In fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, characters and monsters calculate the difficulty class (DC) number needed to save against their spells and powers using the same formula: 8 + proficiency bonus + ability score modifier. That means a 7th-level wizard and a CR-7 mind flayer, both with Intelligence 19 and a +3 proficiency bonus, both force their foes to make a DC 15 save against spells like fireball and powers like mind blast. But according to the designer who led the creation of fifth edition, the monsters were never intended to use the same formula as characters, making the uniformity a “secret error in fifth edition.”
The design strategy of using the same math for both monsters and PCs traces to D&D’s third edition, where characters and creatures shared the same rules foundation. This brought some benefits: In theory, designers could create consistent monsters by plugging attributes like size, type, target challenge rating, and so on into formulas to get the creature’s statistics. Monsters and characters could share customization options like feats and class levels. Third edition sets an effective character level (ECL) for some monsters. The ECL matched the creature’s power to a particular level of PC. A player could play a monstrous PC by just treating it as a typical character of the effective level, and then leveling up from there.
This symmetry suffered drawbacks too. In a discussion, third-edition designer Monte Cook says, “We had to make NPCs and particularly monsters work exactly like player characters. I get it. I understand why that’s cool and why that’s important, but boy that became cumbersome. You could look at some high-level monster and go through his skills and just say, ‘Oh, mistake.’ I’m not thrilled with the fact that I created a game where it was so easy to pick nits.”
Most monsters only survive about three rounds, so unless players love monstrous PCs and DMs enjoy customizing creatures with class levels, the cumbersome math rarely pays off. Worse, the math may result in monsters that prove less fun to battle during its typical three rounds in play. This sort of shared formula became the fifth edition’s secret error.
In a post on Bluesky, fifth-edition lead designer Mike Mearls explained that monsters were not supposed to include their proficiency bonus when calculating the DCs needed to save against their powers. “Monsters were supposed to have DCs…based on their flavor and design.” Monster designers would simply choose saving throw DCs that matched the creature’s lore, while making the creature an exciting foe for the level of character it typically faced. By locking save DCs to a strict formula, designers lost the flexibility to choose the best numbers for fun and flavor.
At lower levels and lower challenge ratings, using the save DC calculation for characters and monsters works well enough, but at higher levels, the steady rise of save DCs that add proficiency bonuses as high as +9 creates trouble. DCs become so high that only characters both proficient at the save and with a high ability score bonus enjoy a realistic chance of success. In a high-level party, that math dooms about two-thirds of the characters to failure. Against a mind flayer’s DC 15 save, a typical party of Intelligence 8 and 10 PCs must hope some of the heroes stand out of the mind blast’s 60-foot cone.
The climactic encounter of Phandelver and Below shows how this dynamic can lead many parties to a total party kill. (This example includes minor spoilers.) The showdown pits a single CR 15 monster against a party of 12th-level characters. According to the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide, this encounter rates as somewhere between low and medium difficulty. The saving throw math says something else. The creature’s CR leads to a +5 proficiency bonus backed with a +6 ability score bonus, setting a DC 19 save. The monster’s mind blast power targets creatures of its choice within 60 feet of it. Targets who fail an Intelligence save take damage and become stunned for 1 minute. Typical 12th-level wizards and artificers make that save about 55% of the time; druids and rogues make it about 30% of the time, and everyone else gets a slim 1-in-10 or 1-in-20 chance of success. Some groups need luck for just one character to escape the blast without cartoon stars circling their head. Stunned characters can redo the save every turn, but the barbarian and everyone else who dumped Intelligence still needs to hope for a natural 20—and to hope the monster doesn’t recharge mind blast on a 5 or 6.
The scarcity of characters with good Intelligence saves and the brutality of the stunned condition makes this example particularly harsh, but the dynamics hold true even for Dexterity and Constitution saves. As levels increase, saving throws for characters who lack proficiency swing toward impossible.
How does a mistake like that happen? “Earlier this year I was at a game design talk, and while mingling with other designers, someone asked about the hardest part of design. Every single person gave the same answer—communication and coordination.”
