D&D 4E Ben Riggs' "What the Heck Happened with 4th Edition?" seminar at Gen Con 2023

[Gammadoodler]

Literally the only difference between a long rest and a short rest is the duration, so they are the same and serve the same purpose, right?

Literally the only difference between a raw egg, a three-minute egg, and a hard-boiled egg is the duration of cooking time, so people eat them all interchangeably, right?

This is so bizarre. There is such a massive design difference at play here that I literally don't know how to keep explaining this, other than to reiterate the following points-

1. The "E" in AEDU has a meaning.

2. Differences in duration ... matter.

3. If a five-minute rest was the same as a one-hour rest, then I am quite sure that it would be uncontroversial for you to post that short rests in 5e can be five minutes with no real changes to the game, and characters can have unlimited short rests. I am sure that Monks and Warlocks, at a minimum, will finally be happy!

4. And all of this ignores everything else about the pacing of 4e. Encounters in 4e are separated by ... short rests. The DMGin 4e itself defines encounters as being typically divided by short rests (and encounters end when the monsters die or flee). It provides further information on what to do if your players can't or won't take short rests between ENCOUNTERS. There's even further pacing information in the DMG2. This is about narrative pacing.

But sure. They share a name.

I mean it seems the case we're looking at is whether one system is abandoning verisimilitude and the other isnt.

From that perspective, in both cases the logic is "you can't do x thing all the time. You need to rest for y amount if time if you want to do it again".

Also in both cases, "x thing" is some fantasy BS with no comparative baselines and "y time" is an arbitrary amount of time established for game design purposes where the only baselines are other arbitrarily defined amounts of time.

In this light, I fail to see how either is "more believable" than the other.

I can see that naming things "encounter powers" rather than "short-rest abilities" is problematic though.

 

[Mannahnin]

I think the 5e default hour long short rest is an impediment to verisimilitude and to people actually using short rests in game.

It is hard to imagine people in a dungeon (say the fellowship in Moria) stopping and taking an hour long siesta before continuing on, much less the assumed baseline of twice an active adventuring day.

4e's view that it is the heroes catching their breath during an action movie cut scene after a fight scene is over makes more sense to visualize happening both in character and for players actually taking short rests.

As a 5e DM I use the DMG rest variant for short rests to be a breather (the DMG says 5 minutes but I just abstract it to a break), but keep long rests 8 hours.

Personally, when I change it, I go the other way. Short rests to a day, long rests to a week. Makes it ... interesting.

I like both of these variants for different campaigns, giving different experiences. The one week long rest is much better for a hex crawl/overland-travel focused game, where I don't want PCs to be able to nova on every single random encounter.

But I absolutely agree with you, Voadam, that generally speaking a 5 minute rest is much more verisimilitudinous and a better match to the fiction and the activity of dungeon-crawling than requiring an entire darn hour.

Although ironically the Fellowship in Moria is probably an example where the hour break fits better than nearly any other dungeon crawl-type activity in fiction.

Players still rarely take short rests in my games though.

Really? Do you have many players with monks or warlocks? Because that's a massive change for those two classes in particular, if the short rests become encounter-based.

Yeah, that's kind of shocking to me too. Though I guess I can imagine how even five minutes can be too long if you're really doing action movie pacing, chase scenes and bad guys getting away.

 

[darjr]

OK. Let me see. I’ll try to reiterate.
—————-
The text for rests in 4e and 5e are almost identical. In fact the latter was almost certainly initially cut and pasted from the prior. Definitely a 4e influence there.

The 4e AEDU (sp?) text talks about a rest and not just a time frame, and is definitely not lifted from WOW. That would have been a big problem. So any direct influence is not as clear.

So maybe 4es influence on 5e is obvious in the text and the argument of wows influence on 4e needs more work.
——————
Is that about right?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I mean it seems the case we're looking at is whether one system is abandoning verisimilitude and the other isnt.

From that perspective, in both cases the logic is "you can't do x thing all the time. You need to rest for y amount if time if you want to do it again".

Also in both cases, "x thing" is some fantasy BS with no comparative baselines and "y time" is an arbitrary amount of time established for game design purposes where the only baselines are other arbitrarily defined amounts of time.

In this light, I fail to see how either is "more believable" than the other.

I can see that naming things "encounter powers" rather than "short-rest abilities" is problematic though.

This goes back to the original post. What works (is more believable, breaks suspension of disbelief, etc.) for one person is not the same for everyone else. And it circles back to the inherent frustration you will see in these conversations.

Here, try and use this analogy that I alluded to earlier.

