Tag Archives: Mike Mearls

Is D&D Best When Corporate Isn’t Paying Attention? The Suits Are Paying Attention Now

D&D is best when its corporate owner isn’t paying attention. When I asked who deserved credit for that observation, it proved too widespread and too old to name a source. The D&D team started sharing the notion soon after 1985, when D&D’s co-creator Gary Gygax lost control of publisher TSR and non-gamers started managing the game. Since then, when the suits steered D&D’s creative direction, the game suffered, but when they ignored it, it thrived. Corporate attention has risen and fallen over the game’s 50-year history, leading to a cycle of highs and lows.

Many gamers fell in love with D&D with its second edition, but the release stands as a creative low. Sure, the second edition designers loved the game and fought to make the release as good as possible, but TSR’s management stifled their ability to improve on the rules. Lead designer David “Zeb” Cook recalled, “We had to convince management that [second edition] was a good idea because they’re going, ‘That’s our Core Business right there and you’re talking about rewriting it.’ Fear starts to appear in their eyes. ‘We have a whole warehouse full of product. If you do this, what’s going to happen to all that product?’”

“There were all kinds of changes that we would have made if we had been given a free hand to make them—an awful lot of what ultimately happened in the third edition,” said second-edition designer Steve Winter said. “We heard so many times, ‘Why did you keep armor classes going down instead of going up?’ People somehow thought that that idea had never occurred to us. We had tons of ideas that we would have loved to do, but we still had a fairly narrow mandate that whatever was in print should still be largely compatible with the second edition.”

A game outside of management’s scrutiny, the 1992 edition of Gamma World, benefited from the design team’s innovations. “We basically said, take all these ideas that we couldn’t do and incorporate them into Gamma World and make it as streamlined as possible,” explained Steve Winter. Gamma World featured many innovations that corporate blocked from reaching the second edition.

Ascending armor class
Skills called skills
Attribute checks
Attribute modifiers similar to those that would appear in 3rd edition
Health and Mental Defense saves that resemble 3rd edition’s Fortitude and Will saves

(See The Dungeons & Dragons Books that Secretly Previewed Each New Edition.)

Management also made the decision to remove demons and devils. “That didn’t work because, oh my goodness, they’re the best monsters ever” Designer Wolfgang Baur said, only slightly in jest. “Every hero wants to take on and defeat them.” The game steered away from anything that might alarm concerned parents. See D&D’s Biggest Controversies Ranked—1. D&D Becomes a Target of the Satanic Panic.

During D&D’s second edition era, parts of the D&D product line also gained freedom and creative energy from management’s inattention. The Planescape campaign setting makes a perfect example. The setting met widespread critical acclaim. For example, in Pyramid issue 8, Scott Haring wrote, “Normally, I start a review off slowly…forget that noise. I’ll cut to the chase—Planescape is the finest game world ever produced for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Period.” He concluded, “Planescape is a revolutionary product, a breakthrough for TSR. If you think you’ve ‘graduated’ from AD&D, that you’ve evolved past it, go back and take a look at Planescape. This is the game world that will get you playing AD&D again.”

Planescape’s lead designer, Zeb Cook, started the setting from minimal instructions summarized in Slaying the Dragon by D&D historian Ben Riggs. “Do the planes. Have a base location as a setting. And do factions.” The idea for factions came from the bestselling Vampire: The Masquerade game. “The vagueness gave [Zeb Cook] license. He could do almost anything and play anywhere in the D&D cosmos.”

Soon after the setting’s release, Cook left TSR, but follow-up products continued to gain from a lack of oversight. “Fortunately for the Planescape team, upper management was very hands-off with Planescape, even after it won the Origins Award, and we could get as weird as we wanted,” recalled designer Colin McComb. “Now that I think about it, it’s possible Creative Director Andria Hayday and David Wise (who would be promoted to the manager for the whole department) managed to shield us from the Eye of Sauron—getting us the resources we needed while keeping management from paying too much attention to us.”

Despite Planescape’s creative success, the line failed to make money for TSR. None of TSR’s products made enough money, so by 1997 the company neared bankruptcy. Wizards of the Coast (WotC) purchased TSR and saved D&D from being auctioned piecemeal by the courts. Peter Adkison, WotC’s CEO and a D&D fan, led D&D to a new high.

Adkison became deeply involved in D&D, attending third edition design meetings and earning a designer credit in the rule books. But Adkison approached the game as a fan and game designer. “Coming into 1990…I was spending so much time on D&D that I decided, along with many of my friends, to start a gaming company—Wizards of the Coast.” When the third-edition design team struggled to agree on a direction for the new edition, Adkison set one from a gamer’s perspective. “I was filled with trepidation. I was assuming responsibility for something very important to, literally, millions of fans around the world. If I made the wrong decisions, a lot of gamers would be very disappointed.” He feared disappointing gamers rather than stockholders.

Adkison set a good direction for the game, and the designers released an edition that delighted existing players and won new enthusiasts. “Fan response was immediate and overwhelmingly positive,” wrote Adkison.

The 2003 release of a 3.5 rules update brought D&D to another low. By then, Peter Adkison had left Wizards of the Coast. Most D&D players now owned third-edition books, so sales slowed. Corporate management looked for a way to boost D&D revenue. Based on his insider knowledge, game designer Monte Cook concludes that management sped the release of D&D 3.5 to just three years after third edition’s debut and that “the amount of change in the books was artificially increased beyond what was needed to force the player base to buy all new rule books.”

The update’s designers succeeded at making improvements, so when Paizo developed their Pathfinder game, they built on 3.5. Still, the sudden release hurt D&D overall. “The changes in 3.5 are so pervasive, and some of them so subtle, that any mastery people had achieved is gone. ‘Oh come on, Monte,’ one might reply, ‘the changes aren’t that bad.’ I’m not even talking about ‘good’ or ‘bad’ here. The problem is that there are just enough changes that a player has to question everything. Even if fireball didn’t really change, after you’ve had to re-learn how wall of force, flame arrow, and polymorph work, how can you be sure? Welcome to the game sessions where you’ve got to look everything up again.”

At the time, D&D players enjoyed a surging number of third-party, D&D-compatible products that filled game store shelves. The release of 3.5 instantly made those books incompatible. Game stores suffered from stocks of nearly worthless products. Most of the publishers went out of business. Everyone lost.

While the D&D team developed the game‘s fourth edition for a 2008 release, Harbro management brought big ideas for an edition could increase the game’s profitability. “Some of the people who ran WotC were really jealous of World of Warcraft’s subscription model and so a whole bunch of the things that happened at Wizards of the Coast at that time were based on trying to get people to pay money every month,” lead designer Rob Heinsoo said. Management also hoped a new edition would break ties to the Open Gaming License, stopping other publishers from profiting from D&D compatibility without paying for a license.

The millions of people playing World of Warcraft seemed to far outnumber those playing D&D. “When we made the fourth edition, one of the earliest design goals given to us by the management was that it should be more familiar to people who were coming in having played World of Warcraft and other digital games. We were supposed to be more approachable.” So the new edition focused on the elements that made the D&D fun and especially appealing to fans of online fantasy games.

Designer Mike Mearls recalled that the team felt that “building a player character was the real thing that drove people to play the games. You wanted to choose your feats, your prestige classes and whatnot.” Rob Heinsoo focused on adding an irresistible hook. “The solution James Wyatt, Andy Collins, and I were excited about was to give every PC an ongoing series of choices of interesting powers. Every combat round you have an interesting choice of which power or powers to use.”

While the ultimate design offered many virtues, it failed to interest enough D&D fans. Mike Mearls later wrote, “No one at Wizards ever woke up one day and said, ‘Let’s get rid of all our fans and replace them.’ That was never the intent. With fourth edition, there were good intentions. The game is very solid, there are a lot of people who play it and enjoy it, but you do get those people that say ‘hey, this feels like an MMO, this feels like a board game.’” (For the full story of fourth edition, see The Threat that Nearly Killed Dungeons & Dragons—Twice.)

By the time the D&D team started on a fifth edition, corporate no longer gave the tabletop game as much scrutiny. After all, the fourth edition had become a financial disappointment and the tabletop RPG market had declined since 2005. Years of annual layoffs had eliminated most of the fourth-edition team. “While we didn’t talk about it in public, the business goal was to make a game that could keep people happy so that D&D could grow via video games and licensing,” fifth-edition lead Mike Mearls wrote later. “We ended up laying off or re-assigning several of the designers and editors after the game launched.”

The focus on video games and licensing brought freedom to the fifth-edition team. Instead of taking orders from upper management, the design team relied on feedback from the fans. Between the edition’s announcement in 2012 and its release in 2014, the D&D team offered a series of open playtest packets, collected feedback from 170,000 players, and then let the fans help guide the design.

Fifth edition became a hit. While every other edition of the game brought a surge of sales that quickly fell after existing players bought in, fifth edition sales climbed year after year. During Hasbro’s investor calls, the company now routinely boasted of D&D’s growth and profitability. Before the fifth edition, D&D only rated a mention once.

But over eight years, sales inevitably cooled, and in the corporate world, a steady profit is a disappointment. In 2022, Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks and Wizards of the Coast CEO Cynthia Williams appeared in a presentation for investors. Williams touted D&D’s popularity but described the game as “under monetized.” Wizards aimed to do a better job of gaining income from the game, bringing more earnings to stockholders. Corporate scrutiny returned.

WotC’s lawyers found a way to potentially invalidate the OGL that allowed publishers to profit from D&D-comparable products without giving WotC a cut. Incensed D&D fans forced the company to kill the plan. (See D&D’s Biggest Controversies Ranked—3. Wizards of the Coast Attempts To Revoke the Current Open Gaming License.)

Unlike D&D 3.5, I suspect something more noble than a cash grab led to the release of D&D’s 2024 update. In a 2020 article on diversity, the team wrote that in the six years since fifth edition’s release “making D&D as welcoming and inclusive as possible has moved to the forefront of our priorities.” D&D needed a new Player’s Handbook that dropped racial ability score modifiers and reflected the priority. As a bonus, the team could also make refinements based on years of play. (For my prediction of an upcoming update, see D&D‘s Ongoing Updates and How a Priority Could Lead to New Core Books.) The 2024 books include many improvements that I love.

Despite the good intentions, the 2024 update suggests Hasbro’s corporate influence, and I think the meddling left us with a weaker game than the D&D team might have created if left alone.

Watch the videos promoting the update to fans. The designers rarely mention all the welcome refinements and corrections to the existing rules. Instead, they boast of additions that never appeared on anyone’s wish list of essential updates.

They show new benefits player characters gain. The scale of these boosts goes beyond shoring up weaker classes, adding new candy like features that will “frustrate” DMs and a new weapon mastery system certain to slow play.
They showcase the bastion system—a game within a game that lets players farm more boons for their characters. Since 1974, D&D has sporadically included stronghold rules, but players rarely use them.
They tout the new crafting system that lets characters manufacture their own loot. When Chris Perkins pitched the crafting system, he cautioned that it appears in the Dungeon Master’s Guide because “this is unlocked by the dungeon master. The dungeon master determines whether or not the materials are available, whether or not the characters can build these items.” Perkins knows if characters with nowhere else to spend their gold can manufacture items like wands and enspelled gear, they will derail any campaign. The book offers no advice to DMs on managing crafting, so this system feels like a trap rushed into the book.

