Development of Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition

The D&D 5th edition Player's Handbook (2014).

The development of Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition began in mid-2011, just three years after the release of Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition. The development of new edition so soon was seen as a response to poor sales and criticism of 4th edition.

The new edition, initially termed D&D Next, was undertaken in an open fashion with a large public playtest, ultimately incorporating 175,000 volunteer playtesters. Development of 5th edition was led by Mike Mearls, who had previously worked on 4th edition.

History

Background

Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition was initially well-received at its release in 2008, with pre-orders so high that Wizards of the Coast had to undertake another print run before the book even shipped. Anecdotally, retailers noted that it sold even better than the previous Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition (2000), which itself had been very popular.

However, 4th edition soon came under criticism, particularly from veteran D&D players. Many felt that it made too many changes to traditional gameplay elements. Players reported that combat took too long to resolve, had too many variables to track, and was reliant on miniatures. Fourth edition failed to be the success Wizards of the Coast had hoped, with many players instead embracing the more traditional games like D&D 3.5, Pathfinder, and retro-clones produced as part of the Old School Revival.

Several of the 4th edition design team were laid off, including lead designer Rob Heinsoo in 2009, and R&D manager Andy Collins in May 2010. Wizards of the Coast shifted D&D's product focus toward introductory products such as the Starter Set (4e) (2008), the D&D Essentials line, and the Castle Ravenloft board game.

Initial planning

Mike Mearls, a designer on D&D 4th edition, was appointed Group Manager for the Dungeons & Dragons Research & Development team. To address a perceived gulf between Wizards of the Coast R&D and the playerbase, Mearls worked with Bart Carroll to plan a web column called Legends and Lore, where Mearls would discuss D&D's past and future and seek feedback from players. The first such column, An Introduction, was posted on February 15, 2011.

Early articles questioned various assumptions of D&D 4th edition, such as the use of miniatures to adjudicate cover, the need to release multiple sourcebooks each month, growing complexity, the need for clerics, and skills and bonuses which increase with level.

Around April 2011, Mearls distributed a short thesis statement to the R&D team, describing his goals for the new edition. Mearls aimed to reunify the fragmented D&D playerbase by creating a new rules edition which supported diverse play styles while preserving traditional D&D concepts.

Early design concepts (2011)

Mearls sought to represent the core experience of D&D, which he described in terms of both mechanical concepts and three basic activities: exploration, roleplaying, and combat. Beyond core mechanics such as ability scores and hit points, many mechanics (such as feats) could be made modular, allowing players and DMs to opt in to their preferred level of complexity.

On the topic of skills, Mearls criticized the disparity between specialized and unspecialized characters, where someone trained in a skill might achieve impossibly high results, while tasks included to challenge to a specialist would be out of range to a non-specialist. He sought feedback from Monte Cook, one of the lead designers on D&D 3rd edition, and whose company Malhavoc Press had published Mearls' Iron Heroes. Cook suggested an innovative skill rank system which unlinked character level from check DC, and allowed automatic success in some cases. Mearls ultimately did not use Cook's suggestion, but praised how it removed the escalating bonus issue of earlier editions.

On September 20, 2011, Mearls announced that Monte Cook would take over the Legends & Lore column. In following week's column, Cook announced that he was now working on D&D at Wizards of the Coast. Cook's role involved examining the entire history of D&D, and use this information to determine where it should go in future.

Cook questioned the 3e/4e idea that magic items should be part of a character's expected build, suggested better teamwork, considered various possible tiers of rules complexity and modular rules which would allow D&D to simulate the functionality of any of the major earlier editions, suggested that complexity should increase with character level, and suggested abolishing move-equivalent and minor actions to speed up combat turns.

Mearls and Cook agreed that the rules should be customizable, but disagreed over implementation. Mearls thought a certain configuration of rules should be given as standard, with other rules as optional variants. Cook argued that variable features should be presented more like equally valid options, giving DMs more authority over the rules as was the norm in AD&D. The final game would ultimately resemble Mearls' approach more closely.

D&D Next announcement (2012)

On January 9, 2012, Wizards of the Coast announced the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons, termed D&D Next. At this stage, an internal Friends & Family playtest had already begun with employees and their own D&D groups, and would soon extend to Wizards of the Coast internal playtesters, with plans for a public laytest. Wizards of the Coast's recent hiring of third edition designer Monte Cook had already lead to speculation that a new edition was in the works, and was taken as a good omen by many D&D traditionalists, who hoped it presaged a return to D&D's roots.

