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

[James Gasik]

So Damage on a Miss is okay in certain situation but not so in others, just like I said to Snarf. Could I dare say that the 'problem' is just when a Martial character use it?

Basically, yes. Magic in D&D is allowed to violate concepts like physics, causality, and the laws of thermodynamics because that's what magic do.

If you're not explicitly supernatural in any way, doing things like "always hitting", "dealing damage on a miss", or "leaping 30' into the air" have no explanation, and there are people who need that explanation to be explicitly stated by the game- supposition or hypothesis has no place.

For these people, D&D starts with the same rules that our reality are bound by, and exceptions must be noted. D&D humans are the same as humans on Earth, unless otherwise stated.

There is a fantasy of martial characters being normal people who somehow deal with extraordinary situations by dearth of pluck, talent, and skill, but nothing that would make them anything other than human.

It's like the Batman paradox. No human is as intelligent, skilled, handsome, physically fit, and rich as Bruce Wayne. You can have people who have some of these factors, but not all. This allows you to maintain the belief (some would say fantasy) that he's a man among Gods, when, in reality, he has often performed feats beyond human ability.

So to give a "martial" an ability that defies our understanding of reality is right out, unless an explanation for why and how they can do it is explicit. And no amount of examples you can find as to why martials aren't normal people will do- if it's not in the rulebooks, it shouldn't be so.

If this sounds familiar, it's basically what this entire thread has boiled down to. 4e's characters are not beholden to our reality, nor are they intended to be, or even attempt to be. Previously, you could mostly maintain the belief that D&D characters are meant to be beholden to our reality, and any oddness could be chalked up to "necessary abstraction in order for the game to work".

It flies in the face of their preferred paradigm for play- certainly, other editions support multiple interpretations of what is going on. D&D could be low fantasy, high fantasy, heroic or superheroic or gritty- it all depended on your interpretation (and some house rules).

4e flat-out said "D&D is this, and nothing else" as it's premise, and all of it's mechanics follow from that base assumption.

To put it another way, some people want to play Cyberpunk. You can't tell them that Shadowrun is "just like Cyberpunk, but with Elves, Dragons, and magic"- it simply isn't so.

D&D had gone from a game that more or less (usually less, but you could squint a little and pretend) multiple viewpoints. A game could take place on "Ye Olde Fantasy Earth", a cosmopolitan world on the brink of the Renaissance, a blasted post-apocalyptic word populated by demigods, travel into the distant edge of reality, or even into DEEP SPACE!!!!

But you could buy in or out of whatever gonzo craziness you wanted. You didn't need to play with Psionics or rayguns or a magical industrial revolution if you didn't want to, and you could pretend that other stuff didn't exist for your games.

4e established a baseline and everything else had to be brought in line with it. Now there are many legitimate complaints about how WotC handled this era, for trying to shoehorn existing settings into this paradigm, which led to the bastardization of the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and Dark Sun, as examples, rather than simply sticking to the setting based around this edition, Nentir Vale/Points of Light, their...interesting...marketing campaign, and so on.

But in the end it didn't matter what worked or didn't- for some people, 4e wasn't "their" D&D and couldn't be. Their preferred way of playing the game wasn't supported, and they had been cast aside and effectively told they were irrelevant out of date.

Nobody is going to be happy with that. It split the fanbase apart, and when you have angry people, they will do whatever they can to tear apart the thing that they hate.

And this continues to this day- if you add anything to the core D&D that doesn't fall in line with the sensibilities of the players, they reject it. "That'd be fine as an optional rule", you might get.

To me, the tragedy was that 4e, as a game, didn't deserve to be lambasted. Even now, you can go on Youtube and find talking heads who say "and everyone knows that 4e was the worst game ever" despite the fact they never even played it or experienced it.

That it wasn't the D&D that everyone wanted it to be was a problem, but I blame WotC's handling of the situation more. They could have said "this is what we think the future of D&D is" and left it at that. But within 2 years, they went from "we made this new thing and your old thing basically sucks" to "please come back, we made things more like old D&D! And look, we brought all of your favorite settings back, but worse!"