Because few gamers asked for many of the advertised changes, I suspect the push to make them came from corporate. The most unnecessary and weakest additions to the 2024 version of the game seem like they came from a meeting where a marketing executive stood at a white board with a marker, turned to face the D&D design team, and then demanded that they pitch new goodies that would sell the 2024 books to players who already have the 2014 books. Years from now, I may write a post that includes quotes from those designers talking about just such a meeting.

Fifth-Edition D&D’s Original Lead Designer Calls Out the Game’s “Secret Error” That Remains Today

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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.

From B1 to Pinebrook: Every D&D Adventure That Includes DM Advice and What They Taught

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Over the 50-year history of Dungeons & Dragons, the game has changed enough that some gamers prefer the early versions of the rules to duplicate the play style of 1974. Have the qualities of good dungeon master changed too? For a tour of DM advice over D&D history, I sought the D&D adventures that included advice, from In Search of the Unknown (1979), to Peril in Pinebrook (2023), and pulled the best, worst, and most dated guidance. Most advice remains timeless, revisited in print over the decades, so this post only mentions guidance when it first appears.

B1 In Search of the Unknown (1979) by Dave Carr

Most adventures that include advice aim to help new DMs through their first session. Later printings of the 1977 Basic Set packaged In Search of the Unknown as a start. Originally, this Basic Set just included unkeyed dungeon maps that DMs could cut apart and rearrange into different configurations. Following the original dungeon design standards, new DMs could just roll for monsters and treasure to stock the map. B1 keeps some of this learn-by-doing approach. The adventure included vacant locations along with separate lists of monsters and treasures to pair with the open locations.

Designate a caller

One player in the group should be designated as the leader, or ‘caller’ for the party, while another one or two players can be selected as mappers (at least one is a must!).

Early on, DMs proved much scarcer than players so groups often included 8-12 players and D&D co-creator Gary Gygax ran sessions for as many as 20. Designating a caller to speak for the group helped speed play. For more on the lost role of mapper, see The Dungeon Mapper: From Half of D&D to a Forgotten Role.

Make the game enjoyable and challenging

The DM’s foremost concern should be to provide an enjoyable game which is challenging to the players. A good DM does not attempt to influence player actions or channel the activity in a particular direction. Although you may set up situations to challenge players, you must understand that you are not their adversary, nor are you necessarily out to defeat them. However, if your players abandon caution or make stupid mistakes, let them pay the price—but be fair.

As Dungeon Master, you are the game moderator. This means you set the tempo of the game and are responsible for keeping it moving. If players are unusually slow or dilly-dally unnecessarily, remind them that time is wasting. If they persist, allow additional chances for wandering monsters to appear—or at least start rolling the dice to make the players think that you are doing so.

In the 1979 Dungeon Master’s Guide, Gary Gygax suggests speeding characters by rolling dice behind the screen, mainly to hint at the threat of wandering monsters. As random encounters fell out of favor, I figured this advice became outdated, but a recent adventure discussed in this post, The Hidden Halls of Hazacor (2018), recommends the same trick. For some of my advice on the subject, see Getting Players Moving, Especially When No One Wants to Drive.

Lastly, it is important to remember that the Dungeon Master is the final arbiter in his or her game. If players disagree with you, hear them out and reasonably consider their complaint. With human nature as it is, players will undoubtedly attempt to try to talk you into (or out of) all sorts of things; part of the fun of being a DM is this verbal interplay. But in the end, what you say is what goes.

T1 Village of Hommlet (1979) by Gary Gygax

By 1979, D&D publisher TSR had split Advanced Dungeons & Dragons from the original game. As an introduction to AD&D, Gygax penned Village of Hommlet, a module that added a village as a home base complete with non-player characters the players might not kill. For more on creating NPCs that players might not kill, see How to Create Loveable Non-Player Characters While You Supercharge Your Sex Appeal. (That title is not pure click bait; the post really does explain how to supercharge your sex appeal.)

Roleplaying NPCs

The persons met at the inn, along the road, and so forth, are you; for the Dungeon Master is all-monsters, NPCs, the gods, everything. Play it to the hilt. Do it with flair and wit. Be fair both to the characters and to yourself. Be deceitful, clever, and thoroughly dishonest when acting the part of a thief. Be cunning but just when in the role of a warding ranger. Actually think of it as if the part you are taking is that of a character you are playing, and act accordingly, but temper actions with disinterest in the eventual outcome and only from the viewpoint of that particular role. Wearing two, three, or a half dozen or more different hats is challenging, but that is part of being an outstanding DM.

For more on roleplaying NPCs and modelling good roleplaying for players, see Most Advice for Encouraging Role-playing Stinks, But I Found the Good Stuff.

B2 Keep on the Borderlands (1979) by Gary Gygax

In 1981, Keep on the Borderlands replaced B1 in the Basic Set. The adventure reprises the familiar advice, but Gygax adds a lofty pep talk for novice DMs.

As DM you are to become the Shaper of the Cosmos. It is you who will give form and content to all the universe. You will breathe life into the stillness, giving meaning and purpose to all the actions which are to follow. The others in your group will assume the roles of individuals and play their parts, but each can only perform within the bounds you will set. It is now up to you to create a magical realm filled with danger, mystery, and excitement, complete with countless challenges. Though your role is the greatest, it is also the most difficult. You must now prepare to become all things to all people.

If all of this seems too difficult, never fear! Just as your players are learning and gaining experience at D&D play, so too will you be improving your ability as a DM. The work necessary to become a master at the art is great, far greater than that necessary to be a top player, but the rewards are even greater. You will bring untold enjoyment to many players in your role as DM, and all the while you will have the opportunity to exercise your imagination and creative ability to the fullest. May each of your dungeon adventure episodes always be a wondrous experience!

Roleplaying monsters

When the players experience their first encounter with a monster, you must be ready to play the part fully. If the monster is basically unintelligent, you must have it act accordingly. Make the encounter exciting with the proper dramatics of the animal sort – including noises! If the encounter is with an intelligent monster, it is up to the DM to not only provide an exciting description but also to correctly act the part of the monster.

B10 Night’s Dark Terror (1986) by Jim Bambra, Graeme Morris and Phil Gallagher

In the 80s, the D&D line sold in a series of boxed sets. The Basic Set started players with dungeon adventures, and then the Expert Set expanded the game to the wilderness. Night’s Dark Terror helped introduce players to the great outdoors. This adventure rates as one of the best ever.

Fudging rolls

Adventuring is, above all, about enjoying yourself, and sometimes in order to do so it is necessary to overrule some dice throws. It is your job as DM to give your players an exciting and fun time, relying entirely on the dice is not always the best way to do so—they are an aid, not a means in themselves. But be discrete—you don ‘t want your players to get the idea that you are pulling any punches!

No other adventure suggests fudging die rolls, but when Peril in Pinebrook (2023) suggested that DMs play to avoid killing player characters, the recommendation took heavy criticism from some gamers. That adventure appears later in this post.

B11 King’s Festival (1989) by Carl Sargent

By 1989, most of the earlier introductory adventures lapsed out of print, so TSR started a new set with B11 King’s Festival.

Description and the senses

Never forget that you are the eyes and ears of the player characters during the game. Players are wholly dependent on you to tell them what their PCs see, hear, and so on. Good DMs are able to convey the feel and atmosphere of an adventure, the thrills and scares, by using good descriptions of what actions are taking place and what the PC can see around them.

A good DM details more than simply what PCs see. Don’t forget noises (scurrying vermin, voices, whistling wind, owl hoots, the scraping of something on stone-is it metal, chitinous claws, or something even more horrid?), smells (food, garbage, the reek of a filthy ogre aiming a club at a PC), and tactile senses (“you feel hair rising at the nape of your neck,” or “the stone feels cold and slimy as you touch it”).

For more, see Narrating Your D&D Game: The Essentials and How To Make Descriptions Vivid and Evocative.

DDA2 Legions of Thyatis (1990) by John Nephew

Legions of Thyatis continued the line of B-series adventures that started with B1, but TSR feared the high module numbers hurt sales, so they restarted the series with DDA1 and DDA2.

Characterizing NPCs

One quick way to characterize an NPC is to visualize him as an animal, and picture that animal as you describe and play him. Another way to create stock characters is to use foils, or opposites. One example is the wimpy, fast-talking thief teamed up with a hulking mountain of a thug.

Winging it

“Winging it” means running an adventure without a detailed script or area key. Like all skills, doing it will be easier after you’ve tried it a few times. When winging a plotted adventure, just identify the main turning points of the plot; how the players get there is less important than the fun they have doing it.

Don’t worry at first if the encounter sends the party away from the main plot—you can practice steering them back to it! Players depend on you dropping clues to guide them, and they can easily get lost if they miss something vital. Don’t panic; keep giving them chances to get on the right track until they connect, if your first clues were too subtle. If they don’t connect, you can decide after the session whether you want to get them back on track or modify the adventure to go in their direction.

If the player characters scatter, think ahead to the next point in your plot at which you can bring them all back together. Try to do this as soon as possible; it’s most important to have all the players in the game, for player boredom is certain death for an evening’s fun.

Finally, you may have a situation where things have gone out of control. In such cases, stopping the game for a few minutes to sort things out is perfectly okay.

WGA4 Vecna Lives! (1990) by David Cook

Unlike all the prior adventures on this list, Vecna Lives! targeted experienced DMs. However, this module aimed to create a more structured story and a more horrific mood than a typical D&D romp.

Story beats

Allowing the player characters to succeed against a seemingly major villain, deadly trap, or a puzzle increases their confidence. This victory may be followed by a stinging defeat or the discovery that their accomplishment was only a small part of something greater and more powerful.

This technique must be used sparingly, however. You don’t want to take away all your player’s accomplishments or they will get discouraged. Wait until they are overconfident and cocky, then give them a reverse and it will remind them that things are not as easy as they seem.

Building tension

To make your players sweat, you must let them know they are in danger before anything actually happens.

Which creates more tension—the player characters open the door and discover the monsters, or the player characters hear a strange noise on the other side before they open the door? In the second case, the players suddenly stop and have to judge the amount of risk. They know something is there, but don’t know what.

The trick is to give your players hints that they are in danger without revealing enough for them to avoid that danger. In movies, this can be done by showing the audience the threat (the monsters lurking behind the door) but not showing it to the hero (about to open the door). This is a little harder in a role-playing game, since players are both audience and heroes.

You can use foreshadowing techniques to some extent. Fleeting, incomplete, and inaccurate glimpses of the major villains will put characters on their toes. The characters can discover Vecna’s grim handiwork just moments after the fact. Ancient manuscripts suggest the full extent of Vecna’s power. Even his Hand and his Eye, as powerful artifacts, only suggest the full extent of Vecna’s power.

Eye of the Wyvern (1999) by Jeff Grubb

Eye of the Wyvern and its twin adventure Wrath of the Minotaur both teach the game using sections with titles like “Funky Dice,” “The Physics of a Gaming Session,” and “The Fine Art of Winging It.”