Some members of the fifth-edition design team likely preferred to make characters and monsters share the same formula for calculating saving throw DCs. Perhaps some on the team still favor this consistency. But even if they all agree on the secret error, after 10 years of fifth edition, it’s too late to change.
As a house-rule remedy for fifth edition’s secret error, Mearls suggests adding the proficiency bonus to all a character’s saves rather than just the few with class-assigned proficiency. Obviously, this rates as a major change at the game’s foundation, but it would make fifth edition play more like D&D’s early editions where every character improved at every save as they added levels.
What a nice article! You provide context, problem statement, example from the literature, and suggest a solution. I’m adding this to my list of house rules — it just makes sense –, and sharing with my RPG friends (including a game designer).
Hi Brian,
Aw, thanks! I’m grateful that you took the time to comment and give my day a lift.
–
Dave
Hi David great article as always, and I’ve definitely spent frustrating sessions repeatedly failing the same saving throw to remove an debilitating effect, turning my character into a bystander (usually a rogue repeatedly failing a wisdom save! Wish Slippery Mind came on board earlier!).
However, a CR 7 creature is supposed to be a decent challenge for four level 7 players… so if anything their proficiency bonuses should be much higher. A mindflayer has 13 hit dice, and is probably more accurately considered a level 13 creature, which would give it a PB of +5, instead of +3.
So you could argue that monsters already don’t work like PCs, as their PBs are calculated by a lower metric.
Hi Duncan,
True, a CR 7 creature isn’t a complete match for a level 7 character. However, the encounter math aims to put parties into several fights that seem like a good challenge, but that prove easy enough allow several wins a day. That means something like 4-to-1 odds favoring the party.
Thanks for the good word! I always enjoy your blog at Hipsters and Dragons.
–
Dave
Monsters only typically survive 3 rounds or less vs PCs. Monsters don’t need to be nerfed more. If anything, they need to do more damage and be more lethal. The death save mechanic and no negative hit points leads to healing word and good berry spells being better than resurrection. A gargantuan red dragon CR24 with a 30 strength only does 17 hp damage with its claws. PCs have at least 140 hp when they face a CR24 creature. No way it’s defeating a party. A 5th level Rogue will do more damage on one hit than a CR24 dragon. A gargantuan creature should have at least 4x damage.
Hi Adam,
At higher levels, monsters absolutely need a damage boost. My friend Tom multiples every monster’s damage number equal to 1.X where X is the proficiency bonus number. So a creature with a +6 bonus get all damage multiplied by 1.6. His Roll 20 macros do the math, but at a table you could also calculate average damage in advance. This adjustment makes dull combat encounters thrilling.
The D&D team says the 2024 Monster Manual boosts the power of high-level foes, so I’m eager to see the update.
–
Dave
I found your article thought provoking and introduced a problem I didn’t know I had. I’ll be talking to my players to see what they think of your suggestion about proficiency bonuses to see if they feel like something like that would improve our game.
John,
Thanks! I love making people think about game design.
–
Dave
The problem with giving everybody proficiency on all saves is that it nerfs one of the things that makes different classes special (especially in D&D 2014, where that was one of the abilities that monks got at some point as a level-up feature).
I was thinking of giving everybody +2 to each of their three lowest stats when they got the ability score improvements at levels 12, 16, and in 2014 edition level 19. I don’t know if this is enough, but my goal was to make them not suck as badly, and I felt that this wasn’t too OP even for classes that had proficiency in said stats (so as not to punish them for their proficiency.)
Hi Alexander,
Your proposed fix strikes me as the sort of thing I would do if I were king of D&D. I’m certain the design team loves the elegance of having every d20 modifier equal a ability score modifier or a proficiency bonus, but as we see, that creates trouble at high levels.
–
Dave
This article is interesting from a historical perspective and it’s good to highlight a problem that might catch people unawares. However, to me, the solution seems to be in the realm of things that a DM should already be doing – looking at the monster stats to gauge (at least approximately) how his group’s PC’s are going to fare in a fight against it/them.
Adventure designers (whether the DM or someone else) already set DCs and other numerical parameters for numerous elements of the world. DMs set DCs for character actions all the time, usually on the fly. I am quite surprised by the idea that a DM would drop a mindflayer or a red dragon into an adventure without taking a look at, and probably tweaking, DCs, as well as HP, damage, and possibly other stats as well.