Now we have 5e, which at every turn, tries not to make definitive statements about anything, and attempts to please the widest possible audience, sometimes to it's detriment. But hey, at least it's popular, right?

 

[Red Castle]

Basically, yes. Magic in D&D is allowed to violate concepts like physics, causality, and the laws of thermodynamics because that's what magic do.

If you're not explicitly supernatural in any way, doing things like "always hitting", "dealing damage on a miss", or "leaping 30' into the air" have no explanation, and there are people who need that explanation to be explicitly stated by the game- supposition or hypothesis has no place.

For these people, D&D starts with the same rules that our reality are bound by, and exceptions must be noted. D&D humans are the same as humans on Earth, unless otherwise stated.

There is a fantasy of martial characters being normal people who somehow deal with extraordinary situations by dearth of pluck, talent, and skill, but nothing that would make them anything other than human.

It's like the Batman paradox. No human is as intelligent, skilled, handsome, physically fit, and rich as Bruce Wayne. You can have people who have some of these factors, but not all. This allows you to maintain the belief (some would say fantasy) that he's a man among Gods, when, in reality, he has often performed feats beyond human ability.

So to give a "martial" an ability that defies our understanding of reality is right out, unless an explanation for why and how they can do it is explicit. And no amount of examples you can find as to why martials aren't normal people will do- if it's not in the rulebooks, it shouldn't be so.

If this sounds familiar, it's basically what this entire thread has boiled down to. 4e's characters are not beholden to our reality, nor are they intended to be, or even attempt to be. Previously, you could mostly maintain the belief that D&D characters are meant to be beholden to our reality, and any oddness could be chalked up to "necessary abstraction in order for the game to work".

It flies in the face of their preferred paradigm for play- certainly, other editions support multiple interpretations of what is going on. D&D could be low fantasy, high fantasy, heroic or superheroic or gritty- it all depended on your interpretation (and some house rules).

4e flat-out said "D&D is this, and nothing else" as it's premise, and all of it's mechanics follow from that base assumption.

To put it another way, some people want to play Cyberpunk. You can't tell them that Shadowrun is "just like Cyberpunk, but with Elves, Dragons, and magic"- it simply isn't so.

D&D had gone from a game that more or less (usually less, but you could squint a little and pretend) multiple viewpoints. A game could take place on "Ye Olde Fantasy Earth", a cosmopolitan world on the brink of the Renaissance, a blasted post-apocalyptic word populated by demigods, travel into the distant edge of reality, or even into DEEP SPACE!!!!

But you could buy in or out of whatever gonzo craziness you wanted. You didn't need to play with Psionics or rayguns or a magical industrial revolution if you didn't want to, and you could pretend that other stuff didn't exist for your games.

4e established a baseline and everything else had to be brought in line with it. Now there are many legitimate complaints about how WotC handled this era, for trying to shoehorn existing settings into this paradigm, which led to the bastardization of the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and Dark Sun, as examples, rather than simply sticking to the setting based around this edition, Nentir Vale/Points of Light, their...interesting...marketing campaign, and so on.

But in the end it didn't matter what worked or didn't- for some people, 4e wasn't "their" D&D and couldn't be. Their preferred way of playing the game wasn't supported, and they had been cast aside and effectively told they were irrelevant out of date.

Nobody is going to be happy with that. It split the fanbase apart, and when you have angry people, they will do whatever they can to tear apart the thing that they hate.

And this continues to this day- if you add anything to the core D&D that doesn't fall in line with the sensibilities of the players, they reject it. "That'd be fine as an optional rule", you might get.

To me, the tragedy was that 4e, as a game, didn't deserve to be lambasted. Even now, you can go on Youtube and find talking heads who say "and everyone knows that 4e was the worst game ever" despite the fact they never even played it or experienced it.

That it wasn't the D&D that everyone wanted it to be was a problem, but I blame WotC's handling of the situation more. They could have said "this is what we think the future of D&D is" and left it at that. But within 2 years, they went from "we made this new thing and your old thing basically sucks" to "please come back, we made things more like old D&D! And look, we brought all of your favorite settings back, but worse!"

Now we have 5e, which at every turn, tries not to make definitive statements about anything, and attempts to please the widest possible audience, sometimes to it's detriment. But hey, at least it's popular, right?

