Confirm or Deny: D&D4e would be going strong had it not been titled D&D

[Hussar]

Ok, question for those who think that 4e is irrational in its approach to HP, how do you feel about 5e? Because every single issue that 4e has with HP appears in 5e. Every single one.

Which is what really baffles me. The whole HP debate thing raged throughout 4e's run. It was a BIG DEAL. There are dozens or more threads on the forum discussing this, thousands of posts. Yet, 5e gets a pass. Other than a couple of hold outs, no one seems to get too wound up about how 5e deals with HP. I mean, good grief, 5e specifically says that HP work exactly the way they did in 4e.

I meaan, this is the quote from the 5e Basic rules:

Dungeon Masters describe hit point loss in different ways. When your current hit point total is half or more of your hit point maximum, you typically show no signs of injury. When you drop below half your hit point maximum, you show signs of wear, such as cuts and bruises. An attack that reduces you to 0 hit points strikes you directly, leaving a bleeding injury or other trauma, or it simply knocks you unconscious.

which is lifted, virtually verbatim from 4e. There's no broken bones, no gouges, not stabbing. You have cuts and bruises - ie. minor, largely ignorable damage. I get cuts and bruises when I go on a rather strenuous hike. I don't get cuts and bruises when someone assaults me with a sword. I get massive wounds, internal bleeding, gouges and whatnot. Mostly because I'm a big wussy and someone would carve me up like a Thanksgiving Turkey if they had a sword.
[MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] above is at least consistent here. He has a problem with HP, so uses a different system that doesn't use HP. 4e maybe makes the problem worse, I don't know. But, he's also said that it's HP, not any specific iteration of them that's the issue. But, if you accept 5e's HP, why is 4e such a bridge too far?

 

[Bedrockgames]

Ok, question for those who think that 4e is irrational in its approach to HP, how do you feel about 5e? Because every single issue that 4e has with HP appears in 5e. Every single one.

I never used the word irrational. I just found it troublesome to manage. 5E, from what I've read, isn't quite my cup of tea either with the rapid healing. It seems a little less in my face though than 4E and a lot of the 4E stuff is scaled back, so overall a good compromise. More like prior editions in some ways, but they clearly kept some 4E elements or 4E-like elements (which I expected). What I like about 5E is it feels like they are reaching out to the entire fan base, and not just trying to appeal to one narrow group of gamers.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I meaan, this is the quote from the 5e Basic rules:



which is lifted, virtually verbatim from 4e. There's no broken bones, no gouges, not stabbing. You have cuts and bruises - ie. minor, largely ignorable damage. I get cuts and bruises when I go on a rather strenuous hike. I don't get cuts and bruises when someone assaults me with a sword. I get massive wounds, internal bleeding, gouges and whatnot. Mostly because I'm a big wussy and someone would carve me up like a Thanksgiving Turkey if they had a sword.

The big difference for me, and again just based on reading, not on playing yet, is it seems much easier to ignore this definition. There is some handwaving for sure still (due to the rapid healing) but it just doesn't seem as difficult to overlook as it was with 4E, because the stuff kept coming up. I think with 4E, it just felt like the game kept reminding you of its definition of HP through the mechanics. But so many people run HP as physical damage.

Also this "Dungeon Masters describe hit point loss in different ways." (Not sure if 4E also mentions that).

I don't think the contention was so much about the definition it offered (I'm used to ignoring definitions in the book if the mechanics allow). It was the structure of the game really played to that definition. People objected to shout healing, healing surges, etc. Now much of that seems present in 5E to a degree, but it is much less so and we have many of the classic elements like the old class structures, restored.

Again 5E is the compromise edition. They need 4E and 3E (and 1E and 2E) players to buy in. I think we are all going into this understanding they would keep some of the 4E stuff.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

When PCs hit monsters and some NPCs with their swords those enemies do become injured. This is the asymmetry of the narration of hit point loss that Gygax mentions in the posts I quoted upthread.

That's a hard line for me. I just can't deal with that. It gives me a headache to even try.

 

[spinozajack]

4th edition and 5th edition might have literally the exact same definition for hit points, but 4th edition abilities and powers were designed in a vaccuum where you would have to make up weird justifications for how outcomes were actually arrived at. Let's say a party member is knocked out and doing some death saves. Then a warlord, a supposedly "martial" character, looks over from 15 feet away, and says "I inspire him to wake up using Inspiring Word". How does that work, exactly? How does an unconscious ally who cannot even move let alone hear you or be physically touched by you wake up all of a sudden, from being at death's door, from an inspiring and rousing speech from across the room, and without using magic?