The adventures even include scripted text for the DM to read to new players who apparently have no idea what activity awaits them.

“What we’re going to do here is tell a story, a story that you’re going to help create. Each of you has a character: a fighter, a wizard, or a rogue. The story takes place in a world filled with monsters, treasure, and adventure. I’m going to be the Dungeon Master, or DM. I’ll describe what your characters see, and you’re going to tell me what your characters do in response.“

Dead characters

The adventure gives advice for character deaths that I’ve never seen before or since. “Just replay.” in video games gamers routinely replay bad outcomes often, but on the tabletop the suggestion feels like a violation of the social contract. Perhaps replaying should not feel like a transgression, especially with a table of new players.

With some lucky dice rolls for the ghoul and some unlucky ones for the characters, the ghoul might be able to paralyze and defeat all the characters if it decides to stay around and fight. This might be a cruel thing to do to the characters (and their players), but it would be a good way to show the players how dangerous a monster like the ghoul can be. (And you can always back up and start the adventure over, or just replay the scene in the library, if you want to give the characters another chance.)

Sock puppets

Eye of the Wyvern includes ravenous little lizard-gremlins called wyverlings, and Grubb gives DMs fun advice for playing them while using your hands as puppets.

One easy prop to use to show wyvernling action is to hold up your hand, thumb in front of the palm. Touch the ring and middle fingers to your thumb and extend the whole outward. You now have a rough approximation of a wyvernling head, which you can use to demonstrate all types of wyvernling activity. Sock puppets work, too, but this is good on the fly.

Crypt of the Smoke Dragon (1999) by Jeff Grubb

Despite already publishing two starter adventures in the same year, TSR later printed a third, free intoduction also by Jeff Grubb. Crypt of the Smoke Dragon uses a “demo version” of D&D that only requires d6s. It includes 3d6 rolls to hit and for ability checks. Plus, none of the foes have parents, so it meets another of my starter adventure rules. (See 6 Things to Include in a 1st-Level D&D Adventure.) It even includes a (smoke) dragon boss battle.

Make the adventure your own

When the heroes try something that isn’t covered in the text, just make it up! Even better, make something up in each scene so that the adventure is uniquely your own. That’s the fun of the D&D game.

Call to adventure

Crypt of the Smoke Dragon gives each pregenerated PC a motivation to go adventure even though the players will proceed just because they sat for a D&D game. One seeks the destruction of evil, one treasure, one knowledge, and one just feels loyal to the other PCs. For more on motivating adventurers, see The D&D Adventures That Stumble by Missing the Hook.

H1 Keep on the Shadowfell (2008) by Bruce Cordell and Mike Mearls

The fourth edition’s introductory adventure, Keep on the Shadowfell, makes subtle change that marks a big improvement. The 1999 introductory modules included four characters, three male and one female. This adventure leaves the names and genders of the pregenerated character blank so players set a gender. Too bad all the PCs’ illustrations appear male.

Way back in 1987, I embarrassed myself by creating a batch of male pregenerated for my event at Gen Con. A woman sat down and asked if any of the characters were female.

Hint: If you ever create characters for other players, always leave the gender unspecified. The (hopefully) ambiguous names I used for my last batch of PCs include Doc (cleric), Lucky (rogue), Sparky (wizard), Sprig (druid), Moxie (fighter), Roamy (Ranger). I could have left the names blank, but making names proved too much fun.

Make the adventure your own, part 2

You want to create a seamless world that seems both deep and exciting. You can accomplish this by adding story elements to the game when the opportunity arises.

Perhaps you think Wrafton’s Inn needs a bard stroking a lyre by the fire as he sings of Sir Keegan’s tragedy. Or perhaps you want to add flavor to a mundane object, such as the wyrmpriest’s necklace from the Kobold Ambush encounter.

Anything you can do to add your personal touch to an adventure makes it that much more distinctive and memorable to your players. Immerse them in the story, and you’ll all be rewarded with a unique experience.

The adventure recommends making NPCs distinct by giving them an accent or favorite saying, showing them with a favorite thing like a lucky coin or pet cat, or adding a personality-related adjective like “greedy, bored, suspicious, tired, enthusiastic, sly, nervous, dumb, zealous, and so on.”

Helping indecisive players

Sometimes when you ask players what they want to do next, they won’t know. If this happens, try to move them in a certain direction by asking a leading question. For example, if players spend a long time after the kobold fight considering what to do next, you can ask, “Are you ready to continue toward Winterhaven?”

This advice works for novice DMs running their first adventure, but if the players have already decided to travel to Winterhaven, you can typically let their decision stand without revisiting whether they want to continue. To break through indecision while giving players a better sense of autonomy, list their most promising three options, and then remind them that they can chose an entirely different action. See The Best DM Tricks for Helping a Party Make Choices.

Lost Mine of Phandelver (2014) by Richard Baker and Chris Perkins

Fifth edition’s introductory adventure, Lost Mine of Phandelver, still rates as one of the best for the game’s current version.

Don’t let rules questions stall the game

When in doubt, make it up! It’s better to keep the game moving than to get bogged down in the rules.

Be consistent. If you decide that a rule works a certain way in one session, make sure it works that way the next time it comes into play.

For advice on delegating rules questions, see Delegate to run better role-playing game sessions by doing less.

It’s a shared story. It’s the group’s story, so let the players contribute to the outcome through the actions of their characters. Dungeons & Dragons is about imagination and coming together to tell a story as a group. Let the players participate in the storytelling.

Make sure everyone is involved. Ensure every character has a chance to shine. If some players are reluctant to speak up, remember to ask them what their characters are doing.

This reverses the early advice to designate a caller to speak for the party.

Read the table

Pay attention. Make sure you look around the table occasionally to see if the game is going well. If everyone seems to be having fun, relax and keep going. If the fun is waning, it might be time for a break, or you can try to liven things up.

Cloud Giant’s Bargain (2016) by Teos Abadia

When an Acquisitions Incorporated game streamed live to theaters, audiences received Cloud Giant’s Bargain as a perk. Although the adventure works for character levels 5-7, it also seeks to encourage fans of live play to run their first game.

If you are a new DM, it is perfectly normal to feel a bit apprehensive before your first session. Just remember: players need DMs to play. What you are doing is valuable and coveted. You don’t need a perfect understanding of the rules or to have Chris Perkins’ improvisational skills for players to have a great time. When in doubt, make decisions that you think the players will enjoy. The more often you run games as a DM, the easier it gets!

See Why Faking Confidence Makes You a Better Dungeon Master.

Name tents

Create a name tent by taking a note card or similar piece of cardstock and folding it in half. Open the fold to a right angle, so that it forms a display tent when the edges are placed on the table. Give one to each player and have them write their character’s name, race, and class on each outer side of the tent. This will allow you and the other players to remember character names and important details.

For advice on name tents and more, see 11 Great Dungeon Master Tips Revealed at Winter Fantasy 2020.

Going off script

If players lose sight of their goals or start chasing red herrings, the adventure recommends luring them back. “One thing to remember is that players often respond to something exciting, interesting, or profitable.”

An old school approach to failure

Unlucky dice can always turn against characters, however, allowing them to be overwhelmed. Defeat is always a possibility in Dungeons & Dragons-but that’s what makes victory so sweet.

The Hidden Halls of Hazacor (2018) by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

Most introductory D&D adventures come directly from the TSR or Wizards of the Coast. After all, D&D’s publisher stands to reach virtually all new DMs first. Nonetheless this independent adventure, The Hidden Halls of Hazacor, gives first-time DMs an adventure stocked with guidance. And the adventure stands out for being the first and only adventure to give advice for some situations that have vexed DMs since 1974. The adventure targets kids and the writing aims for youngsters, but the advice works for any age.

Dealing with murderous treasure hunters

When some new players start playing a game that allows any choice of action, they relish the chance to shatter society’s rules of behavior, often in ways that disrupt the game for players who want to work together without making war with villagers.

Characters can be arrested in the stronghold for getting into fights, stealing from NPCs, climbing the stronghold walls, or trying to break into shops or apartments. So if any players talk about their characters wanting to do such things, it’s up to you to convince them it’s a bad idea.

Describe how there are guards everywhere in Purdey’s Rest, patrolling the streets and the market court. But also, characters will see guards eating in the taverns and visiting people at the inn. Purdey’s Rest is a safe place for its people, and the guards will keep it that way by kicking troublemakers out of the stronghold. If you need to, remind the players that they’ll have lots of chances to fight things in the dungeon.

For more on players who feel tempted to attack townsfolk, see Two weird D&D questions no one asks anymore, answered by the City State of the Invincible Overlord.

Helping distressed players

If you see that a player is uncomfortable with your descriptions, change what you say so it doesn’t seem as real. A player will feel better about monsters and scary descriptions after they play for a while. One way to help with that is to give the player a chance to feel like a hero. During combat, describe how a successful hit by a character makes a monster stagger or fall back. This lets the player know they are in control, and that they don’t need to worry.

For a time my scary descriptions may have wrecked the fun, see My 5 Biggest Game Mastering Blunders Ever and What I Learned.

Running for empathetic players

When you run adventures as a GM, you might see that some players don’t like the idea of killing intelligent creatures, or monsters they feel sorry for. Some players might be upset if they feel as though the game is making them kill other creatures. So it’s important for you to remind the players that they always get to decide what their characters do. Instead of killing intelligent creatures like orcs, goblins, and kobolds, the characters can defeat them in combat, then threaten them into leaving.

The crates, barrels, and boxes of loot that the orcs and the goblins have collected are all stolen from merchants and travelers. It’s okay for the characters to take the stolen loot and sell it if that’s what they want to do. If any players are worried about taking things that were stolen, they can return the stolen goods to the guards in Purdey’s rest instead of selling them.

Arguments among players

Sometimes arguments are more serious. But you can still solve many serious arguments by talking to the players. If two of them want their characters to kill goblin bandits but the other players want to let the goblins go, ask all the players why they feel the way they do. The players who want to kill the goblins might just be worried that the sneaky goblins will come back and attack the party again. So ask for Wisdom (Insight) checks if you want the characters to know that the goblins are too scared to come back, and that the players don’t need to worry.

Sometimes you might have a different situation. Most of the players don’t want to kill the goblins because they feel sorry for them. But one player says they’re going to kill the goblins just to make the other players feel bad. You might have a player who ignores other players when they want to talk to monsters, and who always attacks instead. Or a player might say that since their character killed most of the monsters in an encounter, they deserve more treasure than anyone else. Fixing those kinds of arguments is harder. Because when a player tries to wreck the fun for other players on purpose, that’s a kind of bullying.

Just like with other arguments and problems in the game, you should try to fix bullying first by talking. Remind everyone that characters do best in the game when they work together. Tell the player that as the GM, you want everyone to have fun, and what they’re doing is hurting the fun for the other players. But sometimes a player who’s being a bully won’t stop. And if that happens, that’s the one time when you get to use your power as the GM to tell the player that their character can’t do what they want. You might even need to tell the player that if they don’t stop, they won’t be allowed to play in your game.

For more on player cooperation, see A Roleplaying Game Player’s Obligation.

