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

[Umbran]

That choice to skip over that was poor form.

It was poor form on your part to make an assertion and then not bother to demonstrate why you felt it was true.

Mod Note:
As if bickering over who is in worse form is not poor form for everyone involved?

We're going to need you folks to dial it back before the confrontational approaches turn into a real issue. If you're not interested in being kind to the other person, maybe just leave off and find something more constructive to do with your time, hey what?

 

[Aldarc]

No, the point is not moot. By naming the spell that, the game is deliberately going out of its way to tell us what the mechanical operation is indicating in terms of the fiction. Moreover, that perfectly dovetails with similar operations, such as non-magical hit point recovery, which is not accomplished by picking four-leaf clovers or tithing to a church. There's no "tension" except that the single characterization is not backed up by any of the game's actual mechanical elements (which, yes, include what those elements are named).

I think that you are having the words "Cure Wounds" do a lot of heavy lifting if you believe that the game is going out of its way to say that the mechanical operation means that only meat is restored as part of the spell. Are we told what kind of wounds they are? Are they spiritual wounds? Magical wounds? Psychological wounds? The spell is silent. I guess that I put more value in the fact that the game says that the spell is restoring HP, and we know that HP represents more than just meat. Otherwise we lose sight of the forest for the trees.

You seem to have forgotten what was being discussed in this response, which was your continued insistence that pointing out the double-standard in hit point depletion being injury and being stamina loss is a special pleading, which is rather ironic because it's that double-standard that is itself a special pleading, insofar as the tension between having one operation be two different things goes. Other people saying "but that's never been a problem for me!" doesn't mean that the issue isn't there; again, being able to solve the problem means acknowledging that there's a problem in the first place.

This feels more like an attempt to throw back the terms "double-standard" and "special pleading" back. I don't think that this is special pleading any more to say that light is both a particle and a wave. Is the fact that light exists as multiple things a form of special pleading or a double-standard? The fact that tension exists between these things does not mean that it's a form of special pleading or a double-standard. Sometimes it just means that life is vague, complicated, or not so cut-and-dried simple. Sometimes a game mechanic represents multiple things and not just one thing.

We could likewise look at all the things that the Wisdom attribute represents: willpower, intution, awareness, etc. There will be contradictions contained therein and yet, mechanics will interact with Wisdom regardless of the tension of these elements that may be created in our understanding of the fiction. I may not like Wisdom as an attribute, but I don't think it's apt to say it's special pleading or a double-standard that Wisdom represents a variety of disparate things. I likewise don't think the fact that HP represents multiple things means that a double-standard or special pleading is involved.

Partial damage on a saving throw (a saving throw being a different operation) is simply an acknowledgement that the character is being injured, and is managing to minimize their injuries. That's a very different animal than damage on a miss,

Damage on a miss is simply an acknowledgment that the character has injured or weared-down someone, but that their target has managed to minimize their injuries.

as Snarf very neatly explained above.

He has me on ignore, so his neatness of his explanations are totally lost on me. However, as other people in this thread seem to have remained unconvinced that they are different animals, it seems that regardless of the neatness of his explanation, it failed in convincing others.

 

[pemerton]

A fireball spell is presented to the effect that (so long as it's targeted at the proper square, and the target doesn't have some sort of special ability to negate/avoid it) its inflicting damage on the enemy is a foregone conclusion; it's going to injure them, and the only question is if they can at least minimize the wounds they take.

Fighters being able to do damage on a miss functions in a mechanically similar way, but presents an entirely different paradigm in terms of what's happening in the game world, because we're flat-out being told that the attack didn't injure the enemy (whether or not it failed to connect entirely, or made contact but didn't transmit any damaging force thanks to the armor/shield/magic the target was using, isn't clear since "Armor Class" unhelpfully conflates those two different defense modes), but still caused a loss of hit points

I don't know where the bolded bit comes from. Clearly if an attack does damage on a miss, and that damage is sufficient to kill its victim, then the attack did injure the enemy (and fatally so).

