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

[Alzrius]

The Inspiring Leader feat lets a player provide Charisma modifier + Level temporary HP to up to 6 creatures within 30 feet of me after a 10 minute inspiring speech. The Battlemaster's Rally maneuver provides a creature with temporary hit points equal to the superiority die + Charisma modifier. These are probably two of the most blatant ways to provide temporary HP and they are non-magical.

And insofar as the effect is not magical? E.g. from inspiring leader, fighting spirit, recent UA patient defense, others?

Then I'd say that's an area where having hit points as injuries taken is problematic (I've certainly never claimed that it's perfect, or without issue), but that trying to reconcile that by having hit point loss be injury and something else at the same time is worse, as it exchanges a fairly marginal problem for a much bigger one.

Or just, you know, have the effect that grants temporary hit points be magical.

 

[pemerton]

Then you're not looking very carefully. I'll refer you to a few posts back, which did an excellent job denoting why attack rolls and saving throws are different.

First, you're trying to point me to a post by a user who has me blocked.

Secondly, I'm talking about 4e D&D which does not have saving throws for half damage. I posted two example powers, both attacks vs Fortitude, both of which do half damage on a miss. The fact that one is a weapon attack by a rogue, and the other an AoE elemental attack by a wizard, makes no difference to the basic resolution framework, and has no impact on how the DoaM is adjudicated and narrated.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Figuring out the degree to which something has happened is not the same thing as figuring out what's happened in the first place. Yes, you figure out how much of an injury X hit points' worth of damage is, but at least you know it's damage.

Yeah, but you still don't know what it is and why its there. It could be a penetrating shallow slice, a bruise caused by a solid hammer on the mail shirt, or a twisted ankle from a not-entirely-successful avoidance. There are games that can answer that question for you, but with D&D you have to answer it yourself.

I disagree; the emotional objection is from people who feel attacked by pointing out that the double-standard in having hit point loss represent two different things creates a cognitive burden for people who like the game to inform them of what's going on.

Then you disagree, but I'm on their side of this one and you can't write it off to defensive-4e-fan in my case.

 

[Aldarc]

I've been very clear about this: it represents an actual problem because it off-loads the task of determining what's happening within the context of the game world onto the player(s), rather than informing them itself. Is the hit point loss an injury, or just accumulating stress/fear/loss of luck/less divine protection, etc.? You have to figure it out, rather than the game telling you.

The game is silent on a lot of things. There are a lot of things that I have to figure out. So let's imagine that we establish that hit points loss represent an injury. This just shifts the problem and creates a new front. Where does my sword hit my opponent? How deep does the cut go? Is my opponent in pain? If the GM narrates that a monster bites me in the chest, am I walking around with a punctured lung and chest cavity? Would I be limping if the monster had bit me in the leg instead? The game doesn't tell me much about anything regarding what's happening with injuries within the context of the game world, regardless of what HP represents. D&D really is not a game that is interested in these sorts of things.

I personally suspect that the reason why the game is silent is not because it off-loads the task of determining within the context of the game world onto the players, but, rather, because it has historically off-loaded this responsibility onto the the Dungeon Master! The DM was the referee, the arbiter, and judge of interpreting the mechanics in the game fiction. The DM was the system. What does the HP loss represent? That's what the DM tells you.

I mean, that's not the best example, since the blurb on page 145 of the 4E PHB expressly says: "You call out to a wounded ally and offer inspiring words of courage and determination that helps that ally heal." But we'll ignore the last five words, there.

It would probably be better if we ignored your last eight words and the smiley here. I said, "The game tells me that the Warlord's words fill me with greater resolve, potentially allowing me to tap into my energy reserves, so I keep fighting with a renewed sense of vigor." This is indeed what happens with Inspiring Word. As a result of the warlord's inspiring words of courage and determination, the target can spend a healing surge (i.e., the aforementioned "tap into my energy reserves") in order to heal their HP. "Healing" is a keyword in the game representing a power or ability that restores HP.But remember, that HP is not strictly meat in 4e, and that That is your hang-up and not the game's.

Yeah, and that's the crux of the issue. Having hit points potentially represent two different things creates a cognitive gap that the player(s) then have to bridge. That some players have no issue doing that is fine for them, but if other players want the game to tell us what's happening, having one mechanical result be indicative of two different things is a hindrance that doesn't need to be there.

