[5E] Is Mearls planning to snow Hasbro and the fanbase?

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Mon Jul 29, 2013 3:50 pm

with them trying to combine all editions and playstyles into one codified ruleset, i thought the motto was EVERYBODY is going to get fucked with DDN.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Mon Jul 29, 2013 4:01 pm

ishy wrote:How come TTRPG designers can never admit they fucked up?

because their balls are clamped tight into the corporate purse, and they have to ask permission to do anything, and they are NEVER given that.

i can barely make heads or tails out of what is being said about all this cause the stuff being talked about in relation to it such as "bounded accuracy" makes no sense from outside the playtest.

the simple thing to do is first design the attack system then assign HP. then test it out a bit, and when you get all monster and shit done where they work right, then add other abilities to the monster and adjust whatever abilities the PCs get and test again. that doesn't take any sort of beta testing from the masses. LW didn't allow it, so nobody that came from TSR even knew how to make the games they played, so WotC doesn't know how to test shit either.

the "growing HP" they would have seen from the start if they grew from a concept then designed the game around that concept. they are jsut trying to shove everything ever put into D&D into DDN and don't understand how or why half of it works. i refer again to MtG design where they don't sit over numbers all day, they just assign random mana costs and tweak until it plays right. WotC just doesn't have enough players from enough styles in-house to be able to think outside of whatever cubicle/box the WotC designers think inside of.

Gary tried to apologize for alignment, but never tried to fix it. DM tool.. psssssh. uses 2-axis system rather than a 9-grid square system and it works fluidly.

why is alignment even in DDN if it isnt used because it is a module? just to keep Prot Evil, paladins, and such?

Mearls just thinks he can do no wrong cause he has evaded the lay-offs time and time again. add to this that D&D is no longer a game they care about and want to die so they can fully use all the money and efforts in the brand as that Nathan said in the Forbes article on video games and such. so like 4th DDN is being designed for board game, video game, toys, and etc use of the D&D brand.

Mike Mearls and James Wyatt will be next in the round of lay-offs.

Wiseman · Post by **Wiseman** » Mon Jul 29, 2013 9:02 pm

If they go, then whose left on the staff?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Jul 29, 2013 9:44 pm

ishy wrote:
We want to focus on growing hit points, rather than attack or saving throw bonuses (or DCs), as the way we reflect growing character power.
That said, we've seen a few issues from our playtest feedback and from our own games. The big one focuses on saving throws and skill DCs.

* Saving throws against effects that take you out of the fight, like a ghoul's paralysis, mess up monster scaling. A ghoul is equally deadly to a 3rd- or 17th-level fighter. If either one blows a saving throw, the fighter is out of the battle.
This just shows how important playtesting is for a game. Nobody could have foreseen this without playtesting.

We're instituting a consistent bonus progression for characters that ranges from +1 at 1st level to +6 at 20th level for attacks, checks, and saving throws.

How do these people still have jobs? If the only thing that level scales is HP and damage, it is immediately obvious that you have to tie your SoD's into functioning off HP or level. And of course, their actual solution is to implement "just a tiny bit" of level scaling, which means that a 17th level fighter staring down a single ghoul is no longer almost exactly as likely to lose on the first round as a 3rd level fighter, but it still means a 17th level fighter staring down a level appropriate mob of ghouls is still completely and wholly fucked.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Mon Jul 29, 2013 10:12 pm

Well I don't know their actual numbers but if I assume the Ghoul has a 50% chance to hit the 3th lvl fighter and a 50% chance to paralyse her.
And the lvl 17 fighter has +6 armour and +6 on saves.

lvl 3: 50% chance to be hit, 50% chance to be stunned if hit => 25% chance to be stunned per hit.
lvl 17: 20% chance to be hit, 20% chance to be stunned if hit => 4% chance to be stunned per hit.

Though keep in mind, in the line below the one saying you'd only get +6 to saving throws Mearls said, you could get up to +12 on saving throws.