Person A: I didn't like The Last Jedi because I thought the Holdo Maneuver was unrealistic.

Person B: How can you say that? Did you see A New Hope? Why are all the spaceships flying around like WW2 airplanes, and physics seems to be out the window?

Person C: Both of you are crazy. You're worried about the physics of the X-Wings? What about the fact that everything goes "pew pew pew" in space?

See the point? Sure, it's all make believe. But everyone has a different point where things matter. You might not understand why one level is more believable than another, but that doesn't mean that it's not a real and salient difference for someone else.

It's not something that is amenable to logic, either. It is ... subjective, and driven by preferences. Which is why arguing with people about it is so fruitless.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

OK. Let me see. I’ll try to reiterate.
—————-
The text for rests in 4e and 5e are almost identical. In fact the latter was almost certainly initially cut and pasted from the prior. Definitely a 4e influence there.

The 4e AEDU (sp?) text talks about a rest and not just a time frame, and is definitely not lifted from WOW. That would have been a big problem. So any direct influence is not as clear.

So maybe 4es influence on 5e is obvious in the text and the argument of wows influence on 4e needs more work.
——————
Is that about right?

The concepts behind the short rest in 4e and 5e are completely different. Because (wait for it) the game is designed so that there is a short rest between every encounter. How do I know this? Because it's defined that way. Here, from the 4e DMG, p. 41:

WHEN IS AN ENCOUNTER OVER?
Typically, encounters are separated by a short rest and some amount of travel time, even if it’s as little as crossing the room to open the next door. An encounter ends when the monsters are dead or have fled and the characters take a short rest to regain hit points and encounter powers. The next encounter begins when the characters engage new opponents.

Effects that last “until the end of the encounter” actually last about 5 minutes. That means they never carry over from one encounter to another, as long as those encounters are separated by a short rest. If characters use them outside combat, or plow through multiple encounters without taking a short rest, they enjoy the effect for a full 5 minutes.

What if characters don’t take a short rest? Sometimes they feel as though they can’t—they have to get to the high priest’s chamber before the assassin strikes! Sometimes they just choose not to, perhaps because they hope to enjoy the benefit of an effect that lasts until the encounter ends. In any event, starting a new encounter without the benefit of a short rest after the last one makes the new encounter more challenging.

If you’re designing encounters in which you expect characters to move from one to the next without a rest, treat the two events as a single encounter. If the characters surprise you by running on to a new encounter without resting, it might be worth scaling back the new encounter a bit.


So, one more time. The reason I keep saying that the E means something is because it does. Quite literally, if there is no short rest, there isn't a new encounter! There are even additional rules (see, e.g., DMG2) that allow the DM to pace the game differently for chases and other events, and provide short rests in media res to match narrative needs.

If you don't understand that 4e is fundamentally different in this key aspect, then you won't realize why the difference isn't the duration, but the idea that short rests aren't actually "taken" so much as they are the boundaries between encounters.

 

[Gammadoodler]

This goes back to the original post. What works (is more believable, breaks suspension of disbelief, etc.) for one person is not the same for everyone else. And it circles back to the inherent frustration you will see in these conversations.

Here, try and use this analogy that I alluded to earlier.

Person A: I didn't like The Last Jedi because I thought the Holdo Maneuver was unrealistic.

Person B: How can you say that? Did you see A New Hope? Why are all the spaceships flying around like WW2 airplanes, and physics seems to be out the window?

Person C: Both of you are crazy. You're worried about the physics of the X-Wings? What about the fact that everything goes "pew pew pew" in space?

See the point? Sure, it's all make believe. But everyone has a different point where things matter. You might not understand why one level is more believable than another, but that doesn't mean that it's not a real and salient difference for someone else.

It's not something that is amenable to logic, either. It is ... subjective, and driven by preferences. Which is why arguing with people about it is so fruitless.

Certainly.

I believe the difficulty @Mannahnin was having with you is that it seemed you were making a 'factual' statement regarding the relative believability of the differing mechanics.

That being.

"4e encounter power mechanics are factually less believable and have fundamentally different in-game fiction tied to them than short-rest abilities used in other versions of D&D"

And they've been unable to reckon how either..

...a change in the duration of a rest represents a fundamental difference in game fiction

Or..

..how one duration is any more believable than another in any factual way.

 

[darjr]

The concepts behind the short rest in 4e and 5e are completely different. Because (wait for it) the game is designed so that there is a short rest between every encounter. How do I know this? Because it's defined that way. Here, from the 4e DMG, p. 41:

WHEN IS AN ENCOUNTER OVER?
Typically, encounters are separated by a short rest and some amount of travel time, even if it’s as little as crossing the room to open the next door. An encounter ends when the monsters are dead or have fled and the characters take a short rest to regain hit points and encounter powers. The next encounter begins when the characters engage new opponents.

