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

[soviet]

Can you provide one example of someone refusing to admit that some things in 5e came from 4e? Please? You've been going on about this for days.

'Here's a little thing I like to call passive perception'

 

[Micah Sweet]

'Here's a little thing I like to call passive perception'

I don't get it. Is this a joke of some kind?

 

[soviet]

I don't get it. Is this a joke of some kind?

Monte Cook, when he was on the development team for 5e, posted some columns about their progress, intentions, etc. In one of them he talked about a rule he invented where a character's Perception bonus +10 acts as a static DC for noticing things around them without needing a roll. 'Here's a little something I like to call Passive Perception', I believe is the quote.

The same rule exists in 4e under the same name.

 

[Alzrius]

'Here's a little something I like to call Passive Perception', I believe is the quote.

Nitpick: the actual quote is "That's the straightforward, active perception issue, but what about what I like to call "passive perception?""

Very Perceptive - Legends and Lore

web.archive.org

 

[Micah Sweet]

Monte Cook, when he was on the development team for 5e, posted some columns about their progress, intentions, etc. In one of them he talked about a rule he invented where a character's Perception bonus +10 acts as a static DC for noticing things around them without needing a roll. 'Here's a little something I like to call Passive Perception', I believe is the quote.

The same rule exists in 4e under the same name.

Ok. Again, is someone arguing against this?

 

[billd91]

Nitpick: the actual quote is "That's the straightforward, active perception issue, but what about what I like to call "passive perception?""

Very Perceptive - Legends and Lore

web.archive.org

Yeah, people get funny about it, but the crux of the article isn’t about passive perception, per se. It’s about NOT ROLLING when the DM knows that the PC is either good enough/not good enough to succeed. It’s an introduction to 5e’s shift to formalize not rolling unless the outcome is in doubt.

 

[Hussar]

Can you provide one example of someone refusing to admit that some things in 5e came from 4e? Please? You've been going on about this for days.

That's not the argument.

The argument is that these things come from 4e, they were a HUGE problem in 4e, but are suddenly perfectly acceptable in 5e.

1 :1 :1 movement.
Non-magical healing
non-magical limited powers
etc.

 

[pemerton]

Well, the book does explicitly tell you which role each class is designed to fill. Like, from a list.

Sure.

I'm asking about function, not descriptive text.

Like, how do I build a fighter in 5e D&D whose main contribution is to buff and heal their allies? Or a rogue whose main contribution, in combat, is battlefield control?

I thought the idea is that this is easier to do in 5e than 4e.

 

[pemerton]

When you have an ability which can only be used 3/day, there needs to be some sort of explanation regarding that limit, for instance. If the ability is blatantly supernatural, then it's not that hard to come up with one. If it's something that isn't, that can become harder.

As I said,

If an additional constraint is imposed - along the lines of explain why things unfold as they do by reference to only inherent properties/capacities of the PCs - then 4e will not meet that constraint. But that constraint is not necessary for coherent and verisimilitudinous RPGing.

You are assuming that any explanation has to be inherent to the character, and thus that the way things unfold in the fiction is caused by that inherent property of the character.

That additional constraint is not necessary for coherent and verisimilitudinous RPGing.

 

[Hussar]

@Alzrius

I think I might be having a bit of an epiphany, so, bear with me for a moment while I meander for a bit. I will get to the point, I promise.

Looking at the development of 5e, WotC has been very, very careful to make sure that everything they do has at least the implied, if not straight up explicitly, the approval of most of the fandom. When D&D Next was being developed, there was no way they could straight up say, "Hey, we're going to add a bunch of 4e ism's into the game" because tempers were far too high. People were seriously pissed off.

So, they were very cagey. They did the playtests, gathered the feedback, and came out with 5e. Then, as 5e progressed, and they added new ideas, classes, rules, whatever, they've again, with a tiny drip feed, double and triple checked that the fandom will accept these ideas. If someone doesn't like some concept, they can always step back and say, "Well, the majority of people we polled seem to like this, so, we're doing what the fandom is telling us they want. Yes, we understand that you might not like it, but, we have to go with what the fandom is telling us they want."

And that drip feed is important. Like you said, the issue with 4e wasn't really any specific change, but, rather that so many changes came all at once. No one can point to any one thing and say, "Well, that's the bridge too far" because that bridge is different for everyone.

Now as we head into OneD&D and the 2024 revision, we're seeing stuff being added into the game that people absolutely lost their poop over. Damage on a miss as a perfect example. They put it into the playtest. Now, you're right, it might not make the final cut. True. But, if it does, then WotC can again say, "Look, 82% (a totally fabricated number for the purposes of example) of the respondents said they really like this. We're just doing what YOU are telling us to do." It totally diffuses any real push back because no one want's to be "that guy" badwrongfunning and yucking in everyone else's yum.

Another perfect example. 4e dropped gnomes. This, again, became a HUGE rallying cry. Something that totally blindsided WotC because, everything they knew said that virtually no one played gnomes, so, dropping them wouldn't be an issue. But the whole Gnome Effect became a very real thing.

But, 2024 5e may very well drop half-elves and half-orcs as mechanically distinct races. We'll see if that gets past the sniff test of the polling. If it does, again, they can turn to people who are complaining with a shrug and simply say, "Look, we're doing what people want us to do".

It's actually quite ingenious. But, (and here's where I get back to the point, sorry) it also goes a long way towards explaining why these massively, huge issues that were endlessly problematic, to the point where they are STILL considered problematic suddenly stopped being a problem. Many 4e players moved on to 5e. So, they were part of the numbers that approved of the changes that WotC made with Next. Added to that, the compartementalization of the changes done in Next, where it was a few changes (or quite a few in some cases) in each playtest package where instead of getting hit with all these different changes at once, it was broken down into bite sized chunks, none of which individually was really a problem.

I dunno if that makes sense to anyone else, but, it does seem to explain the inconsistencies to me.