See, in 5th edition there are much fewer although sadly not none, examples of such things happening. If you cast Healing whatever, it's magic. If you want to heal others you use magic spells or some kind of bandages that take time to apply, or you rest. But aside from Second Wind there is really nothing that allows a martial character to literally heal himself or heal others off the ground.

And that's the difference. 5th edition isn't perfect, but it makes a heck of a lot more logical sense in how things work and why things are happening, than 4th edition did. If you try to do a summoning ability, or a taunt, it's either magic or it requires a will save (or persuation, or charisma check). All those things were missing in 4th edition's "Come and Get it". There was literally no rational way to explain how half the powers worked in that game. And they didn't even try half the time. Even the martial characters with supposedly no magic were definitely magical in nature.

When an ability is non-magical and non-supernatural, I expect it to work like any reasonable person would, that being bound by some kind of rational idea of what's possible to do without magic. That might differ from one person to the next somewhat, but it definitely does not allow your character to turn invisible, or shout fallen allies back to full health when they were dying a second before.

The idea that HP are magic and can mean anything you want them to mean is exactly the issue. If they are so flexible as to allow characters or monsters to do absurdly ridiculous actions with no real justification or explanation, or is used to rationalize poor game design, that's a problem.

And that is why, to answer the OP, that I believe 4e failed. They actually took the vagueness possible of the definition of HP and dialed it up to 11 and just said ahh screw it, let's make a game without bounds or concern for story or logic and call it D&D, and people will buy it. It's New! It's Fresh! It's a Slap in the face to those people who are fond of logic! And you'll love it! Trust us, it's D&D! See, it's written right here. If something is printed on a cover of a book it must be true, right? It can't be anything but authentic in every way, right? People can't possibly argue otherwise, right?

 

[spinozajack]

By the way, the poll is fundamentally flawed. Those are not the only two logical reasons.

There is a third option that should be there:

C) The fundamental game was flawed which caused its demise, and it didn't live up to the name it was given or the expectations of what people wanted out of a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Those two things combined hastened its demise, but without D&D as a name it wouldn't even have been as (un)successful as it was. So it should be counted lucky that it was graced with such a title.

Everywhere you go, every review you read, everyone you talk to, will say the same thing. D&D 5e feels like playing D&D again. Because they went back to the roots and analyzed what were the fundamentals that made a game feel like D&D. They actually took the time and make it an express design concern to make the game feel familiar, because they learned their lesson and learned from their mistakes. 5e would not be the success story it was without the excesses of 3e rules or the divergence of 4e ones from what was expected. Or from listening to what players wanted, which they didn't do at all during the development of 4e. I remember hearing about it and then suddenly it was out. Never got consulted or surveyed or anything like that.

Hour long skirmishes, talking all kinds of jargon keywords that had no connection to the story, having to use a grid for combat because abilities required precise positioning, 8 page character sheets full of combat only abilities, terrible adventures that even those who wrote them complained about how the awkward rules got in their way. There are plenty of interviews on this very site that I've read recently with publishers who are unanimous that 5th edition is a much better system to design adventures for, it's far more elegant and don't require a template or page spread formula and big set ups for each and every monster that they place in there.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

By the way, the poll is fundamentally flawed. Those are not the only two logical reasons.

Yes, though you too left out numerous other options. Like, "4e isn't fundamentally flawed AND the expectations associated with the name D&D isn't the controlling factor that led to the existence of 5e."

Because as it is, we either have to agree that 4e "wasn't D&D," or we have to agree that 4e was a bad game. Because I think neither of these things, I cannot vote in the poll--I can't even see what the results are thus far.

 

[innerdude]

I agree it's not in 3E. I think there can be approaches to AD&D that approximate it, but equally there are features of AD&D that get in the way, namely, the lack of player-side rationed resources that allow the players to help dictate effort and pacing.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the closest I got to 4e-style in AD&D was GMing Oriental Adventures (which gives all PCs at least one ki power, and also has martial arts powers available to PCs).

