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

[Micah Sweet]

The problem with this is there are a lot of other game elements that are, effectively, forced to relate to them as actual damage to some degree, because their relevance doesn't begin and end at how many attacks from a given opponent will take them down; they also are used for things like falling, as the indicator of whether poison can be delivered, and to determine how long before the character is fully ready to fight again and what is needed to get them there.

So in practice, stopping at your statement is just not a thing that is going to happen.

I will say again to support this, damage types (and the attendant vulnerabilities, resistances and immunities) are irrelevant if the hit target is not being literally hit.

 

[Voadam]

Can someone point me to the 1e reference on poison indicating hp are necessarily injuries that are being made?

In the 1e DMG page 81 I found this reference which seems the other way if there is a hit with hp damage and a save or die poison (like a viper's strike, a scorpion sting, a spider bite etc.) where an envenomed scratch would be death.

Poison Saving Throws For Characters:
For those who wonder why poison does either killing damage (usually) or no harm whatsoever, recall the justification for character hit points. That is, damage is not actually sustained — at least in proportion to the number of hit points marked off in most cases. The so called damage is the expenditure of favor from deities, luck, skill, and perhaps a scratch, and thus the saving throw. If that mere scratch managed to be venomous, then DEATH. If no such wound was delivered, then NO DAMAGE FROM THE POISON. In cases where some partial damage is indicated, this reflects poisons either placed so that they are ingested or used so as to ensure that some small portion does get in the wound or skin of the opponent.

This seems to be saying that the damage is a poisoned scratch if the save is failed, but no wound or scratch at all if the save is made, just some hp are marked off.

 

[Queer Venger]

MCDM has a great video covering this very topic; I found it very informative.

 

[Aldarc]

MCDM has a great video covering this very topic; I found it very informative.

Would you mind directing us to this video?

 

[Lanefan]

In your "kitbash", you are separating "fatigue"-type damage from "injury"-type damage. How does this make sense with Healing Surges, Inspiring Word, Second Wind, etc?

Things like Inspiring Word*, Second Wind, etc. would only work on fatigue damage. This immediately gets around the problem of "shouting wounds closed" or "inspiring a finger back on" because once you're Bloodied (i.e. taking some actual meat damage) they stop working. This would also encourage healing be done before things get dire rather than after, as a move away from whack-a-mole.

I'd have to think further regarding Healing Surges but my first inclination would be that they'd become more tied to rest-recovery and largely ignored by other healing methods.

* - that said, were I actually doing this kitbash ranged healing would come out altogether, so somewhat a moot point.

 

[tomBitonti]

I will say again to support this, damage types (and the attendant vulnerabilities, resistances and immunities) are irrelevant if the hit target is not being literally hit.

I can (kindof) justify this because an attack of the wrong damage type will be less likely to take out an opponent.

Continuing with the example of the 8 hit point target, with swords doing 4 (or 1-7) points of damage. If the target has DR 5/Silver, then most attacks with a sword have a much lessened chance of harming the target. If swords do the variable (1-7) damage, then they cause actual hit point loss only 2/7 of the time, and for only 1 or two points of damage. A DR/5 Silver 8 hit point target needs to take, on average, 6 hits from a non-silvered sword which does 1-7 points of damage.

That works in a probabilistic sense. Does it really make sense? I can't really say. How well it scales, I have no idea.

I think this is a problem because of the mistaken view (in my opinion) that resistance and damage reduction should be interpreted literally as written. Doing so builds on the idea of "damage" being actual physical damage. A more correct interpretation would be that resistance and damage reduction are a reduction in the chance of an attack taking out an target. Equivalently, resistance and damage reduction increase the number of attempts which are necessary to take out a target.

I do wonder if DR and/or resistance might be better handled simply as adjustments to AC. Or with advantage/disadvantage, per 5E mechanics. The question will become one of what gives the best play result: What "feels" right, and what has the best scaling / mathematical properties.

TomB

 

[Lanefan]

I would be worried that this sort of design would potentially be more hassle than it's worth and possibly a case of over-engineering.

Unfortunately, you're probably right; but that doesn't eliminate the design space entirely.

I've long had magical herbs as a thing in my games (initially comes from a Dragon mag. article way back when, then greatly expanded), and some of those herbs are curative but only work on specific damage types.

I think that there is a reason that HP tends to endure across a lot of tabletop and video games. It's easy and straightforward to understand as a game mechanic.

Agreed, for the most part. There's instances, however, when the mechanic shows itself as too simple to properly reflect the fiction; which is what spawns 99% of these hit-point debates.

It's really only edge cases that rub a small subset of people the wrong way, though I think that is due to their own preferences.

The fully-functional-at-1 dead/dying-at-0 problem is hardly what I'd call an edge case.

 

[Lanefan]

In my game, all PCs have a single hit point each, and if a monster even touches them, they die. Fortunately, they each start out with three lives, and have the opportunity to gain a fourth life if they can reach a certain score during play.

So, your setting is called Minion World, then. Got it.

 

[Lanefan]

While I disagree that multiple HP tracks would have been a 'better' option for D&D specifically, a simple name change on certain things could well have led to less misinterpretation.

Not multiple tracks.

Unlike the Star Wars game where they were tracked separately, with what I have in mind you don't (and almost without exception can't) lose body/wound points until you're out of fatigue/viatlity points. Thus BP + FP = HP, HP is what you track as normal; and you just have to remember that the last few of those hit points are BP and therefore harder to cure/rest back.

Also, if you like the idea of different types of damage requiring different types of healing (and this is starting to get off topic so I'll keep it short and we can split off into another thread), something like the Stress + Trauma option in Cortex Prime might fit the bill. Stress is 'generic' (and also affects your effectiveness in Cortex, wouldn't necessarily need to in a D&D variant) and when it's depleted you are taken out until the next scene, where you gain a starting amount of Trauma (that also affects your effectiveness) that is keyed to and related to what took you out. Stress recovers quickly, but Trauma does not, and what's required to recover Trauma depends on it's type. Could strike a good balance between generic HP for quickness and more specificity when someone goes down.

Interesting idea. Are they tracked separately or in total?

 

[Lanefan]

I do wonder if DR and/or resistance might be better handled simply as adjustments to AC. Or with advantage/disadvantage, per 5E mechanics.

AC adjustment would make sense.

Advantage-disadvantage would not, because there's already so many other things in 5e that give one or the other (meaning they just cancel out a lot of the time) and this would merely add one more to the list.