- Edit: and wasn't one of their goals that unleveled low level creatures should remain a worthwhile challenge no matter what level the player is?

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Mon Jul 29, 2013 10:34 pm

Wiseman wrote:If they go, then whose left on the staff?

Peter Lee and the other guy sitting beside him from the 1st playtest live stream. puppets for WotC will be all besides those two.

though Peter Lee is a good miniature painter, it is sad he was turned into something else due to cad/cam design being used to ruin the minis line. would have bought an actual scuplt that he had made. not sure about his design credentials, cause i really only talked ot him about mini painting prior to his employment at WotC.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Tue Jul 30, 2013 12:54 am

@ishy, it'll be +12 on saves vs +6 on DCs, rather than +6 vs +0. The same against fair challenges but much better against the mobs. Or it'll be something else that messes up everything they've done so far so they can start from scratch again.

One of their goals was that Orcs should stay relevant for "longer". Not forever. More than the 4-5 levels where each monster works in 3e (or 2-3 half-ass levels in 4e), but not quite the 14-15 levels their ghouls turned out to be, which was all fairly obvious about a year ago when I was pointing out you can kill everything by hiring twenty 1st level archers.

Ah well, maybe doing the public shame thing with the ghouls was what marketing demanded for them to step away from their previous promises. "Show them it's not working". Probably sensible.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Tue Jul 30, 2013 1:14 pm

ishy wrote:Well I don't know their actual numbers but if I assume the Ghoul has a 50% chance to hit the 3th lvl fighter and a 50% chance to paralyse her.
And the lvl 17 fighter has +6 armour and +6 on saves.

lvl 3: 50% chance to be hit, 50% chance to be stunned if hit => 25% chance to be stunned per hit.
lvl 17: 20% chance to be hit, 20% chance to be stunned if hit => 4% chance to be stunned per hit.

Using those numbers, if the fighter fights seven ghouls at once, there is a 75.14% chance that he will make all seven saves (so, pretty close to 25% chance that he fails on one or more). So, if a "level appropriate" hoard of ghouls at level 17 is seven, then this works out. If he's expected to fight any more than that, he's pretty well fucked.

If we assume he can only be attacked by eight at a time (if we're using a square grid), each round, he makes all the saves 72.14% of the time (fails 27.86% of the time). Each round.

Under this system save-or-lose effects will be what wins fights, and amassing tons of low-level SoL effects will be king. This will be the edition of armies of tiny men (or ghouls).

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue Jul 30, 2013 3:12 pm

tussock wrote:Ah well, maybe doing the public shame thing with the ghouls was what marketing demanded for them to step away from their previous promises. "Show them it's not working". Probably sensible.

This is Mearls we are talking about. i dont think he really understands what was wrong with the ghouls under the system he himself designed.

what does all this +6/+12 do to spells? dont spells get powered by whatever level you choose in DDN or something? like Magic Missile can be cast in place of a 7th level spell or something, rather than using caster level?

isnt that a bit.. weird and non-functioning? what happens when a only 1st level spells are left?

does the +12 thing mean Magic Missile is then wasted?

Convoluted and Dragons, new from WotC available at GenCon 2014.

isnt just giving more HP also the thing people complain about it being "swingy"?

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Tue Jul 30, 2013 4:05 pm

shadzar wrote:. http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx ... l/20130729 .

I ended up trying to write something about this on FB, and ended up with a rhyme at the end, and then ended up rewriting the whole thing in rhyme.

Oh silly Mearls with your "math just works"
Can't you see that you're feeding clerks?

Defeating system mastery is actually a gordian knot,
despite how hard tried, the attempt will be naught.

A simple system will do more than ease the players thoughts
It will be one that doesn't separate "haves" from "have nots"

It's a clear road that a good argument paves.
As a card shark once said:
"smarten up the dupes; and there will be no knaves."

Of course, making things simple is catching a greased hog.
While creating complications is simpler than slipping on a log.

