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

[pemerton]

I can't deal with full combat effectiveness or dead, with nothing inbetween.

But this is what OSR offers! And you're a self-proclaimed OSR enthusiast.

 

[pemerton]

One of the most surprising, to me anyway things that came out of the whole 4e thing was this notion that D&D in any edition has ever supported simulationist play. Before 4e was announced, you never heard anyone talking about how they play D&D because it's a good simulationist game. And, frankly, people who DO play sim games would giggle at the suggestion. The whole point of sim games, very often, is a reaction to the almost complete lack of anything remotely resembling simulation in D&D (any edition).

<snip>

It constantly baffles me that anyone would seriously think that D&D is a sim game.

I am a perfect example of this.

In the late 1980s I was adapting AD&D in a "purist-for-system" simulationist direction, influenced by the Survival Guides, various magazine articles, and a few ideas of my own. Then in 1990 I discovered Rolemaster, which answered all my simulationist prayers - skills ranging over the full range of character endeavour, purchased with points reflecting the difficulty of learning; intricate rules for armour and crits; spell casters who learned their spells in thematically integrated lists; etc.

It had none of the inanity of D&D's hit points, saving throws, AC equalling both dodge and damage reduction, etc.

After GMing RM for 19 years straight, I started a 4e campaign in early 2009. I knew going in that this was going to be a very different system from RM; it took all the D&D "inanities" and turned them into this amazing vehicle for heroic fantasy adventure.

Like you (@Hussar), the idea of D&D as offering some sort of "process simulation" that 4e heretically departed from is one that I can't take seriously. As you say, it makes me giggle.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I am a perfect example of this.

In the late 1980s I was adapting AD&D in a "purist-for-system" simulationist direction, influenced by the Survival Guides, various magazine articles, and a few ideas of my own. Then in 1990 I discovered Rolemaster, which answered all my simulationist prayers - skills ranging over the full range of character endeavour, purchased with points reflecting the difficulty of learning; intricate rules for armour and crits; spell casters who learned their spells in thematically integrated lists; etc.

It had none of the inanity of D&D's hit points, saving throws, AC equalling both dodge and damage reduction, etc.

After GMing RM for 19 years straight, I started a 4e campaign in early 2009. I knew going in that this was going to be a very different system from RM; it took all the D&D "inanities" and turned them into this amazing vehicle for heroic fantasy adventure.

Like you (@Hussar), the idea of D&D as offering some sort of "process simulation" that 4e heretically departed from is one that I can't take seriously. As you say, it makes me giggle.

Makes me giggle also but I have given up arguing about it with people on the internet.

 

[Mannahnin]

Not a problem for some, perhaps, but I wouldn't want this in a game I ran or played.

D&D needs a body-fatigue or wounds-vitality hit point system. Examples like yours are the reason why.

Well, to be fair that’s what Healing Surge was representing. Pretty much every healing used a Healing Surge and once you get to zero, you can’t heal anymore. It was the body fatigue, the limit of each adventurers that forced the party to stop to rest. It was the real HP.

Yep. Once you were out of surges was when you knew you were riding the ragged edge and seriously vulnerable.

When I speak of a body-fatigue system, I mean that there's body points and fatigue points (the total of which are your hit points). Taking BP damage represents real injury that can't be easily cured up, but you're still functional and conscious until you reach 0.

That's only one option, though. As Red Castle pointed out, the healing surge system in 4E literally is "a body-fatigue system", in that healing surges can be drained by undead, or by physical exhaustion, sometimes as a consequence of a failed skill challenge, for example, so they represent your overall vitality until you get a long rest. And your ability to heal is mostly limited/capped by your physical and mental reserves (remaining surges).

Could work in a simulationist game, but in a heroic fantasy one, I personally prefer HP to be an abstraction and not spend too much time recovering. Personally, I loved the introduction of short and long rest and not have the character forced to spend a month in bed to recover if there is no way to heal magically.

Agreed.

I can't deal with full combat effectiveness or dead, with nothing inbetween.

Well, D&D has always done "full combat effectiveness" or "unconscious". And the "comatose and then combat ineffective" rules for going below 0 in 1E, and the equivalent optional rule in 2E are just "full combat effectiveness" or "totally incapacitated". Though in practice I always saw people ignore the lingering incapacitation rules in AD&D because it was too awkward and annoying to have a party member left behind or have to put the whole adventure on hold while the party waited for the wounded person to recover.

