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

[Aldarc]

4e hp did a couple things as innovations.

1 Healing surges for proportional healing to deal with the high hp character slow healing for minor proportion of wounds, low hp character quick healing for high level of wounds issue.

2 Healing in combat, allowing healers to heal and do an attack so it was often a decently optimized action to take and not a sacrifice of action for group survival.

3 Allow a non-magical healer class for those low magic or Dragonlance type settings.

4 Allow everybody to decently heal themselves between combats, short rest healing surges mean no cure wound wand dependency narratively for the same effect. (optionally there in 3.5 with reserve points alt rule)

5 Full hp healing with long rest for no days of downtime for spells or natural healing to do it. Focus on the action day, less downtime days accounting. Allowed retreat to safe spot then get back in the action.

6 Healing surge limits for a maximum of per day healing resources.

7 Healing surges varying by class role, so amount you can heal varies by role allowing defenders to be more tanks and pull more aggro.

8 Flat hp advancement by class/role, 3e had it as an option, it was now core.

The Bloodied condition arguably belongs in this list as well.

 

[James Gasik]

With the rare exception, of course, of having had a limb removed by a weapon of sharpness (do those still exist in 4e-5e?) or rendered useless by the Wither spell. There were also a few traps in published modules intended to cause specific injuries - I recall one that was set to chop the hand off whoever reached into a hole without first disarming the trap - but for the most part D&D has never had any sort of called-shot or injury-location system.

Although even here, there is oddness. The Sword of Sharpness doesn't really do any more damage to you when it severs a limb than any other hit it would inflict*. You don't suffer ongoing damage from blood loss (that's the feature of another weapon, the Sword of Wounding). You don't even lose any of your maximum hp- you can be healed to full, despite missing an arm or a leg....unless you lost your head, at which point someone should scream "There Can Be Only One!!!".

*Unless a critical hit is also scored, but this depends on the edition. In AD&D, critical hits were not a core rule. Gary claimed to hate them. Of course he also claimed to dislike specific injuries, and yet here we are, talking about Swords of Sharpness...

"If hit points are meat, and I lose an arm of meat, then I should have less hit points", is what one would suppose would happen. I'm fairly certain many DM's would rule that way (along with the massive blood loss), but the rules of the game don't say this is what happens.

Heck, a character under the effect of an Aid spell in AD&D could lose a limb, only lose the 1d8 temporary hit points*, and none of their actual hit points!

*I mean, I'd like to think someone with a Sword of Sharpness would do more than 1d8 damage, but it is only +1 to hit and damage, so maybe the wielder isn't very strong and got a bad roll....

 

[Lanefan]

4e hp did a couple things as innovations.

1 Healing surges for proportional healing to deal with the high hp character slow healing for minor proportion of wounds, low hp character quick healing for high level of wounds issue.

2 Healing in combat, allowing healers to heal and do an attack so it was often a decently optimized action to take and not a sacrifice of action for group survival.

3 Allow a non-magical healer class for those low magic or Dragonlance type settings.

4 Allow everybody to decently heal themselves between combats, short rest healing surges mean no cure wound wand dependency narratively for the same effect. (optionally there in 3.5 with reserve points alt rule)

5 Full hp healing with long rest for no days of downtime for spells or natural healing to do it. Focus on the action day, less downtime days accounting. Allowed retreat to safe spot then get back in the action.

6 Healing surge limits for a maximum of per day healing resources.

7 Healing surges varying by class role, so amount you can heal varies by role allowing defenders to be more tanks and pull more aggro.

8 Flat hp advancement by class/role, 3e had it as an option, it was now core.

Proportional healing via rest - as in everyone naturally rests back up at the same rate relative to each other regardless of hit point total - is a good innovation. (though the whole 'healing surges' piece seems like an overly complex means of doing this)

The rest of those are IMO bad ideas across the board.

 

[Lanefan]

Although even here, there is oddness. The Sword of Sharpness doesn't really do any more damage to you when it severs a limb than any other hit it would inflict*. You don't suffer ongoing damage from blood loss (that's the feature of another weapon, the Sword of Wounding). You don't even lose any of your maximum hp- you can be healed to full, despite missing an arm or a leg....unless you lost your head, at which point someone should scream "There Can Be Only One!!!".

*Unless a critical hit is also scored, but this depends on the edition. In AD&D, critical hits were not a core rule. Gary claimed to hate them. Of course he also claimed to dislike specific injuries, and yet here we are, talking about Swords of Sharpness...