Cook envisioned the new rules as one where different players in the same group could build characters in the style of different editions of the game rules, with the goal of reunifying fans of past editions. All characters would have core features such as ability scores and armor class, which appears in every edition since Original D&D, but features like skills, feats and powers would be optional. Cook envisioned a modular system where features like 3e's character customization or 4e's tactical complexity would be optional, allowing players to simulate the feel of any past edition.

Cook described a return to the Vancian magic system to D&D, which had been removed in favor of the At-Will/Encounter/Daily power system in 4th edition, although non-Vancian options would continue to be available. Designers were considering feats granting small at-will magical abilities.

On March 5, 2012, Mearls announced that the new edition was moving into a new phase of development, during which he took over the Legends & Lore column as Monte Cook shifted primarily to a design role. To gain insight into D&D's roots, Mearls began running a D&D campaign in the Wizards of the Coast offices using the 1981 Basic Set. Mearls was heavily influenced by how quickly D&D play moved under these rules, and sought to emulate this style of play in the new edition. Playtesters would later describe speed of play as a major benefit of the new rules.

Specific issues tackled by Mearls at this time included save-or-die effects, which Mearls enjoyed using occasionally but felt undermined the protection afforded by hit points, and D&D 4e's non-traditional role-based character class design.

D&D Next playtest (2012)

On April 25, 2012, Monte Cook announced his unexpected departure from Wizards of the Coast and the D&D Next project, citing differences of opinion with the company. Mike Mearls was disappointed by Cook's departure, and some players took it as a bad omen for the upcoming edition. Mearls took the opportunity to announce a date for the public playtest beginning on May 24th. In 2015, Cook described his reasons as disillusionment with Wizards of the Coast, who failed to follow through on revitalization plans such as restoring the print edition Dragon magazine and hiring back experienced writers.

At this point, the entire D&D Next team consisted of Bruce Cordell, Rob Schwalb, Jeremy Crawford, Rodney Thompson, Miranda Horner, and Tom LaPille, with Mike Mearls as overall D&D R&D lead.

Designers used a two-week "scrum" approach in order to iterate rapidly and receive playtest feedback about what worked and what didn't. By September 2012, over 85,000 people had taken part in the D&D Next playtest, and over 175,000 by the product's release.

Mearls' design goals for character classes were to make them unique, iconic, and recognisable both to existing players and non-players familiar with fantasy archetypes. Clerics should have powers which reflect their deities but remain primarily a support character rather than an attacker; fighters should be equal to wizards at high level; and rogues should be unpredictable and have the ability to reliably use skills. Wizards changed the most to avoid caster dominance, now having fewer spell slots, particularly at high level, and spells do not automatically scale with level, but in exchange they would have more powerful at-will cantrips. An abandoned suggestion was that wizards who take damage would have a chance to miscast the next round.

In the earliest playtest, "Hit Dice" were introduced as a mechanic to recover hit points between combat, reducing reliance on healing classes in the party. Mearls had previously used a similar mechanic, reserve points, in his low-magic d20 system Iron Heroes, and in D&D 4th edition's healing surges. Hit dice for classes were also changed from earlier editions, where they determined a character's base hit points: wizards now used d6, clerics and rogues d8, and fighters d10. Hit Dice for HP recovery were originally optional, in order to support a more deadly or old-fashioned style of play.

The initial public playtest introduced several major mechanics which would appear in the final D&D 5e release. These included the advantage and disadvantage system, at-will wizard spells, plain language in spell descriptions, 4e-style backgrounds, the one-action one-move combat turn, and rogues' skill mastery. It introduced the modified Vancian casting system where spellcasters prepare a set of spells and cast spontaneously from these, although originally this was given only to the cleric, to differentiate it from other classes and grant better access to healing spells. Abandoned ideas included racial increases to class hit die or weapon damage die type, turn undead as a spell, and "themes" (a role-like structure).

Another key design concept was bounded accuracy, described on a post on June 4, 2012. In earlier D&D editions, particularly 3rd and 4th, characters gained large level-based bonuses to certain rolls such as attacks and skill checks, but often did not see an increase in competency as measured by rate of success, as the target number needed to succeed also increased in order to provide a level-appropriate challenge. This also created a growing disparity between the abilities of specialized and untrained characters. Bounded accuracy removed the assumption that numbers scale with level, instead allowing competency to come from other factors such as increased weapon damage. For example, the decision was made to cap magic item bonuses to +3.

