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

[Hussar]

That goes back to why we're talking about this in the context of 4E, though. Gygax's old essay in the DMG notwithstanding, the presentation of the operation surrounding hit point loss/restoration was remarkably consistent across the decades in being one thing: injuries taken/healed. 4E changed the paradigm by walking the walk where Gary had only talked the talk, and that was something a lot of people held against it.

Hang on though @Alzrius, it does work both ways though. For someone like me, 4e doesn't actually change anything because that "remarkably consistent" presentation, to me, doesn't exist. It was presumed but, largely absent from what the game actually said. But, people interpreted things like "cure light wounds" to mean that damage must be physical wounds. 4e changed the paradigm for you. For me? It was same old, same old. Damage in D&D was always the Final Fantasy thing where the target wobbles a bit and a number pops out of its head.

 

[Hussar]

Speaking as someone who's red/green colorblind, I resemble that remark.

You and me both bud.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That goes back to why we're talking about this in the context of 4E, though. Gygax's old essay in the DMG notwithstanding, the presentation of the operation surrounding hit point loss/restoration was remarkably consistent across the decades in being one thing: injuries taken/healed. 4E changed the paradigm by walking the walk where Gary had only talked the talk, and that was something a lot of people held against it.

I think its more accurate to say "a mixture of hit points and other things". I'll give you you largely have to assume some injury but honestly, given the tiny amounts, the idea that damage-on-a-miss being something like a little bruising from a glancing hit hardly seems being the pale.

(If you're claiming that all hit point damage is injury and nothing but injury--well, its a take, but I think it goes some pretty ridiculous places).

 

[Gammadoodler]

That goes back to why we're talking about this in the context of 4E, though. Gygax's old essay in the DMG notwithstanding, the presentation of the operation surrounding hit point loss/restoration was remarkably consistent across the decades in being one thing: injuries taken/healed. 4E changed the paradigm by walking the walk where Gary had only talked the talk, and that was something a lot of people held against it.

I guess I'm curious then how you square things like "Second Wind" and "Survivor" within 5e. Because neither has anything to do with healing any injury.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Again, going back to the point about people fundamentally speaking different languages, I think this hits the whole "simulation" thing on the head. To me, a sim game would define what happens when you make/fail a saving throw. The game itself would tell you, "in order to do X, you must satisfy condition Y" in order to simulate what is going on in the game world.

I think for those who disagree with you, and where something like Damage on a Miss or whatnot becomes a major sticking point is that they've taken the notion that the description of the saving throw itself has defined what is going on in the game world. Sorry, I'm not explaining that very well because, honestly, I fundamentally don't understand. It's like trying to explain what green looks like to a color blind person. I can intellectually know that there is a difference between green and red, but, I can't see it so I can't really explain it.

Oh, I get what you're saying. Just to be clear, I'm of the school that doesn't think mechanically D&D has ever been simulationist worth even a bit, there's almost no mechanics in any of the versions I'm familiar with that seem like a proper simulation of what they supposedly representing (keeping in mind I'm using it in the way that does not talk about "simulating" genre tropes or other such things; I reserve "emulating" for that). To me its been gamey and story-facing all the way down.

 

[Pedantic]

Hang on though @Alzrius, it does work both ways though. For someone like me, 4e doesn't actually change anything because that "remarkably consistent" presentation, to me, doesn't exist. It was presumed but, largely absent from what the game actually said. But, people interpreted things like "cure light wounds" to mean that damage must be physical wounds. 4e changed the paradigm for you. For me? It was same old, same old. Damage in D&D was always the Final Fantasy thing where the target wobbles a bit and a number pops out of its head.

Both things are true, is the thing. D&D's weird thing is that you get hit with a sword and don't die. Then you get stabbed by a spike trap, pull yourself up off the spikes, and then get hit by another sword, and then you die.

The issue that always seems to spark this discourse is that tolerance for needing 7 swords chops to die (or really, notice) is presumed to extend to tolerance for a "hit" result not necessarily meaning a sword hit you. Turns out those are totally different things, and opinion about one isn't necessarily correlated with the other.

 

[Alzrius]

Hang on though @Alzrius, it does work both ways though. For someone like me, 4e doesn't actually change anything because that "remarkably consistent" presentation, to me, doesn't exist. It was presumed but, largely absent from what the game actually said. But, people interpreted things like "cure light wounds" to mean that damage must be physical wounds. 4e changed the paradigm for you. For me? It was same old, same old. Damage in D&D was always the Final Fantasy thing where the target wobbles a bit and a number pops out of its head.

Let me rephrase: to the best of my knowledge, prior to 4E D&D didn't have any instances (that I'm aware of) where hit points being lost/regained was expressly presented as being something other than injuries being dealt/mended (and if it did, those instances were esoteric enough that I can't recall them now). Instead, the game used terminology that (as I read it) indicated that it was a representation of wounds.

 

[Alzrius]

I think its more accurate to say "a mixture of hit points and other things". I'll give you you largely have to assume some injury but honestly, given the tiny amounts, the idea that damage-on-a-miss being something like a little bruising from a glancing hit hardly seems being the pale.

(If you're claiming that all hit point damage is injury and nothing but injury--well, its a take, but I think it goes some pretty ridiculous places).

You can certainly find extrapolations and corner-cases where the "hit point loss/restoration as injuries being dealt/healed" paradigm has problems. But having that same operation represent multiple things, to me, causes greater problems in that it muddles the message of what's happening, which is how you end up with the unpalatable (again, to me) cases where someone is burned by a fireball and then healed by being yelled at by a warlord.

 

[Alzrius]

I guess I'm curious then how you square things like "Second Wind" and "Survivor" within 5e. Because neither has anything to do with healing any injury.

I don't. Those are instances where 5E doesn't work for me. It's just not enough to make me repudiate 5E as a whole, because I don't see those as being as intrusive to the overall play experience as similar mechanics were in 4E, along with the fact that 4E had a lot of other issues which, together with the aforementioned hit point one, was more than I could countenance.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You can certainly find extrapolations and corner-cases where the "hit point loss/restoration as injuries being dealt/healed" paradigm has problems. But having that same operation represent multiple things, to me, causes greater problems in that it muddles the message of what's happening, which is how you end up with the unpalatable (again, to me) cases where someone is burned by a fireball and then healed by being yelled at by a warlord.

That's only a problem if you consider any attack but that last one particularly significant rather than shock and stress with some minor injuries, and encouragement can make everything but the latter part go away, and let you ignore the latter part.

I mean, in reality, the only degree to which injuries accumulate is shock and blood loss. In all other respects, every hit is a fresh case. So the hit point model, to the degree it doesn't represent those (and it at least does a poor job of doing the last) isn't really representing anything that's matching in any particular way to the fiction. Its too high order an abstraction to do that.