More generally, it's clear that a melee attack that does damage on a miss is one which cannot be avoided: the warrior in question always wears down their foe when the attack them. This is not ambiguous or contradictory.

The removal of hit points, like all aspects of the game's mechanical operations, informs us as to what's going on (from an in-character standpoint) in the campaign world (which is, broadly, what "simulationism" is shorthand for). In this instance, they tell us that the character has been injured. Which is what any instance of a character losing hit points tells us: that said character has received physical harm.

This claim is obviously not true in 4e D&D. Some hit point loss does not tell us that the character has been injured; all it tells us is that the character has been set back. (Consider eg a PC with 130 hp who suffers 10 hp of psychic damage.)

In those cases where hp loss does correspond to injury, it is no different if it comes from damage on a hit or damage on a miss. Either way, the attack caused injury.

Page 276 of the 4e PHB address Attack Results:

When you hit, you usually deal damage and sometimes produce some other effect. When you're using a power, the power description tells you what happens when you hit. Some descriptions also say what happens when you miss or when you score a critical hit. . . .

If the attack roll is higher than or equal to the defense score, the attack hits and deals damage, has a special effect, or both. . .

If your attack roll is lower than the defense score, the attack misses, Usually, there's no effect. Some powers have an effect on a miss, such as dealing half damage.​

Page 293 addresses hit points and healing:

Hit points (hp) measure your ability to stand up to punishment, turn deadly strikes into glancing blows, and stay on your feet throughout a battle. Hit points represent more than physical endurance. They represent your character's skill, luck, and resolve - all the factors that combine to help you stay alive in a combat situation. . . .

Powers, abilities, and actions that restore hit points are known as healing. You might regain hit points through rest, heroic resolve, or magic.​

This all makes it pretty clear that the purpose of the attack roll is to determine what consequences flow from having declared this attack using this power. There is no statement nor any implication that a miss on the attack roll means that no injury is caused. Any hit point depletion may be injury, but this is not a function of the rules for Attack Results but a function of the rules for effects and for hit point loss. Consider, eg, the 25th level Rogue daily "Hamstring":

Hit: 4[W] + Dexterity modifier damage, and the target takes ongoing 10 damage and is slowed (save ends both).

Miss: Half damage, and the target takes ongoing 5 damage and is slowed (save ends both).​

It's pretty clear that, against an ordinary sort of foe, this attack causes an injury whether it hits or misses - whatever the attack roll, the target is bleeding and hobbled. The attack roll simply determines the severity of the injury inflicted. (Against a wraith, say, or a starspawn, then the ability invites more imaginative narration, of course.)

Now if someone insists on narrating nonsense - eg they narrate that the missed attack roll for Hamstring means that nothing physically happened to the opponent yet for some reason they happen to suffer a hobbling effect - that's on them.

 

[pemerton]

Partial damage on a saving throw (a saving throw being a different operation) is simply an acknowledgement that the character is being injured, and is managing to minimize their injuries. That's a very different animal than damage on a miss

In 4e D&D they are exactly the same. I mean, 4e D&D does not have such a thing as "save for half damage". It has attacks that have no effect on a miss, and attacks that have some effect on a miss. And some of those effects on a miss are damage.

There are fireballs, and like effects, that inflict damage regardless of the attack roll, the purpose of the attack roll being to determine how much. And there are also weapon attacks that inflict damage regardless of the attack roll, the purpose of the attack roll being to determine how much. There is no a priori reason why a FRPG cannot include weapon attacks that have this feature.

Damage on a miss is simply an acknowledgment that the character has injured or weared-down someone, but that their target has managed to minimize their injuries.

100% this! There is no puzzle, ambiguity, double standard of special pleading involved.

