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

[Autumnal]

Right now I'm recovering from a cracked ulna and have a bruised knee. These are so far apart in their impact that just knowing both are "injuries" tells me virtually nothing.

Yow! This is exactly why you need to update your Real Life campaign to get rid of the RineQuest-based hit locations and damage matrix. And best wishes for mending.

 

[Aldarc]

No, it doesn't "shift" the problem. It still requires some adjudication in terms of the specifics of what's being represented, but it still establishes what's being represented. 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.

You say it's different. I say that it's the same. The loss of HP establishes what's being represented per the game's understanding of HP, but it still requires adjudication in terms of the specifics of what's being represented.

Which is why I've noted previously that the game is more about heroic fantasy than realism, with characters taking numerous injuries (oftentimes serious) with no corresponding loss of prowess. In that regard, you're free to narrate any particular set of wounds that you want (within reasonable limits, obviously; no one is going to seriously countenance you saying someone's head has been chopped off or their eyes gouged out) without creating any sort of cognitive gap in doing so, unlike the one that you'd get when you suffer burn wounds and then have someone else at the party make them go away (according to the game's operations) by shouting at you to buck you up.

Again, the game is silent about whether your burns go away. You choose to read "heal" to mean that "your burns go away," but in the context of 4e rules, we are told that healing only represents the regaining of HP, which are a variety of aspects of a character's combat vigor. Nothing more.

More convenient for you, certainly, but not better.

And it "helps them heal."

You are again losing sight of the forest for the trees. I have already referred you to the rules of healing and what they and HP represent in the context of 4e, so "helps them heal" is not the gotcha that you think that it is. I think that this is a consistent problem with your reading of 4e. You read it in isolated pieces. You don't try to understand the rules in the context of the big picture. You have little to no actual game experience with 4e.

No, it's the game's hang-up, too. That's fairly self-evident from the fact that the mechanical operation is exactly the same as the cleric's healing word (4E PHB p. 62), in that they use positive energy to let the target spend one of their own healing surges, while the text describes it as "You whisper a brief prayer as divine light washes over your target, helping to mend its wounds." Given that it wants to have the same thing be two different things (i.e. "recover resiliency" and "mend wounds"), that creates an issue with what the keyword is denoting, since it can vary by context, and so that context has to be parsed by the players (including the DM) more than they would if it was only connoting one thing.

@pemerton addressed this already.

More like a self-evident truth. Having one mechanic present potentially two different things depending on the circumstance is more complex than if one mechanic presented itself as only one thing, period. That's not really something that can be argued. You might say that's not a big deal, and it might not be for you, but it's undeniably more complicated (and doesn't need to be).

One mechanic doesn't represent just two different things. It's not just wounds and everything else. In D&D HP represents a variety of elements that factor into a character's survival. Wounds are one among several others. Is that "more complex than if one mechanic presented itself as only one thing"? If so, it appears to be negligibly so for most people who are playing and enjoying the game. So despite what you would assert here, I would say that it is deniably more complicated, even if we were to agree that it was "more complicated."

That's a semantic distinction, and not really helpful in what it offers. If something is vague, then you have to expend mental energy figuring it out. It's a gap that your cognition bridges. Changing the shorthand doesn't change that.

You may call it a semantic distinction, but I do think that it is helpful in that vagueness offers more explanatory power and is a more readily apparent problem that we regularly deal with in communication with little fuss in our daily lives. I think that "cognitive gap" tries to present a simple case of vagueness as a much more insurmountable technical problem of cognitive incomprehensibility than it actually is.

For comparison, vagueness of rules is lauded by some as a "feature" in 5e that empowers GMs to make rulings rather than be beholden to rules.

Except the game used to get alone just fine doing exactly what I've been talking about.

It sounds like you are in danger of conflating yourself with the game here.

Remember, 4E changed things up by actually having that idea of "Hit point loss/restoration isn't just injury" actually be present in the game's mechanical operations. Prior to that, the idea received lip service in essays, but wasn't ever actually suggested in how the mechanics functioned. Then a change was made, and while that might have addressed certain issues, it also presented new ones, which to my mind were much greater than anything it fixed.

