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

[billd91]

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.

I... don't think it's a dumb example. Remember, this was the edition that encouraged DMs (and players) to get to the action, the interesting stuff. So, glossing over the 5 minutes of rest by encouraging it to be satisfied by walking across the room to the next door (and next encounter)? Not at all surprising. It's right in character.

 

[Scribe]

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.

Yeah, this is the real tea I want.

And I've been saying this, for a looooooooong time.

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.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I... don't think it's a dumb example. Remember, this was the edition that encouraged DMs (and players) to get to the action, the interesting stuff. So, glossing over the 5 minutes of rest by encouraging it to be satisfied by walking across the room to the next door (and next encounter)? Not at all surprising. It's right in character.

Hmm.. Well, I guess Snarf's right and all of us that actually imagined it as a five-minute break, in which you have a drink/snack, bind your wounds, adjust your armor, and take a break to refocus your morale, were always doing it "wrong"!

No WONDER we don't see much of a difference from 5e's hour break! We've wrongly been describing them the same the whole time!

EDIT: I'm being snarky, but I AM willing to concede that my always-using-D&D-to-tell-stories attitude probably really DID always have me running D&D with story behind any mechanic. Not just glossing over a thing (like the act of spending healing surges) without having the characters EXPERIENCE something.

 

[billd91]

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.

I might expect the movie to give me no more than a few minutes of him doing it before it cuts to something else or there's a scene shift of an indeterminate time. I don't necessarily expect him to be done in 5 minutes or to not try to catch a longer breather between encounters with the bad guys when he can.
I recognize there's a difference between the tempo I expect as an action movie watcher vs the tempo I think is reasonable for an action movie character living the story to maintain.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I might expect the movie to give me no more than a few minutes of him doing it before it cuts to something else or there's a scene shift of an indeterminate time. I don't necessarily expect him to be done in 5 minutes or to not try to catch a longer breather between encounters with the bad guys when he can.
I recognize there's a difference between the tempo I expect as an action movie watcher vs the tempo I think is reasonable for an action movie character living the story to maintain.

Since the PCs are the one's living the story, that's what I care about insofar as what actually happens. You can handwave through the time at the table if that's what everyone wants, but the real amount of time still occurred.

 

[Shardstone]

This also makes all the long conversations about learning D&D's design process, talking about design, WotC decisions in books etc, is all pointless. What we get is just what we get, and we're lucky to get it, and it's cohesive we're even luckier. The design philosophy is liquid and changes and isn't easily enforced, and JC as editor hammer things that he thinks don't work until they kinda do. Ultimately, D&D's design can be best described as slapped together, and though it does work, it's working in spite of everything else in the universe. Therefore, designing new content for D&D means subscribing to non-existent design paradigms that your work gets harshly judged on by other fans.

tldr, WotC gets away with doing the same stuff fans accuse third parties of doing. There's no difference. In fact, C7 and Free League probably have more cohesive visions for their games than WotC.

Yeah, this is the real tea I want.

And I've been saying this, for a looooooooong time.

 

[Scribe]

tldr, WotC gets away with doing the same stuff fans accuse third parties of doing. There's no difference. In fact, C7 and Free League probably have more cohesive visions for their games than WotC.

The most important parts?

"Wizards of the Coast"
"D&D"

Maybe that belongs in the "Unpopular Opinions" thread, but its true even if people dont want to hear it.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I might expect the movie to give me no more than a few minutes of him doing it before it cuts to something else or there's a scene shift of an indeterminate time. I don't necessarily expect him to be done in 5 minutes or to not try to catch a longer breather between encounters with the bad guys when he can.
I recognize there's a difference between the tempo I expect as an action movie watcher vs the tempo I think is reasonable for an action movie character living the story to maintain.

I think there are two elements of short rests that could be seen as in something of a narrative conflict.

Hit Die healing and
Short Rest abilities

I think when you look at the substance of each you get a different impression of how long a rest should be.

I think any kind of nonmagical healing in D&D feels like it should be time consuming. You were almost dead a minute ago, surely you need to take it easy for a bit.

But consider the "powers".

A burnt out level 5 monk who spent all their ki on flurry of blows.. made 5 extra punches in 30 seconds.

A burnt out level 5 battlemaster..made 2 bonus attacks and tried to trip 4 dudes (or something).

Do we really think that punching an extra 5 times in 30 seconds is a level of exertion that requires an hour of recovery time?

 

[billd91]

I think there are two elements of short rests that could be seen as in something of a narrative conflict.

Hit Die healing and
Short Rest abilities

I think when you look at the substance of each you get a different impression of how long a rest should be.

I think any kind of nonmagical healing in D&D feels like it should be time consuming. You were almost dead a minute ago, surely you need to take it easy for a bit.

But consider the "powers".

A burnt out level 5 monk who spent all their ki on flurry of blows.. made 5 extra punches in 30 seconds.

A burnt out level 5 battlemaster..made 2 bonus attacks and tried to trip 4 dudes (or something).

Do we really think that punching an extra 5 times in 30 seconds is a level of exertion that requires an hour of recovery time?

1) Since healing (bandaging, catching a breather, hydrating, getting a snack) is happening at the same time as recovering specific powers, I don't see a reason to consider them separately.
2) But if I did, I might consider them this way: a monk who fought their hardest and exceeded their normal limits 5 times! Or a battle master who fought their best fight and exceeded their normal limits several times!

I expect that even if a monk isn't burning their ki powers on flurry of blows, they're fighting their best fight all the time - dealing with the stress and toll on their body and mind. Then they tap their reserves to push themself farther. It's not just "oh, a chance to roll another attack <clatter clatter>" that we have operationalized as the game mechanics. It's a monk pushing themself to a higher level of performance to win a deadly fight.

 

[deganawida]

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).

Well, some of that may come from those of us who started in older editions. A round in AD&D 2nd Edition was one whole minute.