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

[Micah Sweet]

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.

You can always come up with an explanation if the games tells you to make one up.

 

[Kannik]

Interesting idea. Are they tracked separately or in total?

Separately. Stress is generic like HP (though there could be separate stress tracks, but typically that's done for more narratively driven games), but once you are taken out in a scene the Trauma you gain would be named for what took you out. So if you were hit by a mace a few times and then were taken out by a fireball, you might get Burned d6 and your Stress resets. Next fight, you get perforated by arrows and taken out, and gain Wounded d6 (and again your Stress resets). It's not your lucky day, so a knife to the back next fight takes you out and you're up to Wounded d8. This means that for every action you're suffering a penalty for both the Burned and the Wounded, and each will need to be treated and healed separately (though they don't have to be treated sequentially, just individually).

 

[AnotherGuy]

My experience is that pre-3e healing was by cleric cure light wound spells, sometimes downtime measured in how many days it took the cleric to bring the party back to full when memorizing nothing but cures. Healing potions were also used in the field. At high levels heal was the big gun healing everything in one shot.

The exception was when there was no cleric and so weeks of downtime could be regularly required after a single fight.

3e's big innovation was the cheap available cure light wounds wand for healing to full between every fight multiple times more than a spellcaster could, and used by two thirds of the classes (bards, clerics, druids, rangers, paladins, and rogues and sorcerers with UMD).

I don't disagree with anything you've posted. That was my experience too.

 

[Hussar]

You can always come up with an explanation if the games tells you to make one up.

That's the basic issue at the end of the day.

Do you want a game to tell you what the explanations are, or do you not want the game to tell you what the explanations are?

And that dichotomy is at the heart of why you guys keep talking past each other. And why you will never actually come to any sort of compromise. One side looks at D&D and sees that all this stuff is defined by the system and can't imagine playing D&D without those system defined elements. The other side disagrees, thinks that very little is defined by the system and can't imagine trying to use the definitions in the system to define in game reality.

And you guys are just not going to agree. I am rather sad that it has taken me so long to understand this. I kept talking about how it's a presentation issue. I do hope that @Bill91 will check this out on his phone or something and see that I would very much like to apologize for being such a dick. I just didn't understand. It's not really about presentation. It's all about interpretation. To be honest, until all the arguments about 4e came along, I never imagined that not only did people play D&D this way but that D&D could even BE played this way. I'd never seen it before. And because I had never seen it, I think I started presuming bad faith which is totally my bad.

People aren't arguing this in bad faith. They really believe that D&D defines this stuff.

Who knew? (Yes, I do realize the irony here since I was explicitly told this over and over, but, it's taken me this long just to beat it into my skull - I got there eventually)

 

[Voadam]

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.

Absolutely, it was just the phrase "injected poison" that brought hypodermics and shots to mind, I am not suggesting it is a general combat thing or a common D&D thing. In combat at best for trying to inflict damage I would probably consider them an improvised weapon.

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.

I don't believe that a plate mail wearing fighter can generally avoid the danger of poison needle traps in AD&D or Basic by keeping their gauntlets on when opening things other than a DM ruling so by fiat.

There might be a reference to thieves needing to have bare hands or light gloves only to do pick locks and disarm traps and making them vulnerable to poison needle traps somewhere though which could be interpreted to implicitly indicate that gauntlets would be protective, but I do not remember switching to gauntlets to actually open stuff ever being a suggested defensive precaution tactic.

 

[Mannahnin]

Of course then you'd have people really soggy about the (admittedly) gaminess of the rule (as happens with the 13th Age case). That's why I say this is so intractable; there's a set of desires in play that are, fundamentally contradictory, sometimes on the same people. And solutions satisfactory to some are not only suboptimal to others, they're sometimes actively offputting (the round to round thing you mention with the Crusader would drive some people absolutely up a wall).

I really enjoyed the Crusadar mechanic, getting those "flashes of divine insight" represented by random draws from my little deck of maneuver cards.

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).

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.)