Summarize the boring parts

When you decide things aren’t important, you can give the players a short summary instead. Traveling is often best summarized. If the characters leave the dungeon to rest up, then come back, you don’t need to play out having them move through every room like you did when they first explored. You can just tell them that the dungeon is dark and quiet as they go back to where they left off.

See Just Because a Dungeon Numbers Every Room Doesn’t Mean Players Have To Explore Room-by-Room and What Choose-Your-Adventure Books Can Teach Game Masters About Pacing and Decisions.

Peril in Pinebrook (2023) by Shawn Merwin

Peril in Pinebrook is a free, introductory adventure designed for new and young Dungeons & Dragons players and inspired by The Practically Complete Guide to Dragons. For a more accessible experience, it includes a simplified version of fifth edition’s rules and premade character sheets.

Let players succeed

Use “Yes, and …” or “No, but …” Allow the players to succeed as much as possible, and let them participate in the telling of the story. If they want to try something unexpected, try to say “yes” and then work their ideas into the story. If you have to say “no” to a player’s idea, suggest options that let them do something similar.

Allow Alternatives. D&D is a game of fantasy, where heroes use wits, skill, and determination to overcome obstacles. Sometimes those obstacles are defeated with weapons and spells. But characters can succeed in other ways. Communicating with monsters, tricking them or frightening them away, or avoiding a fight while cleverly sneaking past a challenge can be just as much fun. Such options are ideal if anyone playing the game wants to avoid violence.

The advice to let players succeed reminds DMs to allow player ingenuity rather than looking for whatever solution we have in mind, but still acknowledges that not every idea works. See Challenging Your Players’ Skill Without Risking Frustration and Sometimes I Tell Players No, but “Say Yes” Made Me a Better Dungeon Master.

Listening as a safety tool

Encourage your players to speak to you, publicly or privately, if something in the game upsets them. Then respond appropriately. For instance, you can move past upsetting topics by quickly narrating a resolution to a scene, then quickly move to the next part of the story.

Avoid character deaths

Peril in Pinebrook started a controversy by suggesting ways for DMs to avoid killing new player’s characters. “You can intervene if the characters seem to be losing the battle. For instance, you can give the characters advantage on attack rolls or give the monsters disadvantage on attack rolls.” The adventure also advises DMs to avoid focusing fire on a single PC. For more on sparing characters, see How To Adjust Combat Difficulty on the Fly Using the Magic of Roleplaying.

Before scorning the advice, consider that even Gary Gygax recommended occasional mercy for characters. In the original Dungeon Master’s Guide (p.110), he wrote, “Now and then a player will die through no fault of his own. He or she will have done everything correctly, taken every reasonable precaution, but still the freakish roll of the dice will kill the character. In the long run you should let such things pass as the players will kill more than one opponent with their own freakish rolls at some later time. Yet you do have the right to arbitrate the situation. You can rule that the player, instead of dying, is knocked unconscious, loses a limb, is blinded in one eye or invoke any reasonable severe penalty that still takes into account what the monster has done. It is very demoralizing to the players to lose a cared-for-player character when they have played well.”

D&D’s Biggest Controversies Ranked—4. Fourth Edition Sparks an Edition War and the Creation of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game

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While the Dungeons & Dragons team developed the game‘s fourth edition for a 2008 release, they faced problems from several directions. Corporate owners Hasbro brought a big corporate cost structure and return on investment expectations set by Magic the Gathering and Pokémon. As third edition sales sagged, the D&D team endured annual Christmas-season layoffs. World of Warcraft debuted in 2004 and experienced surging popularity. By 2008, the WoW community hit more than 11 million players. D&D fans saw fellow players switch their attention to the online game and disappear from tabletop games.

To compete, D&D needed a big advance—a new edition that didn’t just improve the game but an edition capable of winning Warcraft players by matching some of what drew players to online games. “As far as I know, fourth edition was the first set of rules to look to videogames for inspiration,” D&D designer Mike Mearls said. “I wasn’t involved in the initial design meetings for the game, but I believe that MMOs played a role in how the game was shaped. I think there was a feeling that D&D needed to move into the MMO space as quickly as possible.”

So, the new edition focused on the elements that might appeal to fans of online fantasy games. Mearls recalled that the team felt that “building a player character was the real thing that drove people to play the games. You wanted to choose your feats, your prestige classes and whatnot.” Lead designer Rob Heinsoo sought to give the game an irresistible hook that tied the game together and compelled gamers to play. “The solution James Wyatt, Andy Collins, and I were excited about was to give every PC an ongoing series of choices of interesting powers. Most every time you gain a level you select a new power or a feat. Every combat round you have an interesting choice of which power or powers to use.”

The game didn’t just need to be fun to play. It needed to be easy to run online. Casual DMs could simply buy an adventure, read the boxed text, and then run a sequence of skill challenges and combat encounters. In a skill challenge, the DM just had to decide if a skill helped the players—but only when the challenge’s description neglected to list a skill in advance. Ideally, Players could drop into the virtual tabletop at any hour, join any available DM, and feel confident that a stranger could deliver a fun experience. A thriving virtual table would let players join a game 24/7, just like Warcraft. And all those players would pay monthly, just like Warcraft.

Despite the lofty goals, the new edition divided D&D’s existing players and failed to win a generation of new fans.

While the D&D team readied their game for release, magazine and D&D adventure publisher Paizo planned their response. They sent future Pathfinder designer Jason Bulmahn to a convention that offered gamers and chance to preview the new edition. Paizo founder Lisa Stevens recalled, “We had trepidations about many of the changes we were hearing about. Jason’s report confirmed our fears—4th Edition didn’t look like the system we wanted to make products for.” She led her company to create Pathfinder, a game that boasted compatibility with the existing, third edition of D&D.

For gamers who shared the Paizo team’s distaste for the direction of fourth edition, Pathfinder offered an obvious alternative. And plenty of gamers chose the alternative. By 2010, rumors circulated that Pathfinder outsold D&D. The rumors proved false, but Pathfinder seemed to dominate many conventions and game stores. At Gen Con, its players filled the massive Sagamore Ballroom that had once hosted D&D play. Meanwhile, D&D players became exiles in a much smaller space.

“No one at Wizards ever woke up one day and said, ‘Let’s get rid of all our fans and replace them.’ That was never the intent,” Mike Mearls explained later. “With fourth edition, there were good intentions. The game is very solid, there are a lot of people who play it and enjoy it, but you do get those people that say ‘hey, this feels like an MMO, this feels like a board game.’”

From the D&D designers’ perspective, the market’s rejection of fourth edition stemmed from two causes: The game dared to change too much at once and suffered from a lack of design time.

The designers came to regret changing so much so fast. Steve Winter, a designer since D&D’s 2nd edition, wrote, “Fourth Edition was a glorious experiment that succeeded technically. Unfortunately, its breaks from the past were too severe for many fans, who didn’t pick up the new banner.” Rob Heinsoo wrote, “Knowing what I know now, I might have worked for smaller changes in the world, since shifting both the world and the mechanics at the same time proved difficult for some of the D&D faithful to swallow.”

More players might have accepted the change if the developers had gained time to perfect the edition. “We just ran out of runway.” Mearls explained “That’s kind of the story of fourth edition in a lot of ways. We ran out of runway as we were trying to get the plane up in the air.”

Fourth edition never emphasized D&D’s unique strengths. As Mearls put it, “I think what was happening was [fourth edition] was really focusing on really hardcore mechanics, the intricacies of how the rules interact. It really became about the rules and about mastering the rules, rather than about the story, or role-playing, or the interaction between the DM and the players.”

By the end of fourth edition’s run, the designers had perfected a game about building characters and showing them off in dynamic fights. Perhaps they lost some of what makes D&D uniquely compelling.

For the full story, see The Threat that Nearly Killed Dungeons & Dragons—Twice.

Next: Number 3.

Ten Insights into the One D&D Playtest of Expert Classes

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The Dungeons & Dragons team released the second One D&D playtest document, which focuses on the Bard, Ranger, and Rogue classes. Like the first packet, the changes in this release convince me that the update remains in good hands. Nonetheless, many changes deserve attention. This post avoids repeating things lead designer Jeremy Crawford mentioned during his video commentaries on the release.

1. Hubris and power level. The D&D team runs public playtests to measure players’ enthusiasm for rules and game elements, rather than to measure power levels. So each packet begins with friendly reassurance that power levels may change. “Don’t worry about broken features,” the note seems to suggest. “Count on us to set the power levels ourselves.” But from Sharpshooter, to healing spirit, to twilight domain clerics, the team keeps releasing features with busted power levels, so I feel unconvinced. Still, during his video, Jeremy Crawford says that future playtest packets will revisit the successful elements, enabling fine tuning.

2. Rules that give the Sage some rest. Even though the D&D team hasn’t shown an unerring sense of power levels, I’m certain the team boasts a hard-won understanding of the rules that raise questions and cause confusion. Jeremy logs D&D’s common misunderstandings and pain points. Exhibit A: The playtest changes Armor Proficiency to Armor Training, so folks learning the game can stop wondering where to put the proficiency bonus when they wear armor. I’ve seen proficiency bonuses mistakenly added to AC, creating bulletproof characters.

I suspect Jeremy never wants to explain how jumping fits with movement either. How else can we explain the playtest separating jump into an action? At that price, no one will ever jump again.

Credit—or blame—the playtest’s careful rules for hiding, influence, and searching on a matching drive to add rigor to certain common tasks. During the fifth edition design, the team opted to favor a dungeon master’s judgement to handle such actions. Rodney Thompson described the goal. “We want a system that makes it easy to be the DM, and at the same time trusts the DM to make the right call for any particular situation, rather than create many highly specific chunks of rules text in an attempt to cover every possible situation.”

The 2014 rules for Stealth and Perception, for example, left room for a lengthy Sage Advice discussion. The playtest rules work to pave over the DM’s judgment and the monsters’ passive perception in favor of a roll against a close-enough DC of 15.

Apparently the D&D team also listens to complaints about a lack of social interaction rules. The playtest moves some social interaction guidelines from the Dungeon Master’s Guide to a place where the table’s rules lawyer can more easily cite them at the table as the reason Vecna must cooperate based on a strong persuasion check. I’m all for helping tables handle social interaction, but leave DMs room to work.

3. Class groups. The playtest recalls the Warrior, Mage, Priest, and Rogue class groups introduced in 2nd edition by putting classes into similar sets. “A Class Group has no rules in itself, but prerequisites and other rules can refer to these groups.”

I imagine a design meeting where the team matched classes to groups, and then faced a jumble of leftovers like Bard, Ranger, and Rogue that defied an obvious group name. What did these classes share in common? They all rate as the most knowledgeable and skilled in their province, whether a tavern, a back alley, or the wild. Designing each class around Expertise and calling the group Experts builds on that trait.

The Expertise feature doubles a character’s proficiency bonus, so at higher levels an expert can succeed at nearly impossible tasks and routinely accomplish merely difficult ones. D&D tests use a d20 roll, and the 1-20 random swing can overwhelm the relatively small bonus delivered by proficiency and ability scores. Even the most talented and skilled characters often fail, creating a system that often fails to reward competence. Expertise delivers enough of a bonus to reward masters of a skill with a reliable chance of success.

