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

[Autumnal]

That's a far smaller cognitive burden than having to determine if it's an injury or just some sort of depletion of personal stamina, luck, divine protection, etc.

I admit to having trouble seeing what the potential problem is. Am I…one sec. Let me be clear upfront that have chronic physical disabilities that, among other things mess with my memory. The question they follows is therefore an honest one. Am I forgetting anything you’d need to differently depending on which kind of strain a particular hp loss represents? I can’t think of any, but truly, I have good reason not to trust such self-assessments.

 

[Alzrius]

Yeah, but you still don't know what it is and why its there.

I'm pretty sure you do know what it is (i.e. an injury) and why it's there (i.e. you were just attacked), but presuming you meant "you don't know what type of injury it is," I already granted that as being true, but that's one step further than having to determine if it's an injury at all.

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.

Right, but that's true regardless of edition, since every iteration of D&D has some instances of hit points as injury. It's just that some start from there, whereas others require you to figure out if that's even the case to begin with.

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.

Like I said before, I'd be happier if we could all agree that 4E's operation regarding hit point loss/restoration being potentially two things is more complicated than if said operation was only representing one thing.

 

[Alzrius]

I admit to having trouble seeing what the potential problem is. Am I…one sec. Let me be clear upfront that have chronic physical disabilities that, among other things mess with my memory. The question they follows is therefore an honest one. Am I forgetting anything you’d need to differently depending on which kind of strain a particular hp loss represents? I can’t think of any, but truly, I have good reason not to trust such self-assessments.

In terms of what's different, it's a matter of having the game inform you about what's happening via the operations of the meta-game aspects of play (i.e. the rules). Consider the scenario that I outlined a few posts prior: if you have "injury hp" and "resilience hp" as one mechanic, then what happens if your "injury hp" eventually exceeds your total hit points, but the actual number never drops to 0 because you've been given "resilience hp" healing over the course of a session.

To put that another way, if you have 30 hit points, and take 20 hit points of fireball damage, you're now at 10 hp. If you then get healing worded for 20 hit points, you're now back to full. Now if you take another 20 hit points of sword damage from some orcs later that same session, you've taken a total of 40 "injury hp" damage, but are still at 10 hp altogether thanks to that "resilience healing." According to the game rules, you're still alive, even though you've taken more "injury hp" than you have total hit points, with only "resilience hp" making up the difference. How is that?

 

[Autumnal]

The fact that you think I'm claiming any sort of moral high ground suggests that you're not reading what I'm saying, so much as reading into itl

When A accuses B (and C, D, E…) of a double standard, that is very much claiming moral high ground. Double standards are a species of hypocrisy. Which is what made me wonder if you’d grabbed hold of the wrong term, if you mean to suggest an unnecessary complication instead.

The thing is that hp just can’t be entirely meat points in some situations that come up routinely in play, as discussed above at some length. But I just think of healing spells as Restore, Renew, Rejuvenate, Revenant, etc, then the existing systems work just fine, no intervention needed, and no need to assign various sources of hp loss or require separate methods of getting them back.

And that’s all that’s in my head about this subject. There will be no further flogging of horse corpses at this time.

 

[Alzrius]

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

Huh, that keeps happening. My bad there, I don't know how to avoid that.

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.

I'm pretty sure that one being an AoE elemental attack and one being a weapon attack means that they are different in terms of what's being said to happen in the in-game presentation. In one, the "miss" is a literal miss, and yet is still dealing damage somehow, while the other is covering an area which means that there isn't "miss" per se because it's literally affecting the entirety of the character's space and the spaces around them. In other words, one has the attack being explicitly something you can't avoid (without an exception-based ability) while the other doesn't.

 

[Alzrius]

When A accuses B (and C, D, E…) of a double standard, that is very much claiming moral high ground. Double standards are a species of hypocrisy. Which is what made me wonder if you’d grabbed hold of the wrong term, if you mean to suggest an unnecessary complication instead.

The operation is a double-standard, not any particular person here, but as I said before the nomenclature isn't really a big deal. It's just a method to try and get everyone on the same page.