That's a very interesting comparison with Oriental Adventures. And no, that playstyle is definitely not in 3e, at least not any campaign I've been a part of. It's interesting, because I kept wondering after switching to Savage Worlds, "What has happened to my game sessions?" (meaning it in a good way). Yeah, Savage Worlds was less complex than Pathfinder, and much, much easier to prep for GM-ing (seriously, it's so easy). But there was something going on in the character dynamics as well. The players' character choices were naturally pushing them into their roles in the fiction. To the point that one player said, "You know, I totally had this idea in mind that my character was pretty much going to be a power-tripping 'Monte Haul' type. But every time we play, it's like he has a mind of his own to go in a different direction."

The choices of skills, edges, hindrances, and even gear were creating these really obvious, yet really fun and easy-to-embrace "spaces" in the fiction--and when the players "played up" to those spaces, their enjoyment and effectiveness increased.

Something else interesting happened too, and I was going to actually ask you out of curiosity if you've seen this in 4e play as well. One of the characters specifically set up his character to sort of be the "anti-hero" rogue, the socially misanthropic, always-drunk-and-penniless guy. And yet, over and over, simply by playing to this character's "role" in the fiction, he ended up creating some of the most meaningful stories / fun hijinx----and yet STILL ended up being "the hero" in so many different situations. I suppose this might be "bad" if the player didn't actually want it to end up that way; if he or she really did want to be the anti-social, misanthrope non-hero. But my player loved it.

I keep seeing this, but I don't buy it! Or maybe I'm not sure what you mean by "screwy".

I assume, from your posts upthread, that you don't think of Savage Worlds "soaking" as screwy. Hit-points-as-mojo is basically the same thing. (With some of the exceptions noted upthread - no "blow through" for real injury, as there is in Savage Worlds, until 0 hp is reached, which itself can be handled either the 1st ed AD&D way as really dying, or the 4e metagame way as possibly dying, depending on resolution.)

Ah, sorry, I'll clarify. By "screwy" I mean, "Having no immediately obvious, universally applicable narrative resolution that will, under scrutiny, completely satisfy all aspects of both process sim and fantasy/heroic genre tropes."

And honestly, until working through it in my own mind in this thread, I actually did think "soaking" was a bit....off for me. I could never completely wrap my head around why the designers went with it. Understanding that "soaking with hero pool points" and healing surges were actually two sides of the same coin actually increased my regard for the nature of the mechanic significantly. Not because it feels better emotionally, per se, but because I could at least see the "why," and understand that it allowed for specific "down range" side effects and mechanics to work with it in parallel.

From a certain perspective Savage Worlds has a "hit point mechanic" like any other RPG, it's just that A) player characters and NPCs never have more than 3 hit points (marks on the wound/fatigue track), B) tend to be lost in increments of 1, 2, or 3 rather than 10/20/40, etc., and C) any hit point loss is ALWAYS considered real injury.

"Bennies"/hero pool points are a totally separate thing, and aren't considered "hit points"----they're player-activated narrative resolution control. They might prevent hit point loss, but aren't themselves hit points. Take away the option of "soaking" wounds through player narrative control, and Savage Worlds becomes deadly---not quite up to the level with Runequest or GURPS, but definitely in the same ballpark.

 

[innerdude]

Because as it is, we either have to agree that 4e "wasn't D&D," or we have to agree that 4e was a bad game. Because I think neither of these things, I cannot vote in the poll--I can't even see what the results are thus far.

But see, here's the thing---4e wasn't D&D. If you really wanted "D&D"---classic, absolute zero to super hero, Gygaxian, gamist-drifted-pseudo-simulationist D&D---4e was NEVER going to get you that game. It just wasn't.

But if you wanted high stakes, fictionally positioned / scene framed, gamist-drifted-light-narrativist, hero to nigh-upon-godhood gameplay, 4e is your baby. Assuming you can get over some of the dissociated hurdles, it's highly suited for that kind of gameplay. And frankly, if you're not in that camp, it's likely you've moved on from 4e at this point anyway, because why play a game that isn't giving you what you want?

Saying "4e wasn't D&D" is no insult to someone who likes 4e. If I'm a 4e fan and someone says that, my response would be, "Damn right it isn't, and I like it that way."

 

[pemerton]

That's a hard line for me. I just can't deal with that. It gives me a headache to even try.

If it's any consolation, I thought of you and your dislike of PC/NPC asymmetry when I wrote that post!