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

[Gammadoodler]

As a general rule, feel differently is not good advice to give to other people when it comes to discussing games.

I'm not sure its any less valid than "manage your expectations"

If you are bothered by how something feels, it's not unreasonable to apply some amount of introspection to it and determine how reasonable your concern is and/or if it can be alleviated by a change in mindset.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Really, remove miss and say it does a minimum damage upon an attack.

And make sure it works that way.

Cause I can “miss” someone with a punch from several miles away and there is only One Punch Man and he def doesn’t miss.

Fair point. I wonder if some of this is general language stuff of "hit" vs "miss". Maybe it could be mitigated by using "success" vs. "failure" (or something similar) to describe the results of attacks instead?

It would also bring attack language and save language into alignment.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I'm not sure its any less valid than "manage your expectations"

If you are bothered by how something feels, it's not unreasonable to apply some amount of introspection to it and determine how reasonable your concern is and/or if it can be alleviated by a change in mindset.

No, it is completely different, because you are, in effect, lecturing other people on how they are reacting, and telling them that their reactions (how they are interpreting the fiction) is wrong, because you do it differently.

I've used this example before, so I will use it again.

Everyone has a different level of suspension of disbelief when it comes to fiction. For example, I can watch a show that features legal proceedings, and the fact that they do things that are wrong usually doesn't bother me. Are opening statements and closing arguments three minutes long? No. But this is a fictional representation of a case- not reality.

And yet, if a show uses a legal term incorrectly, it will throw me out of the fiction completely. Right there, it's a step too far. It's gone from something I can accept in terms of a necessary suspension of disbelief, to something that is so wrong, I can no longer enjoy the fiction. Will the same thing bother you? Probably not! But it bothers ME. And for you to tell me to "feel differently" about it borders on arrogance. Different people have different preferences.

We are discussing games. People have repeatedly explained to you something that bothers them, and why. We are not demanding that you apply introspection and change what you like or manage you expectations, nor should we. It is beyond explanation why you don't extent the same courtesy to others.

People are allowed to like what they like, and to tell people that they need to feel differently misses the point. Or, more correctly, why should we feel differently, and not you? The proper answer is that, perhaps, we both can feel exactly how we want, and that's totally cool.

 

[darjr]

Fair point. I wonder if some of this is general language stuff of "hit" vs "miss". Maybe it could be mitigated by using "success" vs. "failure" (or something similar) to describe the results of attacks instead?

It would also bring attack language and save language into alignment.

Oh, that last bit? Do not want.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Hit points in any edition of D&D are far too abstract to actually say that losing hit points counts as "being injured" in any physical sense, save for three specific contexts:
(1) The minimal amount of hp possessed by a low-level/low-CR/low-HD creature (depending on edition);
(2) A certain proportion of hp possessed by a very large creature (that has a lot of "meat" to cut through to inflict a mortal wound);
(3) The last few hp of a PC/NPC/monster that has a lot of them.

As such, this reading of AC doesn't make sense by my reckoning beyond those contexts.

In fact, given what hit points have varyingly been said to represent across the editions, "damage on a miss" is entirely sensible within the fiction.

And indeed, at least one OSR game - Worlds Without Number - has a mechanic that is very close to "damage on a miss" as implemented in 4e, in the form of Shock (free edition pg. 43), which to me suggests that "damage on a miss" feeling incongruous to a player is not the result of some genuine fact about what is going on in the fiction, but instead the result of how that player conceives of the goings-on in the fiction - which is fine as far as it goes, but it also means (a) that they could just conceive of those goings-on in a way that reconciles with the mechanics instead of in a way that doesn't; and (b) if they do not that is a choice they have made. (It's their choice to make, sure, but it still is what it is.)

A big part of it is calling it "damage on a miss". On the face of it, it's nonsensical. You have to re-frame something like that in the text, not just assume players will imagine a way to make it work in their minds so the rules work as written. In some ways, it's the tripping ooze all over again.