To simplify the game at entry-level, humanoids such as kobolds lost 4e-style minor group combat powers such as the kobold's "Shifty" trait, with group combat powers instead granted by higher-level leader units.

In response to feedback that fighters were too boring, the team suggested a feature called "combat superiority", dice which could be used to deal extra damage or empower unique combat abilities. Combat superiority subsumed earlier ideas for combat maneuvers (a focus of Mearls' 2005 work Iron Heroes) and class-independent "themes", creating something resembling the final release concept of class archetypes. Wizards were planned to gain an "arcane tradition", as well as allowing some underused spells (such as utility spells) to be used more often in a non-Vancian manner.

By the August 2012 playtest, "themes" were re-named "specialties", and represented bundles of feats to focus on a given role. Feats were granted at level 1 and every third level, as in D&D 3.5. Backgrounds were also in the rules, working similarly to the finished game. Exotic armors appeared in the standard rules (displacer beast hide, mithral chain, dragon scale). Skills granted +3, and the many knowledge-based skills were now known as "Lore", e.g. "Historical Lore", or "Undead Lore". Masterwork weapons appeared, granting +1 damage. Classes granted ability score bonuses. Rogue subclasses were known as Schemes. The warlock and sorcerer were added to the playtest. The nine-alignment system was back, plus the Unaligned alignment. The XP table reached level 2 at 650 XP. Saving throws for all six ability scores appeared. Critical hits dealt maximum damage. Negative hit points still existed, down to a negative number equal to Constitution score plus character level; a failed death saving throw dealt 1d6 damage.

New lore was invented for the sorcerer as an individual possessed by a second otherworldly soul which struggles for dominance, ultimately transforming them into some otherworldly creature. The final game would not use this exact lore, following feedback that it strayed too far from the established understanding of the sorcerer's identity, but would include a variety of sorcerous origins. Mearls also considered making the rogue's sneak attack an optional ability. Mearls initially intended to include 3e-style multiclassing, as well as prestige classes as they had originally been envisioned by Monte Cook as respresenting organizations or setting elements, but these would also not appear in the final version.

Magic item attunement first appeared in playtest on October 8, 2012, limiting attuned items to 3 per character to constrain how powerful a character can become through items alone. Attunement was initially envisaged to convey some thematic purpose, such as a curse or special purpose.

In the next patch, wizards gained arcane traditions which granted at-will spells and a single fast-recoverable signature spell; in the final release, at-will spells were detached from arcane tradition and arcane recovery worked differently. Rogues lost their intended reliable skill use feature, and gained fighter-style expertise dice. Clerics lost channel divinity, but gained archetypes based on deity type, which would appear in the final version. Backgrounds increased from granting three skills to four.

An unused early idea was to cap the game at level 10 in order to avoid complications associated with high-level play. By November 5, 2012, this had been dropped in favor of a 20-level play, as had been the norm in 2nd and 3rd editions. The idea of capping the game at low level had previously been popularized by E6, a fan variant of D&D 3.5 which limited the game to level 6. Another unused idea was to give high-level characters the ability to establish things like a thieves' guild, temple or stronghold, as had been an option in AD&D.

Rules elements intended to be included as optional included alternative magic systems, tactical combat, mass battles, skirmish battles, planar travel, gritty wounds, and realm management.

Development of the monk and paladin took place late in 2012, with resulting influence on core mechanics. Casting would be more standardized across classes, sneak attack would be a situational bonus damage (as in 3e) rather than a maneuver (as in 4e), and paladins were intended to have powers based on alignment, although this would change in the final version to be based on a particular ethos. However, Mearls preferred alignment to be a background descriptor, imagining detect evil to detect demons and undead rather than people of evil alignment, thus having only situational use.

Mearls also wanted to beef up the importance of damage-dealing spells, which had become weaker as editions increased monster hit points; and to soften instant one-save-or-die effects.

Continued development and playtesting (2013)

The D&D Next playtest and development cycle continued throughout 2013. The team's goal here was to establish a core basic form of D&D, which could be stated in 16 pages plus character class specific material. It would focus on quick-start play, fewer combat options, more emphasis on the use of ability score checks, and the relatively free-form play of oldschool Basic D&D. The standard rules would reflect a great complexity and detail, including backgrounds, multiclassing, classes beyond the core four, and robust rules for many situations, as was the standard in D&D 3e. Finally, a set of optional advanced rules, analogous to Unearthed Arcana (3e) (2004), would offer features like henchmen, magic variants, tactical miniature combat with a grid, strongholds, critical hit tables, lingering injury rules, sanity, firearms, and action points.