Generally, I want players to play what they want to be;
instead of having to practice system mastery.

and why I chose to kludge #AfterSundown,
as making my own had me rundown.

Just so that I'm clear, would making the game very easy to make optimized characters; with larger possible differences between their values; make "system mastery" less of an issue?

I've got the feeling that the more system mastery is made "harder", the larger that the differences between those who practice it, and those who don't/can't, will be.

Is that right, or wrong?

zugschef · Post by **zugschef** » Tue Jul 30, 2013 5:24 pm

Judging__Eagle wrote:Just so that I'm clear, would making the game very easy to make optimized characters; with larger possible differences between their values; make "system mastery" less of an issue?

I've got the feeling that the more system mastery is made "harder", the larger that the differences between those who practice it, and those who don't/can't, will be.

Is that right, or wrong?

The way I see it, making it easier or harder won't make much of a difference. If you want to influence the impact system mastery has on your game, you need to increase or reduce its rewards.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Jul 30, 2013 6:12 pm

Making combat take more rolls makes optimization make more difference. If combat goes for 11 rounds like it does in 4e, an extra +1 to-hit amounts to .55 hits per battle. If combat goes for 3 rounds like it does in 3e, an extra +3 to-hit amounts to .45 hits per battle. Iterative probability is a bitch, and it makes smaller real bonuses more noticeable. Also it makes very small chances basically a certainty to crop up eventually.

-Username17

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue Jul 30, 2013 6:19 pm

Judging__Eagle wrote:Just so that I'm clear, would making the game very easy to make optimized characters; with larger possible differences between their values; make "system mastery" less of an issue?

I've got the feeling that the more system mastery is made "harder", the larger that the differences between those who practice it, and those who don't/can't, will be.

Is that right, or wrong?

the system mastery comes from those things that cannot be balanced, yet people want in "today's market", more options.

as long as people want these character builds, rather than a class archetype, system mastery will exist because you will have those poor choices that fit for thematic reason, and others only for mechanic reasons.

in either, you will have those looking for the mechanic, and those looking for the thematic. removing the options to where there is nothing of the mechanic to find, is the only way to remove the need for system mastery.

Foxwarrior · Post by **Foxwarrior** » Tue Jul 30, 2013 9:36 pm

RobbyPants: It wouldn't be contradictory to have a game where ghouls could always kill any creature they touched, but one is a hard fight at level 1, and at level 10 you were expected to fight hundreds of them at a time.

FrankTrollman: Your example suffers from neglecting the part where the significance of each attack is (roughly) inversely proportional to the number of attacks made.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Wed Jul 31, 2013 8:45 am

. http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=340615#340615 .

D&D to become the .//hack franchise, notice the word franchise not brand. it will have games, comics, videos, which if you want the full content you wil have to get all forms of the media because they can't put it in one single media format for people.

it is one thing to have the old game, novels, comics, video games, and cartoon, but the way Jon describes it in reference to recent attempts, means simply that .//hack franchise will be the model the use where the extras aren't really extra but required to have bits on all sorts of media formats. they are still trying to GLEEMAX! D&D it seems. tie everything together rather than have things loosely based on one major product. this means ALL the forms of media will suffer.

for those not knowing about .//hack, one part of the story was an anime series, followed by a 4 game series for PS2 with little anime films included, then a comic book, followed by another anime series, then another comics book followed by yet another anime series (.hack//Roots); at that point i stopped keeping track and stopped caring. never read the comics. D&D doesn't need this sort of thing. the old style of make ONE thing and make it good, then have so lower quality products to drum up interest is what still works best. comics for those liking comics, video games for those wanting to pay them, cartoons/movies for those wanting that media format. but to force people into needing them all...when not everyone enjoys all of them, seems a failure.

again why in the fuck is the art director having so much control over the RPG model?

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Wed Jul 31, 2013 1:36 pm

Foxwarrior wrote:RobbyPants: It wouldn't be contradictory to have a game where ghouls could always kill any creature they touched, but one is a hard fight at level 1, and at level 10 you were expected to fight hundreds of them at a time.