That's where I was going with. That it's not really the Damage on a Miss mechanic the problem that doesn't make sense, or the term used (because in some case they can deal with it, even if it's not to their liking), it's the narrative behind it that they just can't accept. And I'm okay with it, as long as they are being honest about it. I fully understand. So it's not as simple as it being a binary operation that a miss should be a miss no matter what... because it's not 'no matter what', but 'depending on what'.

 

[payn]

Basically, yes. Magic in D&D is allowed to violate concepts like physics, causality, and the laws of thermodynamics because that's what magic do.

If you're not explicitly supernatural in any way, doing things like "always hitting", "dealing damage on a miss", or "leaping 30' into the air" have no explanation, and there are people who need that explanation to be explicitly stated by the game- supposition or hypothesis has no place.

For these people, D&D starts with the same rules that our reality are bound by, and exceptions must be noted. D&D humans are the same as humans on Earth, unless otherwise stated.

There is a fantasy of martial characters being normal people who somehow deal with extraordinary situations by dearth of pluck, talent, and skill, but nothing that would make them anything other than human.

It's like the Batman paradox. No human is as intelligent, skilled, handsome, physically fit, and rich as Bruce Wayne. You can have people who have some of these factors, but not all. This allows you to maintain the belief (some would say fantasy) that he's a man among Gods, when, in reality, he has often performed feats beyond human ability.

So to give a "martial" an ability that defies our understanding of reality is right out, unless an explanation for why and how they can do it is explicit. And no amount of examples you can find as to why martials aren't normal people will do- if it's not in the rulebooks, it shouldn't be so.

If this sounds familiar, it's basically what this entire thread has boiled down to. 4e's characters are not beholden to our reality, nor are they intended to be, or even attempt to be. Previously, you could mostly maintain the belief that D&D characters are meant to be beholden to our reality, and any oddness could be chalked up to "necessary abstraction in order for the game to work".

It flies in the face of their preferred paradigm for play- certainly, other editions support multiple interpretations of what is going on. D&D could be low fantasy, high fantasy, heroic or superheroic or gritty- it all depended on your interpretation (and some house rules).

4e flat-out said "D&D is this, and nothing else" as it's premise, and all of it's mechanics follow from that base assumption.

To put it another way, some people want to play Cyberpunk. You can't tell them that Shadowrun is "just like Cyberpunk, but with Elves, Dragons, and magic"- it simply isn't so.

D&D had gone from a game that more or less (usually less, but you could squint a little and pretend) multiple viewpoints. A game could take place on "Ye Olde Fantasy Earth", a cosmopolitan world on the brink of the Renaissance, a blasted post-apocalyptic word populated by demigods, travel into the distant edge of reality, or even into DEEP SPACE!!!!

But you could buy in or out of whatever gonzo craziness you wanted. You didn't need to play with Psionics or rayguns or a magical industrial revolution if you didn't want to, and you could pretend that other stuff didn't exist for your games.

4e established a baseline and everything else had to be brought in line with it. Now there are many legitimate complaints about how WotC handled this era, for trying to shoehorn existing settings into this paradigm, which led to the bastardization of the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and Dark Sun, as examples, rather than simply sticking to the setting based around this edition, Nentir Vale/Points of Light, their...interesting...marketing campaign, and so on.

But in the end it didn't matter what worked or didn't- for some people, 4e wasn't "their" D&D and couldn't be. Their preferred way of playing the game wasn't supported, and they had been cast aside and effectively told they were irrelevant out of date.

Nobody is going to be happy with that. It split the fanbase apart, and when you have angry people, they will do whatever they can to tear apart the thing that they hate.

And this continues to this day- if you add anything to the core D&D that doesn't fall in line with the sensibilities of the players, they reject it. "That'd be fine as an optional rule", you might get.

To me, the tragedy was that 4e, as a game, didn't deserve to be lambasted. Even now, you can go on Youtube and find talking heads who say "and everyone knows that 4e was the worst game ever" despite the fact they never even played it or experienced it.

