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

[Alzrius]

Thank you for the quick refresher. Unfortunately for you, the Wikipedia article on special pleading referenced says nothing about how your argument isn't a case of special pleading.

You don't seem to understand that when someone makes an affirmative statement ("that argument is a fallacy!"), the burden of proof falls on them to demonstrate why it's so. Otherwise, you're cut down by Hitchens's razor.

Of course, given that the fallacy you cited doesn't actually apply to my argument anyway, I figured that giving you a refresher would make that obvious once you reviewed what a special pleading actually was. Did you not read the page?

 

[Alzrius]

That's not how we generally interpret them. We see hit points as representing a combination of endurance, skill, luck, and experience, which is why they go up when you gain levels. At our table, characters roll for injuries if they go to 0 HP.

And there's nothing stopping you from doing that, but then you potentially run into problems of having positive energy-laced healing spells with names like "cure light wounds" being applied to restore...luck?

Now, if you don't really care about that cognitive dissonance, that's perfectly fine. A lot of people enjoy D&D from a (predominantly) gamist standpoint, and there's nothing wrong with that. But there's still a disconnect there, and for some other people, it's a bump in the road that they'd prefer to do without.

I actually think equating hit points directly to physical harm is borderline incomprehensible. Are we saying that someone with ten times more hit points can survived being stabbed ten times as much as a normal person? But be completely healed after a good night's rest?

As I noted above, the in-character information tells us they're being injured, but it doesn't connote that it was a "stabbing" or that it was their tenth stabbing of the day. Admittedly, though, the "fine after a night's rest, with no magical healing" is an issue in that regard, but not nearly as much of an issue (at least to me, and a lot of people who had a problem with 4E) as being injured and then immediately healed because your warlord buddy shouted at you.

 

[Gammadoodler]

You don't seem to understand that when someone makes an affirmative statement ("that argument is a fallacy!"), the burden of proof falls on them to demonstrate why it's so. Otherwise, you're cut down by Hitchens's razor.

Of course, given that the fallacy you cited doesn't actually apply to my argument anyway, I figured that giving you a refresher would make that obvious once you reviewed what a special pleading actually was. Did you not read the page?

If I'm not mistaken, the case for special pleading is that per your argument, one form of hit point depletion (damage on a save) is different from another form of hit point depletion (damage on a miss) in a "special" way, a "special way" (something something different paradigm) that you have defined and one for which there is no objective standard.

 

[Mannahnin]

As I noted above, the in-character information tells us they're being injured, but it doesn't connote that it was a "stabbing" or that it was their tenth stabbing of the day. Admittedly, though, the "fine after a night's rest, with no magical healing" is an issue in that regard, but not nearly as much of an issue (at least to me, and a lot of people who had a problem with 4E) as being injured and then immediately healed because your warlord buddy shouted at you.

Using the exact same rationale and imaginative tools we employ in comprehending that the injury a 10th level Fighter who can take ten hits before dropping has barely been touched by the first hit (if at all), we can envision how the injury a Warlord inspires her ally to disregard or that a 5E Fighter negates by using Second Wind was also a minor one.

 

[Kannik]

I think it good to remind ourselves of some context at play here to avoid some talking-past-each-other. It’s not that most 4e aficionados can’t accept that a subset of D&D players didn’t/don’t like or enjoy 4e (or that no other version/way of playing ought to exist – that most 4e players are playing 5e these days is illustrative of this). It that a subset of that subset were most vitriolic about it, complete with insults, mocking, and denigration towards those who played 4e. (To a whole new degree – when 3e was released there were those who disliked it immensely but it felt much less like they were attacking their fellow players.)

Atop this was, as was noted upthread, that a chunk of that subset also approached 4e with knives out before seeing it or giving it a try/fair shake, due to a whole host of non-game reasons (edition churn, licensing issues, taking the marketing poorly, change/sacred cows, the batman effect, etc). And many of those adopted (perhaps for expediency) the same attack points as the vitriolic crowd, even if and when some of those points were inaccurate or hyperbolic.

Problem was, and still remains, it can be hard to know where a fellow poster is coming from when you engage. Or if they even are engageable. Earlier this year (or perhaps late last year) even Morrus had to admonish someone that they were a “sore winner” as they continued to tout how wrong 4e was and how right they were, a decade plus after 4e ceased to be published. And this opaqueness can lead to some confusion and back and forth misunderstandings, as well as unexpected (if you don’t remember the context) heat.

 

[Alzrius]

If I'm not mistaken, the case for special pleading is that per your argument, one form of hit point depletion (damage on a save) is different from another form of hit point depletion (damage on a miss) in a "special" way, a "special way" (something something different paradigm) that you have defined and one for which there is no objective standard.