I think that you are having the words "Cure Wounds" do a lot of heavy lifting if you believe that the game is going out of its way to say that the mechanical operation means that only meat is restored as part of the spell. Are we told what kind of wounds they are? Are they spiritual wounds? Magical wounds? Psychological wounds? The spell is silent. I guess that I put more value in the fact that the game says that the spell is restoring HP, and we know that HP represents more than just meat.

From the 5e Basic pdf, pp 74-5:

Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck. Creatures with more hit points are more difficult to kill. Those with fewer hit points are more fragile. . . .

Whenever a creature takes damage, that damage is subtracted from its hit points. The loss of hit points has no effect on a creature’s capabilities until the creature drops to 0 hit points. . . .

Dungeon Masters describe hit point loss in different ways. When your current hit point total is half or more of your hit point maximum, you typically show no signs of injury. When you drop below half your hit point maximum, you show signs of wear, such as cuts and bruises. An attack that reduces you to 0 hit points strikes you directly, leaving a bleeding injury or other trauma, or it simply knocks you unconscious.​

A character may show no signs of injury, or may show signs of wear (eg cuts and bruises) that are not as severe as the trauma that a "direct strike" would cause. Yet the Cure Wounds spell will cheerfully restore their hit points.

I don't see any marked difference here between 4e D&D and 5e D&D, except that in 4e healing is proportional (which makes sense to me) whereas in 5e (as in earlier versions of the game) it is easier to restore the signs of wear on a peasant than it is to restore the "metaphysical" wounds of a powerful warrior.

 

[Alzrius]

I think that you are having the words "Cure Wounds" do a lot of heavy lifting if you believe that the game is going out of its way to say that the mechanical operation means that only meat is restored as part of the spell. Are we told what kind of wounds they are? Are they spiritual wounds? Magical wounds? Psychological wounds? The spell is silent. I guess that I put more value in the fact that the game says that the spell is restoring HP, and we know that HP represents more than just meat. Otherwise we lose sight of the forest for the trees.

No, the game itself is doing the heavy lifting (as it's supposed to) by telling us that the mechanical operation of the cure light wounds spell is, in fact, curing wounds. You'll notice that I've already said that that the degree of information conveyed with regard to the in-character nature of the wound received when hit points are lost is rather sparse. Which is fine, since its conveyed the essential element of the operation: that a physical injury has been received.

This feels more like an attempt to throw back the terms "double-standard" and "special pleading" back. I don't think that this is special pleading any more to say that light is both a particle and a wave. Is the fact that light exists as multiple things a form of special pleading or a double-standard? The fact that tension exists between these things does not mean that it's a form of special pleading or a double-standard. Sometimes it just means that life is vague, complicated, or not so cut-and-dried simple. Sometimes a game mechanic represents multiple things and not just one thing.

No, hit points doing double-duty is not comparable to light being a particle and a wave. At the risk of going too deep into the analogy, light is both at the same time (essentially), whereas hit point loss is one...except when it's the other. You can take burning damage from a fireball, losing hit points commensurately, and then regain them because a warlord yells at you. The operation is the same, but what they represent is two different things in two different circumstances.

We could likewise look at all the things that the Wisdom attribute represents: willpower, intution, awareness, etc. There will be contradictions contained therein and yet, mechanics will interact with Wisdom regardless of the tension of these elements that may be created in our understanding of the fiction. I may not like Wisdom as an attribute, but I don't think it's apt to say it's special pleading or a double-standard that Wisdom represents a variety of disparate things. I likewise don't think the fact that HP represents multiple things means that a double-standard or special pleading is involved.

Pointing out that mental ability scores can conceivably said to represent different aspects of a character's psyche is a tu quoque fallacy, in that even if that's true it doesn't speak to the fact that having hit point loss/restoration represent two different things (as a game operation) is still an issue in terms of leaving the players to parse which thing that single mechanic is representing at any particular time. Having an aggregate of your character's mental accuity is a separate consideration from having one mechanic measure two different things happening to them in combat.

