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

[Thomas Shey]

I entirely agree. The view of hit points that I presented is hard to align with events which should be directly damaging.

For example, there is little that can be done to avoid damage from a fall. Then, a more realistic way of handling fall damage might be to represent it as a coup-de-grace. Or to use escalating damage (1d6, 3d6, 6d6, 10d6, and so forth).

Well, to be honest, that's as much an artifact of rolling together a bunch of things at once. This isn't a big deal with games with relatively fixed-at-start hit points that represent defensive increases in other ways, for example.

But, most games don't use these more realistic methods. My sense of this is that, having accepted hit points as a measure of survivability, folks prefer to dial back the lethality of events such as falling. (Which, in my experience, matches an avoidance to use of coup-de-grace rules. They are there, in 3E, but they don't seem to be used much.)

I think this requires at least one to define "most". Once you get away from the D&D-sphere, relatively deadly falling damage isn't that hard to come by. Its just accepted that large falls are a really bad idea in them.

Folks also seem to like hit point restoration as a mechanic, although, this makes no sense in the probabilistic model that I provided.

Again, yeah. As a couple people have mentioned a distinction between true injury points and some combination of fatigue/luck/skill/whatever would help here, but its a bridge too far for a lot of people (and some of the people prone to accepting it are likely off using games that already have other solutions and don't care that much about the pace-of-resolution benefits a large-hit-point-model can present).

The theme here is that the game has invented a whole set of processes and expectations relating to gaining and losing hit points, taking the idea quite far away from either the probabilistic model or a basic idea of being physically damaged and being healed.

The result is, for many folks, a quite playable game, with a consequence of there being a fundamental limit to the meaning of hit points. Play the game, and don't push too hard on this mechanic.

Or as I've commented before, D&D's attitude toward more than one thing (you can get pretty far into the weeds on a couple other abstractions too) is "It just works, 'k?"

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

And I will note again, that doesn't have to make most of the numbers being counted physical damage. It just means some of it needs to be.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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

I don't know that there is. I do know that for there to not be at least a minimal injury needed to deliver injected poison is nonsensical.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

Shouldn't they still work but leave an untouchable remnant? If you recorded hits in two tracks (before Bloodied/after Bloodied) that wouldn't up the bookkeeping signifiantly.

 

[Lanefan]

Shouldn't they still work but leave an untouchable remnant? If you recorded hits in two tracks (before Bloodied/after Bloodied) that wouldn't up the bookkeeping signifiantly.

Doesn't up it significantly but at the same time doesn't need to be done at all.

If you've got 70 hit points total and your bloodied threshold is half* that (so 35 in this case), all you need to know is your threshold number. If you're currently at that number (35) or more then fatigue-curing effects will work; while if you're below that number (34 or less) they will not. No double-tracking required.

* - the threshold doesn't have to be half, it can be any fraction that seems to make sense (I'd probably use 1/4); it's half here only due to 4e's precedent.

 

[Voadam]

I don't know that there is. I do know that for there to not be at least a minimal injury needed to deliver injected poison is nonsensical.

Right that makes sense for the spider bite and stinger attacks but that does not say all hp damage = injury. And the attack for damage and poison save with a successful poison save meaning no poison means no minimal injury to inject the poison even though hp damage.

And thinking about it I suppose I would not impose hp damage for a straight hypodermic injection of medicine (or poison) unless they were trying to use it to inflict damage (neck or eye stabbing), even though a shot causes pain and some minimal piercing of actual flesh. Or I don't know, maybe as a PC I would not blink at a hp damage, something less than the d4 I would expect from an active dagger stab. Shots can hurt.

And thinking more I think this is the poison needle trap of AD&D and Basic, a potential scratch for minor physical injury that causes no hp damage but injects poison. If a person immune to poison gets hit they still take no hp damage.

 

[pemerton]

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.

I stand by my claim that you are not describing, here, a straightforward "kitbash" of 4e D&D. You are talking about fundamentally rewriting a core mechanical pillar of the game.

 

[pemerton]

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.

Why?

In a 4e game I GMed one of the PCs was a Tiefling, and hence had fire resistance. In one combat with a Hobgoblin phalanx he was attacking the Hobgoblin soldiers with some sort of fiery attack, and setting some alight, and the fact that he was not bothered by fire meant that he could be more reckless in his wielding of the fire and charging in among the Hobgoblins.

If someone were to attack him with fire, he would not bother to try and avoid it, and would not need to withstand it, and hence it would not set him back as it would an ordinary person.

So I don't see any particular contradiction between having damage types and treating hit point loss in a "Gygaxian" fashion.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Doesn't up it significantly but at the same time doesn't need to be done at all.

If you've got 70 hit points total and your bloodied threshold is half* that (so 35 in this case), all you need to know is your threshold number. If you're currently at that number (35) or more then fatigue-curing effects will work; while if you're below that number (34 or less) they will not. No double-tracking required.

* - the threshold doesn't have to be half, it can be any fraction that seems to make sense (I'd probably use 1/4); it's half here only due to 4e's precedent.

It just doesn't seem to me that you should no longer be able to address fatigue just because you've taken some genuine injury. Just that you shouldn't be able to address the injury part the same.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Right that makes sense for the spider bite and stinger attacks but that does not say all hp damage = injury. And the attack for damage and poison save with a successful poison save meaning no poison means no minimal injury to inject the poison even though hp damage.

And thinking about it I suppose I would not impose hp damage for a straight hypodermic injection of medicine (or poison) unless they were trying to use it to inflict damage (neck or eye stabbing), even though a shot causes pain and some minimal piercing of actual flesh. Or I don't know, maybe as a PC I would not blink at a hp damage, something less than the d4 I would expect from an active dagger stab. Shots can hurt.

An actual hypordermic level wouldn't probably be discernible damage on D&D scale--but getting through armor or even just heavy cloth would require something that did. Basically, the hypodermic injection is liable to be a pretty rare outlier on actual attacks.

And thinking more I think this is the poison needle trap of AD&D and Basic, a potential scratch for minor physical injury that causes no hp damage but injects poison. If a person immune to poison gets hit they still take no hp damage.

That sort of thing should only be possible with someone using bare hands or very light gloves, though. Mind you, you might need to have those to handle some locks and the like, but generically probably not what you expect adventurers to be wearing.