Meanwhile, the playtest’s jump rule seems designed to enable a gross range of possible outcomes. An average, untrained person making a running jump for maximum distance can leap between 5 and 20 feet. If this rule had reached print in the 80s, Space Gamer magazine’s Murphy’s Rules cartoon would skewer it for laughs. Basketball games in D&D worlds must be something to see.

4. Inspiration works the way most players think it works. In the last playtest, Jeremy Crawford championed some changes that matched the game rules to the way players incorrectly assumed the game worked. That goal makes this playtest’s change to inspiration inevitable. Players can use inspiration to re-roll after rolling a d20 test. This makes inspiration more valuable, but under the old inspiration rules, few DMs awarded much inspiration, so the house rule’s bigger benefit hardly mattered. My earlier post discussed the merits of giving inspiration for 5% of d20 tests, and how that generosity tilts a game already stacked in the players’ favor. Won’t someone think of the monsters?

5. Bards stay busy every moment. The playtest class descriptions feature numerous small changes that improve play. For example, the Bardic Inspiration and the Cutting Words features include changes that improve the Bard’s agency and remove a source of friction. Now instead of giving another player a Bardic Inspiration die to control and often forget, bards can use their Reaction to add an inspiration roll to a failed d20 Test.

The new design eliminates the requirement that players choose to use a Bardic Inspiration die after they make their rolls, but before the DM determines whether the attack roll or ability check succeeds or fails. That requirement interrupted than natural flow of the game. For Bardic Inspiration, the requirement also blocked the DM’s option to reveal DCs and ACs despite the advantages of transparency. Now in the game fiction, the bard sees a companion falter and gives a magic boost that might win success.

6. Hunters mark gets a fix. The 2104 ranger class suffered from an need to concentrate on the hunter’s mark spell, which underpins the ranger’s flavor as someone who targets prey and pursues it to the finish. With a duration marked in hours, hunter’s mark seems meant to last through a ranger’s daily adventures. But the spell requires concentration, so 2014 rangers who cast another concentration spell lose their mark and what feels like a key feature. Also, 2014 rangers who aimed to enter melee suffered an outsized risk of losing their mark. The playtest version of the ranger no longer needs to concentrate on hunter’s mark. In the last 8 years, would that errata have proved too much?

6. Playing a spellcaster becomes less daunting. Jeremy Crawford says the need to pick spells means that “sometimes playing a spellcaster can be a little daunting.” So the playtest classes add recommended spells to prepare. Good idea. I created a list of recommended spells for wizards, but 2014 spellcasters can prepare different numbers of spells based on an ability score, and that variable added complication to my lists. The playtest rules cut the formulas for number of spells prepared in favor of letting characters prepare spells equal to their spell slots. I’m happy to never again search the class descriptions for the formulas that I never remember.

7. Free hands and spellcasting. D&D’s rules for spellcasting components aim to reinforce the classic flavor of the game’s classes while adding the dash of balance that comes from, say, not letting Wizards equip shields. The simplest measure of these rules’ success comes from 4 tests.

Do the rules encourage Wizards to carry an arcane focus in one hand while leaving the other hand free?
Do the rules prevent exploits like letting you equip a shield between turns to maximize AC, and then stow a shield on your turn to cast spells? (DMs can say no, but we like the rules to back us up.)
Do the rules enable Clerics to equip a shield, carry a weapon, and still cast spells?
Do the rules enable Rangers to have two weapons or just a sword and shield, and to cast spells without any juggling?

Rules as written, fifth edition passes the first 2 tests, complicates the third test by requiring a cleric to free a hand to cast cure wounds (see the first question answered on page 16 of the Sage Advice Compendium), and botches the fourth test. Sure, a dual-wielding ranger can use their free, manipulate-an-object action on one turn to sheath a sword, and then on next turn use another free action to get out their components, and players can keep track from turn to turn, but few players see that as a fun enhancement to the heroic action. Ranger players could take War Caster, but the rules shouldn’t impose a feat tax just to allow the things we expect of rangers. Also, letting rangers do their thing hardly overpowers the class.

To be fair, the playtest makes a change that eases some of the friction. Now the attack action allows characters to “equip or unequip one Weapon before or after any attack you make as part of this Action.” I like how this enables characters to switch weapons in a single turn without dropping one, but the measure fails to let rangers be rangers without a juggling act.

8. Class capstone abilities come sooner so they get used. The 2014 classes rewarded players who reached level 20 with capstone features that often seemed almost too good. But level 20 represents the end of a character’s career, so players seldom flaunted those wahoo abilities for more than a session. The playtest classes move the capstone features to level 18, so players gain more time to savor them. Levels 19 and 20 now gain more ordinary-feeling rewards. For some players, this change makes the capstones feel less like an aspirational target to seek as the crowning achievement of a character. I say level 18 rates as enough of an achievement to reap these rewards.

9. Why would anyone take the Ability Score Improvement feat? The designers of the 2014 version of fifth edition made feats an optional system that groups could skip in favor of a simpler game. So the 2014 team tried to design feats that matched the power of a +2 ability score increase. Clearly, the One D&D team sees little point to keeping feats optional. Who can blame the team for this conclusion? I never saw a table choose not to use feats.

When Jeremy Crawford touts the playtest’s feats, he boasts that nearly all increase the power of the older versions. They achieved this using the highly technical design technique of packaging every 4th-level feat with an extra +1 ability score boost. Many feats nearly match the 2014 versions that the designers judged as powerful as a +2 ability score bonus, except now boosted by an extra +1, making them as good as a +3. Someone please check my math.

With One D&D awarding feats at level 1, and offering boosted feats at level 4, characters keep getting candy. I hope the monsters get some help keeping up. Won’t someone think of the monsters?

Does anyone else consider feats that bundle a +1 ability score bonus a nuisance? Odd numbered ability scores deliver no bonuses, so without planning, those +1 increases can feel wasted. For new players, the wasted +1 feels like a gotcha. For lazy players like me who rarely plan a character’s career, same.

The monsters and I applaud one change: The designers fixed the worst thing in D&D, the Sharpshooter feat, by removing the +10 damage option. I have just one note: Find a different benefit than bypassing cover.

Erasing the effect of cover means ranged characters can mostly ignore tactics, making combat less interesting for their players. Meanwhile, as a DM, I can counter sharpshooters by having monsters move out of total cover to attack before moving back to total cover. If sharpshooters cope by readying attacks, they lose their extra attacks and bonus action attacks. Unless you relish tactical crunch, none of this tit-for-tat brings much fun, so I would rather just play monsters benefiting from partial cover.

10. Can guidance be saved? The 2014 version of guidance rates as the game’s most useful cantrip and its biggest nuisance. Simply by interjecting “I cast guidance” before every single skill check, the cleric gets to improve d20 rolls by an average of 2.5. This proves both useful and tiresome. Frequently in play, someone blows a check, the cleric remembers forgetting the guidance mantra, and the game halts while players plead to add retroactive guidance. Forgetting guidance creates a feel-bad, gotcha moment. I’ve seen some tables bypass the I-cast-guidance spam by just adding a d4 to every skill check. I assume the DM secretly raises every DC by 3. Should we drop guidance from D&D and call it a win? In the cantrip’s favor, priests praying for divine guidance reinforces these classes’ flavor.

The playtest includes a new version of guidance that makes the spell less spammy. Plus the new version’s limit that characters can only benefit once per day might weaken the spell to extinction. I’m okay with that.

The One D&D Playtest: Big and Small Surprises and Why I Like the Controversial Critical Hit Rule

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Fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons started as a game with a strong foundation, strong enough that when I imagined changes that would best improve the game, I just wished for replacements for the annoying spells, overpowered feats, and toothless monsters—the game’s features atop the foundation.

The D&D team agrees. “We did a smart thing with fifth edition by listening to the fans and what came out of that process was a system that is stable, that is well loved, that incorporates the best elements of earlier editions.” Designer Chris Perkins says. “Now that we have that, we are no longer in a position where we think of D&D as an edition. It’s just D&D.”

The D&D team started fixing trouble spots years ago. For example, newer books like Xanathar’s Guide To Everything revisits the rules for downtime with a more evolved take. Tasha’s Cauldon of Everything includes the most updates, with a new way to assign ability score bonuses, alternatives to game-stopping summoning spells, and new beast master companions that strengthen the ranger archetype. The changes improve the game without invalidating anything in the 2014 Player’s Handbook. (See D&D‘s Ongoing Updates and How a Priority Could Lead to New Core Books.)

In 2024, the D&D team will release new core books, making that 2014 Player’s Handbook obsolete. In a way, this 2024 update resembles the jump between first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and second edition. In the 80s when designers started work on second edition, copies of first edition adventures and books like Oriental Adventures were staying in print and selling well for years. TSR management wanted to keep those evergreen products earning, so they required that second edition remain broadly compatible with first. Second edition’s most important goal was “to make sure the game was still the one you knew and enjoyed.” Of course, first edition had already seen changes and new options would continue to evolve second edition. (See The Dungeons & Dragons Books that Secretly Previewed Each New Edition.)

For the next 12 to 18 months, the D&D design team plans to release monthly playtest packets, enabling gamers to sample and provide feedback on the game’s 2024 release. “You’re going to be able to use all of these playtest docs with your existing core books,” says designer Jeremy Crawford. “We’ve designed these docs so you can take each one, and other than the places where we tell you here’s an update, all of this material works with the core books you already have.”

The D&D team emphasizes how the new release will just build on the game we play today. Their claim and my feeling that the game’s foundation is good leads to the playtest package’s biggest surprise: The document makes changes to rules such as critical hits and conditions—changes at D&Ds foundation. Make no mistake: I’m fine with these changes and the package convinces me that the designers will improve the game.

The changes to D&D’s foundation hide in the packet’s unremarkable sounding “Rules Glossary.” Roleplaying game design often means making choices between the benefits and drawbacks of a particular choice. To weigh the choices revealed by the playtest, I like looking at both sides of this equation. My listing of the drawbacks of a choice doesn’t mean I wouldn’t choose the same.

Critical Hits rate as the candy of D&D. No one ever accused D&D co-creator Gary Gygax of giving players too much candy, and he hated crits. (See page 61 of the original Dungeon Masters Guide.) Like candy, crits give joy, but they’re also bad for us, and especially bad for our new characters. Forget bugbears and goblins; blame most new character deaths on a natural 20. First-level characters lack enough hit points to survive the extra damage. D&D’s designers aim for a game that makes players feel like characters can die while rarely actually killing them. (Some gamers enjoy a more dangerous game, but fifth edition needs optional rules to cater to that taste.) Removing crits helps D&D avoid wasting new characters, but we love our candy, so the test rules allow only player characters to score crits—a change that would have appalled Gary. I like it.

As a DM who speeds play by using average monster damage, monster crits add extra friction. That 20 interrupts my flow and forces me to hunt for damage dice to roll and total. (Yeah, I know I could find a short cut.) A crit and a miss deal less damage than two hits, so the slowdown adds little to play.

