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

[AbdulAlhazred]

Meh - it maps the narrative to the mechanics. In 1e RAW a shield gives 1 point* of AC, so if that last point is what makes the attack a miss it's logical enough to say the shield is what made the difference.

* - we houseruled it to give 2 points, and 7 years later 2e caught up with us.

And yet, years of SCA fights of various sorts teaches me UNEQUIVOCALLY that a shield utterly trumps basic armor and even a helmet, which itself completely trumps most basic armor, as general protection from melee attacks. I'm 100% sure Gygax and Arneson were well aware of this, but they wished to encourage and reward the use of armor by fighters, and only mildly penalize thieves by denying them shields, so it was a purely gamist consideration to have a 1AC point shield. All of D&D is like this, the fiction is all bent around a practical and fun set of rules. 4e is no different... Honestly, I think the one and only real objection to 4e, fundamentally, is just that it dared to be a somewhat different D&D. It challenged you all, and the community fell flat on its face. That's how I see it.

 

[darjr]

And yet, years of SCA fights of various sorts teaches me UNEQUIVOCALLY that a shield utterly trumps basic armor and even a helmet, which itself completely trumps most basic armor, as general protection from melee attacks. I'm 100% sure Gygax and Arneson were well aware of this, but they wished to encourage and reward the use of armor by fighters, and only mildly penalize thieves by denying them shields, so it was a purely gamist consideration to have a 1AC point shield. All of D&D is like this, the fiction is all bent around a practical and fun set of rules. 4e is no different... Honestly, I think the one and only real objection to 4e, fundamentally, is just that it dared to be a somewhat different D&D. It challenged you all, and the community fell flat on its face. That's how I see it.

And there it is.

He’s saying we can’t believe our own minds. Our own experience. Our own feelings. We can’t possibly be right. Only he can.

AbdulHazrad Do you not see your own words here?

 

[Micah Sweet]

And yet, years of SCA fights of various sorts teaches me UNEQUIVOCALLY that a shield utterly trumps basic armor and even a helmet, which itself completely trumps most basic armor, as general protection from melee attacks. I'm 100% sure Gygax and Arneson were well aware of this, but they wished to encourage and reward the use of armor by fighters, and only mildly penalize thieves by denying them shields, so it was a purely gamist consideration to have a 1AC point shield. All of D&D is like this, the fiction is all bent around a practical and fun set of rules. 4e is no different... Honestly, I think the one and only real objection to 4e, fundamentally, is just that it dared to be a somewhat different D&D. It challenged you all, and the community fell flat on its face. That's how I see it.

There are definitely better ways to model shields, I'll freely admit that.

As to the rest of your comments, do you really want to blame the bulk of the D&D community because they didn't like 4e enough for WotC's desires?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Except with what I'm speaking of the skill challenge is abandoned before it resolves, during the rolling process.

Yeah, so? 4e combat doesn't specifically talk about what happens if the PCs run away either. Are you seriously maintaining that this means its impossible to run from a fight? I doubt it! The challenge fails, that's all. The players declare what they do, the GM describes the results, and that's pretty much it. I don't really know how this creates any basic difficulty.

 

[FrogReaver]

There are definitely better ways to model shields, I'll freely admit that.

As to the rest of your comments, do you really want to blame the bulk of the D&D community because they didn't like 4e enough for WotC's desires?

Best shield ever = Barbarian holding the goblin Wizard who casts the shield spell!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

There are definitely better ways to model shields, I'll freely admit that.

My point is really that the modeling of stuff is only very shallow and highly subject to gamist considerations, as well as other sorts of considerations possibly. So why sweat "prone just means the ooze can't move this round" or whatever? We're not entering some new territory in terms of approximating things.

As to the rest of your comments, do you really want to blame the bulk of the D&D community because they didn't like 4e enough for WotC's desires?

I think the bulk of the D&D Community proved to be fairly disappointing, yes.

 

[Lanefan]

I think there is a fair amount of daylight between..

No one except the PCs are in any way exceptional.

and

PCs are not in any way exceptional vs any other NPC.

And I'd posit that most games live within that daylight.

Perhaps, but I think generally closer to the second than the first of these.

PCs are exceptional vs. the broader population, but not exclusively so. The broader population does not have class levels, while PCs and other similarly exceptional folks do.

That's just it, though - the broader population might very well have class levels, or be able to acquire such, though probably not many.

As these already somewhat exceptional characters gain experience, confront dangers, learn dark secrets, are exposed to exotic energies and other magics, they gain capabilities that further differentiate themselves from the broader population.

Ah, there's where we differ.

I see adventuring as merely being the high-risk fast-track to gaining levels. Stay-at-home types who perform the same functions as adventurers - a soldier, a street thief, a lab mage, a temple cleric - also all gain levels as they go along and learn their trade, only that gain accrues MUCH more slowly than it does for adventurers in the field. Meanwhile those in truly non-adventuring professions - a jeweller, a baker, a valet, a painter - never gain levels of any kind; yet they could, if they chucked those trades and got out into the field.

How much you may have to change an NPC to convert it to a PC is, frankly more about DM prep than any underlying characteristics of the world. You build your NPCs for the storytelling purpose they serve in the way you find most useful.

If you only set them up to assist in picking a lock, or some light infiltration, you might only focus on those things. If you expect them to assassinate a few guards, you might kit them to do that. Maybe you go the whole way and decide to do a full-fledged character build for them. Or.. naybe you just handwave the prep, and say they succeed at whatever task you need them to succeed at and fail when you need them to fail.

None of these are wrong ways to set up your NPC, and none of them say anything particularly meaningful about the world, but the amount of effort to convert them to a PC will vary wildly.

My point is that it should take no time whatsoever.

The only dissonance that would exist would be if you had already set out to make that NPC obviously more or less capable than the PCs and the players had been exposed to that gap in capability.

Indeed, this is true; but were it more capable I probably wouldn't allow the player to take it over (not yet anyway) and if it's less capable the player is merely taking on more of a challenge.

The one thing I won't do is have an NPC be capable of doing things a PC of the same species and class can never aspire to do.

 

[cbwjm]

Side kicks have taken some of this space.

Oh yeah, I had completely forgotten about sidekicks. I could use them as PCs for a low-power game.

 

[Lanefan]

Where were all of you when the Warrior, Aristocratic, Commoner, and Adept classes were getting axed?

Truth be told I was never a fan of the Commoner or Adept or similar classes; those took a good idea well beyond eleven and kinda ruined it in the process. Warrior and Nobility I could see to a point, though Warrior could just be a sub of Fighter.

 

[darjr]

Oh yeah, I had completely forgotten about sidekicks. I could use them as PCs for a low-power game.

I have. They are fragile, but that was the intent of the game. Though at higher levels with good equipment they are less fragile than I'd thought they would be.