"If hit points are meat, and I lose an arm of meat, then I should have less hit points", is what one would suppose would happen. I'm fairly certain many DM's would rule that way (along with the massive blood loss), but the rules of the game don't say this is what happens.

Heck, a character under the effect of an Aid spell in AD&D could lose a limb, only lose the 1d8 temporary hit points*, and none of their actual hit points!

*I mean, I'd like to think someone with a Sword of Sharpness would do more than 1d8 damage, but it is only +1 to hit and damage, so maybe the wielder isn't very strong and got a bad roll....

Yeah, there was a design miss there somewhere. I know I had to houserule this back in the day when someone fell victim to one of these things, that losing a limb meant you permanently* lost x% (depending on what limb you'd lost) of your fatigue points along with also permanently* losing at least one body point (which is a big deal given that most characters only ever have between 2 and 5 bp).

* - permanent until-unless the lost limb was regenerated or otherwise replaced.

Edit to add: rolling damage on a sharpness hit did lead to one of our crew's more famous quotes, though:

[die roll shows a mere 6 points damage against some humanoid foe]
GM: "What limb can you conceivably cut off and only do six points damage?"
Player: "Is it male?"

 

[Thomas Shey]

"If hit points are meat, and I lose an arm of meat, then I should have less hit points", is what one would suppose would happen. I'm fairly certain many DM's would rule that way (along with the massive blood loss), but the rules of the game don't say this is what happens.

Of course as I noted, it doesn't really work that way. A missing arm might make it harder to defend (or not; losing your off arm when your combat style was dependent on a single weapon and no shield might well have little effect here) and in reality doesn't make you any easier to kill. If anything (and this came up a while back with those runners using the custom prosthetic legs), it can actually improve your endurance because your blood flow doesn't have to take care of that arm, too.

(To make it clear, this isn't just a problem with D&D and other level-elevating hit point models; it applies just as much to, say, the simplest version of BRP hit points without critical injuries or Hero System Body without hit locations, too. Just totalling up damage is just a poor representation of injury except in the crudest way).

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why not? Other posters tell me my concerns don't even exist! And if you have a problem with how hit points are, collectively:

*Physical capacity to resist harm.
*Morale.
*Divine providence.
*Resistance to being put magically to sleep or blinded.
*Can be restored by magic that cures wounds.
*Can be restored by going to lunch for an hour.
*Can be restored by application of the Healer Feat (but not normal Medicine).
*Can be restored by a Fighter willing it so 1/short rest.

It's pretty obvious that the game itself doesn't care to pick a lane. So how could you?

People have told me my entire preferred playstyle doesn't exist. I don't have to believe them.

I think games are better when they pick a lane. 4e is a better game than it would otherwise be because it picked a lane in terms of playstyle, even if I personally don't like the lane they picked. When I play a D&D-like game, I push it mechanically toward a lane I prefer.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not even just talking about D&D. And I can only go by my own (non-trivial) experience, and even 40 years ago how much anyone cared about simulation elements varied considerably, and I've no evidence but that its decreased to a pronounceable degree over time; if anything I probably care more than most players, and I care far less than I did in my 20's and 30's.

All I can say is YMMV. No one's experience is definitive of anything outside of it.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

[die roll shows a mere 6 points damage against some humanoid foe]
GM: "What limb can you conceivably cut off and only do six points damage?"
Player: "Is it male?"

…looks more like THREE hit points to me.

 

[Voadam]

The Bloodied condition arguably belongs in this list as well.

Arguably yes.

It was mostly an occasional monster mechanic that was introduced in I believe the 3.5 Monster Manual V and then carried into 4e from the start. There are a few 4e PC things triggered by being bloodied or a bloodied foe, but not a whole lot. Designed to make fights more interesting with a change of status point so that long fights are less of a grind but shifted dynamics or had a surprise injection mid point. I wish more had been done with it. Often it was just a monster power recharging at bloodied instead of simply being once per encounter.

 

[Voadam]

Proportional healing via rest - as in everyone naturally rests back up at the same rate relative to each other regardless of hit point total - is a good innovation. (though the whole 'healing surges' piece seems like an overly complex means of doing this)

The rest of those are IMO bad ideas across the board.

Tastes vary.

I like them pretty much across the board, possibly with the exception of the daily surge limit, I played in a 4e game with the numbers reduced down for an encounter basis of surges and it was fantastic.