Rules were tested for overland travel, exploration and mapping. The barbarian was worked at this point, but the playtest version was delayed. A playtest packet released on March 20, 213, incorporated the druid, paladin, and ranger. Fighter bonus weapon damage was replaced with multiple attacks. Druids had wild shape from level 1 and selected from various circles, with Circle of the Oak focusing on spellcasting and Circle of the Moon focusing on wild shape. Paladins similarly gained oaths which granted unique abilities, and rangers still had favored enemy bonuses. Rangers had the ability to dual-wield with two one-handed weapons.

Mearls revisited the concept of level tier, an explicit feature of D&D 4e which he traced as far back to the campaign focus shifts between the 1983 Mentzer D&D Basic, Expert, Companion, Master and Immortals rules. D&D Next considered an Apprentice Tier (Level 1-3), where players would level up once per session, and experienced players could skip to level 3; Adventurer Tier (Level 4-15), where most play occurred and players levelled up around once per two sessions; and Legacy Tier (Level 16-20), where player characters control kingdoms or armies and levelled up once per three sessions. This tier configuration would not appear in the final version, but its influence can be seen in classes which do not gain their specialist archetype until level 3.

Feats were initially intended to be acquired at different rates by fighters and rogues to make them more versatile, with the alternative of gaining +1 to an ability score to a maximum of 20. Feats were more powerful, and Mearls believed that they could replace prestige classes, drawing influence from D&D 4e's paragon paths which allowed players to gain special abilities without diverging from their core class features. By April 15, 2013, feats were considered which were more powerful than in earlier palytest iterations. Feats and skills would be optional.

On April 29, 2013, the concept of subclasses was fixed in the playtest, incorporating established D&D Next class subtypes like wizard traditions, as well as traditional class variants appearing in previous editions as kits or prestige classes, such as the gladiator or assassin.

On June 10, 2013, Mearls revealed new mechanic called a "downtime system", where player characters between adventures may seek to gain social influence, make money, engage in research/training, or manage followers and holdings. Downtimes allowed training in background-style proficiencies.

In an article titled Playtesting Dragons, Mearls introduced legendary creatures, having legendary actions. Legendary creations were intended to replace the 4e "solo" creature type, which he criticized as a "mechanical contrivance". A statblock for a black dragon shows four legendary actions, personality statistics, two-axis alignment, lair actions, regional effects, and a lack of space/reach entry.

An article on July 1, 2013, discussed D&D Next's approach to cosmology. The primary goal was to make past material consistent, making some tweaks to lore to ease this process. The elemental planes were originally to be a three-ringed phase from the border elemental planes (bordering the material plane and possible to adventure on), the deep elemental (matching descriptions in the Planescape lore), and the elemental chaos. The Feywild was initially considered a border between the positive energy plane and material plane. Planescape and the Great Wheel would be the default planar cosmology of D&D once again. Some consideration was even given to the Spelljammer setting, which traditionally linked other campaign settings together. The team also gave focus around this time to monster lore.

Feats became an optional mechanic, and absorbed the "specialty" concept. Characters now gained two ability score bonus points instead of one, or optionally a feat instead. To encourage roleplaying, bonds, flaws, and Inspiration were introduced.

In a post on July 29, 2013, Mearls outlined the design team's intent on statistics, with a bonus progressing from +1 to +6 for attacks, saving throws, and checks; narrower number ranges to ensure character optimization does not become necessary to succeed; and hit points as the primary feature allowing high-level characters to survive low-level creatures easily, rather than armor class and saves rendering them unable to hit.

Multiclassing was further refined, resembling D&D 3.5's system but with better balance. Subclasses were under development handle mixed concepts: the eldritch knight as a fighter/mage, and the warden as a ranger/druid. Subclasses were envisaged as a tool the DM could use to establish the campaign world; at the same time, they would allow the ready introduction of new class ideas without reinventing the core mechanics, such as introducing the psion and artificer as subtypes of wizards.

Gen Con that year ran D&D Next events The Siege of Candlekeep and Murder in Baldur's Gate (2013), and announced that the next playtest packet would be the final one.

