.
Choose Dex or Int for Reflex.
Choose Wis or Cha for Will.

That is what 4e did. And it was bad, because characters who are strong and tough are a lot less resilient than people who are smart and pretty - and that is fucking retarded.

-Username17

True. Even with the race and class part, you could end up with some stinkers. A lot of holes get plugged, but not all of them.

And even if you did go through all of the effort to plug them all, you might as well just say "everyone gets +4 to saves which scales at X rate".

[MGuy]

Why is it bad for someone who is strong and tough to be 20=25% less Evasive and Willful then they are tough and strong?

[Seerow]

What if you could add both relevant attributes to the saves?


So someone who has two good attributes going to the same save just has a really fucking high save in that attribute, rather than it being wasted and having two bad saves with one save the same strength as the guy who has two good ones?

[Username17]

What if you could add both relevant attributes to the saves?


So someone who has two good attributes going to the same save just has a really fucking high save in that attribute, rather than it being wasted and having two bad saves with one save the same strength as the guy who has two good ones?

Then you'd get Titanic Toad syndrome. Sure, it would be better than nothing to have a titanic save to go with your two weaknesses, but functionally it would still be two weaknesses. Leaving aside some of the crazier statements by the 5e design team, you actually don't get to choose what defense you use. Your defense is chosen for you when your opponent chooses their attack. And if they have an attack that can target one of your weak defenses, they are going to do that. So if you have two weak defenses, you have twice as much to worry about and in actual play you're much more vulnerable.

Even if your total defense numbers add up to the same as someone with a more even defense distribution. Points in your best defense are worth less than points in your worst defense. Because your enemies preferentially target your worst defense and actively avoid targeting your best defense.

-Username17