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

[Cruentus]

At which you can ask, "why don't all attacks do damage on a miss then? Why do you need some sort of special feature for that effect"?

Well, it’s every weapon, regardless of class, so… They all do damage on a miss, under certain circumstances. But magic and other effects are much more subtle, so you’re not fireballing or having flashy big magic effects either.

One could also ask why you need special features and ability bonuses for everything as well. To make things different. A dagger isn’t going to do as much shock as a maul, for example, and you’re going to experience more shock if unarmored than bearing at least a shield. . Could also be for setting and period flavor. Either way, it’s something I’ve seen and like, but I’m not judging 8t to be best thing ever.

Though I will say that I had a player in my 5e campaign use the Next playtest fighter with the maneuver die, which also allowed him to spend the die to do damage on a miss, and he enjoyed the flexibility and decisions about which maneuver when. It also didn’t break the game either against other 5e characters.

 

[CleverNickName]

 

[overgeeked]

Yeah, pretty much.

So, honestly, why are you still engaging with this thread? You already know 4E doesn't produce the fiction you want. What do you think you'll gain by repeatedly telling people an edition of the game that's been out-of-print for 10 years doesn't suit you?

 

[James Gasik]

I know that the idea of "hit points as a conglomeration of endurance, physical wounds, luck, divine favor, etc." goes all the way back to AD&D 1E, but as much as I admire Gary Gygax, he wasn't very consistent in that regard. He offered the "conglomeration" explanation once that I recall (in the DMG), but then has every other instance of regaining hit points treating them like injuries. What's the spell called that restores hit points? Cure light WOUNDS. What's a non-magical way of restoring lost hit points? It's not praying at a temple, and it's not performing good luck rituals, etc. It's bed rest.

That's without even returning to the issue of making an attack roll with a poisoned blade, as mentioned above.

Gygax didn't define hit points because they're absurd, and he says as much in his preamble in the DMG, including why they can't be only "meat":

For us to say hit points are meat, then we have to accept the fact that a 10th level character with 100 hit points can withstand punishment akin to movie action heroes without any noticeable depreciation in their ability to act, which is no more or less realistic than hit points not being strictly "meat".

 

[payn]

 

[darjr]

Yes, hit points are whoooo and a big abstraction and also sometimes meat and not.

It’s all mixed up.

And people live with it and adjust in the fly even if it still kinda wackadoodle.

But that doesn’t mean more abstraction is automatically welcome generally.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

So, honestly, why are you still engaging with this thread? You already know 4E doesn't produce the fiction you want. What do you think you'll gain by repeatedly telling people an edition of the game that's been out-of-print for 10 years doesn't suit you?

I think part of the issue is that the thread is no longer serving the issues raised in the OP.

It's why it remains frustratingly difficult to discuss 4e in any meaningful sense. I can repeatedly say, for example, that 4e was a well-designed game that did some things great! But when people try and discuss the ways in which 4e did not work for them, we are told (to quote Steve Jobs), that "You're holding it wrong."

The OP raised a salient issue- new reporting on why 4e was the way it was, and why it wasn't the success that higherups at Hasbro hoped that it would be. But as I stated near the beginning of the thread-

I think that fundamentally, though, this reporting won't change what people already want to believe about the transition from 3e to 4e, to the extent it contradicts the emotional experiences that people had and the stories we have told ourselves. Heck, despite the fact that Peterson has extensively documented the early history of TSR and RPGs in the 70s, we still see people keep repeating the same incorrect assertions about that time, over and over and over again.

Instead of engaging with the substance of what was reported (and why that might be interesting, especially in light of the current direction of the game vis-a-vis 5e 2024), we remain stuck talking about .... looks around ... hit points as meat, or whether skill challenges worked for people, or why some people didn't like "damage on a miss" mechanics.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I suspect this is where we're disagreeing, since if it doesn't make "enough" sense, then the narrative isn't serving as a justification to begin with. Evasion works because it suggests that you're evasive enough to avoid things that other people can't (at least, not fully; presuming you're referring to the 3.X evasion). But that's going to be different for everyone, and moreover if the narrative used introduces new elements that aren't reflected in the mechanics, then it's going to be an issue for some people.

I guess I don't see how...

"your blows are forceful enough to damage things in circumstances where other people can't (i.e.: on a miss unsuccessfull attack roll)"

is meaningfully different than..

you're evasive enough to avoid things that other people can't

 

[overgeeked]

Yes, hit points are whoooo and a big abstraction and also sometimes meat and not.

It’s all mixed up.

And people live with it and adjust in the fly even if it still kinda wackadoodle.

But that doesn’t mean more abstraction is automatically welcome generally.

The reverse is also true. Just because the game is abstract doesn't mean that less abstraction is automatically welcome generally.

That's part of the problem. As mentioned up thread a few times. Everyone has different levels of suspension of disbelief on these things. Too abstract and too concrete are relative preferences, not objective markers. That's the trouble with the big tent approach. Wildly disparate preferences and play styles artificially jammed together into one game.

 

[darjr]

The reverse is also true. Just because the game is abstract doesn't mean that less abstraction is automatically welcome generally.

That's part of the problem. As mentioned up thread a few times. Everyone has different levels of suspension of disbelief on these things. Too abstract and too concrete are relative preferences, not objective markers. That's the trouble with the big tent approach. Wildly disparate preferences and play styles artificially jammed together into one game.

Yup. It’s both why this discussion is important and why specifically the HP discussion can get tedious fast.