That it wasn't the D&D that everyone wanted it to be was a problem, but I blame WotC's handling of the situation more. They could have said "this is what we think the future of D&D is" and left it at that. But within 2 years, they went from "we made this new thing and your old thing basically sucks" to "please come back, we made things more like old D&D! And look, we brought all of your favorite settings back, but worse!"

Now we have 5e, which at every turn, tries not to make definitive statements about anything, and attempts to please the widest possible audience, sometimes to it's detriment. But hey, at least it's popular, right?

Sounds like we really need a, "What the heck happened to 5E" thread. So that we can explore how a poorly designed game with only intent to appeal to grognards became not just popular, but most popular D&D edition of all time. Leading theory so far is it was name dropped on a few TV shows.

 

[billd91]

So Damage on a Miss is okay in certain situation but not so in others, just like I said to Snarf. Could I dare say that the 'problem' is just when a Martial character use it?

No, it‘s that attacks that interact with AC (and don’t affect an area) should have a fail state that incorporates the abstract nature of how AC operates. Otherwise, it’s badly undermining the value of armor and anything else that contributes to AC or penalizes melee combat (like disadvantage, cover, etc).

 

[Micah Sweet]

These are not rules for mis-casting. They encourage the player to be very careful about placement, relying on the fact that there is no chance of not placing the spell where the player wants to.

To distinguish from an attack against enemies.

4e's rules are clear; although there seem to be many critics in this thread who have not read them.

Again, this clearly a case of people not liking the 4e rules, not people not understanding them. If you're being asked to do anything here, it's to accept that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Basically, yes. Magic in D&D is allowed to violate concepts like physics, causality, and the laws of thermodynamics because that's what magic do.

If you're not explicitly supernatural in any way, doing things like "always hitting", "dealing damage on a miss", or "leaping 30' into the air" have no explanation, and there are people who need that explanation to be explicitly stated by the game- supposition or hypothesis has no place.

For these people, D&D starts with the same rules that our reality are bound by, and exceptions must be noted. D&D humans are the same as humans on Earth, unless otherwise stated.

There is a fantasy of martial characters being normal people who somehow deal with extraordinary situations by dearth of pluck, talent, and skill, but nothing that would make them anything other than human.

It's like the Batman paradox. No human is as intelligent, skilled, handsome, physically fit, and rich as Bruce Wayne. You can have people who have some of these factors, but not all. This allows you to maintain the belief (some would say fantasy) that he's a man among Gods, when, in reality, he has often performed feats beyond human ability.

So to give a "martial" an ability that defies our understanding of reality is right out, unless an explanation for why and how they can do it is explicit. And no amount of examples you can find as to why martials aren't normal people will do- if it's not in the rulebooks, it shouldn't be so.

If this sounds familiar, it's basically what this entire thread has boiled down to. 4e's characters are not beholden to our reality, nor are they intended to be, or even attempt to be. Previously, you could mostly maintain the belief that D&D characters are meant to be beholden to our reality, and any oddness could be chalked up to "necessary abstraction in order for the game to work".

It flies in the face of their preferred paradigm for play- certainly, other editions support multiple interpretations of what is going on. D&D could be low fantasy, high fantasy, heroic or superheroic or gritty- it all depended on your interpretation (and some house rules).

4e flat-out said "D&D is this, and nothing else" as it's premise, and all of it's mechanics follow from that base assumption.

To put it another way, some people want to play Cyberpunk. You can't tell them that Shadowrun is "just like Cyberpunk, but with Elves, Dragons, and magic"- it simply isn't so.

D&D had gone from a game that more or less (usually less, but you could squint a little and pretend) multiple viewpoints. A game could take place on "Ye Olde Fantasy Earth", a cosmopolitan world on the brink of the Renaissance, a blasted post-apocalyptic word populated by demigods, travel into the distant edge of reality, or even into DEEP SPACE!!!!

But you could buy in or out of whatever gonzo craziness you wanted. You didn't need to play with Psionics or rayguns or a magical industrial revolution if you didn't want to, and you could pretend that other stuff didn't exist for your games.

4e established a baseline and everything else had to be brought in line with it. Now there are many legitimate complaints about how WotC handled this era, for trying to shoehorn existing settings into this paradigm, which led to the bastardization of the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and Dark Sun, as examples, rather than simply sticking to the setting based around this edition, Nentir Vale/Points of Light, their...interesting...marketing campaign, and so on.

