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

[pemerton]

1e's natural rest rate of 1 point a day went too far the other way (and, in the process, treated all hit points as meat for purposes of natural recovery time).

I don't get this. I know from experience that significant soft tissue damage can take weeks or months to recover. And what's the natural recovery time for evisceration, or maiming?

Anything that can be recovered by nothing more than bed rest in a week or two (which is every hp loss ever suffered in AD&D by any person below 2nd or 3rd level) is not a very serious injury. So either all weapons in AD&D are not very dangerous, or hit point loss and recovery is not modelling the injuries that real weapons might inflict.

 

[Alzrius]

Verisimilitude means the property of seeming true or real.

Your interpretation of AD&D hp does not seem very verisimilitudinous to me; nor to Gygax, I assume, hence his account of hp which is different from yours.

It's far more verisimilitudinous than 4E's interpretation of hit points, which Gygax would have found to be a radical departure from the manner they functioned in AD&D.

 

[pemerton]

It's far more verisimilitudinous than 4E's interpretation of hit points, which Gygax would have found to be a radical departure from the manner they functioned in AD&D.

4e's interpretation of hp seems pretty consistent with Gygax's - narrate as makes sense for the particular action that occurs, with most hp loss being stamina and resolve, not significant physical harm.

Recovery generally being by drawing on one's reserves - with the exception of powerful prayers or paladin selflessness - is an addition,which fits with most hp being stamina and resolve.

 

[Alzrius]

4e's interpretation of hp seems pretty consistent with Gygax's - narrate as makes sense for the particular action that occurs, with most hp loss being stamina and resolve, not significant physical harm.

It may seem that way, but it's not; Gygax's interpretation of hit points only pays lip service to the idea of hp loss/recovery being something other than wounds taken/healed, and never tried to incorporate that under the actual operations of the game (as you and I have demonstrated over the course of this thread), hence why AD&D has no damage being dealt on a failed attack roll, to use a notable example. 4E goes far beyond the pale in this regard, assigning two different operations to hit points in what honestly looks like a good-intentioned but ultimately misguided attempt to make that lip service a reality, and in doing so actually moved further away from Gygax's original presentation.

 

[Bedrockgames]

4e's interpretation of hp seems pretty consistent with Gygax's - narrate as makes sense for the particular action that occurs, with most hp loss being stamina and resolve, not significant physical harm.

Recovery generally being by drawing on one's reserves - with the exception of powerful prayers or paladin selflessness - is an addition,which fits with most hp being stamina and resolve.

I think the issue with this, is whatever Gygax's interpretation, most groups leaned heavily on it being some kind of physical damage at the table. D&D is one of those games that I think doesn't have the luxury of smaller RPGs. A smaller more niche RPG, can insist on rules being this way or that way, whereas with D&D there is a strong culture of play the designers have to follow as they alter the system for new editions. That said, I think with 4E it was more about the volume of such changes than HP in particular (if it was essentially 3.75, with more of a 4E handling of HP, people might have grumbled but I don't think it would have had the negative reaction so many of us saw in our own groups (I wasn't enthused about 4E, but I was willing to play it on its own terms and give it a shot, but the two groups I was in at the time, 50% of the players flat out refused to play). One of the guys who loved 4E was my old business partner and he ended up joining multiple groups, while remaining in ours, in order to play 4E. So I think 4E had this odd effect where it was loved or hated by people.

Also there is the fact that when 4E was announced, system aside, many people were already pissed at WOTC because they had just released 3.5 not that many years before and it was largely seem as just a way to get people to rebuy all the core books

One thought I have always had about 4E though, despite some of my misgivings about it, is it seems like it would be a really good edition for running a wuxia campaign. I never got a chance to try that (I ran a bunch of D&D wuxia campaigns cobbling together rules from 3E, d20 supplements and other non-D&D systems). It was always quite a bit of work to make it play how I wanted. But 4E seemed really well suited to it (I don't know enough about 4E to know if there were available class options in supplements to make it work as written or if you might need to make more classes, but the core system looked like it would work great for a game where characters are playing martial heroes with wildly different fighting styles)

 

[Red Castle]

Regarding HP and if it represents actual physical damage or not, my personal opinion is simply that it is not a Black or White matter. Thinking that there is no physical damage at all involved is absurd (to be fair, I don't think anyone is actually thinking that way), but so is thinking that it only represents physical damage. And I'll take my 5-6 years of fencing as example.

As you gain experience in fencing, you don't actually get better at taking a hit (harder! harder I say!), you get better at parrying, dodging, distance control and managing your exhaustion level. A new fencer simply has no chance against an experienced one, he'll just never hit him and exhaust himself to death while the experienced one will not even break a sweat.

So, as a fighter gain level in DnD, technically speaking, he should get better and better to dodge and parry a blow, that's how you actually survive since, again technically speaking, a sword hit ca potentially be a mortal blow. But there is no mechanic in game to represent this skill, the actual experience of the fighter (well, except in 4e where you actually add your half level to defense to represent that you are getting better to dodge and parry attacks, which makes total sense). If I take ADnD2 as example, a level 10 fighter with no armor will be just as easy to hit than a level 1 fighter with no armor, exactly the same AC. Now, by experience, the level 10 fighter should be harder to hit, because he should be better to dodge and parry. But no, since they both have AC10, they are just as easy to hit. The only difference is that one hit of a longsword can actually kill the level 1 fighter while it will be just a scratch for the level 10 fighter. But how so? A hit should be a hit. Why does it kill the level 1 fighter but is just a scratch for the level 10 one? There must be something else at play linked to fighting experience. So, not only does Hit Points represents physical damage, but it also represents actual skills to deflect blows and the ability to change a mortal blow to just a scratch.