 

[Mannahnin]

Fair point. I wonder if some of this is general language stuff of "hit" vs "miss". Maybe it could be mitigated by using "success" vs. "failure" (or something similar) to describe the results of attacks instead?

It would also bring attack language and save language into alignment.

I'm reminded of an excellent post/discussion by Ben Laurence on his blog.

Injury and the Abstract Combat Round

Let me give a natural description of how combat works in D&D. Each person gets to make (at least one) to hit roll against an enemy per rou...

maziriansgarden.blogspot.com

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'll counter this by pointing to an instance of an attacker coating their weapon with an injury-type poison, i.e. it only poisons the target if they're damaged by the attack.

Yeah, that argument falls apart the  moment we start talking about damage types.

 

[Gammadoodler]

So how does that interact with the idea of AC including the concept of not making contact with the target at all?

Mostly..It ignores it and/or alters it.

As a concept, AC is not well-constructed as you illustrated in your description of it. It does too much. Were I to attempt a finer hand at it, maybe I'd split out evasion based defense from armor based defense and treat those differently.

But in the interest of avoiding additional crunch, maybe I'd describe the force of the wind moving past as being harmful even if the blade did not connect.

 

[Zaukrie]

Denegrate?

As a mechanic when it came out the math was wrong. How many times did they rework it? Three times? Within the Living Forgotten realms writers WotC pretty much had to demand that skill challenges be included.

How many videos did Mike make explaining it? More than any other mechanic.

How many debates and discussions where there over using combat powers during skill challenges or just clever tactics vs rolling skills?

I find many folks who like skill challenges are using them not as presented originally but some version of it that came later on in 4es lifecycle.

Are you really going to tell me it was so great as first conceived?

Denigrate? Like it’s a person?

I recently went thru every old magazine.... And pulled out the articles by topic into PDF..... And maybe I'll be writing a lot on skill challenges. We'll see.

They were a mess at first, for sure. The idea is great, imo, within the confines of DnD. The execution got better over time.

 

[Gammadoodler]

No, it is completely different, because you are, in effect, lecturing other people on how they are reacting, and telling them that their reactions (how they are interpreting the fiction) is wrong, because you do it differently.

I've used this example before, so I will use it again.

Everyone has a different level of suspension of disbelief when it comes to fiction. For example, I can watch a show that features legal proceedings, and the fact that they do things that are wrong usually doesn't bother me. Are opening statements and closing arguments three minutes long? No. But this is a fictional representation of a case- not reality.

And yet, if a show uses a legal term incorrectly, it will throw me out of the fiction completely. Right there, it's a step too far. It's gone from something I can accept in terms of a necessary suspension of disbelief, to something that is so wrong, I can no longer enjoy the fiction. Will the same thing bother you? Probably not! But it bothers ME. And for you to tell me to "feel differently" about it borders on arrogance. Different people have different preferences.

We are discussing games. People have repeatedly explained to you something that bothers them, and why. We are not demanding that you apply introspection and change what you like or manage you expectations, nor should we. It is beyond explanation why you don't extent the same courtesy to others.

People are allowed to like what they like, and to tell people that they need to feel differently misses the point. Or, more correctly, why should we feel differently, and not you? The proper answer is that, perhaps, we both can feel exactly how we want, and that's totally cool.

So to start with, I don't believe that I have told anyone to feel differently yet.

However, I also do not believe that feelings should be immutable or outside the scope of available levers to pull to increase your net enjoyment of the hobby.

As you say, it is completely fine to feel however you want about a thing. But if that thing bothers you, your options to maximize your satisfaction are:

1. Don't engage with it
2. Change the thing so you're satisfied with it
3. Change how you feel about it.

Feelings aren't immutable. Stuff you like now, your past self would hate, and vice versa. We teach ourselves to like things all the time. I didn't always drink coffee. I didn't always appreciate baseball.

It doesn't always work. I still don't like mayonnaise or pineapple on pizzas.

But it can be a perfectly viable strategy for getting to enjoy something you don't currently.