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

[darjr]

I co-DMed a game for a group that included 4 kids age 11 and under, just a couple of weeks ago. Youngest was 6. The rules were VERY helpful in adjudicating what they wanted to do. So yeah, you're wrong about that.

Gimme a break, it was a joke.

 

[Fifth Element]

Next time you make Jello, cut a 3-inch cube of it and put it on a plate. It's solid enough to stand on its own and not collapse into a puddle yet amorphous enough to bend and wiggle.

Next, imagine it being alive, vaguely sentient, and able to move on its own. It's also trying to eat you.

Then, using a typical D&D mini, try to trip it.

I'll wait here.....

Next time you make Jello, make it a 10-foot cube WITHOUT it collapsing under it's own weight.

I'll wait here.....

But you won't be able to do it, because the square-cube law is a thing in reality. So physics tells us that realistically.....

 

[Micah Sweet]

You don't say.

Nice to hear from you again.

 

[Fifth Element]

First off, the term "trip" defines a fairly narrow action-result sequence, most notably that the thing tripped almost always falls in the direction of whatever is tripping it (i.e. if tripped from behind you fall backwards, if from in front you fall forwards, etc.). Using a shield to tip something over such that it falls away from you is not tripping it.

Had the designers meant "knock over" I think they'd have used that term.

This is mind-bogglingly pedantic, but also just plain wrong in parts. If you pull someone's legs out from under them using say a stick, from behind, they fall forward. People are top-heavy when they lose their footing.

Add in the fact that they define what they mean by words in the books, so you don't have to make assumptions like this, and you're wrong in several different ways here.

If the book describes a trip as including knocking someone over, then that's what it means because that's his words work.

 

[FrogReaver]

Next time you make Jello, make it a 10-foot cube WITHOUT it collapsing under it's own weight.

I'll wait here.....

But you won't be able to do it, because the square-cube law is a thing in reality. So physics tells us that realistically.....

IMO. Physics tells us no such thing as without an actual gelatinous Cube we are unable to study it to find out what physical processes allow it to not collapse on itself. Or are you proposing that a Gelatinous Cube must function identically to a block of Jello?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Mod Note:

We’re starting to notice a rise in the unnecessary snark in this thread. Let’s dial it back, people.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, maybe we are closer on this than it appears.

The bolded does point to one question: how big, if at all, should that gap be? And a corollary question, if the gap is big enough can - or should - other "levels" be designed to fill it in?

In 0e it's a fairly small gap. In 1e there's certainly room for a 0th level between commoner and 1st, this is formalized in UA with the Cavalier class and was always there informally with the "militia or man-at-arms" designator. 3e also formalizes a 0th-level between commoner and 1st.

In 4e the gap is close to immense. There's room to shoehorn maybe 4 or 5 more levels in there.

Well... 4e really makes no comment or commitment as to what the 'average man' is actually like. Yes, the rules contain things like minions, but those are thematic and dramatic in nature, not really descriptive of any kind of 'reality of the game world' beyond "here's what happens when we put this guy in the PC's story under the current circumstances." I mean, we reason that 'normal humans' are generally lower level and minions probably properly portray them in a lot of cases. However, unlike say AD&D, races don't have levels, per se. humans are not '0 level humanoids' or OD&D's '1d6 per stand' low-quality figures in 4e. 'level' is a concept that applies to PCs for purposes of structuring play and progression. It CAN be applied to a limited degree to some NPCs (human or otherwise) as in there are Companion Characters, as well as things like some ranger's beasts that may be progressed along with the PCs.

I don't think it would be especially challenging to build some stat blocks that represented weaker or stronger figures that are in between the power levels of level 1 minions and level 1 standards. Many of us thought about it, tinkered with it, found them to have no compelling use case, and dropped the idea.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well... 4e really makes no comment or commitment as to what the 'average man' is actually like. Yes, the rules contain things like minions, but those are thematic and dramatic in nature, not really descriptive of any kind of 'reality of the game world' beyond "here's what happens when we put this guy in the PC's story under the current circumstances." I mean, we reason that 'normal humans' are generally lower level and minions probably properly portray them in a lot of cases. However, unlike say AD&D, races don't have levels, per se. humans are not '0 level humanoids' or OD&D's '1d6 per stand' low-quality figures in 4e. 'level' is a concept that applies to PCs for purposes of structuring play and progression. It CAN be applied to a limited degree to some NPCs (human or otherwise) as in there are Companion Characters, as well as things like some ranger's beasts that may be progressed along with the PCs.

I don't think it would be especially challenging to build some stat blocks that represented weaker or stronger figures that are in between the power levels of level 1 minions and level 1 standards. Many of us thought about it, tinkered with it, found them to have no compelling use case, and dropped the idea.

Yeah, doesn't seem like it would be particularly useful for that kind of game.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Yeah, maybe we are closer on this than it appears.

The bolded does point to one question: how big, if at all, should that gap be? And a corollary question, if the gap is big enough can - or should - other "levels" be designed to fill it in?

In 0e it's a fairly small gap. In 1e there's certainly room for a 0th level between commoner and 1st, this is formalized in UA with the Cavalier class and was always there informally with the "militia or man-at-arms" designator. 3e also formalizes a 0th-level between commoner and 1st.

In 4e the gap is close to immense. There's room to shoehorn maybe 4 or 5 more levels in there.

I'm not sure if there is an exact answer for what that gap should be, but I think it'd need to be big enough for adventuring to be profoundly unwise life choice if you haven't cleared it.

 

[Aldarc]

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.

I played a historical RPG set in post-Roman Britain, which was pretty much a DnD chassis, similar combat, etc. In it, you had your traditional attack roll in combat, which did damage. However, each weapon had its own Shock value, and AC target. You did shock damage on a miss if the if the attack roll failed, and the target has equal to or less AC than listed for the weapon.

I liked the mechanic as it added another layer to combat, made armor (or lack thereof) a consideration, differentiated weapons, and also pretty much meant you were going to take damage in combat (potentially ending the combat much earlier), and so really thought hard about engaging in fighting, or worked to stack things in your favor.

In DnD, HP being luck, meat, endurance, magic fairy dust, or whatever, or all of it, it does make some sense to me that the "miss" also eats up your luck, or endurance as you're getting out of the way, or beginning to tire, even if the blade never touched you.

Kevin Crawford's OSR game Worlds Without Number works similarly to this, except minimum damage is also gated by the specific weapon and the opponent's AC. So certain weapons will always do a minimum amount of "Shock damage" even if they miss and if the target's AC is a certain value or less. So a Long Sword does 2/AC 13. So even if I do not land solid hit by beating the opponent's AC 12, my Long Sword will inflict 2 + Strength modifier in damage.

Healing is definitely a problem, agreed. I suggest re-working it into a percentage of the target's total hp, modified by how powerful the healing effect is.

You mean like casting a spell and the target spends one of their limited healing surges allowing them to regain one-quarter of their total HP value plus the amount specified in the spell? Sounds like a great idea.

It's a narrative mechanic.

You keep using that term. But I don't think that that term means what you think it means.

Now please enjoy this light-hearted meme that I made for you.

I don't think that labeling everything that you dislike as a "narrative mechanic" is a particularly meaningful, insightful, or accurate definition, and it will likely involve many non-narrative mechanics getting called "narrative mechanics" simply on the basis of your idiomatic preferences (as per the above).