Tangent- I've been talking about The Nightmares Underneath repeatedly lately because I've been reading it, and its take on hit points is one of the main reasons it interests me. Instead of HP you have Disposition, which resets after a night's sleep (you may also choose to reset it after a four hour rest and a meal). Every time you do that, you re-roll your Disposition fresh (using your hit dice, so, say you're a level 4 Fighter, you'll roll 4d8). Any damage that exceeds your remaining Disposition goes against your Health score (which replaces Constitution), so there's your "body points", and represents actual injury. Poison and non-combat injuries also go straight to Health.

Longer system excerpt in spoiler tags.

Disposition Zero and Injury
When NPCs are reduced to zero Disposition, they are defeated. The GM is free to decide the fate of any human or animal that has been reduced to zero Disposition, or turn that decision over to the player who landed the final blow. Because this game is mostly concerned with the lives of the PCs and the nightmares they fight, the specific injuries of NPCs are rarely of any particular importance. Creatures of nightmare
lose their ability to affect the material world once they have been reduced to zero Disposition, so their Health scores are also not important when it comes to tracking damage.

The injuries of the PCs, however, we do care about. They are the protagonists of the game, so we will follow them into injury and watch them bleed out where otherwise we wouldn’t. When PCs are reduced to zero Disposition, they are still conscious and may continue taking actions. Any further damage taken after being reduced to zero Disposition reduces the victim’s Health score—and the victim may be injured, incapacitated, crippled, mutilated, or killed as a result. Any time you lose points from your Health score, you must roll your current (modified) Health score or less on a d20 in order to prevent the wound from temporarily incapacitating the affected location. You might have blood in your eyes, or have lost all feeling in your arm, for example. It takes at least one round (a complicated action) to pull yourself together and recover your senses.

If you lose half of your current Health score or more in a single blow, the affected location has been maimed or mutilated, possibly permanently. You must roll equal to or lower than your Willpower score on a d20 in order to stay conscious, otherwise you pass out for 1d6 rounds. In order to regain consciousness once those rounds have passed, you must roll equal to or lower than half your Willpower score, rounded down, on a d20, or you remain unconscious for an additional 1d6 rounds.

Bleeding
If you lose half your current Health score due to a cutting wound, there is a 50/50 chance you are now bleeding out. When bleeding out, you lose an additional point of Health every round from the blood loss. Once you spend a round tending to the wound, the bleeding slows to 1 point of Health every turn (5-10 minutes). Once you spend a turn tending to the wound, the bleeding stops altogether.

Dying
If your character is reduced to zero Health, or must have some vital organ amputated because it was mutilated, your character is dead. You must make a new character if you wish to continue playing.

skipping over the hit location tables

If you are hit in the arm while you are wearing a shield, you may choose to have the shield break instead of losing points from your Health because of the damage.

If you are hit in the head while you are wearing a helmet, you may choose to have the helmet break instead of losing points from your Health because of the damage.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Apparently you want a much deadlier game than 5e. I mean, let's be fair- going to 0 hit points is an arbitrary and random event that most of the time, you can't really prevent. Most characters have no control over when an enemy will hit your AC in combat, or how much damage they do. Saying "well, don't fight monsters" is completely contrary to the point of the game. You're a Fighter and you enter melee combat, because that's what your class tends to do is going to result in you going to 0.

If the consequence of this is that you are in a coma for 1-6 turns, as Gary suggest (I think a turn is 10 minutes in AD&D) basically means you're not only out of the combat, you're not doing anything until the party can find a way to short rest.

Going to 0 hit points is already a really bad thing. Barring a massive stroke of luck, you are left to slowly bleed out until another character can use an action or a resource to get you back into the fight.

I realize you prefer the game to make narrative sense, but let's be real. Going on adventures and fighting deadly monsters in small groups doesn't make the most sense to begin with. It's this exact lethality in AD&D that led Robert Kuntz to hire a large force of hirelings to clear the way ahead for his party in a dungeon, much to Gary Gygax's chagrin.

If that sounds like the game for you, have at it, but it's certainly not the way most groups play the game.

My preference is for a PC to have their state of health determined when someone goes to check on them. You could roll on a table (with modifiers like how negative they are, how long they've been down, their Con bonus, what type of care they are receiving, etc.), and the result would be what injuries they've suffered and how long they'll be out of action.