What this tells me is that 4e is internally consistent in word and deed with how the mechanics and operations of HP are reflected in the fiction. Way to go, 4e!

No, I disagree strongly, in that 4E took its gamist aspects much further than any edition before or since, and so abandoned much of the heavy lifting with regard to conveying what the various operations were actually representing from an in-game standpoint.

As you yourself noted, it's vague.

I said that your complaint involves an issue of vagueness about HP rather than an inherently problematic cognitive gap. I was not, however, saying that 4e was vague. I think that 4e is quite the opposite. It's quite explicit. 4e powers tell us a LOT about the fiction. The designers were wholly transparent and not one bit shy about what the mechanical processes, terms and keywords, and various operations of the game represent from an in-game standpoint, and it was fairly consistent in that regard. Things may not map perfectly (e.g., square fireballs) but we are told what the mechanics are meant to represent in the fiction.

From a gamist standpoint; not in terms of actually connecting meta-game operations to in-character happenings.

Please stop using the term "gamist" for things that you dislike or go against your own sense of self-proclaimed simulationism, because powers are very forthright in telling you what the meta-game operations represent for in-character happenings. You may not like what they are telling you they represent or are simulating, but they are telling you. There is a difference between those two positions, and it's not even a subtle one.

You don't "have" to deal with the problem, in the sense that you can just ignore the issue. Or simply bridge the cognitive gap on your own. In that regard, it's much like any other issue, in that you don't have to fix a broken stair when you can just step over it, or you might think that fixing the stair isn't a very hard job to do, and can be accomplished with ease. But I'd say it's still better for the stair not to be broken in the first place.

We can't even agree that the stair is broken or not! That's the problem. You asserting the existence of a problem and a cognitive gap that others either don't see as being problem or believe exists at all. You are saying "this is broken and needs fixing!" Others are telling you, "this isn't broken and it's working as intended." If a cognitive gap exists, it's between these two positions more so than anything.

I'd like to encourage you to read the rules as well, so that you can have a better appreciation for things like how the framing fiction for inspiring word says it restores the same hit points that a fireball causes, despite the fact that one is causing fire damage and the other is reinvigorating you, making the players (including the DM) be the ones who have to track which thing the hit point changes are representing (i.e. injury or stamina) when mapping the game-play to what's happening in the setting.

I know that you like to turn things back on people in "no you!" games, but I've read and played the rules of 4e. In contrast, I remember that you were surprised in one thread (or maybe here) about the existence of 4e healing surges and their associated rules when people told you about them.

I don't think that healing spells or powers restore "the same" HP that was lost by a fireball or a sword or by a monster bite. I think that HP can be restored by different sources and through different means. I think that it has never been as clear cut as losing 20 HP to a fireball and having a healing spell erasing 10 damage from those burn wounds. Do my burn wounds disappear within 24 hours just because I sleep in 5e? Do my burn wounds disappear when I take a short rest and spend HD to heal myself in 5e? I don't think that this is what these operations are meant to represent in the fiction. The same is true in regards to a warlord's abilities.

But to reiterate, the problem is that the game indicates that the same operation can represent multiple different things, creating a cognitive gap where the players (including the DM) have to then figure out how to connect the two.

You keep asserting and taking for granted in your argumentation the creation, existence, and problematic nature of this "cognitive gap" regarding HP, but I don't think that you are doing a good job of demonstrating these things in your argument, which comes across as a series of compounded assumptions. Does this cognitive gap exist? Is this phenomenon what creates it or is it something else? How is this even a problem?

If your character is badly burned, and had a warlord yell at them, then there's an issue with figuring out how they keep taking wounds and not being healed, but rather motivated to stay active even when the "wound hp" damage they've taken exceeds their total hp, but the numbers are still in positive amounts thanks to "resilience hp"-type healing.

Let's be clear here. You have an issue with it. You don't know how to reconcile these two things in accordance with your own idiomatic preferences. I and others don't necessarily share agreement that this "issue" exists. There is nothing for us to reconcile as it's perfectly consistent with our understanding of what the mechanics represent in the fiction. @pemerton and I have already shared our readings of this power and what this mechanic represents in the fiction, using the rules and text of 4e to do so even. So there is little point repeating myself here just because you choose to do so.