That's not my point though; it's literally what I'm arguing against! The people saying that hit point depletion from damage on a miss isn't really "damage" at all, but rather a loss of luck/stamina/divine protection/etc., are the ones saying it's different from hit point depletion due to being hit by a fireball (which are burns), etc.

Admittedly, some people are trying to reconcile the double-standard by saying that even hit point loss from a fireball isn't physical injury either, but I'd like to think that's self-evidently a much harder point to make.

 

[Alzrius]

Using the exact same rationale and imaginative tools we employ in comprehending that the injury a 10th level Fighter who can take ten hits before dropping has barely been touched by the first hit (if at all), we can envision how the injury a Warlord inspires her ally to disregard or that a 5E Fighter negates by using Second Wind was also a minor one.

Using the same tools doesn't mean that you're doing the same amount of work. Some people might not find the effort that goes into bridging the cognitive gap of having the same operational process represent two different things (i.e. hit point loss being injury, and hit point loss being a reduction of stamina et al), but saying "it's not hard" is not the same thing as saying "it's not something that has to be done in the first place."

Again, the game's processes represent (i.e. simulate) things happening in the game world. When the same process represents two different things, then you're pushing the differentiation onto the people playing the game. Some people won't mind that, but others will.

 

[Gammadoodler]

That's not my point though; it's literally what I'm arguing against! The people saying that hit point depletion from damage on a miss isn't really "damage" at all, but rather a loss of luck/stamina/divine protection/etc., are the ones saying it's different from hit point depletion due to being hit by a fireball (which are burns), etc.

Admittedly, some people are trying to reconcile the fallacy by saying that even hit point loss from a fireball isn't physical injury either, but I'd like to think that's self-evidently a much harder point to make.

What is the fallacy they are reconciling (by treating both forms of hp depletion in a consistent manner)?

 

[Alzrius]

What is the fallacy they are reconciling (by treating both forms of hp depletion in a consistent manner)?

I want to be clear that I'm not the one who's been calling other people's arguments fallacious (save to note the irony in someone else saying that mine is, and then falling victim to Hitchens's razor when they said I hadn't disproven their unproven assertion).

That said, in an effort to be clear as possible: the issue that I'm arguing against is presentations of hit point depletion (being itself a single operation, i.e. that hit points are lost) representing two different things, those being physical injury and loss of stamina/luck/divine protection, etc. If we accept that the mechanics of an RPG (or at least D&D) inform us as to what's happening in the game world, then having a single operation potentially be two different things leads to a hindrance of understanding with regard to what that operation is telling us (since it could be one or the other).

Some people are saying that they don't see that hindrance as a problem, whether because they don't care, can manually separate out the one presentation (i.e. injury) from the other (i.e. stamina), or because they can narratively bridge the gap between being injured and being slightly less combat-capable, etc. Those are all fine ways of resolving the issue, but it doesn't mean it isn't an issue to begin with.

 

[Aldarc]

You don't seem to understand that when someone makes an affirmative statement ("that argument is a fallacy!"), the burden of proof falls on them to demonstrate why it's so. Otherwise, you're cut down by Hitchens's razor.

Of course, given that the fallacy you cited doesn't actually apply to my argument anyway, I figured that giving you a refresher would make that obvious once you reviewed what a special pleading actually was. Did you not read the page?

Your "argument" for why you weren't engaging in special pleading was to link me to a Wikipedia page about special pleading. Please tell me how your "argument" deserved a substantial rebuttal again?

I want to be clear that I'm not the one who's been calling other people's arguments fallacious (save to note the irony in someone else saying that mine is, and then falling victim to Hitchens's razor when they said I hadn't disproven their unproven assertion).

I don't think that Hitchen's Razor applies. That said, the evidence for your special pleading seemed pretty apparent with your prior posts and others have brought up reasons why that is the case. The reasons why I believe that you are engaging in special pleading has been the double-standard that you apply with regards damage saves and damage-on-a-miss. You also seem to apply a willingness to read the mechanics in a way that flows from the fiction for one while refusing to do so with the other. And when others say that it is a consistent understanding of HP between both mechanics, you insist that it isn't for some reason. So yes, your argument regarding saves for half damage being different from damage-on-a-miss does ring a lot like special pleading. It's fine if you don't like damage-on-a-miss, but it's not alien to D&D outside of 4e, including partial damage on saves.

That said, in an effort to be clear as possible: the issue that I'm arguing against is presentations of hit point depletion (being itself a single operation, i.e. that hit points are lost) representing two different things, those being physical injury and loss of stamina/luck/divine protection, etc.

Which is equally as true for damage-on-a-miss and saves for half-damage. This is choosing to read the mechanics in a manner that is entirely consistent with the game fiction.