Some folks complain that not letting monsters crit makes them too weak, and I’m sympathetic because D&D’s mid- and high-level monsters are too weak, and I’ve complained as much as anyone. But the fix comes from much more damage than the occasional critical hit delivers. Hopefully, the 2024 Monster Manual will deliver the power bump foes need.

The test critical hit rule also affects players. Spell attacks no longer deal crits. This just brings the rule in line with what new players expect: Only weapon attacks and unarmed strikes crit. We D&D enthusiasts can master this change.

The new critical rule also changes the damage formula: Only weapon damage dice get doubled. The designers probably aimed to weaken characters designed to farm criticals with feats like Elven Accuracy. The new formula hinders paladins and rogues by eliminating doubled smite and sneak attack damage. Paladins rate as one of the game’s strongest classes, so this change helps bring them down to Oerth. Rogues suffer more from losing a double sneak attack damage.

Still, in D&D specific rules beat a general rule. The critical rule works like this in general, but a class like rogue might gain a feature that adds additional damage to crits. If that feature worked for melee attacks and not ranged attacks, then it would help make up for the inferiority of melee-focused rogues. A guy can dream.

Rolling a 20. Another change deals monsters a more serious blow than losing critical hits. Based on the new rules for rolling a 20 and inspiration, characters will rarely fail saving throws. Now players gain inspiration whenever they roll 20 on an ability check, saving throw, or an attack roll. Players gain more fun candy for their high rolls. If you already have inspiration, you can pass the award to another character. “We wanted a way to feed people inspiration through the system itself. What the system is intentionally doing is encouraging you to use the inspiration.” Dream on. Inspiration proves so much more valuable for saving throws that I plan to continue hoarding it until I need to make a save. I suspect this will bring my characters closer to never failing a save. When I run games, players like me who hoard inspiration make monsters much less fun to run because characters rarely fail a save and so many monster abilities amount to “Action: Waste a turn while every single character laughs off your biggest threat.” At tables using the widespread house rule that lets players spend inspiration to re-roll, the heroes’ edge grows even stronger.

Instead of the players fighting ice cold dice who could use a lift, the inspiration-on-a-20 mechanic awards more success to the character already rolling 20s. Perhaps if a 20 let you inspire another character in the party, the rule would feel better.

Nonetheless, I have mixed feelings about the inspiration-on-a-20 rule. As a player, I love rolling natural 20s and hate failing saves. But even more, I love challenges that press my characters to the limit.

Ability score bonuses. The playtest’s update to ability score improvements rates at the playtest’s least surprising change. Now instead of pairing each race with set of ability score bonuses that reinforce a fantasy archetype, every player chooses where to put a +2 and a +1 bonus, or alternately three +1 bonuses.

Since first edition AD&D, each race has gained ability score modifiers that match the fantasy archetypes of robust dwarves, agile elves, and so on. This started back when everyone rolled characters at random and when good play meant making the most of whatever the dice gave you.

Now most players build characters to match their tastes, so ability score bonuses limit freedom to create capable characters who defy stereotypes. Also, for many, such adjustments raise troubling reminders of how real ethnic groups can suffer from racist stereotypes that paint people as lacking certain aptitudes. Sure, elves, dwarves, and half-orcs are imaginary species, but they become relatable reflections of us in the game world. After all, imaginary halflings, I mean hobbits, just started as Tolkien’s stand-ins for ordinary folks.

Setting ability scores should require just one step: Assign the scores you want to suit your character. Instead, the current design asks players to assign scores and add bonuses as separate steps, likely adding some back-and-forth friction as players find the right values. I would like to see a process that folds the two steps into one. That would work easiest if the game simply offered a few standard arrays of scores with the ability score bonuses included.

Feats at first level. Originally, the fifth-edition designers sought to make new characters as simple as possible. This returned to D&D’s 1974 roots. Then, characters just started with 6 ability scores and a class. Characters developed in play. Those simple characters proved especially easy for new players. You could immerse yourself in your role and play without knowing the rules. If you’re a hero with a sword and a monster charges, then you know your options: talk fast, hit it, or run. Now text like “a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus” weighs races, 1st-level feats, and classes. If you’re coaching a new player, prepare to explain “proficiency bonus.”

The playtest rules make a new character’s history feel more important by bolstering it with mechanics. “I’m super excited about this whole approach that we’re taking with backgrounds,” says Jeremy Crawford. “It’s all about building your character’s story and making certain meaningful game-mechanic choices that reflect the story you have in mind for your character.” Or instead, you can take the Lucky feat.

For new players, the added “game-mechanic choices” risk making the game feel overwhelming. Maybe that’s fine. New players confronted with a pregenerated character always find it overwhelming, but the end of the session, they typically feel comfortable with the basics.

The designers seem enchanted by the phrase “a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus,” but I wish fewer feats added things to track.

The playtest feats include a change that strike me as ingenious. Each feat includes a level. “One of the ways to make sure that feat selection is not overwhelming is to break feats up into smaller groups, and one of the ways that were doing that is with levels.” Credit Pathfinder second edition for adding this innovation first.

Grappling. The playtest changes the rules for grappling. Now, if your Unarmed Strike hits versus AC, then you can grapple the target. Likely this change aims to make grappling for characters work like all the monsters that grapple by hitting a target. Starting a grapple with an attack strikes me as odd because it defies a fifth edition design principle.

Fifth-edition designer Mike Mearls once explained that to determine whether to use an attack roll or a save, designers asked, “Would a suit of plate mail protect from this?” Armor protects against darts, scythes, and so on, so traps using such hazards make attacks. Poisonous fumes, lightning, and mind blasts all ignore armor, so targets make saves. Attacks to grapple fail this test. Surely though, rules for saves to avoid a grapple would add more complexity than the designers want. Besides, D&D hardly needs another reason to favor Dexterity over Strength.

The Twisting Tale of Skills in D&D

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Modern Dungeons & Dragons includes both skills and character classes, but in the early days of the roleplaying hobby, gamers often saw skills and classes as incompatible. Some gamers touted skills as the innovation that freed roleplaying games from character classes. Three years after D&D reached hobby shops, new games like Traveller and RuneQuest eliminated classes in favor of skill systems. Advertisements for RuneQuest in The Dragon trumpeted, “No Artificial Character Classes!!” Such games eliminated the unrealistic class restrictions that prevented, say, a fighter from learning to climb walls or from mastering a spell. “Mages can wear armor and use blades.” The ad credits RuneQuest to designer “Steve Perrin and friends.” Remember that name, because Perrin returns to this tale later.

1978 Chaosium ad featuring RuneQuest

D&D co-creator Gary Gygax favored classes because they resonated with the fantasy archetypes everyone knew. He warned, “If characters are not kept distinct, they will soon merge into one super-character.” He had a point. Skill-based games gave every character the ability to improve the same common adventuring skills, leading to a certain sameness among adventurers.

Classes let characters make distinct contributions to a group’s success. In a 1984 interview in DRACHE magazine, Gygax said, “The D&D game is based on the theory that there is so much to know and to do that nobody can do everything on his own. The team aspect is important. Each player has to use his strengths at the right place. Otherwise, the group won´t be able to survive.”

As long as Gygax controlled D&D’s development, he kept skills out of the game. His Unearthed Arcana (1985) added weapon proficiencies as a sort of weapon skill, but their narrow scope kept the sharp lines between classes.

Still, TSR designer Dave “Zeb” Cook saw a need for character development beyond class. “One of the things dreadfully lacking from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was any sense that your character had a real life beyond class skills.” When Cook wrote Oriental Adventures (1985), he brought a taste of skills to D&D in non-weapon proficiencies—skills without the name. These new proficiencies never overlapped with class abilities. Characters gained skills such as calligraphy, etiquette, animal handling, and bowyer. Non-weapon proficiencies “gave players a way to create a more culturally-informed background for their character.”

Checks finally reached AD&D in the Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide (1986). Although this book’s title suggests a focus on player strategy, this guide brought key rules innovations to AD&D. Here, the non-weapon proficiencies from Oriental Adventures became options in the primary game. When players used non-weapon proficiencies, they made proficiency checks to determine the outcome. These checks filled the place of ability checks. The new system of featured all the ingredients of a modern skill system, although class features still covered most of the actions characters attempted during an adventure, so thieves still rolled on their private tables to climb walls and move silently.

In a convention appearance, Dave “Zeb” Cook and fellow designer Steve Winter talked about how these first-edition books led to a second edition. “Oriental Adventures was the big tipping point because Zeb Cook put a lot of really cool stuff in OA,” Winter said. “We felt like, wow it would be great if this was actually part of the core game, but it’s not.”

“Because of the way we had to treat those books, you couldn’t actually consider them canon when you were writing product or doing modules,” Cook explained. “You always had to assume that players only had the Dungeon Master’s Guide and the Player’s Handbook.”

Even after Gygax left TSR in 1985, designers like Cook and Winter lacked the clout to make sweeping changes to the company’s flagship game. TSR management insisted that second edition AD&D remain broadly compatible with the original. The Player’s Handbook (1989) included non-weapon proficiencies as an optional rule. Ability checks entered the core game, but languished in the glossary. Nonetheless, these additions inched AD&D closer to matching the ability checks and skills in other role-playing games.

But TSR sold two D&D games, an advanced version that got more scrutiny from management, and a basic version that offered more freedom to designers. By 1988, RuneQuest designer and freelancer Steve Perrin was gaining assignments writing D&D supplements. His GAZ5 The Elves of Alfheim (1988) for the D&D campaign setting of the Known World introduced skills by name to the game. “Due to their background, elves have a variety of skills that are neither shown in the rule books, nor related directly to combat, thieving, or magic. These are optional additions to your D&D campaign.” RuneQuest’s designer put more cracks in the wall between skills and D&D’s classes.

A year later, GAZ11 The Republic of Darokin (1989) by Scott Haring expanded this skill system beyond elves.

“Each skill is based on one of the character’s Abilities (Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma). When a circumstance arises in which the DM feels the use of a character’s skill is needed, he asks the player to roll a d20 against his current score with the Ability. If the result of the d20 roll is less than or equal to the Ability, the skill use succeeds. A roll of 20 always fails, no matter how high the chance for success.”

The gazetteer listed skills from advocacy and animal training to woodworking, but the options still kept away from the class specialties of combat, thieving, and magic.

In 1991, the Dungeon & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia gathered all the rules from the basic line into a single hardcover that included the skill system. Meanwhile, AD&D would spend another decade forcing players to say “non-weapon proficiency” in place of “skill.”

For D&D’s third edition in 2000, the designers finally gained permission to correct old drawbacks. “We knew we wanted to make a more robust set of skills,” designer Monte Cook said in an interview. “You had thieves‘ skills, which were different and they worked completely differently, because they were percentage based. So we wanted to marry all of that together.” Like RuneQuest and virtually every other contemporary roleplaying game, the new edition would adopt a single, core mechanic to resolve actions. Players made checks by rolling a d20, adding modifiers, and comparing the result against a difficulty class number. Skills now offered bonuses to these checks.

The older D&D skill system and AD&D proficiency checks had created in impression that the third-edition designers worked to avoid. In both systems, skills seemed like a requirement to attempt many tasks, so characters needed gemcutting skill to even attempt a radiant cut. That adds up. On the other hand, surely anyone could attempt bargaining and gambling, yet D&D’s original skill checks only applied to characters with a skill.