Damage on a miss is simply an acknowledgment that the character has injured or weared-down someone, but that their target has managed to minimize their injuries.

Damage on a miss is based around the idea that you've missed (as in, not injured) the character. And yet, despite not injuring them, you've made them lose some hit points. So they've now lost hit points for reasons that aren't injury...and which can be restored via cure light wounds.

Now, if the game changed that to suggest that damage on a miss wasn't a miss at all, but represented an attack that always dealt some degree of damage to the target regardless of their defenses, that's a different issue, in that it at least remains consistent about what hit point loss represents.

He has me on ignore, so his neatness of his explanations are totally lost on me. However, as other people in this thread seem to have remained unconvinced that they are different animals, it seems that regardless of the neatness of his explanation, it failed in convincing others.

Entrenchment does not mean that the argument is not salient, or correct. That said, I'm not sure if I should go further into it, since I think that might violate the forum rules with regard to blocked content. So I'll just say I found it quite well-presented.

 

[Hussar]

Before anything else, I want to note that your @ didn't show up in my notifications. Did you edit it in after the fact? Because that's the only reason I can think of why I didn't get an alert; otherwise, I may need to make a post in Meta about that.
.

I probably posted from my phone which makes the notification process fraught. Oh wait. I remember. I did post from my pc but being too lazy to look how to spell your handle I cut and pasted it in. Which probably picked up extra characters and futzed with the notification system.

Sorry about that.

But to respond to your post, I think I can largely buy that. I will stick to the “presentation problem” explanation. Heck look at your response to “grazing”. It’s okay to have fighters deal damage on a mission so long as WotC finds just the right word to explain it. Whereas in 4e they largely just handed that off to people playing and said, “pick an explanation that works for you”.

 

[Alzrius]

I don't know where the bolded bit comes from. Clearly if an attack does damage on a miss, and that damage is sufficient to kill its victim, then the attack did injure the enemy (and fatally so).

So sometimes the damage on a miss wasn't a miss, and caused hit point loss from injury, whereas other times (I think you're implying) it was a miss, and the hit point loss was something else? Because that's what the "on a miss" seems to imply for most instances when it comes into play.

More generally, it's clear that a melee attack that does damage on a miss is one which cannot be avoided: the warrior in question always wears down their foe when the attack them. This is not ambiguous or contradictory.

This claim is obviously not true in 4e D&D. Some hit point loss does not tell us that the character has been injured; all it tells us is that the character has been set back. (Consider eg a PC with 130 hp who suffers 10 hp of psychic damage.)

In those cases where hp loss does correspond to injury, it is no different if it comes from damage on a hit or damage on a miss. Either way, the attack caused injury.

Page 276 of the 4e PHB address Attack Results:

When you hit, you usually deal damage and sometimes produce some other effect. When you're using a power, the power description tells you what happens when you hit. Some descriptions also say what happens when you miss or when you score a critical hit. . . .​

​

If the attack roll is higher than or equal to the defense score, the attack hits and deals damage, has a special effect, or both. . .​

​

If your attack roll is lower than the defense score, the attack misses, Usually, there's no effect. Some powers have an effect on a miss, such as dealing half damage.​

Page 293 addresses hit points and healing:

Hit points (hp) measure your ability to stand up to punishment, turn deadly strikes into glancing blows, and stay on your feet throughout a battle. Hit points represent more than physical endurance. They represent your character's skill, luck, and resolve - all the factors that combine to help you stay alive in a combat situation. . . .​

​

Powers, abilities, and actions that restore hit points are known as healing. You might regain hit points through rest, heroic resolve, or magic.​

This all makes it pretty clear that the purpose of the attack roll is to determine what consequences flow from having declared this attack using this power. There is no statement nor any implication that a miss on the attack roll means that no injury is caused. Any hit point depletion may be injury, but this is not a function of the rules for Attack Results but a function of the rules for effects and for hit point loss. Consider, eg, the 25th level Rogue daily "Hamstring":