This assertion is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Based on what he said prior, I imagine that @Hussar reading this would probably think to himself "what cognitive gap?" That's probably true for others in this thread.

I wouldn't call it a cognitive gap. I would call it a simple case of vagueness. You don't like that the game is vague about this subject matter. You want the game to be more explicit and less vague about what's happening with HP. It's not, and the game and its designer don't want to be explicit about these things or they are possibly uninterested in such things. There may be reasons why that's the case. It's possible that they see value in keeping HP vague. It's possible that making HP less vague makes other and more problems than it's worth.

Which is why the game is at its most elegant when it takes up the metaphorical "heavy lifting" on your behalf, at least as much as it can without becoming burdensome. Now, that will naturally vary from person to person insofar as what constitutes "burdensome," but again, just because you don't find a task difficult doesn't mean that it's not a task in the first place.

4e is probably the one of two editions of D&D that goes to the greatest lengths to do the metaphorical heavy lifting on your behalf through its extensive use of keywords, terms, and so on that it provides, particularly in regards to its character abilities and powers.

Whereas I find nothing "liberating" in the game telling me that I have to keep track of one more thing that's happening, in addition to everything else that I'm keeping track of. If it wants to present two different things, injuries and stamina, then it should have two different mechanics for injury and stamina.

You mean like HP and healing surges? While not perfectly tuned, 4e is a remarkably consistent game when you look into how its design.

Either way, it's something that the people sitting around the table have to deal with, rather than the game system taking care of that burden for them.

But do they though? Do I have have to deal with this problem? Does @Hussar, @pemerton, @Red Castle, or others have to deal with this at our tables? If this is a problem, I have never seen it play out at any table I have personally sat it. If it is a problem, then it is only one that I have encountered on message boards.

Yes, but what effect? Physical? Psychological? It doesn't seem to want to say, and so that's now something that the players need to figure out on their own. The game could do more to convey what it's trying to model, is my point.

If you are curious for the answers to your questions, then I would encourage you to read the rules of 4e. You know how, for example, a fireball causes fire damage on a successful save? You can read it in the Fireball spell description. Likewise, these powers in 4e will often explicitly tell you what kind of damage and/or effect the target takes on a miss.

Yeah, that doesn't really narrow things down. It's a vague nod in the direction of maybe being physical damage, but doesn't commit to it, and doesn't explain how a "miss" is still a hit.

A miss can indicate a splash effect, a glancing blow, or some other incidental effect of a power.

That is the 4e explanation for how a miss is still a hit: i.e., splash effects (just like partial damage on saves), glancing blows (weapon attack powers!), or incidental effects of the attack. Now granted, you may personally want a more thorough explanation or have it done on a case by case basis, but the game does indicate what a miss is intended to represent.

In this metaphor, the game isn't saying a rose at all, which is a problem because without informing us of what's going on in the setting, we don't actually know if it smells as sweet.

It does inform us what is going on in the setting. A lot of the abilities are pretty clear about what's going on in the setting, including what happens on a miss. In fact, it's arguably even clearer than other editions of D&D. Like when I "miss" as a Cleric with my Turn Undead ability, the game tells me that targets take half radiant damage but aren't pushed or immobilized on a miss.

 

[James Gasik]

Wow, so this debate on hit points and what they are really took off. Somewhere in there, someone begged a question about hit points and what they represent (I lost track of who) that reminded me of something D&D does that I always just accepted.

In D&D, some effects target or suppress one's "life force", for lack of a better term. A spell can have a very different effect on you if you have a certain level/amount of HD, for example:

But also, spells can have a different effect based on how many hit points you have at the moment:

In the case of Power Words (and similar effects, like the 5e versions of Sleep and Color Spray), where we have an effect that doesn't deal damage, but relies on you having a certain hit point threshold, it's obvious that hit points are being used to model something completely different than "hits to kill". It's certainly not physical resilience to injury, as this is a mind-affecting effect. There's (usually) no saving throw involved- somehow your hit points are your "saving throw". Either what is being gauged is your "total life force", or perhaps the morale, divine providence, and stamina that Gary told us hit points are on pages 61 and the oft-quoted 82.

