Mike Mearls Games

Boss Monsters and Control Spells

Legendary resistance is a cheap hack, jammed into 5e because we didn't have a better solution to the broken control spells that we had to include in the game for tradition's sake.

How's that for an intro?

As incendiary as the statement might be, it's fundamentally true. D&D changed over the years, but its content remained the same. The spells that give DMs headaches today had co...

Making 5e Deadlier

There are many complaints that it’s too hard to die in 5e. I think part of that comes from the weird safety zone that exists at 0 hit points. It takes a while to die. When you're rolling death saves, you exist in a weird, safe bubble. The rest of the party has a crystal clear understanding of your risk of death. A DM attacking a downed character feels vindictive, creating an uncomfortable dyn...

OD&D Meets 5e: Dungeon Exploration

Many years ago when I first launched the D&D 5e project, the design team took the time to play every edition of D&D. Our big takeaway from the process was that the core game play of D&D remained largely the same across every edition. The DM described a scene, the players argued about what to do, they did stuff, and the DM described what happened next.

However, the games diverg...

Diseases in 5e

The perils of having an above-average Constitution - everyone in my household except me is sick! Even my doughty Shetland Sheepdog is out of sorts. So today, I'm exposing you to my stray thoughts on diseases in 5e.

Here's my controversial take: I think that RuneQuest, and its setting of Glorantha, has the best fantasy take on diseases I've seen. In RQ, diseases are spirits that possess an...

Improved 5e: Monsters with Levels

Hey everyone!

For the past couple of weeks I've been working on a system for 5e monsters that uses level rather than CR. Each creature also has an XP value, so you can build encounters with the existing 5e encounter rules.

Each monster has an encounter role:

• Minions are weaker monsters that attack in hordes. Pit four minions against the party per PC.

• Tro...

  2025-09-28 14:28:55 +0000 UTC View Post

Some Real Fun Guys

The system reference document for D&D 5e lacks any background or flavor text for monsters. Personally, I love this. It forces me to look at a creature and build a story in my head to explain its existence without falling back on nostalgia. It's a fun challenge!

Lately I've been working on a new approach to designing monsters and building encounters in 5e. I've written about it before...

Improved 5e: Monster Levels

I literally can't think of anything that challenge rating does well.

Let's back things up and think of how a good system for rating monster strength would work. I think it should do the following:

• It should be driven by character level. The rating I use to measure a monster's strength should be easy to understand with respect to character level.

• It should allo...

  2025-09-16 12:00:43 +0000 UTC View Post

5e Control Spells are Broken

Last week I wrote about blast spells and how they don't do enough damage. Even worse, they don't scale well. This week, let's take a look at control spells.

Imagine we are playing a game. In this game, I can play one card per turn. One of my cards causes you to lose your next turn. That sounds powerful but perhaps niche. I lose a turn to make you lose a turn. You can imagine some situatio...

Priest Class

Hey all! Here's a PDF for the priest class for my streamlined revision of 5e. A few notes:

• Subclass is replaced with a set of divine blessings, each themed to a type of deity.

• I've fully replaced spell slots with spell points.

• You'll notice that some class features also allow you to spend spell points.

• Divine blessings also consume chan...

  2025-09-05 21:22:21 +0000 UTC View Post

10 Year Flaws: Scaling Spell Damage

One of the things I find fascinating about 5e is how deeply embedded some of its design flaws have become.

Take blast spells as an example. It's been obvious for years that they don't do enough damage at higher levels. Why hasn't this been fixed? I have no idea, but let's do it.

If you doubt my perspective, here's a 2025-09-04 17:32:29 +0000 UTC View Post

More Spell Streamlining

Last week I wrote about streamlining an existing spell to match its vibes. Vibe players and DMs start with the fiction and expect the rules to back up their impressions of how things work. When players talk about the rules getting out of the way, they're describing what happens when the vibe and the mechanics match up.

This week, let's look at how we can use the existing elements of 5e to...

Simplified 5e: Curating Spells

Nothing says "Magic!" like halting the game to spend a minute or three or ten looking up a spell and trying to figure out how it works.

Here's the sleep spell from D&D 5.5:

Sleep

Level 1 Enchantment (Bard, Sorcerer, Wizard)

Casting Time: Action

Range: 60 feet

Components: V, S, M (a ...

2025-08-29 15:48:01 +0000 UTC View Post

Simplified 5e: Spell Lists

D&D's spell lists are the clearest sign that the game needs an overhaul.

Most editions of D&D are designed with backward compatibility in mind. Each one dutifully takes the prior edition's spell list, converts its contents to the new rules, and then adds a few new spells to spice things up.

The thought process is pretty simple. People need the old spells to use the old conte...

Simplified 5e: The Mage

For paid backers, here's some reading material for the weekend: the mage class in all of its stripped down glory. I'll be talking in more detail next week about the class features and how the design came together. Until then, enjoy.

Streamlined 5e: Spell Points

Spell slots have been in D&D since the beginning. They've calcified into the game as part of what allegedly makes D&D what it is. I've always found that line of thinking to be odd. There's nothing about spell slots that's innate to the concept of fantasy roleplaying.

Spell slots do offer one, important benefit. They regulate how often you can use your most powerful abilities. That...

