AMAredditMike1217

What is your favorite villain you have ever fought in one of your campaigns?

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CommentGOOOOOOD MORNING MIKE MEARLS! Hope the morning has gotten off to a great start! I have two questions, one for you as a player, and then one for you as a designer.

As a player, I would love to know what is your favorite villain you have ever fought in one of your campaigns?

As a designer, what is the best piece of homebrew on the DMs Guild that you have ever seen for 5e D&D? One that seems to follow the design principles of the WotC team very well.

That’s it. Have a good AMA!

mikemearls11 points20 days ago
Favorite Villain: In a game set in a mythic version of Europe, I played a Spanish fire mage. I had to blast the big villain of the campaign with a fireball to defeat him, but I couldn’t kill him, just knock him unconscious. We wanted to redeem him. I of course rolled max damage and murdered him. Still feel bad about that.

I really liked Kate Holden’s spellbinder class. from discussion AMA: Mike Mearls, D&D Creative Director.

Any plans on expanding the types of weapon and armors in game?

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Any plans on expanding the types of weapon and armors in game or tweaking the balances? Some appear to have clear mechanical superiority over other ones and I know a lot of players would love to see either additional options or tweaks to make other weapons just as appealing.

mikemearls5 points21 days ago
Not in the near term.Comment from discussion AMA: Mike Mearls, D&D Creative Director.

I’ve always wanted stats for a Phoenix, how would you do it?

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Comment Hey Mike.

I’ve always wanted stats for a Phoenix, how would you do it?

mikemearls16 points21 days ago
I’d make the phoenix really epic and destructive, something that could ignite fires that destroy cities. I’d make it effectively immortal, but defeatable if you can douse is flame. from discussion AMA: Mike Mearls, D&D Creative Director.

Is there any chance of a central library option?

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Is there any chance of a central library option that we can link to so show we’ve purchased a book – physically or digitally?

I ask as currently the pricing strategy doesn’t encourage me to buy anything other than a physical book. If I buy digital access to the books on DND Beyond, it’s exclusive to DND Beyond. I’d have to buy access again (at full retail) on Roll 20… and then again (at full retail) for access in Fantasy Grounds.

mikemearls63 points19 days ago
Much of that comes down to the cost needed to implement content across different platforms. If we offered one product that gave access to all the platforms, its cost would look a lot like the prices added up across all of them.

Lower prices work for ebooks when you talk about novels and such. However, RPGs are a lot more costly to make due to art, layout, game design, and so on. Compared to a novel, a much smaller percentage of the product cost to us comes from the cost of printing.

For digital platforms, you then have to account for the coding, server maintenance, and so on, to keep everything running and updated. Comment from discussion AMA: Mike Mearls, D&D Creative Director.

Did the design process for Xanathars feel different from the PHB?

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Howdy Mike, thanks for doing this AMA! Did the design process for Xanathars feel different from the PHB? What changed about how you created for the game after 5e being out for a while?

mikemearls17 points21 days ago
Biggest thing was having feedback based on several years of play with the final game. There is definitely a point where people start to push the game and begin to bump into its limits or issues. Comment from discussion AMA: Mike Mearls, D&D Creative Director.

Could you expand on why you don’t like the Bonus Action mechanic?

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Comment I’ve heard you mention that you’d like to do away with Bonus Actions. For me the Bonus Action seems like a great mechanic, and restricting the action economy makes it much easier to make simply worded yet balanced homebrewed subclasses and helps maintain balance when multiclassing.

Without the Bonus Action mechanic, I’m having a hard time imagining how you’d restrict #actions w/cunning action, inspiration, monk abilities, etc without getting buried in a pile of “You may take an extra action to do X unless you’ve taken one to do Y or Z or..”

Question: Could you expand on why you don’t like the Bonus Action mechanic and what you’d rather be in place?

mikemearls18 points21 days ago
Bonus actions are clunky because they are solving the wrong thing. The problem is what you combo on your turn, not that you are making a combo of several action. So, for Cunning Action I’d redo it like this:

Cunning Action As an action, you do two of the following things. You can’t do one of these things twice: * Make a weapon attack * Dash * Disengage * Hide

In some ways, a more explicit approach would actually encourage some more fun design. from discussion AMA: Mike Mearls, D&D Creative Director.

With Wizards releasing Star Frontiers what can you say about future plans for that game?

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Comment from discussion With Wizards releasing Star Frontiers material on DriveThruRPG, what can you say about future plans for that game?

mikemearls27 points20 days ago
I think it would be really interesting to build an SF game using the D&D rules engine and drawing inspiration from authors like Iain M. Banks. I love the Culture series. AMA: Mike Mearls, D&D Creative Director.