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

[pemerton]

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.

I don't think this is quite right. Clearly some of them think that high level human fighters can be run through many times by swords and not die, even though the rules for AD&D state the exact opposite.

And many seem to think that a giant can literally hit a person with a club yet that person not be knocked down.

I don't think the strong views are about what ordinary people can do. I think they are strong views about game conventions - as we have seen in this thread, such as the convention that a fireball must damage everyone in its AoE, or that a person who is attacked by a sword-wielding warrior must have a chance of taking no damage at all.

 

[Pedantic]

Touch AC was a patch so that casters with terrible BAB could actually fight with certain spells. On the plus side, it makes casters and martials operate and feel different, despite it being mechanically convoluted. As a big fan of 3E/PF1, I do not miss it at all.

I really loved touch AC and its less used (and less distinct) flat-footed AC from a modeling perspective. They were so clear about what they represented, and made things like brilliant energy weapons make sense. Less desirable was the shivering touch spell and similar, wherein they just didn't scale reasonably with the level challenges and/or the effects you could get with them scaled unreasonably well.

 

[payn]

I really loved touch AC and its less used (and less distinct) flat-footed AC from a modeling perspective. They were so clear about what they represented, and made things like brilliant energy weapons make sense. Less desirable was the shivering touch spell and similar, wherein they just didn't scale reasonably with the level challenges and/or the effects you could get with them scaled unreasonably well.

I did too, but mechanically it wasnt such a hit for me that I missed it. I really didnt care for the shenanigans Paizo got up to either with fighter classes (gunslinger) using the touch AC which wasn't intended for a full BAB class.

 

[pemerton]

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.

Granted, there can be attacks that armor is ineffective against, but D&D usually models those as magical, and if something can bypass an armor type, it was usually a bonus to the attack roll.

I posted an example from 4e upthread - the Rogue 25th level Daily "Biting Assault":

Melee or Ranged weapon
Requirement You must be wielding a crossbow, a light blade, or a sling.
Target: One creature
Attack: Dexterity vs Fortitude
Hit: 3[W] + Dexterity modifier damage, and the target takes ongoing 10 damage and is weakened (save ends both)
Miss: Half damage, and the target takes 10 ongoing damage​

It's pretty clear what is going on with this attack: it involves pounding the living daylights out of the target, regardless of their armour. And if the attack is made, then the target is set back and suffers ongoing damage, whether that be bleeding or the reverberating effects of the pounding. On a successful, but not a failed, attack roll the pounding is so brutal that the foe is also weakened. What helps a target resist this pounding is their fortitude.

There are many examples of this sort of thing in 4e, some of which do damage on a miss and some of which don't.

And the defence that is targeted is not about bypassing armour, but about the nature of the attack. A pounding attack like this one, for instance, doesn't "bypass" armour but just goes straight through it! It's clear what is happening in the fiction, whether or not any particular person likes that fiction.

 

[pemerton]

Magic has limits to bind its ability so having that structure in place helps. Yes, I am aware the ceiling is ever expanding as the game levels.

The odd consequence of this design decision is that the binding makes magic more powerful than the "unbound" non-magical abilities.

 

[payn]

The odd consequence of this design decision is that the binding makes magic more powerful than the "unbound" non-magical abilities.

I think it should be. Also, it should be limited, but those limits have been stretched and broken over the editions. Sounds like they are going even further in 5E 2024.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Magic has limits to bind its ability so having that structure in place helps. Yes, I am aware the ceiling is ever expanding as the game levels.

Yeah, given the number of spells that exist in D&D over time, I think other than perhaps magnitude (and there are ways you could bake that in generically) I'm not sold that's in practice true.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I really loved touch AC and its less used (and less distinct) flat-footed AC from a modeling perspective. They were so clear about what they represented, and made things like brilliant energy weapons make sense. Less desirable was the shivering touch spell and similar, wherein they just didn't scale reasonably with the level challenges and/or the effects you could get with them scaled unreasonably well.

That's the problem when certain kinds of AC bonus expanded almost indefinitely, and others--not so much.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I did too, but mechanically it wasnt such a hit for me that I missed it. I really didnt care for the shenanigans Paizo got up to either with fighter classes (gunslinger) using the touch AC which wasn't intended for a full BAB class.

Its not a coincidence that the 2e guns don't do that.

 

[Hussar]

I don't think this is quite right. Clearly some of them think that high level human fighters can be run through many times by swords and not die, even though the rules for AD&D state the exact opposite.

And many seem to think that a giant can literally hit a person with a club yet that person not be knocked down.

I don't think the strong views are about what ordinary people can do. I think they are strong views about game conventions - as we have seen in this thread, such as the convention that a fireball must damage everyone in its AoE, or that a person who is attacked by a sword-wielding warrior must have a chance of taking no damage at all.

But, you're still getting hung up on the why. Why do people take this position? It doesn't really matter. The only point of asking why is to try to convince someone that their position is wrong.

And the past ten or fifteen years have proven one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt, you can't convince someone that their position is wrong. What you see as inconsistencies are bound by that interpretation. The GAME DEFINES this. Giants cannot knock someone down because the game says so. And if you believe that the game itself defines reality, then, there is no inconsistency. A human fighter can be run through multiple times because the game says that that's okay.

The whole issue here is you are trying to define in game events separate from the mechanics. Those that disagree with you will never do that. In game events are DEFINED by the game itself. Thus a fireball is never avoidable, but, a giant cannot knock someone over. When they talk about "simulation" that's what they're talking about. That the game world is defined by the rules of the game. And, those rules have been, more or less, static from OD&D to 3e. When 4e came along, many times the powers didn't actually define anything about how something happened. You use the power, this happens, but, any narrative is supplied by the players, not the system. So, your Biting Assault doesn't really work because how do you pound something with a light blade or a crossbow? Crossbow only shoots once. That's what the game says it does.

Now, for you or me, this isn't a problem at all. I get that. I agree with you. But, they will not ever agree with you here. It doesn't matter how many examples you bring up, how many quotes you point to, how much evidence you bring. It does not matter. You cannot win this argument. It's not possible. They are starting from a position that is fundamentally different from yours or mine. Humans can't jump 30 feet because the tradition of the game says that they can't. Fireballs always hit because the tradition of the game says that they do. Weapons MUST have a chance of failure because tradition says they do.

Which is why they reject so much of 4e. 5e gets away with it because they made just enough nods to those traditions that the changes that were made became acceptable. So, ten years ago, in D&D Next, if you tried to add in damage on a miss, it wouldn't be possible. People would have lost their minds. Now? Now it gets through because there is enough tradition for the idea to slide past.

Rules and games can be judged by their traditions. It may not be how you or I do it, but, it can be done that way.