It's actually less clear than in other editions; all of them, in fact. That's because the gamist applications that 4E champions simply don't prioritize the connecting of the mechanics with in-game representation. If they did, we wouldn't have Schrodinger's hit points, where they can be injury one round and then personal stamina the next.

Except they aren't Schrödinger's HP - which is hardly an apt use of Schrödinger's Cat - because the understanding of HP is consistently applied in 4e as being a variety of factors that contribute to the character's survival. 4e is loud and clear about its HP and what they represent.

In fact, I think that it's the vagueness of HP in other editions that you liked, because it was that vagueness regarding HP and associated operations that empowered you to read HP in terms of your stated preferences.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yow! This is exactly why you need to update your Real Life campaign to get rid of the RineQuest-based hit locations and damage matrix. And best wishes for mending.

Its recovering. I did it back around when I took a tumble at Knott's Berry Farm on I and my wife's annual haunted attraction run in late October (I don't recommend hurrying down a poorly lit shortcut when you're 66, 6'2" tall and weigh in at 340 lbs.) It wasn't even clear there was a break rather than just a nasty tendon pull or the like (its hard to ID hairline cracks when they first happen; its much easier, oddly enough, when they're healing as there's a visible line that shows up on x-rays (which I got the second one done this Friday). Its at the point I mostly just can't apply too much pressure with it (no more than about five pounds).

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I find the “Gary was lying” angle an… an interesting tack to take. Especially since he chose to iterate it not just once but separately in both books, with further allusions to it other sections dealing with damage, all illustrating what, to him and the game, HP represented.

Briefly on this ...

I love Gygax. His purplish and overwrought verbiage, to this day, are "D&D" to me. It always will be. And his output from 1973 - 1982 (roughly from the genesis of OD&D through, um, going to Hollywood) is right up there with any person's contributions to this hobby; looking back, it is truly staggering the amount of work he put in and the amount of classic material he developed (or that he helped develop) that we still use today.

But ... look. He contained multitudes. If you want to find something to contradict what Gygax wrote, you won't have to look far. Because Gygax contradicted himself. Often. Often in the same lengthy paragraph.

And he also lied. Sometimes it was because he was exaggerating. Sometimes it was because he was being defensive. Sometimes it was because he was involved in litigation. Sometimes it was because he was trying to play up (or play down) his own, or other people's, contributions.

Gygax was all over the place. Hit points represented all sorts of things, except when they represented the damage you took. In the same section that he talks about hit points not representing the actual ability to sustain physical damage, he also discusses how hit points do reflect physical damage- it's just that higher levels, you turn the sword through the heart to a hit that grazes you and nicks you (which makes the poison effects make sense). When talking about the lengthy time for physical hearing, he just kind of ... I dunno, says that it takes that long to get to your peak physical and metaphysical ability.

Or take the section about not being a simulation. Sure! He was probably feeling a little defensive about that. But this in the DMG- the same book filled with complicated rules for making combat more realistic (that were largely ignored). That had table upon tables for generating everything from diseases to government types to the distances various races could tunnel through rock.

I think it is more accurate to say that Gygax started D&D on the original path of providing ... well, something for everyone (but not really being the best at any one thing). You can always find what you're looking for, and it's always a reflection of what you want.

 

[Voadam]

I see nothing to indicate that, besides Gary's essay, which isn't a game mechanic unto itself. The actual mechanics, at least prior to 4E, seem to have been very consistent in only putting forward injuries taken/healed as in-game interpretations of the operations in question.

I think that a dual nature is fairly inherent in hp by level.

A sword blow hit that kills a man at arms does not kill a hero. Sir Lancelot takes as many hits of the same damage to kill as a giant. Lancelot cannot take the same level of physical injury as a giant, even though it takes the same number of mechanical hits and damage to kill them both.

This has been there since chainmail. It is there mechanically in every edition of D&D.

HP damage does not equal straight physical injury from static damage hits.