Not to harp too much on it, but I think this is why The Nightmares Underneath has non-combat damage go direct to ability scores. And thus falls are always actually injurious. In the edition I'm reading it's 1d6 Health (Constitution equivalent) per 15 feet fallen. And remember that anytime you take Health damage there are further injurious consequences (in spoiler for those interested).


Any time you lose points from your Health score, you must roll your current (modified) Health score or less on a d20 in order to prevent the wound from temporarily incapacitating the affected location. You might have blood in your eyes, or have lost all feeling in your arm, for example. It takes at least one round (a complicated action) to pull yourself together and recover your senses.

If you lose half of your current Health score or more in a single blow, the affected location has been maimed or mutilated, possibly permanently. You must roll equal to or lower than your Willpower score on a d20 in order to stay conscious, otherwise you pass out for 1d6 rounds. In order to regain consciousness once those rounds have passed, you must roll equal to or lower than half your Willpower score, rounded down, on a d20, or you remain unconscious for an additional 1d6 rounds.

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

Or possibly Super Mario World.

 

[cavalier973]

I really enjoyed the Crusadar mechanic, getting those "flashes of divine insight" represented by random draws from my little deck of maneuver cards.


Not to harp too much on it, but I think this is why The Nightmares Underneath has non-combat damage go direct to ability scores. And thus falls are always actually injurious. In the edition I'm reading it's 1d6 Health (Constitution equivalent) per 15 feet fallen. And remember that anytime you take Health damage there are further injurious consequences (in spoiler for those interested).


Any time you lose points from your Health score, you must roll your current (modified) Health score or less on a d20 in order to prevent the wound from temporarily incapacitating the affected location. You might have blood in your eyes, or have lost all feeling in your arm, for example. It takes at least one round (a complicated action) to pull yourself together and recover your senses.

If you lose half of your current Health score or more in a single blow, the affected location has been maimed or mutilated, possibly permanently. You must roll equal to or lower than your Willpower score on a d20 in order to stay conscious, otherwise you pass out for 1d6 rounds. In order to regain consciousness once those rounds have passed, you must roll equal to or lower than half your Willpower score, rounded down, on a d20, or you remain unconscious for an additional 1d6 rounds.



Or possibly Super Mario World.

In my game, a barrel dragon kidnapped the princess, and flew to the top of a high tower. The PCs have to fight their way to the top of the tower as the dragon spits flaming barrels at them. Sometimes, I will allow the PCs to find a +3 hammer, that can smash the barrels.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Absolutely, it was just the phrase "injected poison" that brought hypodermics and shots to mind, I amW not suggesting it is a general combat thing or a common D&D thing. In combat at best for trying to inflict damage I would probably consider them an improvised weapon.

Well, they certainly do damage in the more general sense--its just below the scale D&D (or honestly, most games) are going to acknowledge it. But that changes in most cases once you get to the kinds of delivery systems that will actually come up (giant scorpion stinger). It can get a little odd when something like swarm attacks are involved, but there are a lot of problems when the wind blows from that quarter.

I don't believe that a plate mail wearing fighter can generally avoid the danger of poison needle traps in AD&D or Basic by keeping their gauntlets on when opening things other than a DM ruling so by fiat.

Well, I'd answer "That just shows a rules failure state." I certainly know if someone told me the poison need trap got through my heavy gloves without telling me it did some damage doing so, I'd look at them like they lost their mind (and then I'd suggest "spike" would be a better term than "needle

 

[Thomas Shey]

I really enjoyed the Crusadar mechanic, getting those "flashes of divine insight" represented by random draws from my little deck of maneuver cards.

Well, I did say "some people". Its like games that have skill rolls associated with spellcasting; some people are fine with them, so very much not (and this becomes even more true with backlash systems).

 

[Mannahnin]

Well, I did say "some people". Its like games that have skill rolls associated with spellcasting; some people are fine with them, so very much not (and this becomes even more true with backlash systems).

Oh, I didn't mean to contradict you. I saw the "some". And yes, agreed on roll to cast too.