Also, this is why I like gold for xp. It encouraged fighting as a last resort, and urged you to find other ways to get around what you wanted, because combat was deadly. The reaction roll helped too, as most creatures can be negotiated with and/or intimidated. Having a strong hireling culture also helped, both as protection in numbers and because if your PC did go down there was likely someone available to tend to them and make they didn't die, and while they were down the players still had henchmen to control in the fight.

The increased focus on who your character is, how cool they are, and the "story" you're telling with them over what you're all doing together as you explore and interact with the setting has, IMO, damaged this style.

 

[Micah Sweet]

One of the most surprising, to me anyway things that came out of the whole 4e thing was this notion that D&D in any edition has ever supported simulationist play. Before 4e was announced, you never heard anyone talking about how they play D&D because it's a good simulationist game. And, frankly, people who DO play sim games would giggle at the suggestion. The whole point of sim games, very often, is a reaction to the almost complete lack of anything remotely resembling simulation in D&D (any edition).

Yet, it became this huge rallying cry. And, bizarrely, it still is. I mean, if you don't like Full to Zero HP mechanics, why on earth would you play any edition of D&D? D&D has never had anything remotely resembling a sim based combat system. It's entirely abstract and it's effectively old Final Fantasy 1 combat. One side wiggles slightly and a negative number appears over the sprite on the other side. Repeat until one side or the other falls down.

It constantly baffles me that anyone would seriously think that D&D is a sim game.

It has been more sim at some points than others, and it's important to note that sim mechanics are not exclusive to combat. Ideally you're simulating the whole setting, not just when you fight, which, as you say, does require more abstraction than the rest of the game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But this is what OSR offers! And you're a self-proclaimed OSR enthusiast.

Not my OSR. Injuries and rest to recover that last longer than a single night happen in OSR games.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Makes me giggle also but I have given up arguing about it with people on the internet.

Seems rather dismissive of other people's opinions to laugh at it.

 

[Hussar]

It has been more sim at some points than others, and it's important to note that sim mechanics are not exclusive to combat. Ideally you're simulating the whole setting, not just when you fight, which, as you say, does require more abstraction than the rest of the game.

But, again, nothing in D&D is "simulating a whole setting". The setting books are largely just fiction. There's no system for determining virtually anything in the setting. Is there a peasant revolt in that kingdom over taxes? Well, that's for the DM to decide. Is the market for used chainmail depressed in the local village? Well, that's for the DM to decide. What's the weather going to be like tomorrow? Ask the DM because the system isn't going to tell you anything.

Virtually nothing in the setting is determined by the system. And the proof of that is that the settings for D&D are system agnostic. You can run Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk or Darksun in any version of D&D and they all work. Because nothing in the setting is determined by the system.

IOW, what sim mechanics for simulating a setting are you thinking of? There very much ARE systems for that sort of thing. Harn being one of the first ones that I can think of. Ironsworn is another fantastic one. I'm sure there are many more.

Seems rather dismissive of other people's opinions to laugh at it.

An opinion that has virtually nothing supporting it deserves to be giggled at. They should be dismissed. Why should I take an opinion seriously that has virtually no evidence to back it up?

 

[Micah Sweet]

But, again, nothing in D&D is "simulating a whole setting". The setting books are largely just fiction. There's no system for determining virtually anything in the setting. Is there a peasant revolt in that kingdom over taxes? Well, that's for the DM to decide. Is the market for used chainmail depressed in the local village? Well, that's for the DM to decide. What's the weather going to be like tomorrow? Ask the DM because the system isn't going to tell you anything.

Virtually nothing in the setting is determined by the system. And the proof of that is that the settings for D&D are system agnostic. You can run Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk or Darksun in any version of D&D and they all work. Because nothing in the setting is determined by the system.

IOW, what sim mechanics for simulating a setting are you thinking of? There very much ARE systems for that sort of thing. Harn being one of the first ones that I can think of. Ironsworn is another fantastic one. I'm sure there are many more.


An opinion that has virtually nothing supporting it deserves to be giggled at. They should be dismissed. Why should I take an opinion seriously that has virtually no evidence to back it up?

My preferred setting mechanics come from ACKS, actually, but even without that the idea is that your setting be plausible in how it works. You can do that in D&D, even if most people don't seem to bother.

And laughing derisively at other people's opinions is at the very least unkind and disrespectful. Why can't you just be clear that you have a different opinion, or that you simply disagree?