The thing is that hp just can’t be entirely meat points in some situations that come up routinely in play, as discussed above at some length.

Insofar as no abstraction works in every possible situation, sure. But some corner-cases come up more often than others. You might find some more egregious than others, and there's nothing wrong with that, but having having a single operation be multiple different things in the game world strikes me as changing your entire house to match your kitchen sink, rather than changing your kitchen sink to match your house.

But I just think of healing spells as Restore, Renew, Rejuvenate, Revenant, etc, then the existing systems work just fine, no intervention needed, and no need to assign various sources of hp loss or require separate methods of getting them back.

Healing spells, as spells that use magic to close wounds, do indeed work just fine. It's why you didn't really have major debates about this problem before 4E handed out non-magical "healing" powers that worked just like spells.

 

[Hussar]

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.

But, again, that's your interpretation. I'm not saying you're wrong. Not at all. It's just that, previous editions never really made an issue of it at all. There was never any expressly specific interpretation at all. HP lost or gained was never represented as anything other than HP lost or gained. It had nothing to do with actual injuries. That is an interpretation that you have taken. And, it's certainly a reasonable one.

Where the problem lies, and why we keep talking past each other is that the interpretation that HP actually represents anything in the game fiction is one of many interpretations.

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.

And, that's probably fair. Again, it's why I look at 5e and see so much 4e DNA in there. All these things, like HP recovery and whatnot are, as you say, pulled straight for 4e. But, WotC has managed to sail them in under the radar as it were and now they've become acceptable.

 

[Alzrius]

But, again, that's your interpretation. I'm not saying you're wrong. Not at all. It's just that, previous editions never really made an issue of it at all. There was never any expressly specific interpretation at all. HP lost or gained was never represented as anything other than HP lost or gained. It had nothing to do with actual injuries. That is an interpretation that you have taken. And, it's certainly a reasonable one.

That's the thing, though: when I looked at those editions, I perceived (and I don't believe wrongly) those interpretations (i.e. hit point loss/restoration as injury/treatment) as being there. Spells named "cure light wounds," non-magical healing that could only be done by bed rest and medical treatment, poisoned weapons that only required a saving throw on a successful attack roll, etc. To me, there were many places where the game was giving us a single clear, consistent interpretation.

Where the problem lies, and why we keep talking past each other is that the interpretation that HP actually represents anything in the game fiction is one of many interpretations.

I'll say that I'm struggling to see this in terms of the above. I just don't recall any instances of the game saying (in terms of mechanics) that hit point loss/restoration was anything except wounds and treatment.

And, that's probably fair. Again, it's why I look at 5e and see so much 4e DNA in there. All these things, like HP recovery and whatnot are, as you say, pulled straight for 4e. But, WotC has managed to sail them in under the radar as it were and now they've become acceptable.

And I want to stress that it's fine that they're acceptable. I'm not hurling any invectives, here.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If people want a game where the mechanics reinforced and reflect the world/fiction, why isn't Role Master more popular? Or G.U.R.P.S.?

If verisimilitude is undeserved in D&D, why do those who want it stay?

Accessibility. The answer is always accessibility.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm pretty sure you do know what it is (i.e. an injury) and why it's there (i.e. you were just attacked), but presuming you meant "you don't know what type of injury it is," I already granted that as being true, but that's one step further than having to determine if it's an injury at all.

That's so general I think I'll stick to it being "not knowing anything".

Right, but that's true regardless of edition, since every iteration of D&D has some instances of hit points as injury. It's just that some start from there, whereas others require you to figure out if that's even the case to begin with.

Sure. But that's kind of my point; hit point damage has given you virtually nothing to work with, so its all on your overhead.

Like I said before, I'd be happier if we could all agree that 4E's operation regarding hit point loss/restoration being potentially two things is more complicated than if said operation was only representing one thing.

That's only relevant if you accept it was every just one thing. I don't. I may not be with the people who think it can be different things at different times, but it think its always been at least two things at once, and possibly as many as four.