Given that WoTC make the sort of design decisions (or possibly oversights) exemplified by the things discussed in this article, and seem happy to let them persist for years if not decades in their works, it seems sort of like DM malpractice to take any of it at face value.
An interesting read!
However, the serious problem with this kind of analysis is that it ignores all the other things a party of pcs has going for them beyond the tiny aspect of the game that are Saving Throw stats, especially once they reach tier 2, not to mention the tools at their disposal in tier 3.
Bardic Inspiration exists, Bless exists, Paladin Auras exist, Artificer Flash of Genius exists, Lucky feat exists, Resilient feats exist etc. etc.
That is before we even get to things outside of the character sheet like pcs gathering information, developing a strategy etc. I.e. very fun parts of the game that can feel rewarding in ways pushing a button on a character sheet (or just relying on their stats) can’t.
Of course if the adventure simply runs the players through a series of rooms with solid doors, they only get to open the door and go “oh no, a mind flayer! Let’s all roll initiative…”, the soft factors I mentioned don’t weigh as much, but in that case the problem lies more with the adventure than with a particular monster.
While I certainly agree save DCs shouldn’t slavishly adhere to some formula and should rather be an expression of the monster’s qualities beyond their stats, I think the example given isn’t great to make the point it is supposed to.
And when it comes to determining what dc’s are fair and fun, a more wholistic approach is required. The good thing is, if you know your party, you only have to consider their specific combination of classes, species, feats, spells etc. (and their party size!)
I don’t play 5e, and I never will, because obviously it sucks.
But I thought one of the major problems with 5e was that PCs are nearly impossible to kill. Because that’s fun and makes the game so much more awesome or something.
But now I read that, oh my gosh, in certain very specific situations the players may have a chink in their nigh-impenetrable armor? Quelle horreur!
My first question before dragging out the fainting couch and calling for smelling salts is, how often does this actually come up?
Because the only example provided involves a mind flayer. In my 43 years of DMing I’ve never used a mind flayer because we (the 20 or so players I’ve DMed) all agreed psionics sucked even if you could make sense of the rules (ahh, AD&D!). It just did not fit the swords and sorcery genre for us. And I’ve never seen anyone else use one either.
Even if you do include psionics (there’s no accounting for taste), how often are mind flayers even showing up? Can’t be more than once a campaign, can it?
So, mind flayers aside, where else might this be an actual problem?
“…but at higher levels, the steady rise of save DCs that add proficiency bonuses as high as +9 creates trouble.”
Does it though? Or maybe the better question is, why shouldn’t it? Is it really a problem? Hasn’t enough risk been removed from this edition of the game? There should – no, not “should”, must – there MUST be monsters that scare the milk out of players no matter their level. If that’s because they cannot defend from its attacks, I’m totally fine with that.
Imagine complaining it’s too easy for queens to take pawns in chess.
“…a typical party of Intelligence 8 and 10 PCs…”
Lololololol!
I forgot intelligence was a dump stat! It really is objectively the dumbest edition!
Seriously though, don’t you think there should be some kind of penalty for being really stupid?
I know you (not you personally, your dimwitted character with the 8 intelligence) won’t confuse which end of a sword to hold with an 8 intelligence. But, it’s got to affect something when your brain is in the bottom 11 percentile. (That’s what it is to get an 8 when you’re rolling 4d6 and drop the lowest. With a straight up 3d6 distribution it puts you on the cusp of the bottom quartile)
If there isn’t a mechanic that indicates you put your helmet on backwards or that you didn’t notice the army of orcs because you were too busy picking your belly button lint or that you couldn’t figure out how to buckle your armor correctly because your character is so fricken dumb, at least you can be completely incompetent at making an occasional mental saving throw, dontcha think? Is that a bridge too far?
Heaven forbid the players have to use a spell to buff their saves or find a magical device to protect them or some other solution. Or just run away.
“How does a mistake like that happen?”
Perhaps Mikey Mearls is bad at his job? Or, through his incompetence something good and necessary accidentally made it into the game?