D&D’s new d20 core mechanic meant that skills expanded to include actions characters actually did in the game. For instance, rogues got skills rather than a private table listing their chance of hiding and picking pockets. “D&D was still a class based game, but the idea that you were not a thief, so you can’t climb and you can never climb, didn’t really hold a lot of water.” The system allowed any character to attempt to hide and climb. Unskilled characters just suffered worse odds of success. Good luck with the gemcutting.

By fourth edition the games designers worked hard to reach Gary Gygax’s ideal of teamwork—but only during combat. On the battlefield, each character class served a distinct role like striker and defender. For tasks outside combat, the designers contrived a skill challenge system aimed at ensuring that every character gained an equal chance to contribute.

During fifth edition’s design, the D&D designers planned to sideline skills in favor of simple ability checks. “We’re making skills completely optional,” lead designer Mike Mearls wrote. “They are a rules module that combines the 3E and 4E systems that DMs can integrate into their game if they so desire.”

But playtesters liked the depth that skills gave characters. Also finessing the game’s math so it played equally well with or without skill bonuses doubtless proved troublesome. So skills stayed part of the D&D core. The designers still chose to rename skill checks as ability checks. This further avoids from the implication that characters need a skill to attempt certain tasks. Without formal skill challenges, fifth edition allows characters with particular skills to shine more as individuals who bring special talents to contribute to the team.

And in the end, no one had to say or type “non-weapon proficiency” ever again (unless they tell this story).

4 Ways D&D’s Creators Tried and Failed to Balance Classes

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The classes in today’s Dungeons & Dragons game are balanced to make sure that when players leave a session, everyone feels like their character contributed to the party’s success. No player should ever see their character routinely upstaged and wonder, “Why am I even here?” In a list of goals for fifth edition, designer Mike Mearls wrote, “All of the classes should feel competent when compared to each other at all levels.”

The game’s designers didn’t always aim for this target, and when they did the methods often failed. What methods of class balance have the game’s designers abandoned?

1. Ineffective in one pillar, strong in another

The D&D game focuses on three pillars of play: exploration, roleplaying interaction, and combat.

In the early D&D game, players spent most of their game time immersed in exploration: mapping, searching, and evading hazards. Good play meant avoiding combat and saving spells. Expert play meant getting treasure without a fight. The original thieves lacked any combat assets—not even backstabbing—but during all the searching, scouting, and evading, only thieves brought any useful, reusable abilities. They shined in the exploration pillar, and floundered in combat.

In an interview for Drache issue 3, D&D co-creator Gary Gygax explained, “D&D’s team aspect is important. In a D&D game, each player has to use his strengths at the right place. Otherwise, the group won´t be able to survive.”

Some of that spirit remains, Mearls writes, “We’re OK with classes being better at specific things. Rogues are good at checks and handling traps. Fighters have the best AC and hit points. Clerics are the best healers and support casters. Wizards are the best at area attacks and control effects.”

But the game no longer allows classes that prove ineffective in a pillar. “If each class has wildly different combat abilities and the game doesn’t account for that, the system falls apart,” Mearls wrote. Over the years, the thief class added a backstab feature, which became sneak attack and a suite of combat abilities.

See The Thief’s Strange Trip from Non-Combatant to Battlefield Domination.

2. Weak at low levels, mighty at high levels

In D&D’s early days, Gygax saw characters who survived to high level as proof of a player’s skills. By this notion, players able to raise a weak character to the top deserved rewards. Tim Kask, the first editor of The Dragon magazine, echoed this perspective when he wrote, “Anyone that gets an Illusionist [to high level] deserves whatever they can achieve.”

No class showed this attitude more than the magic user. Originally, magic users started with the no armor, the lowest hit points, feeble attacks, and just one magic missile or sleep spell. But while a high-level fighter just added more hit points and a higher attack bonus, wizards gained power in 3 ways: They gained more spells per day, higher-level spells, and more damage with spells of a given level. Their power grew to overshadow the other classes.

“Earlier, D&D balanced wizards by making them weak at low level and powerful at high level,” wrote third-edition designer Jonathan Tweet. “But we tried to balance the classes at both low level and high level. (We failed. Spellcasters were still too good at high level.)”

The current edition starts to get the formula right. Mearls explained his goal for fifth edition. “Attaining balance is something that we must do to make D&D fit in with fantasy, myth, and legend. Even if a wizard unleashes every spell at his or her disposal at a fighter, the fighter absorbs the punishment, throws off the effects, and keeps on fighting.”

See How fifth edition keeps familiar spells and a Vancian feel without breaking D&D.

3. Higher-powered classes require more experience points

Before third edition, every D&D class had a different table of experience points required to level. As far as I know, Gygax never explained this quirk. No one asked because everyone just assumed the higher-powered classes demanded more experience points to level. The charts hint at some of this: The mighty paladin requires more experience than the weaker rogue. But for the original classes of fighter, cleric, and wizard the differences seem quirky rather than systematic. “The system sometimes gave clerics more hit points than fighters because a cleric would be higher level than a fighter with the same XP total.” Until double-digit levels, the XP requirements for a magic user never left the wizard more than a level or two behind the other classes.

4. Classes with level maximums

Originally, Gary Gygax gave little thought to high-level characters. Kask recalled, “We figured the odds of even getting to level 9 or 10 were so high that it wouldn’t pose a problem. This was before the gross inflation of XP’s and the corresponding levels. The highest-level player in Gary’s Greyhawk campaign was a 7 or possibly 8 at that time, and they had been playing more than any other group with the possible exception of Dave Arneson’s.”

After D&D’s release, TSR co-owner Brian Blume lobbied to include the monk class in the game’s upcoming Blackmoor supplement. Kask wrote, “Brian rationalized the nearly super abilities of the monk’s high levels with the argument that nobody, or damned few, would ever get that high. (This illustrates a certain naivete that all of us shared back then. We had no idea people would play almost daily and rack up XP’s at a truly unimagined rate.)”

Gygax published a class that imposed harsh limits to high-level monks. For monks “there is only one man at each level above 6th.” So to rise above 6th level, a monk character had to find the one monk of that level and win a fair fight. “There will always be a higher level to fight, even if there is no player character in the role.” The class topped out at 16th level.

A year after Blackmoor, gamers had completely disproved the theory that few characters would rise to high level. So Gygax returned to the monk class’s scheme for limiting the new Druid class in the Eldritch Wizardry supplement. Kask explained, “Every advance beyond level 11 meant fighting and defeating a fellow druid in either magical or physical combat—and the occasional 11th-level challenger of one’s own to deal with!”

In practice such limits only steered players away from choosing the classes they wanted to play, or blocked characters from advancing with their peers in a high-level party.

Next: Number 5.

Scrutinizing the 9 Most Popular House Rules for D&D

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In the beginning, Dungeons & Dragons required house rules to run. For instance, for 10 years the game suffered from an unplayable initiative system, so everyone used a house rule. Every dungeon master grew accustomed to tinkering with the game, leading to a generation of amateur game designers who sometimes graduated to the pros.

Fifth edition has proved sound enough that the game’s designers resist tweaking even the worst parts of the game. The reluctance makes sense: No customer wants to learn that the rules in their game book are changed by some notice on the Internet.

Nonetheless, everyone who plays the game long enough wishes something played a bit differently, perhaps a bit better. Forty-some years on, the roleplayer’s urge to design and redesign remains. My search for fifth-edition house rules turned up an avalanche of favorites.

What are the most popular house rules for D&D and how do they stand to scrutiny?

Players may spend inspiration to a gain a reroll.

Spending inspiration gives you advantage an attack roll, saving throw, or ability check, so you must choose to use inspiration before the roll. Meanwhile, so many people think that inspiration allows a reroll that every convention DM who runs by the book can tell a story of being falsely accused of not knowing the rules. “You may be right,” we lie. “Go ahead and look that up for me.”

Advantage. The original conception of Inspiration supposed that players would gain inspiration more frequently than typical now. During the edition’s design, Mike Mearls wrote, “A player can gain it once per significant scene or important combat. Inspiration fades quickly, so you must spend it within a few minutes in game time before you lose it.” The lighter benefit of advantage suited this frequency. With most DMs awarding Inspiration less often, a stronger reroll benefit works fine.

Disadvantage. You may foster a misunderstanding that causes your players to call out some poor DM who plays by the book.

Players roll their characters’ death saves in secret.

Groups who adopt this house rule allow players to override their secret saving roles to spare their character or, I suppose, speed a tragic end. This change doesn’t actually change D&D rules, so the pedant in me wants to call it a table convention.

Advantage. By rolling their character’s death saves secretly, players gain more control over whether their character dies. This suits groups who emphasize story and would rather not see the campaign arc overturned by a blown save.

Disadvantage. Allowing players to choose not to die may seem like a violation of the game’s spirit to players who value a genuine threat of death.

See How Character Death Lands D&D in a Tug-of-War Between Game and Story.

DMs roll the characters’ death saves in secret.

Advantage. If you play fifth edition long enough, you suffer through this scene: Your character drops early in a fight, and because you never fail a death save, no one bothers to heal you. The players know your character remains 3 turns from death, so no one feels urgency. Meanwhile, for all the characters know, their friend is hearing her dead parents calling her toward the light. (As an adventurer, her parents are as inevitably dead as a Disney lead’s mother.)

If the DM rolls death saves, or the player rolls and only shares the result with the DM, the rest of the party stops gaining metagame information about a dying character’s closeness to the final curtain. This adds urgency to the need to heal fallen characters and can heighten feelings of peril. Such secrecy encourages players to quickly bring their friends back into the action.

Disadvantage. Particularly if the DM rolls, the players lose a sense of control over their fate, even if that false sense only comes from throwing the die.

Precedent. If Gary had invented death saves, you know that he would have rolled them secretly for players.

Critical hits deal maximum damage plus damage from a second roll of the dice.

Advantage. In fifth edition, we’ve all experienced the excitement of a critical, followed by the roll of a handful of dice that yields mostly ones, twos, and a big letdown. Reinforcing critical hits guarantees big damage. This favors divine smiters, sneak attackers, and the kid at my game table whose “practice” rolls uncannily end when he rolls a 20. “Look! Another critical!”

Disadvantage. Apparently, none of the folks bolstering criticals have played a paladin and realized that the class rates as almost too good without smites backed by stronger crits.

Criticals offer fun, but they are secretly bad for players because characters endure far more critical hits than any monster. Dialing up extra damage increases the chance that a monster’s attack will kill a character dead. For criticals that avoid the bummer of low rolls without adding risk to player characters, make criticals deal maximum damage.

Precedent. In third edition, criticals let you double your damage bonuses along with your damage dice. Fourth edition backed away from doubling damage bonuses by just making criticals deal maximum damage. That favored players, but eliminated the fun of the roll and the chance of huge damage against monsters. The fifth-edition system opts for a mechanic converging on maximum damage, but with extra dice to roll.

Lesser Restoration and remove curse won’t automatically remove diseases, poisons, and curses.