Effects that last “until the end of the encounter” actually last about 5 minutes. That means they never carry over from one encounter to another, as long as those encounters are separated by a short rest. If characters use them outside combat, or plow through multiple encounters without taking a short rest, they enjoy the effect for a full 5 minutes.

What if characters don’t take a short rest? Sometimes they feel as though they can’t—they have to get to the high priest’s chamber before the assassin strikes! Sometimes they just choose not to, perhaps because they hope to enjoy the benefit of an effect that lasts until the encounter ends. In any event, starting a new encounter without the benefit of a short rest after the last one makes the new encounter more challenging.

If you’re designing encounters in which you expect characters to move from one to the next without a rest, treat the two events as a single encounter. If the characters surprise you by running on to a new encounter without resting, it might be worth scaling back the new encounter a bit.


So, one more time. The reason I keep saying that the E means something is because it does. Quite literally, if there is no short rest, there isn't a new encounter! There are even additional rules (see, e.g., DMG2) that allow the DM to pace the game differently for chases and other events, and provide short rests in media res to match narrative needs.

If you don't understand that 4e is fundamentally different in this key aspect, then you won't realize why the difference isn't the duration, but the idea that short rests aren't actually "taken" so much as they are the boundaries between encounters.

Yes, absolutely! but, at least in my post, im not talking about the concept or play, not really.

It may have been closer in those aspects at one point but I agree with you they are not now.

But the text itself is clearly derivative. I think that’s obvious. And at least in that way it’s a fact that 4e had an influence, even if just in copied text.

That’s at least something.

 

[Voadam]

Short cooldowns were mostly in the 4-10 second range so they could be used multiple times on an instance boss encounter. Medium cooldowns were in the 1-5 minute range typically, so you could use them once per instance boss encounter and by the time you cleared the trash monsters between boss encounters, they'd be back up again for use.

Then you have the long cooldowns. For a warrior, this included stuff like Shield Wall (reduced damage taken by 75% for 10 seconds) and Recklessness (increased crit rate and made you immune to fear for 15 seconds). They had a 30 minute cooldown so you wouldn't be able to use them on every boss encounter and they also shared a cooldown, so you had to pick which one you wanted to use (though usually that was kinda chosen for you based on what specialization you were).

Translating that concept to a TTRPG would be abilities you could use a couple times per encounter, abilities you could use once per encounter, and abilities you could use once a day (assuming you're building your game around X number of encounters per day).

Thanks!

Are the short 4-10 second cool downs things like how long between swinging a sword again, or are they separate powers in addition to swinging a sword?

It sounds like the short and medium cool down powers were each their own thing with a separate cool down while the 30 minute long cool downs were a choice of long powers with a shared cool down.

So depending on how long WoW fights lasted the short and medium were a bit like 4e at will and encounter powers but the dailies were not like 4e dailies where you can nova and do multiple dailies in one fight or where dailies can last through an entire fight.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Certainly.

I believe the difficulty @Mannahnin was having with you is that it seemed you were making a 'factual' statement regarding the relative believability of the differing mechanics.

That being.

"4e encounter power mechanics are factually less believable and have fundamentally different in-game fiction tied to them than short-rest abilities used in other versions of D&D"

And they've been unable to reckon how either..

...a change in the duration of a rest represents a fundamental difference in game fiction

Or..

..how one duration is any more believable than another in any factual way.

Naw. They are all just game mechanics. They are all, to a certain extent, abstractions and "wrong."

But different people have different threshholds as to how far they are willing to go in terms of those abstractions. Use the "hit point" example I used earlier. Hit points are an abstraction. For some people, going too far into that abstraction will become "too much." But that's a subjective and personal preference. Arguing with that is the same as saying that they can't complain about anything in Star Wars or Star Trek because of the "pew pew pew" sounds.

Heck, I have the same feelings when I see legal proceedings dramatized. I can take simplifications and dramatizations, but as soon as a show uses a real legal term incorrectly, it loses me completely and I'm out because I can't suspend disbelief anymore.

 

[Voadam]

Heck, I have the same feelings when I see legal proceedings dramatized. I can take simplifications and dramatizations, but as soon as a show uses a real legal term incorrectly, it loses me completely and I'm out because I can't suspend disbelief anymore.

I've had that happen with just seeing the ad for Double Jeopardy.

Me: "That's . . . not how that works."