But what about when a scratch is not really an option? Let's say our two fighters are fighting a giant swinging a tree like a mace as a weapon, something that would kill anyone with just one hit. The giant takes a swing at the level 1 fighter, hit him and do 24 damages, killing him right away. The giant takes the exact same swing at the level 10 fighter, hit him, do 24 damages, but the fighter is still on his legs as if nothing happened. So what happened? If he got hit he should now be pudding on the ground... unless he actually dodged the blow. But if he dodged, it means he was not hit, so how come he still took damage. A simple explanation is that dodging this killing blow was actually exhausting. And back to my experience from my years of fencing, exhaustion do play a big role in a fight. The more you fight, the more you get tired, and the more exhausted you are, the more difficult it is to dodge or parry a blow, because you get more and more slower, your reflex is just not there. But again, there is no mechanic in DnD that represent this level of exhaustion; fight for 20 seconds or 5 minutes and your character will still be in top shape... except probably for his HP level that will get lower and lower the longer he fight as he try to dodge and parry blow, until the fatal blow. So it is easy to tie HP to stamina level, as it is the only mechanic that can actually represent this reality (Well, except in 4e with Healing Surges, and I guess 5e with Hit Dice)

So, in my opinion, Hit point not only represent physical damage, but also the skills of the fighter and his stamina, and game mechanics support it. When you accept that it is a little bit of everything, it all makes sense. It explains why a level 10 fighter can take 10+ sword hits and live while a level 1 will be dead after 1-3 hits. It explains how a second wind work as the fighter is taking a moment to catch his breath. It explains why some encouragement words can give you the will to continue fighting instead. Why just a little rest can give you back all your HP. It also explain the value of healing surge because, again from my experience in fencing, everybody as a limit at one point where he just don't have any energy left, where he need to take a long rest to fully recover.

But at the end of the day, DnD is just a game. It is not meant to simulate real life. There is abstractions that is only there to serve the game, that you need to do some mental gymnastic to get around. HP is one of those abstraction that you need to adjust to fit your own personal narrative in this game of make belief.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't get this. I know from experience that significant soft tissue damage can take weeks or months to recover. And what's the natural recovery time for evisceration, or maiming?

First off, the game has never gone into specific details on injuries e.g. evisceration, maiming, etc. Whether or not it should is a different discussion; for now we just have to take it at face value that these things aren't detailed.

Second, the recovery rate of only 1 h.p. a day doesn't square with Gygax's explanation where he says hit points are a combination of luck, fatigue, injury, and so forth; as fatigue can be dispelled fairly quickly and luck, well, is just luck, a slightly higher rate of healing to represent the faster recovery of fatigue etc. makes sense. The exception, of course, is commoners and 1st-level adventurers; where this rate of recovery might - as you suggest - even be too fast.

Anything that can be recovered by nothing more than bed rest in a week or two (which is every hp loss ever suffered in AD&D by any person below 2nd or 3rd level) is not a very serious injury. So either all weapons in AD&D are not very dangerous, or hit point loss and recovery is not modelling the injuries that real weapons might inflict.

It's things like this that eventually made me tie recovery rate to one's hit point total, as a fraction. It makes no sense that a 1st-level character reduced to 1 h.p. can be right as rain in 6 days while a 10th-level character taken to 1 h.p. could take two months to rest back up to full. It's not like that 10th-level chap is getting any more badly hurt in physical terms.

 

[Lanefan]

4e's interpretation of hp seems pretty consistent with Gygax's - narrate as makes sense for the particular action that occurs, with most hp loss being stamina and resolve, not significant physical harm.

The interpretation of what hit points represent is somewhat consistent, yes. However...

Recovery generally being by drawing on one's reserves - with the exception of powerful prayers or paladin selflessness - is an addition,which fits with most hp being stamina and resolve.

...the interpretation of, and mechanics around, how those hit points are or can be recovered is very different, and for some (including me) this difference is a bridge too far.

Non-magical ranged healing? Full recovery on an overnight rest? Those show a vastly different view of hit point recovery than anything Gygax ever put into his versions of D&D.

 

[tomBitonti]

The nature of hit points seems similar to the treatment given to electrons: in one view, they are a continuously variable flow, in another, they are individual particles.

A character receiving a strike perhaps can receive a similar strike ten times, successfully dodging or deflecting the strike nine times until the tenth gets through defenses and takes out the character.

In game, instead of having strikes getting through one in ten times, the character is given a number of hit points, and a strike is set to remove, on average, one tenth of the hit points. The tenth strike removes the last hit point, and the character is debilitated.

Then, hit points are actual damage, but in an odd probabilistic sense.

I don’t think whether this is better than a strike being debilitating is answerable. I think it is a matter of preference. However — I think — using hit points is more manageable. Hit points become a managed resource.

Also, the use of hit points lets the game blur out the lethality of true combat. That is to say, hit point healing should not exist. That it does is a conceit of the game. If one in ten strikes results in debilitating damage, that five strikes occurred but missed should not be erasable.

TomB

 

[pemerton]

@Reynard, your post just upthread is consistent with what Gygax says in his rulebooks, and with the approach taken by 4e D&D.

What "damage on a miss" means is that this attack always wears its target down at least a bit. The attacker is unrelenting.