To be physical damage only a 6 hp hit can only be determined to be a major or a minor blow in context of how many hp the target has. If you are striking a high hp giant they can physically absorb a heavy 6 hp blow which is not a big deal to such a big creature and it would take multiple heavy blows to fell them. For a high hp warrior it can only be a comparatively small scratch. Whether this is because that is how it coincidentally happens every time or because this is a representation of skill or whatever that is worn down by fatigue of dealing with such hits, the hit and damage means a different narration than it would for the giant to get to the same effect of hp percentage. It also means the narration of the same hit and damage on a man at arms is wildly different.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Underlying all of this is the changes over the decades to how quickly PC's can recover from adventuring. In the very beginning, we didn't even have Clerics. Then when we got them, their healing magic was sharply limited past Cure Light Wounds.

3e created a paradigm where it became increasingly easy to not need natural healing, and to have characters are full hit points for most encounters. 4e continued to make healing easier, but put an absolute limit on how many times a character could heal in a day. 5e has easy healing and no real cap- a Fighter with Second Wind can practically regenerate by kicking back for a day and using Second Wind every hour.

Indeed, Crawford had this to say about monster design. From this, we know that using the encounter building rules simply tell you when they expect the party to be out of resources for the day, but no individual encounter is built with the idea that the party is at 75%, 65%, or 50%- they all assume 100% resources. Characters are likely presumed to mostly be at high levels of hit points.

How does this relate to the nature of hit points? Largely because, just by resting for an hour, you can spend some hit dice to reverse any sort of injury, be it from being hacked apart by the claws of a troll or flash fried by a lightning bolt. No injury is permanent, even in the face of "natural" healing. This has (at least) two possible implications-

One, that hit points can't be meat, because wounds simply do not heal that way!

Or, alternately, hit dice are a nigh-supernatural resource that allows those with them to recover at fantastic rates (going all the way back to Recovery Tests from FASA's Earthdawn).

My suggestion? Relax and play D&D. Don't worry about verisimilitude or the man behind the curtain. Some aspects of the game just can't make any sense, if they ever did.

"If you're wondering how he eats and breathes
And other science facts
Then repeat to yourself 'It's just a show,
I should really just relax.'"

MST3K simply does not work for everybody, and you know it. Simply telling people with these concerns to stop having them is extremely unhelpful, to the point of dismissive.

 

[Micah Sweet]

How would that follow? If you want a gamist/story oriented game (leaning into the former) and don't have issues with the mechanics on grounds other than its pretty much nonexistant simulation focus, accessibility is an extra benefit on a D&D. Its an extra push in that direction

Are we talking about D&D players in general, or 4e fans in particular? If the latter I agree with you. The former is far too broad a category to make the kind of assumptions you're making.

 

[Alzrius]

You can think whatever you want. I expressed my opinion. If you don't know anything past "you're injured" that's close to irrelevant.

Which is still closer to relevant than "you might be injured, or just demoralized," leaving you to pick between them.

You don't know how much, where, what it is, or anything you'd actually care about. Right now I'm recovering from a cracked ulna and have a bruised knee. These are so far apart in their impact that just knowing both are "injuries" tells me virtually nothing.

But which is still more information than if you were just feeling sort of demoralized, and someone could shout at you to lift your spirits.

Do I have to walk through the things that show it? The first two are absolutely self-evident. And the other two are pretty close.

I am, in fact, very curious at to what game operations in pre-4E D&D you feel indicate non-injury instances of hit point loss/recovery.

 

[Alzrius]

I think that a dual nature is fairly inherent in hp by level.

A sword blow hit that kills a man at arms does not kill a hero. Sir Lancelot takes as many hits of the same damage to kill as a giant. Lancelot cannot take the same level of physical injury as a giant, even though it takes the same number of mechanical hits and damage to kill them both.

This has been there since chainmail. It is there mechanically in every edition of D&D.

HP damage does not equal straight physical injury from static damage hits.

To be physical damage only a 6 hp hit can only be determined to be a major or a minor blow in context of how many hp the target has. If you are striking a high hp giant they can physically absorb a heavy 6 hp blow which is not a big deal to such a big creature and it would take multiple heavy blows to fell them. For a high hp warrior it can only be a comparatively small scratch. Whether this is because that is how it coincidentally happens every time or because this is a representation of skill or whatever that is worn down by fatigue of dealing with such hits, the hit and damage means a different narration than it would for the giant to get to the same effect of hp percentage. It also means the narration of the same hit and damage on a man at arms is wildly different.

