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

[Red Castle]

An animated stone statue could have an AC through the roof and yet not otherwise be very good at fighting back; this was the sort of example I had in mind.

If your intention when creating this creature is to make it indestructible by raising your Defenses but are afraid that the players might destroy it with time using DoaM, my suggestion to you would be to simply give the creature Resistance to Weapon Damage 10 and your problem is solved without any need for any houserules. At-Will that do DoaM will do about 5 damage on a miss so won' be enough to get pass the Resistance and while most Daily powers do DoaM (except for fighters that have a lot of Reliable daily powers instead), the number of daily is very limited and do half damage... combined with Resistance 10, your stone statue will be just fine.

EDIT: Just wanted to add, the At-Will power that do Damage on a Miss is actually one of the worst At-Will of the Fighter, I'm not even sure anybody would actually take it, so we're talking about a highly hypothetical situation that will never really happen.

 

[Thomas Shey]

An animated stone statue could have an AC through the roof and yet not otherwise be very good at fighting back; this was the sort of example I had in mind.

This is what happens when your game is so stylized it conflates attack avoidance and damage absorption.

 

[Hussar]

An animated stone statue could have an AC through the roof and yet not otherwise be very good at fighting back; this was the sort of example I had in mind.

Oh, indeed.

Never minding that the Living Statues in D&D had an AC of 4, and an AD&D Stone Golem had an AC of 5 so, again, not something that would be "through the roof". And, in AD&D, you'd simply whack on something like "need +2 Weapon to hit" and you'd never have to worry about DoaM.

IOW, you're really grasping at straws here. The only edition where "Need 20 to hit" was ever really a thing was 3e. And, even then, it was extremely rare.

 

[James Gasik]

Never minding that the Living Statues in D&D had an AC of 4, and an AD&D Stone Golem had an AC of 5 so, again, not something that would be "through the roof". And, in AD&D, you'd simply whack on something like "need +2 Weapon to hit" and you'd never have to worry about DoaM.

IOW, you're really grasping at straws here. The only edition where "Need 20 to hit" was ever really a thing was 3e. And, even then, it was extremely rare.

I mean, technically, there are some insane AC's in 2e. A 0-level town guard isn't hitting a Great Wyrm Red Dragon (AC -10) without a natural 20. You wouldn't think this would be a likely scenario, but I've encountered a few DM's who are like "just because you're low level doesn't mean powerful monsters avoid you".

3e had something far worse than damage on a miss. It had "chance to miss even if you hit"!

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

3e had something far worse than damage on a miss. It had "chance to miss even if you hit"!

Oh yeah, 20%/50% chance to miss if something has concealment. Such a feel-bad mechanic.

 

[Hussar]

I mean, technically, there are some insane AC's in 2e. A 0-level town guard isn't hitting a Great Wyrm Red Dragon (AC -10) without a natural 20. You wouldn't think this would be a likely scenario, but I've encountered a few DM's who are like "just because you're low level doesn't mean powerful monsters avoid you".

3e had something far worse than damage on a miss. It had "chance to miss even if you hit"!

True, 2e had some. But, again, I think we can pretty safely ignore them. After all, a low level fighter, even with damage on a miss, isn't really going to do anything to a Great Wyrm Red Dragon. Sure, like you said, there are a few outlier creatures out there, but, again, not really something that we have to concern ourselves with.

And, in 1e and 2e it was simpler just to make something immune to damage. Need +X weapon to deal damage. So, all the DoaM isn't going to help you at all vs a 1e or 2e wight or stronger undead, for example. At least, not until you had a magic weapon.

 

[Zardnaar]

Sure but why is that an exception? Why are we ok with magic saying "ok, so your arrow deals bonus lightning damage, and even if it misses, it can still deal that damage", but "oh man, you can shoot an arrow that still does some damage if you miss" is rediculous?

Heck, why can't you have, I don't know, a non-magical fire arrow that can do the same thing? After all, a miss doesn't mean you aren't struck at all, it just means your various protections defended you. So you could totally have a fire arrow stick in your cloak and now your cloak is on fire!

Well ones an exploding fall of fire and the others not.

Damage on a miss is generally AoEs.
Mundane ones are things like grenades, mass arrow volleys, automatic gunfire, flamethrower in various d20 games.

 

[Lanefan]

Oh yeah, 20%/50% chance to miss if something has concealment. Such a feel-bad mechanic.

I never understood why they didn't just jump up the AC value of creatures with inherent concealment, have invisibility grant a big AC bonus, and call it done. Less dice-rolling and the math isn't any harder.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

I never understood why they didn't just jump up the AC value of creatures with inherent concealment, have invisibility grant a big AC bonus, and call it done. Less dice-rolling and the math isn't any harder.

This was 3e, the attack bonus could shift really wildly, as the same character could be doing attacks with +30/+25/+20/+15. And attack bonuses always outpaced any AC progression, anyway.

 

[James Gasik]

I never understood why they didn't just jump up the AC value of creatures with inherent concealment, have invisibility grant a big AC bonus, and call it done. Less dice-rolling and the math isn't any harder.

It's certainly how it worked in 4e, where being Invisible gave you +5 AC. The way I see it, when you have stuff like the original 3e Shield spell handed out something ridiculous like +7 AC, you kind of painted yourself into a corner with regards to defensive buffs. If you have Blur as a 2nd level spell, and it's less effective than a 1st level defensive spell, that's a problem, and piling on more AC on top of that might be problematic, especially with how they wanted melee weapon warriors to work, with multiple attacks of descending success rates.

Rather than scaling things down (like how the 3.5 Shield was equal to a Tower Shield), they elected to have a second line of defense separate from AC. Which really affected play a big deal- enemies with miss chances were obnoxious, and so you had to find ways to combat them, while trying to find your own miss chance abilities, and I don't think anyone really liked the mechanic. It slowed down play, was often a feel bad moment, could turn off abilities like Sneak Attack- just a mess, really.

While I understand being invested in 3.5 (I know I was) when 4e came out, 3.5 was plagued by a lot of rules that seemed to exist largely to make the game less fun, and 4e took steps to eliminate a lot of cruft.

Of course, it had it's own odd rules, but I still felt it was an improvement.