Streamlined 5e: Spell Philosophy

The process of streamlining a game requires you to do two things.

First, you need to understand the game's core mechanics. You're cutting stuff out. Cut something critical, and the game falls apart. You need a thorough understanding of what's going on under the hood.

Second, you need to know why you are streamlining. I can trim D&D down into this: roll a d20 and add your level. ...

Rewriting 5e

A funny thing happened at Gen Con. If you've been following my writing here for a while, you night remember that I took a pass at dramatically simplifying 5e a few months ago. That project has remained in the back of my mind. While working on Cthulhu by Torchlight, I felt that my mastery of 5e had slipped badly over the years. To help rebuild it, I grabbed the 5.2 SRD and rewrote parts of it. I...

Death or Glory!

First up, Gen Con was a blast. Easily the busiest I have been at the show in a long time. It's wild to consider how much tabletop gaming, and Gen Con along with it, have grown since I started designing games. I had to spend last week getting caught up on both work and home fronts, but now I should be back into the groove.

And speaking of which, I had the chance to playtest some material a...

Cthulhu and Dungeons in D&D 5e

About a week ago, a project I led called Cthulhu by Torchlight premiered on D&D Beyond. It's always pretty exciting to see a project release into the world. You can buy the book here.

My knowledge of D&D 5.5 is a little rusty, so I turned to a few experts to help build the product. One of ...

Odyssey Resting Rules

I've never been happy with the resting rules in 5e.

The resting rules are far too generous in how much they allow you to recover. It's far too easy to take on a few encounters, or even just one, and regain everything.

I think rests are flawed on two levels.

Generous to a Fault

The 5e resting rules give you a lot. Short rests can potentially let you recov...

Putting Magic Back into Magic Items

Here's the broom of flying from the SRD:

Broom of Flying

Wondrous Item, Uncommon (Requires Attunement)

This wooden broom functions like a mundane broom until you stand astride it and take a Magic action to make it hover beneath you, at which time it can be ridden in the air. It has a Fly Speed of 50 feet. It can carry up to 400 pounds, but...

2025-07-26 16:33:23 +0000 UTC View Post

Magic Items in Odyssey

I think AD&D 2nd edition was the last version of D&D to make magic items interesting. I used to love accumulating a janky pile of random tools and figuring out a way to make them work. Later editions turned magic items into a resource for making characters more powerful with augmented AC, attack bonuses, and damage.

That shift also came with a significant growth in character class...

Low Level Bestiary

Here's a selection of paid critters to populate your games. There are about a dozen monsters here, including a tier 2 dragon that would destroy a low level party. A few notes:

• Encounter building shows the number of creatures at each tier that make for a potential TPK. A is apprentice tier, tier 1 is levels 1 and 2, tier 2 is levels 3, 4, 5, 6, tier 3 is levels 7, 8, and 9, while t...

  2025-07-17 18:21:19 +0000 UTC View Post

Building Encounter Building

Many moons ago, encounter building in D&D consisted of:

• Pick the monster you wanted to use or roll on a random encounter table

• Roll the number of dice indicated on the table or in the monster's description to determine how many of those critters the party faced

• Run the encounter

What that system lacked in precision in made up for w...

The Condition of My Conditions

It's time to dive into monster design. Before we can do that, we need to address the elephant in the room about D&D and D&D-likes that use 5e: the game has moved away from a battle of hit points to a war of conditions.

It is far too easy to subvert HPs and take out PCs and monsters with spells like hynoptic pattern and force cage. I have a theory that people love playing D&D u...

Updated Core Rulebook

The core rules for players are done! There's just enough content to make characters and play through to 10th level. I need to flesh out a few more pieces, but the player side is in testable shape.

That means I'm on to monsters and treasure. I'll be building those out for the rest of the year, plus adding in more character options as I go.

Monster Remodel: Ettin

Last week I wrote about a new approach to monsters. This week, let's put that advice into practice.

This creature is aimed at 5e to allow you to use it at your table ASAP. I need to make some adjustments to the Odyssey math, but it will be easy enough to adapt it once that's done.

Step 1: Concept and Mechanics

The best monsters have a distinct identity. When you encounter on...

Mage Character Class

Here's the mage character class, a revised version of the magic-user. A few notes:

• I've shifted the class to focus heavily on schools of magic. The schools I use are more flavorful than D&D's. This document includes illusion, fire, and battle magic. I anticipate adding things like life magic for healing and summoning magic for conjuring creatures.

• The schools ar...

  2025-07-03 14:45:43 +0000 UTC View Post

Monster Roles + Psionics

I designed a lot of monsters for 4e. I led Monster Manual 3, along with the revision to the game's math. One of my fondest memories of working on D&D is sitting in Jeremy Crawford's home, working through the Essentials monster book from front to back to make final corrections. If we had to work all weekend to get a book out, we might as well do it in comfort, right?

4e had roles, a fo...

Odyssey Exploration Rules

You might remember that a few weeks back I talked about exploration. Since then I have run a number of games using those ideas. The rules are now fully fleshed out for use at your table.

Hopefully these rules also give you a sense of how Odyssey and 5e interact. If you look through the rules, they should work with both game systems. Since Odyssey and 5e use the same skill system, DCs and ...