Former Dungeons and Dragons designer Mike Mearls has acknowledged issues with the way encounters are balanced in the game and is working to address them. In a forum post on RPG site EN World, Mearls takes responsibility for the inclusion of Challenge Rating (CR) in the game, a system that helps Dungeon Masters balance encounters. He admits that CR is an unreliable yardstick for measuring an encounter’s difficulty and has developed a new point-based tool inspired by Warhammer 40k to address this issue. The new system assigns point values to characters and monsters, with the goal of having the same number of points on either side of a balanced encounter. Mearls, who was let go from Wizards of the Coast in December, plans to continue his DnD design work as a third-party creator. He is exploring new content beyond the bounds of his previous work, including psionics, new character class structures, and DM tools. He also intends to devise his own DnD setting, although he does not expect to have anything ready for publication in the near future. For more TTRPG content, readers are encouraged to check out a guide to all the DnD classes and races.
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Laid off by Hasbro, ex DnD designer wants to fix the game’s faults