Lesser restoration and remove curse turn poisoning, diseases, and curses in D&D into the loss of a spell or a donation at the local temple. To match folklore and for story, we want curses and other afflictions to prompt quests, so many groups add limits to the spell remedies. The limits run from an ability check similar to dispel magic, to a requirement for special material components, to more. Adventurers League administrator Greg Marks writes, “I’m a big fan of any story-based poison or disease requiring a story-based solution in addition.” If a character gets hit with a bestow curse spell in a random encounter, then remove curse fixes it. If the party is cursed by the dying breath of a witch queen, then that’s an adventure to fix.

Advantage. Limiting lesser Restoration and remove curse opens D&D to a type of story that pervades the tales that inspired the game.

Disadvantage. Limiting these spells hurts characters who prepare them, but not as much as in earlier editions. Originally, clerics who prepared a just-in-case spell like remove curse lost a spell slot, which they could have devoted to a healing spell that would always prove useful.

Precedent. Many adventures through D&D’s history include curses and other afflictions that resist mere spells.

Healing potions can be consumed with a bonus action.

A character can spend a bonus action to drink a healing potion. Administering a potion to another character still requires an action.

Advantage. When a typical round takes several minutes of real time, losing an action to drink a healing potion feels like a bummer. Also, a player who needs a potion probably needs that action to turn the tide of battle.

Disadvantage. If your campaign awards a typical amount of treasure, then the 50 gp cost of a healing potion quickly becomes negligible, especially when characters have little else to spend money on. If drinking becomes a bonus, expect smart players to litter battlefields with empty vials. Still, this change probably won’t upset the game’s balance.

Lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford might prefer that you not mistreat bonus actions as just a lesser sort of action though.

Characters gain a bonus feat at first level.

Advantage. Granting characters an extra feat enables more customization, especially for groups who tend to shorter, low-level campaigns. Some DMs even allow characters who reach ability score increases to gain both an increase and a feat rather than choosing one.

Disadvantage. Some feats grant big boosts in power. See The Two D&D Feats Everyone Loves, How to Build a D&D Polearm Master That Might Be Better Than a Sharpshooter, and How to Build a Sharpshooter Who Wins D&D. Also, the Lucky feat may as well be called Never Fail a Save. The power of feats means that bonus feats steeply increase the power curve for characters. Some groups don’t mind because they see combat as a way for characters to show off their prowess rather than a challenge that endangers heroes. Some DMs don’t mind because they happily dial up the opposition to match.

Also, pairing extra feats with ability score increases strongly encourages multi-class characters to take class levels in blocks of 4.

Precedent. If you like this rule because it allows extra customization, you may benefit by switching game systems. Pathfinder 2 modularizes character advancement into choices of feats and allows much more customization of characters.

Players can delay their turn to take a later place in initiative.

Advantage. Too often, the slow, tough characters who open the dungeon door roll a low initiative while the quicker skirmishers in back roll high. The tanks in front wind up bottling up the door because the rules offer no way for the bladesinger in back to just wait for the paladin to step out of the damn way.

Also, some groups enjoy the tactical options unlocked by letting characters delay.

Disadvantage. The D&D designers sought faster play and a leaner game by dropping the delay option. For more, see 3 Actions D&D Players Want That Defy the Game’s Design Choices.

I favor a lightweight alternative to a full delay option. Before combat starts, let players opt for a lower initiative than they rolled.

Precedent. Third and fourth edition both included a delay option. For a suggested delay rule adapted from those editions, see What to Do When a D&D Player Wants to Be Ready, Call a Shot, or Delay.

Characters who fail a death save suffer a level of exhaustion.

Advantage. Players intent on wringing every advantage from the game rules will only heal characters when they drop, because damage below 0 heals for free. Imagine being injured but denied healing until you lie dying on the dungeon floor because the magic somehow works better that way. As an adventurer, I would find a less psycho group of comrades in arms.

By making characters who fail a death save suffer a level of exhaustion, the dying condition becomes something to be realistically feared rather than an inconvenience where players can exploit their metagame understanding of fifth edition’s lack of negative hit points.

Disadvantage. Although this penalty encourages players to keep their friends in the game rather than incapacitated by 0 hit points, the rule remains a penalty that will sometimes prove unavoidable.

Precedent. In first edition, characters brought to 0 or fewer hit points needed a week of rest. “The character cannot attack, defend, cast spells, use magic devices, carry burdens, run, study, research, or do anything else.” However, due to house rules, I never saw this penalty enforced.

The Obvious Innovation in Fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons That No Designer Saw Before

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Stirrups. Zero. Shipping containers. Luggage with wheels. All these innovations seem obvious in hindsight. But they went undiscovered for millennia, until someone’s bright idea changed the world—or at least put airport porters out of work. Even those hotel shower rods that curve made someone rich.

Fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons includes one obvious-in-hindsight innovation that the game’s past designers failed to spot. Alas, it won’t make anyone rich.

Up until fourth edition, D&D fighters gained extra attacks, but fourth edition avoided them. The designers shunned extra attacks partly to speed play by reducing the number of attack and damage rolls. Sure, spells attacked lots of targets, but at least spells only required one damage roll.

Also fourth edition, like all earlier editions of D&D, aimed to parcel out benefits smoothly as characters leveled up. In theory, this made the difference in power between, a 4th- and 5th-level character about the same as the difference between levels 5 and 6. Characters at similar levels could adventure together without someone routinely dealing twice as much damage. But a second attack on every turn brings a fighter a big jump in power.

The designers of past editions worked to smooth these jumps in power by granting fighters something less than a full extra attack. AD&D gave fighters extra half attacks, and a need to remember half attacks. Third edition traded half attacks and the memory issue for weaker attacks and fiddly attack penalties. These solutions complicated the game with awkward memory demands and calculations.

So playtest versions of fifth edition did not grant fighters and other martial characters an Extra Attack feature. Rather than gaining more attacks, these classes earned features that enabled attacks to deal more damage. But this approach put fighters at a disadvantage against weaker foes easily dropped by a single blow.

When a fighter confronts a goblin horde and only makes one attack per turn, no amount of extra damage matters because one strike can only fell one goblin per turn. To help martial types against weak foes, the playtest included cleaving-attack powers that swept through groups. But such features failed to remedy another trouble: To-hit bonuses in fifth-edition increase at a slower rate and never grow as big as in earlier editions. The designers call this bounded accuracy, because they do not come from marketing. Bounded accuracy means that fighters hit weaker foes less easily than in past editions.

Fighter types should hew through the rabble like grass until, bloodied and battle worn, they stand triumphant. But in the playtest, even the mightiest spent turns muffing their one attack against some mook. With an extra attack, misses matter less because there’s more where that came from.

During the playtest, I wrote, “If D&D Next’s designers can find a good way to allow fighters to gain multiple attacks against weaker opponents, then a key piece of the Next design puzzle falls into place.”

Late in fifth edition’s creation, the designers compared the benefits each class gained as they leveled and noticed that wizards leap in power at 5th and at 11th levels. These jumps come from quirks of a spell list that date to the beginning of the game. At 5th level, wizards gain potent attack spells like Fireball, plus unbalancing buffs like Haste. At 11th level, wizards gain 6th-level spells, which bring save-or-die effects like Disintegrate. At the 9th spell level, Gary Gygax felt comfortable stashing world-altering spells like Wish and Time Stop, because his players never reached 17th level and never gained easy access to them.

Earlier editions of D&D aimed to parcel out benefits smoothly as characters leveled up. Those editions’ designers ignored the leaps in power certain spells brought; the fifth-edition designers embraced the leaps.

This brought the obvious-in-hindsight innovation: Rather than offering fighters half attacks or fiddly attack penalties, fifth edition matches the leaps in power brought by additional attacks to the leaps brought by 3rd, 6th, and 9th-level spells. Fighters gain extra attacks as wizards gain these spells. At the same levels, other classes gain potent powers and spells of their own. For instance, the bard’s Hypnotic Pattern spell got a fifth-edition redesign that moves it to 3rd level and dramatically increases the spell’s power.

Third and fourth editions arbitrarily aligned the game’s tiers with 10th and 20th levels, because of round numbers. The fifth-edition tiers match to the levels where characters gain the best new powers and spells. These leaps in ability mean 4th- and 5th-level characters cannot adventure together without displaying big power differences, but characters in the same tier can join a party and contribute.

It all seems obvious now. Designer Mike Mearls says that a lot of innovations in game design work that way.

DMDavid

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Tag Archives: Mike Mearls

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1. Ineffective in one pillar, strong in another

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Scrutinizing the 9 Most Popular House Rules for D&D

Players may spend inspiration to a gain a reroll.

Players roll their characters’ death saves in secret.

DMs roll the characters’ death saves in secret.

Critical hits deal maximum damage plus damage from a second roll of the dice.

Lesser Restoration and remove curse won’t automatically remove diseases, poisons, and curses.

Healing potions can be consumed with a bonus action.

Characters gain a bonus feat at first level.

Players can delay their turn to take a later place in initiative.

Characters who fail a death save suffer a level of exhaustion.

The Obvious Innovation in Fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons That No Designer Saw Before

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B1 In Search of the Unknown (1979) by Dave Carr

Designate a caller

Make the game enjoyable and challenging

T1 Village of Hommlet (1979) by Gary Gygax

Roleplaying NPCs

B2 Keep on the Borderlands (1979) by Gary Gygax

Roleplaying monsters

B10 Night’s Dark Terror (1986) by Jim Bambra, Graeme Morris and Phil Gallagher

Fudging rolls

B11 King’s Festival (1989) by Carl Sargent

Description and the senses

DDA2 Legions of Thyatis (1990) by John Nephew

Characterizing NPCs

Winging it

WGA4 Vecna Lives! (1990) by David Cook

Story beats

Building tension

Eye of the Wyvern (1999) by Jeff Grubb

Dead characters

Sock puppets

Crypt of the Smoke Dragon (1999) by Jeff Grubb

Make the adventure your own

Call to adventure

H1 Keep on the Shadowfell (2008) by Bruce Cordell and Mike Mearls

Make the adventure your own, part 2

Helping indecisive players

Lost Mine of Phandelver (2014) by Richard Baker and Chris Perkins

Don’t let rules questions stall the game

Share the narrative

Read the table

Cloud Giant’s Bargain (2016) by Teos Abadia

Name tents

Going off script

An old school approach to failure

The Hidden Halls of Hazacor (2018) by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

Dealing with murderous treasure hunters

Helping distressed players

Running for empathetic players

Arguments among players

Summarize the boring parts

Peril in Pinebrook (2023) by Shawn Merwin

Let players succeed

Listening as a safety tool

Avoid character deaths

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1. Ineffective in one pillar, strong in another

2. Weak at low levels, mighty at high levels

3. Higher-powered classes require more experience points

4. Classes with level maximums

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Players may spend inspiration to a gain a reroll.

Players roll their characters’ death saves in secret.

DMs roll the characters’ death saves in secret.

Critical hits deal maximum damage plus damage from a second roll of the dice.

Lesser Restoration and remove curse won’t automatically remove diseases, poisons, and curses.

Healing potions can be consumed with a bonus action.

Characters gain a bonus feat at first level.

Players can delay their turn to take a later place in initiative.

Characters who fail a death save suffer a level of exhaustion.

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