I don't really know which, as again, I've never really thought about this until now-what is a spell like Power Word, Stun/Blind using hit points to model isn't very clear. In the case of Power Word, Kill, it makes a little more sense (though there are many things in the game that can kill you that are completely unrelated to hit point loss, like level or ability drain/suppression).

That you could be hit by an attack and killed despite having hit points remaining seems to run counter to what I've always assumed hit points to mean- and given the prevalence of ways the game itself, over the years has treated hit points as one thing or another, I wonder if the people who developed it even know themselves!

 

[pemerton]

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.

I've played D&D since 1982, and have never imagined it working like this. I don't see it as a fundamentally absurd game.

 

[Imaro]

I've played D&D since 1982, and have never imagined it working like this. I don't see it as a fundamentally absurd game.

I would argue assuming a game like this is "absurd" would probably make most to nearly all action films... absurd as well...

EDIT: Which I guess if you do... then yes I'd argue D&D and many ttrpg's are absurd.

 

[pemerton]

The game does not tell me that the Warlord's yelling cures my burns or unsinges my skin. It remains absolutely silent on that point. The game tells me that the Warlord's words fill me with greater resolve, potentially allowing me to tap into my energy reserves, so I keep fighting with a renewed sense of vigor. However, in contrast, the Cleric calls upon their deity so they can channel their holy magic to bind my wounds or fill me with divine courage, though this also may also deplete part of my energy reserves. Different proceses in the fiction. Same end result in the mechanics.

<snip>

Yes, a GM or player may have to parse what HP loss represents, much like a GM or player may have to parse what a variety of other mechanics or game processes (e.g., attributes, a missed attack, a saving throw, etc.) may represent in the fiction. Parsing how the mechanics play out in the fiction is called "playing the game." I don't see how HP is somehow peculiar in this regard or why it's an issue. The fact that HP can be a variety of elements that contributes to a character's survival is IMHO meant to be liberating for the GM and player to interpret/parse the fiction in a variety of ways for the purposes of greater rather than less simulation.

Though I will add that depending on who you talk to here, it's not the player's job to parse that information; instead, that responsibility rests entirely with the referee/judge/GM to parse that information.


Damage on a miss is based around the idea that you have not made a full hit with a full effect, but that your attack still had some effect on the target. Pemerton provides further elaboration on the point of what damage-on-a-miss represents in the context of 4e.


You seem pretty easily hung-up on labels without actually doing the work to read the rules in their context. Here is the entry on Miss in the 4e PHB 1, which tells us what a miss represents:

Call it whatever you want if it helps you sleep at night. A rose by any other name is still a rose. Regardless of your hang-ups with the name "miss," the game is explicitly clear and internally consistent with what a miss can represent.

All this, 100%.

There is no lack of clarity in the game rules.

 

[pemerton]

I would argue assuming a game like this is "absurd" would probably make most to nearly all action films... absurd as well...

The only film I know of that represented the stab wounds as @Pedantic described them is The Holy Grail. Which is a comedy. The scene with the Black Knight is meant to be silly, not a model for an action adventure game.

 

[Pedantic]

I've played D&D since 1982, and have never imagined it working like this. I don't see it as a fundamentally absurd game.

I'm a late 2e baby, but this was not only not obviously absurd, but so normative in media derived from D&D that it took decades of arguing about this on the Internet for me to conceive of this as a problem for some people and not just the norm for fantasy. Killing people with singular sword blows was reserved for pointedly "gritty" works.

In fact I just posted elsewhere about running into an example of the concept in the wild, from a book written before I was born.

I've been thinking about hit points in the broader cultural context, while listening this podcast doing a playthrough of the Grailquest series of choose your own adventure books. This particular one quite pointedly describes the PC getting stabbed, through the stomach by a surprise spear trap, and then instructs them to remove the spear and carry on if they have remaining "Life Points" as the book calls them.

That position, where HP is an absolute description of life or death and it's the nature of wounds that has been redefined to accommodate them is, I think the more enduring result from D&D than any talk of "luck or grit." That's from 1986, so it really doesn't seem to have taken long at all for hit points to reach that state.