By September 16, 2013, it was announced that skills would be presented as subtypes of ability checks, presented such as "Strength (Athletics)". Professions would appear as background features. Rogues could become experts in a field, gaining a +5 bonus. Now, proficiency bonuses ranged from +2 to +6. An option to use a random die roll instead of a flat bonus was removed at this point. Most of the final skills were in place by this point; Search (Int) and Sense Motive (Wis) would be replaced in the final product by Investigation (Int) and Insight (Wis), and Medicine moved from Int to Wis.

The final D&D Next public playtest backet was released on September 19, 2013, with a revision to wild shape on October 14. The final game would still not be released for almost a year.

Next development phase (2013-2014)

Wizards of the Coast announced the next phase of D&D Next development in September 23, 2013. The D&D Next team would finalize the design and fix any issues over the next several months. At the same time, a second design team would stress test the system and develop additional optional systems, including tactical miniatures, a player-driven dramatic storytelling variant, guidelines for players or DMs to build their own subclasses, and the downtime system.

A brief attempt was made to revive the AD&D approach of classifying all character classes into four categories (Warrior, Trickster, Mage, and Priest). More effort was given to monster lore, paying attention to the creature's personality as defined in past works.

The warlock was worked on at this point, integrating elements of the otherworldly patrons of the 4th edition warlock, in turn drawing on the third edition binder and hexblade classes.

Also in this development phase, monsters gained proficiency bonus to saving throw DCs based on challenge rating. The initial plan for monster DCs to scale with level was mentioned in a July 2013 post, the same which announced the proficiency bonus for player characters. However, according to Mearls, monster DCs were originally intended to be set individually by the monster designer. The decision to use proficiency bonus for monsters was, he says, a miscommunication with the design team.

A major design ethos of D&D 5th edition was elegance, a concept popularized in software and usability design, where systems behave intuitively and support the user's goals. Examples include the concentration mechanic, which was finalized by December 2013, which was designed as a caster-specific feature to avoid encumbering non-spellcasters with this additional rule. Limiting concentration to one spell also helped prevent casters from loading up on multiple buff spells. The less tangible concept of "feel" was also important.

The developers exceeded goals for positive playtest feedback. Mearls thanked the team, including Rodney Thompson, Rob Schwalb, and Bruce Cordell for design work; Jeremy Crawford, Chris Sims, Peter Lee, and Scott Fitzgerald Gray for developing and editing to improve usability; and Matt Sernett for his encyclopedic knowledge of D&D lore.

Significant rules updates made post-playtest included bringing back 4e-style passive Perception, to reduce rolls; simpler group stealth and exploration; a limit on extra actions, now termed bonus actions; a base speed of 30 feet for all races; speed reduction in heavy armor based on Strength; milestone XP; and wild magic sorcerers.

Weapon-specific powers were ultimately abandoned due to the amount of up-front complexity, although some would later be implemented through feats. Automatic skill successes were also abandoned. Bards were promoted to full casters, their music was replaced with Bardic Inspiration, and they gained a "jack of all trades" style ability. Monsters were given more lore linking them to other monsters or elements, often pulling together disparate lore elements from past editions.

From D&D board games Lords of Waterdeep and Castle Ravenloft, designers learned that ease and speed of setup was important to encourage players to get started and play more often.

On April 28, Mearls described an optional set of mass-combat rules called Battlesystem. Like D&D 3rd edition before it, the planned mass-combat system ultimately did not appear in the final release.

Publication (2014)

On May 27, Mearls announced Basic Dungeons & Dragons, a free PDF available on the Wizards of the Coast website, offering introductory rules for the game. Release dates were announced for the Starter Set (5e) (2014) and the three core rulebooks. An equivalent to the Open Gaming License was planne dfor early 2015. The Legends & Lore article series continued through to the release of D&D 5th edition, giving previews of the upcoming release.

On June 16, Mearls announced that the final version of the Player's Handbook (5e) (2014) was completed and sent off to the printers a week earlier, while the Basic D&D PDF, Dungeon Master's Guide (5e) (2014), and Monster Manual (5e) (2014) available. Dungeon Master's Guide rules were still not finalized by July 7, and difficulty fitting all the planned monsters into the Monster Manual led them to increase the book's pagecount by 32 pages.

Mearls announced the intent to continue listening to player feedback and incrementally adding errata to the core rulebooks in future printings. A long-term goal was to maintain D&D 5th edition and keep the edition in print for a long time.

References

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