But in the end it didn't matter what worked or didn't- for some people, 4e wasn't "their" D&D and couldn't be. Their preferred way of playing the game wasn't supported, and they had been cast aside and effectively told they were irrelevant out of date.

Nobody is going to be happy with that. It split the fanbase apart, and when you have angry people, they will do whatever they can to tear apart the thing that they hate.

And this continues to this day- if you add anything to the core D&D that doesn't fall in line with the sensibilities of the players, they reject it. "That'd be fine as an optional rule", you might get.

To me, the tragedy was that 4e, as a game, didn't deserve to be lambasted. Even now, you can go on Youtube and find talking heads who say "and everyone knows that 4e was the worst game ever" despite the fact they never even played it or experienced it.

That it wasn't the D&D that everyone wanted it to be was a problem, but I blame WotC's handling of the situation more. They could have said "this is what we think the future of D&D is" and left it at that. But within 2 years, they went from "we made this new thing and your old thing basically sucks" to "please come back, we made things more like old D&D! And look, we brought all of your favorite settings back, but worse!"

Now we have 5e, which at every turn, tries not to make definitive statements about anything, and attempts to please the widest possible audience, sometimes to it's detriment. But hey, at least it's popular, right?

Never have I seen my opinions expressed so clearly. Thank you.

 

[Red Castle]

No, it‘s that attacks that interact with AC (and don’t affect an area) should have a fail state that incorporates the abstract nature of how AC operates. Otherwise, it’s badly undermining the value of armor and anything else that contributes to AC or penalizes melee combat (like disadvantage, cover, etc).

That’s pretty much the difference between a weapon attack and a magical attack though… weapon attack usually target AC while magic target either Fortitude, Reflex or Will.

But regardless, the fact remains that Damage on a Miss is acceptable in certain situations and not others, which is the only point I was making.

 

[billd91]

That’s pretty much the difference between a weapon attack and a magical attack though… weapon attack usually target AC while magic target either Fortitude, Reflex or Will.

But regardless, the fact remains that Damage on a Miss is acceptable in certain situations and not others, which is the only point I was making.

Speaking as someone who gave up 4e as a poor fit and greatly prefers 5e, it’s less damage on a miss for those situations than a save for half under most circumstances. And there‘s no targeting NADs.
I was not a fan of targeting NADs in place of saving throws. When it debuted in SWSE, it undermined some of the value and philosophy of Force points, and that was a real shame. I would have hoped they’d correct course after that, but they didn’t.

 

[payn]

Speaking as someone who gave up 4e as a poor fit and greatly prefers 5e, it’s less damage on a miss for those situations than a save for half under most circumstances. And there‘s no targeting NADs.
I was not a fan of targeting NADs in place of saving throws. When it debuted in SWSE, it undermined some of the value and philosophy of Force points, and that was a real shame. I would have hoped they’d correct course after that, but they didn’t.

 

[Red Castle]

Speaking as someone who gave up 4e as a poor fit and greatly prefers 5e, it’s less damage on a miss for those situations than a save for half under most circumstances. And there‘s no targeting NADs.
I was not a fan of targeting NADs in place of saving throws. When it debuted in SWSE, it undermined some of the value and philosophy of Force points, and that was a real shame. I would have hoped they’d correct course after that, but they didn’t.

This I can 100% gets behind! I personnally love the NADs and what they bring to the table, but I can understand that people can hate that new mechanic. And it’s true that 4e is the only edition that doesn’t use Saving Throw so if for you, it is an important part of DnD Legacy, I can understand that the move away from it could rub you the wrong way.

Honest question, believe me, it’s not a trap, I’m just curious. Would you be okay if the power was written like that:

Reaping Strike: You punctuate your scything attacks with wicked jabs and small cutting blows that slip through your enemy's defenses. The defender must make a dexterity Saving Throw. If he fail, he suffer 1(W)+Strength modifier damage. If he succeed, he takes half your Strength Modifier damage or equal to your Strength modifier if you are wielding a two-handed weapon.