I'm not sure I'm understanding you correctly. Are you saying that the game should reflect a situation where one ghoul is deadly at level 1, but hundreds aren't at level 10?

If so, under the numbers above, the fighter straight up gets murdered by 100 ghouls, baring astronomically good rolls. Lets assume the fighter can only be engaged by 8 ghouls at a time, and that he can auto-kill 8 of them a round. He'd win the fight in just over 12 rounds. Now, we've already established that each round, the fighter only has a 72% chance to make all his saves. What if he had to do that for twelve straight rounds? The chance of him making all of his saves for 12 rounds consecutively is...

1.99%

So, nearly 49 in 50 fights, the 10th level fighter dies to 100 ghouls.

Now, maybe I misunderstood your post, and this was all moot, so you might need to clarify a bit.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Wed Jul 31, 2013 2:54 pm

sounds like it to me

1 for level 1 = hard

<100 for level 10 = easy

100s for level 10 = hard

sound stupid to me, but that is how it reads.

so 1 million kobolds for level 20 = ?

Foxwarrior · Post by **Foxwarrior** » Wed Jul 31, 2013 6:19 pm

Yes, RobbyPants, our mental images are not aligned. To avoid getting caught up in probabilities, let us assume that the ghoul's attack is:

Death Touch: As a standard action, the ghoul kills one creature within reach.

In 3rd edition, a level 5 Wizard would have some difficulty killing a full hundred of these guys, assuming that they were pursuing him tirelessly. I don't find it hard to imagine a hypothetical 5e where a 10th level fighter with plenty of magic items could defeat them, using tactics other than "stand next to them and let them hit you".

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Wed Jul 31, 2013 11:14 pm

Well sure, if you can attack from a position of impunity (flying archery against foes with no ranged attacks, for example), then you can kill any number of foes. That's not really based on level though - a 1st level guy with a flying mount could eventually kill 100 ghouls, if they had no cover.

The only way that would be a factor of level is if your tactics (for all classes) were expected to change to a more indirect style as you went up in level. So a Barbarian would be something like:
L1 - stab fools in the face
L5 - throw axes/boulders at fools from above
L10 - lead your horde of barbarians into battle (from the back)
L15 - deploy your barbarian army to go stab fools, while you stay at home.
L20 - stir up sentiment against fools, so that they get stabbed without you even needing to send your army.

This is actually in-theme for some classes, but not universally, IMO.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Thu Aug 01, 2013 12:23 am

Ok, here's what's annoying me about this whole thing.

Why do we care what this guy says?

At this point it is clear that he is stalling, backpedaling, whiffling, et.al. because when the product gets realized he and the rest of the morons in the D&D department will be shown the door. Right now they have a product that no one wants to buy. If they release it and it flops someone at Hasbro is gonna notice. Whereas right now they can cost by leeching profits off the Magic team.

Previn · Post by **Previn** » Thu Aug 01, 2013 1:04 am

CapnTthePirateG wrote:Ok, here's what's annoying me about this whole thing.

Why do we care what this guy says?

At this point it is clear that he is stalling, backpedaling, whiffling, et.al. because when the product gets realized he and the rest of the morons in the D&D department will be shown the door. Right now they have a product that no one wants to buy. If they release it and it flops someone at Hasbro is gonna notice. Whereas right now they can cost by leeching profits off the Magic team.

People will buy it. Just like people bought 4e which was objectively bad for actually trying to play D&D. What Mearls says and sells ruins not only D&D, but poisons the well and allows bad DMs to tear groups apart and put new and old players alike off of TTRPGs all together, and that's bad for what is already a pretty small and fragmented hobby.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu Aug 01, 2013 2:34 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Making combat take more rolls makes optimization make more difference. If combat goes for 11 rounds like it does in 4e, an extra +1 to-hit amounts to .55 hits per battle. If combat goes for 3 rounds like it does in 3e, an extra +3 to-hit amounts to .45 hits per battle. Iterative probability is a bitch, and it makes smaller real bonuses more noticeable.

