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

[Voadam]

Spell-like abilities, mostly. Check out what a 3.0 pit fiend can do in that regard versus what a 3.5 pit fiend can do; it's rather stark.

Admittedly, this is a very niche area, and one that doesn't apply to a lot of monsters, but for some reason it's always stood out very strongly in my mind. The 3.0 pit fiend can identify targets worthy of corruption via detect good, lure them into sin with suggestion, and defile holy sites with unhallow, etc. The 3.5 pit fiend is basically just a combat machine, though it at least kept the 1/year wish.

Gotcha.

3.0's glass cannon outsider spell like ability platforms versus the 3.5 beefed up combat stat bruiser ones who can fight better at their CR class but have stripped down magic.

3.5 struck me the other way with a little more descriptions in the SRD (in that all monsters had one) and with more flavorful descriptions.

From the example pit fiends you linked to:

3.0 ". . ."

3.5 "A pit fiend often wraps its wings around itself like a grotesque cloak, and appears wreathed in flames."

For the actual MMs they are mostly the same brief descriptions but 3.5 has a little more.

3.0

3.5:

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I mean, exactly how it works is different, sure, but it follows the same basic reasoning.

No, it doesn't follow the same reasoning. In the 4e DMG, one of the actual examples of a short rest between encounters is crossing the room to open the next door.

Because it doesn't follow the same reasoning. It works different, because it follows completely different reasoning.

In 4e, a short rest is the boundary line between encounters. It's the basis for the "E" part of AEDU.
In 5e, a short rest is encounter-agnostic.

The reason I keep returning to this is it's one example that is emblematic of why some people took to 4e so well, and others bounced off of it so hard. If you viewed 4e fresh, it is a very well-designed game! If, however, you came into it with baggage from prior editions as to "how you should be playing," (as opposed to playing it like 4e should play), then it could be rough.

5e, on the other hand, is kind of the opposite. It suffers in the sense that it's hard to pin down exactly how people should be playing it. On the other hand, it's incredibly forgiving in many ways if you are playing it and just ad hoc'ing rules to make it more like prior versions of the game you might be familiar with.

 

[Umbran]

The idea that it's a failed, controversial, or divisive edition and it's a D&D game are not mutually exclusive.

But it's the enduring legacy that will never let it go, and it pollutes the community to continually accept these as universal truths. So maybe worry less about your own mental capabilities and drinking habits, and think about someone else who might want to try--or maybe even enjoy!--4e without this juvenile and tiresome rhetoric spewing constantly all over the internet.

Mod Note:
Folks, this kind of butting of heads is not going to get you anywhere good. Please stop.

And, especially - referring to the honest opinions held by others in a derogatory way (as, say, "...juvenile and tiresome rhetoric spewing constantly..." is insulting. It will generate conflict which, ironically, would continue the "enduring legacy" Mr. Lewis would like to avoid. So, stop that, too. Thanks.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

Delete.

 

[Voadam]

You could try, but you run into the problem that people doing so always run into. The general public understands that resting for a bit of time really is restorative.

Gotcha, I'm with you here.

The idea that someone might need to catch a night's sleep to replenish their energy is an extremely intuitable mechanic for a game to rest on.

I think it also works with

"The idea that someone might need to catch a night's sleepbreather for a few minutes to replenish their energy is an extremely intuitable mechanic for a game to rest on."

The specifics of how many X you get per day may be arbitrary and based on game engine concerns, but the recognition that a good long rest is a fantastic way to recover is not. That's why it's not the tail wagging the dog like the encounter-based unit for recovery is in 4e and why attempts to equate the two are generally rejected.

I think having both a short and long rest works narratively for recovering different levels of stuff which 4e's short and long rest do.

A short rest can recover your encounter powers and you can spend healing surges that you still have to recover some hp. It does not allow you to recover dailies or healing surges. It allows you to recover some cool stuff, but not top stuff to full.

A long rest allows you to recover daily powers, recover all hp, and recover all healing surges. It does more than a short rest gives you.

I might agree that there's nothing special about an hour, in particular, but it is substantially longer than 5 minutes which doesn't seem long enough for fully recovering from one death defying exertion to another. There's a reason most high performance runners wind down 10-15 minutes after their race and then rest more afterward and that's because 5 minutes isn't much rest time between major exertions. So yeah, I'd say there is an inherent difference in verisimilitude between a 5 minute recovery and an hour. And, again, that's easily intuitable based on our real life experiences.

I expect John McClaine Bruce Willis to spend some time between his multiple fight scenes catching his breath and picking glass out of his feet. This is what I narratively expect of a short rest. I do not expect this to take an hour before getting back up and hunting down bad guys again in the same building.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I just had a thought, I'm sure its come up before, but we also have 'rounds' in combat sport.

