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

[pemerton]

Prone

“This condition can affect limbless creatures, such as fish and snakes, as well as amorphous creatures, such as oozes. When such a creature falls prone, imagine it is writhing or unsteady, rather than literally lying down.”

Pretty straight-forward. Any creature that has any kind of sensory perception system and proprioception can have that system foiled. Having such systems be unassailable would actually be the unrealistic thing!

Can I just double-check - are you saying that in 4e we can use our imaginations?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Its been a while since I was caught up in this thread but this stuck out to me.

I just wanted to clarify that while 4e has a prone condition and a number of powers that knock an opponent prone, it does not have a mechanically defined trip game mechanic.

The 4e FAQ was discussing whether a cube can be knocked prone. The blogger was using trip as his 4e example, but 4e does not itself use trip.

"Can a gelatinous cube be knocked prone? In situations like this, DMs are encouraged to change the flavor of what is happening without changing the actual rules governing the situation. For example, the ooze could be so disoriented by the blow that it suffers the same disadvantages as if it had been knocked prone until it spends a move action to stand up effectively shaking off the condition"

The term trip is used twice in the 4e PH, but only narratively.

In a level 13 Fighter power the flavor text description is "You trip your enemies, knocking them back. As they recover, you shift to a more advantageous position."

Mechanically this attack hits them for damage and pushes them and the fighter follows up with movement to follow them, more push and movement with a spear type weapon. No knocking them down prone at all though.

There is also a level 13 rogue attack power of unbalancing attack.

"Ducking and weaving, you land a decisive blow that staggers your foe and sets it up for a tripping attack."

"Hit: 3[W] + Dexterity modifier damage, and the target cannot shift until the end of your next turn. If the target provokes an opportunity attack from you before the start of your next turn, you gain a bonus to the attack roll and damage roll with the opportunity attack equal to your Strength modifier, and you knock the target prone on a hit."

The narrative parts are only in the power section labelled flavor text and the explanation of powers explicitly says these are examples and can be narratively changed by the player.

"A power’s flavor text helps you understand what happens when you use a power and how you might describe it when you use it. You can alter this description as you like, to fit your own idea of what your power looks like."

Nobody is arguing any of that. The issue is simply the philosophy espoused by 4e in this matter (and others) does not meet the needs of a significant portion (probably the majority) of D&D's fan base, and yet is lauded as if it really should be, and feeling otherwise is somehow a problem.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm asking a concrete question - how is it less realistic for hit points to ablate continually, rather than for their ablation to be anchored behind a prior yes/no roll?

I have my own issues with damage and healing, and prefer to use a different system in my own games, as I've noted.

They're both unrealistic, in other words, and one being so doesn't give the other one a pass IMO.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Prone

“This condition can affect limbless creatures, such as fish and snakes, as well as amorphous creatures, such as oozes. When such a creature falls prone, imagine it is writhing or unsteady, rather than literally lying down.”

Pretty straight-forward. Any creature that has any kind of sensory perception system and proprioception can have that system foiled. Having such systems be unassailable would actually be the unrealistic thing!

Are you claiming that the rule you cited above wasn't developed specifically because people complained about this issue?

 

[Voadam]

Nobody is arguing any of that.

I was literally responding to what I was quoting.

 

[pemerton]

I have my own issues with damage and healing, and prefer to use a different system in my own games, as I've noted.

They're both unrealistic, in other words, and one being so doesn't give the other one a pass IMO.

OK, but does that mean (to borrow your words from post 1026) that the core D&D hp-ablation combat mechanic likewise "has much more to do with drama than it does with how a battle would go in any realistic way" and hence is a "narrative" mechanic?

I mean I think that's obvious - it's a big chunk of why, in 1990, I went out and bought a whole lot of Rolemaster book after playing my first session of it. But I rarely find agreement among those who prefer AD&D and/or 3E D&D to 4e D&D - those people tend to assert that hit points in those other editions are realistic in some or other fashion.

 

[darjr]

Can I just double-check - are you saying that in 4e we can use our imaginations?

Only if the rules allow it.

 

[Aldarc]

Only if the rules allow it.

You joke, but there are people here who argue that the only reason they can change the game rules is because Rule 0 allows it.

 

[pemerton]

You joke, but there are people here who argue that the only reason they can change the game rules is because Rule 0 allows it.

As I posted upthread, I find this a bit ironic.

 

[Micah Sweet]

OK, but does that mean (to borrow your words from post 1026) that the core D&D hp-ablation combat mechanic likewise "has much more to do with drama than it does with how a battle would go in any realistic way" and hence is a "narrative" mechanic?

I mean I think that's obvious - it's a big chunk of why, in 1990, I went out and bought a whole lot of Rolemaster book after playing my first session of it. But I rarely find agreement among those who prefer AD&D and/or 3E D&D to 4e D&D - those people tend to assert that hit points in those other editions are realistic in some or other fashion.

I have never asserted that hit points are realistic, and to answer your question I can understand the point of view that drama is part of their make-up. There are definitely more preferable ways to deal with damage and healing than the hit point system, but in the real world people usually play with that with which they are familiar, and that is 5e for a lot of folks.

My own preference is for either a death spiral mechanic (like Cyberpunk 2020 or classic L5R), or a modified hit point system that puts more emphasis on what happens when you go down and the long term effects of being brought to zero (like the OSR game ACKS).

But I don't always get what I want, so compromises have to be made.