Hit: 4[W] + Dexterity modifier damage, and the target takes ongoing 10 damage and is slowed (save ends both).​

​

Miss: Half damage, and the target takes ongoing 5 damage and is slowed (save ends both).​

It's pretty clear that, against an ordinary sort of foe, this attack causes an injury whether it hits or misses - whatever the attack roll, the target is bleeding and hobbled. The attack roll simply determines the severity of the injury inflicted. (Against a wraith, say, or a starspawn, then the ability invites more imaginative narration, of course.)

Now if someone insists on narrating nonsense - eg they narrate that the missed attack roll for Hamstring means that nothing physically happened to the opponent yet for some reason they happen to suffer a hobbling effect - that's on them.

You're reiterating what's already been established, in that we know that 4E actually went and presented hit point loss/restoration as actually being what Gary Gygax previously said it was (but never had it mechanically be), which is a measurement of being able to continue acting in combat...and also personal injury. Therein is the problem, because actually having that double-duty take place in the game's operations is what led to the double-standard that so many people found objectionable.

In 4e D&D they are exactly the same. I mean, 4e D&D does not have such a thing as "save for half damage". It has attacks that have no effect on a miss, and attacks that have some effect on a miss. And some of those effects on a miss are damage.

They are not "exactly" the same. They use very similar mechanics, in that they both have the attacker making a roll against a static number of the defender's, but what they represent is different, which is why the values are calculated differently. Different operations are different, even if they both use a metric of "die roll plus bonuses versus target number." It's why wound and vitality points are two different operations, and do a much better job of what 4E wanted to represent with hit points.

 

[Alzrius]

I probably posted from my phone which makes the notification process fraught. Oh wait. I remember. I did post from my pc but being too lazy to look how to spell your handle I cut and pasted it in. Which probably picked up extra characters and futzed with the notification system.

Sorry about that.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

D&D has always bundled a bunch of things together in one mechanic. The attack roll includes both landing a blow and penetrating armor; those are awfully different things and what may make one easy can make the other hard, but there it is from day one.

 

[pemerton]

They are not "exactly" the same. They use very similar mechanics, in that they both have the attacker making a roll against a static number of the defender's, but what they represent is different, which is why the values are calculated differently. Different operations are different, even if they both use a metric of "die roll plus bonuses versus target number."

I've got no idea what you're talking about here.

Rogue 25th level Daily "Biting Assault":

Melee or Ranged weapon
Requirement You must be wielding a crossbow, a light blade, or a sling.
Target: One creature
Attack: Dexterity vs Fortitude
Hit: 3[W] + Dexterity modifier damage, and the target takes ongoing 10 damage and is weakened (save ends both)
Miss: Half damage, and the target takes 10 ongoing damage​

This is an attack the involves the attack pounding the living daylights out of the target, regardless of their armour. Either way, the target is set back and suffers ongoing damage, whether that be bleeding or the reverberating effects of the pounding. On a successful, but not a failed, attack roll the pounding is so brutal that the foe is also weakened. What helps a target resist this pounding is their fortitude.

Wizard 29th level Daily "Greater Ice Storm":

Area burst 5 within 20 squares
Target: Each creature in burst
Attack: Intelligence vs Fortitude
Hit: 4d8 + Intelligence modifier cold damage, and the target is immobilized (save ends)
Miss: Half damage, and the target is slowed (save ends)
Effect: The burst creates a zone of ice. The zone is difficult terrain until the end of the encounter or for 5 minutes.​

This is an attack that conjures an ice storm. The storm is so fierce that anyone caught in it is chilled, perhaps severely, and slowed or (if the attack roll is a hit) unable to move at all. Armour provides no protection against this ice storm; only sheer fortitude does so.

Your notion of "different operation" has no purchase that I can see.