The idea that we can equate 1 15 minute round, with 3 5 minute rounds, is a false one. That minute to breath without the threat of violence, is very restorative as well.

Just something I'm thinking on.

I think the longest D&D combat I've been a part of went maybe 13 or 15 rounds..

..or almost 90 seconds
..1/2 a round of boxing and less than a third of a round of a UFC fight..
..half the duration of the Inigo vs Westley fight scene from Princess Bride
..or almost as long as the step test I took for my yearly physical

I think there is a temptation to think of D&D combat in the minds eye as something out of a Braveheart battle scene, where everyone is grizzled and worn down from hours of ceaseless violence. So something like an hour to rest "feels" right.

Where the (abstract) reality is that even the longest combat encounters are brutally short by most "real-world" standards.

An experiment for folks who think an hour is "more real"
1. Go back and watch the Inigo v. Westley fight,
2. Stop the video halfway through, and
3. Say to yourself "yeah, they're gonna need an hour to recover from that" and
4. See how you feel.

5. Then..reflect that what you just watched represents an encounter likely 3-4x the duration of a standard combat encounter.

Edit: To summarize..I think it's fair to say that D&D combat can often be very perilous, but I don't think it'd fair to think of it as particularly arduous (except maybe for players at the table).

 

[FitzTheRuke]

No, it doesn't follow the same reasoning. In the 4e DMG, one of the actual examples of a short rest between encounters is crossing the room to open the next door.

That is a weird example. How does crossing the room TAKE FIVE MINUTES? Sounds to me like someone wrote a dumb example, more than a rule on how it works. At any rate, I'm not denying that the usual expectation in 4e was that you rest between every encounter and in 5e that you only get to do it every 2-3 encounters. But I definitely don't see the "fundamental" difference that you do.

 

[Shardstone]

I guess everyone else here just assumed this, but can I highlight how insane it is that WotC is and apparently always has employed different factions of game design? Like, there should be a cohesive discussion to get your teams on the same page. If the most prominent people aren't working on the game anymore, and if the people working on the game don't agree about the philosophy or logic behind the game, then well...that explains a lot.

It's explains the mid adventure writing. It explains the half-assed additions to the core content we often get. It explains why some things seem overvalued and why pet projects seem to pass playtesting when they shouldn't. It just explains so much.

D&D isn't being designed by a cohesive team working together to create ever-better magic. It's literally being designed by Enworld but professionally, like someone said up thread. The entire thing is a circus, and for the last 10 years so many people have told me that the team at WotC "knows what they're doing" because they released a phenomenon. But in reality, they don't know what they're doing, the person who wrote said phenomenon isn't on the team anymore, and they don't have a cohesive vision for the game. This tracks with them constantly relying on freelancers as opposed to internal designers.

Wild. Just wild to me. What a break of the facade. This pretty much makes me take back a lot of my old opinions and now I'm not really a big fan of WotC's doing. Some of their books I'm sure I'll still like, such as Bigby's, but it seems like the D&D that's coming out is being made (has been made) by a chaotic team that doesn't seem to work well together. No game can reach its potential like that. How disappointing.

 

[Reynard]

I find it strange that the difference in time for cooldowns is being used as both an argument for 4e's difference from WoW and also 4e's similarity to 5e...

Once 4E enters a discussion, the thread becomes a Rorschach test. Same with alignment.

 

[Dausuul]

It's similar to the many issues with hit points. There are people that grudgingly agree with the abstract nature of hit points. But if you make it too "in their face," (damage on a miss, or the proverbial high level character who just jumps from their house down a chasm to go to work because they have the hit points for it), they revolt. Because everyone has a different tolerance level, and one person's "great design" is another person's "too far."

This is a key point. D&D does not strive for realism -- it is obviously wildly unrealistic in many ways. But it does strive for "stage realism." The systems do not need to stand up to scrutiny, but they must offer a narrative that seems credible in the heat of the game.

Hit points are an example of this. You get hit by an attack, you're damaged. The cleric casts a cure spell, the damage goes away. Too much damage, you die. That very simple narrative doesn't stand up if you examine it carefully, but it works fine in the middle of combat, and that's what is required.

But this means the names put on the mechanics are a really big deal. There is nothing wrong in principle with a warrior who is guaranteed to wear down an enemy's defenses even with their weakest attacks. But when you call the weak attack a "miss" and the wearing-down effect "damage," now that simple narrative becomes "You missed the monster. It falls over dead."

I maintain that 4E would have been much better received -- maybe not embraced, but at least not so reviled -- if the designers had simply put more thought into the names of the mechanics.