I disagree in that the "hit point loss/restoration is indicative of a non-injury change is status" paradigm is inherent, at least insofar as the earlier editions of D&D goes. As I noted before, the game was remarkably consistent in having its mechanics indicate that such things were interpreted as injury, e.g. cure light wounds spells, the manner in which non-magical healing was accomplished (i.e. bed rest), poisoned weapons taking effect only on a successful attack roll, etc.

By contrast, the "hit point loss/recovery as resilience/luck/divine protection/etc." paradigm only seems to have two sources that I can see: Gygax's essay in the AD&D 1E DMG (and later repetitions of the same idea) which aren't themselves mechanics and which don't match with what the game's operations tell us (i.e. the essay says hit points can be luck, and yet there is no restore luck spell), or alternatively, the idea that hit point loss cannot be injury because there's no concomitant loss of personal prowess, which is an appeal to a level of realism that D&D has never, in any incarnaton, attempted to portray.

Now, the paradigm of hit point loss/recovery as injury/healing certainly isn't perfect; I've never said that it was! The scaling nature of how many hit points characters at different levels have versus the absolute values of the damage dealt can be off-putting, to be sure. But the game is still telling us that it's injury (as per the above examples), even if there are some corner cases where the model breaks down.

 

[Mannahnin]

I disagree in that the "hit point loss/restoration is indicative of a non-injury change is status" paradigm is inherent, at least insofar as the earlier editions of D&D goes. As I noted before, the game was remarkably consistent in having its mechanics indicate that such things were interpreted as injury, e.g. cure light wounds spells, the manner in which non-magical healing was accomplished (i.e. bed rest), poisoned weapons taking effect only on a successful attack roll, etc.

It's inherent in every edition of D&D. It's implicit in fact that Cure Light Wounds can cure a peasant of a mortal wound. It's implicit in the fact that a 10th level Fighter can be "hit" with a giant's club and sustain no actual injury, no fracture, not be slowed whatsoever or even knocked backwards. We understand that, like an action movie hero, the PC has been just barely grazed or has deflected the blow, at worst having a little bruising or having some wind knocked from them. No injury that will meaningfully impair their fighting prowess, other than to wear down their defenses (HP) and ability to ward off an eventual telling blow (HP).

By contrast, the "hit point loss/recovery as resilience/luck/divine protection/etc." paradigm only seems to have two sources that I can see: Gygax's essay in the AD&D 1E DMG (and later repetitions of the same idea) which aren't themselves mechanics and which don't match with what the game's operations tell us (i.e. the essay says hit points can be luck, and yet there is no restore luck spell), or alternatively, the idea that hit point loss cannot be injury because there's no concomitant loss of personal prowess, which is an appeal to a level of realism that D&D has never, in any incarnation, attempted to portray.

Gary explained the concept at multi-paragraph length in both the DMG and Player's Handbook. These explanations ARE the reason why there's no concomitant loss of personal prowess. Gary explained it to both players and DMs.

Now, the paradigm of hit point loss/recovery as injury/healing certainly isn't perfect; I've never said that it was! The scaling nature of how many hit points characters at different levels have versus the absolute values of the damage dealt can be off-putting, to be sure. But the game is still telling us that it's injury (as per the above examples), even if there are some corner cases where the model breaks down.

The scaling nature of how many hit points characters have at different levels versus the absolute values of the damage dealt isn't off-putting to me. It's not "unpleasant, disconcerting, or repellant" to me because I accept and embrace Gary's explanations of what hit points are and always have been.

The only difference between how 4E treated HP and how every other edition treats HP is that 4E is arguably a little more clear and explicit about them. That and the Healing Surge concept making healing proportionate to maximum HP, which eliminated or at least reduced one of the more off-putting aspects of D&D healing, "Cure Light Wounds" healing a 1st level character of a mortal wound.

I am a bit tempted now to check the explanations of HP in other editions and quote them, though. I suspect that they're pretty consistent across the board.