This is just stupid. Of course a +1 bonus will have more cases where it makes a difference in an 11-die-roll battle than a 3-die-roll battle (since 11*.05 is greater than 3*.05) but it will also have more cases where it fails to make a difference as well (since 11*.95 is greater than 3*.95). It has everything to do with the fact that 11 > 3 (duh) and nothing to do with bonus sizes.

Drachasor · Post by **Drachasor** » Thu Aug 01, 2013 4:53 am

The more I've thought about it, the planned modularity of DDN design seems oddest to me. How often do Optional Rules actually fit seamlessly into a game? Unless they are very small in scope and effect, such rules often make the game play worse. Just consider Arcana Unearthed in 3.5 and how many systems in there would not work well out of the box.

Changing the rules usually involve needing to tweak a lot of aspects of the game to ensure it doesn't unbalance the whole game. Granted, D&D has never had great balance, but it is never THAT hard to make things run worse and be less fun.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:42 am

hogarth wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:Making combat take more rolls makes optimization make more difference. If combat goes for 11 rounds like it does in 4e, an extra +1 to-hit amounts to .55 hits per battle. If combat goes for 3 rounds like it does in 3e, an extra +3 to-hit amounts to .45 hits per battle. Iterative probability is a bitch, and it makes smaller real bonuses more noticeable.
This is just stupid. Of course a +1 bonus will have more cases where it makes a difference in an 11-die-roll battle than a 3-die-roll battle (since 11*.05 is greater than 3*.05) but it will also have more cases where it fails to make a difference as well (since 11*.95 is greater than 3*.95). It has everything to do with the fact that 11 > 3 (duh) and nothing to do with bonus sizes.

No, you're stupid.

A +1 to hit is the same 5% absolute chance per attack no matter how long battles are. A +1 to hit when you otherwise hit half the time is the same 10% increase in DPS no matter how long battles are.

But in a long battle, you are statistically likely to notice the difference between having +1 to hit and not having it. In a short battle, you are not.

3e players tolerate quite substantial differences in to-hit bonus optimization, because battles are short enough that they don't usually notice the difference. 4e players don't, because battles are long enough that they do in fact notice the difference provided by small changes in optimization levels. And that is why 4e players whine bitch moan and complain about how overpowered something is that grants +2 to-hit instead of +1, and 3e players don't give an actual fuck.

-Username17

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Thu Aug 01, 2013 6:34 am

Drachasor wrote:The more I've thought about it, the planned modularity of DDN design seems oddest to me. How often do Optional Rules actually fit seamlessly into a game? Unless they are very small in scope and effect, such rules often make the game play worse. Just consider Arcana Unearthed in 3.5 and how many systems in there would not work well out of the box.

I'm not terribly convinced that the optional rules modules will happen, for a two reasons.

1- Primarily, they still don't have any fucking clue what the basic rules actually are. For all the gibbering about 'simple fighters,' having feats, skills and whatever form of martial maneuvers they currently have seems pretty engrained into the system. Take them out and they've got fuck-all, especially the maneuvers, as taking them out guts the class and leaves them as effective as a wizard that never casts spells. Especially since the hit bonuses and other shit are apparently officially going to be +0 to +6 over 20 fucking levels.

Given that they almost certainly expect to publish this load next year (given that they're producing real, but shitty, preview adventures for Gencon this year) , they've got to ship a final version off to the printers at some stage, probably by January/February, so they can have an actual new D&D rulebook on shelves by late spring or summer for the first time in several years.

2- I just don't see them sustaining this train wreck long enough to support optional books. As it is, a lot of basic shit that people expect out of D&D just isn't going to be in the initial Player's Handbook. So they're probably going to resort to the PH2, 3 and failure just like 4e, long before they publish a 'so you don't like feats' book