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

[James Gasik]

I'm not sure this is a worse approach than banking on knowing and incorporating a whole bunch of individual eccentric interpretations of what can and cannot happen in explicity supernatural fantasy settings.

E.g. What is the bodily experience and composition of a fire elemental? What is magical fire made of? How do you damage it with swords and arrows, or lightning, etc.

Not to mention people's varying levels of ignorance and understanding of real-world phenomena)

How many snakes slither eye-side down?

Elementals in general have long been a sticking point in D&D. How do you punch something made of air? Grapple something made of fire? Should you be able to burn a water elemental?

Can elementals wield weapons or pick up objects? Wear armor? I don't think any edition has really addressed these points in a satisfactory manner, often leaving it entirely up to the DM to figure out what makes sense to them.

 

[Voadam]

This point really surprised me recently. I got a Wand of Binding in game, and I read Hold Person and Hold Monster, and didn't see a single line about it not working on constructs!

So I tried it on a construct.

Turned out the construct itself was immune to paralysis (lol), but maybe there's one construct out there that isn't, lol.

Which edition?

3.5 constructs are immune to paralysis as a default construct trait but the spells are also mind-affecting which constructs are also immune to, and hold person is limited to humanoid creatures. I'd have to look up whether warforged as living constructs with exceptions to a lot of standard construct traits are immune or not.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is all ridiculous. Whether it is a taunt, a lure, a wrongfooting of the foes - there is nothing remotely "telepathic" about a skilled warrior being able to draw their foes into close combat with them.

But again, it is also with some people the fact it worked on things that to them it seemed like it shouldn't. Its the "tripping the slime" problem all over again.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You don't generally do fantasy adventuring in Call of Cthulhu's horror version of the BRP rule system with sanity mechanics, you do it in BRP's Runquest or Elric! or BRP magic. Although there is also Cthulhu Dark Ages right there for castles. I forget if Pendragon is BRP for castles and kingdoms.

Powered by the Apocalypse covers a ton of non apocalypse genres. Fate, GURPS, Savage Worlds.

D&D does not typically do gothic horror but there is Ravenloft. Blades in the Dark is typically about fantasy heists, except when it is about military expeditions or rebellions against oppressive vampires or sci-fi horror.

There are certainly one off systems and certainly ones that are fairly highly tuned to a specific genre, but a lot of RPGs cover a lot of genres and get bent into different shapes.

Of course the question always becomes "How well." But that also turns on the perceptions of the genre and how medium effects it, too; you get this a lot about whether trad systems can actually properly handle supers.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not if you fail to hit with the encounter "Come and Get it" power vs. their Will defense. It doesn't work then. But this touches on another issue folks had: they didn't read the rules in the freakin' book!

Edit: I would also add that a lot of "your powers don't work on X" have subsequently been abandoned by a lot of d20 publishers because of things like your Sneak Attack not working on undead or constructs in 3e was not considered much fun for many players.

Yeah, but at least a fair bit of people sometimes think that's gamist thinking and sneer at it, too.

 

[James Gasik]

Which edition?

3.5 constructs are immune to paralysis as a default construct trait but the spells are also mind-affecting which constructs are also immune to, and hold person is limited to humanoid creatures. I'd have to look up whether warforged as living constructs with exceptions to a lot of standard construct traits are immune or not.

Oh I'm aware of how it worked in 3.5, which is why I was surprised that Hold Monster in 5e didn't say "any living creature" as the 3.5 version did, just "a creature". It may be that every construct in 5e is immune in the stat block to paralysis, I really haven't looked, but it seems they don't have to be.

In a similar vein, the idea that 5e allows me to use spells like Confusion on the undead is a breath of fresh air, since I haven't been able to do that since 2e, lol.

 

[Pedantic]

Eh, there was a non magical martial ability in later 3.5 that was a lot like Come and Get it.

3.5 had the Knight in Player's Handbook II whose big shtick was challenging people to draw attacks upon themself like a defender.

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It had a little bit of pushback in 3.5 as well.

The Knight is pretty indicative of the shift in design. The challenge ability is buried in caveats and explanations, and it was still slightly controversial at the time. It's quite a leap from only Intelligence 5+ creatures, they won't endanger themselves to move toward you, they can use ranged attacks and spells, etc, etc.

Not if you fail to hit with the encounter "Come and Get it" power vs. their Will defense. It doesn't work then. But this touches on another issue folks had: they didn't read the rules in the freakin' book!

It's been years, but I seem to recall that some of the issue with Come and Get It came down to to it targeting AC originally, before it was errata'd?

 

[Pedantic]

Oh I'm aware of how it worked in 3.5, which is why I was surprised that Hold Monster in 5e didn't say "any living creature" as the 3.5 version did, just "a creature". It may be that every construct in 5e is immune in the stat block to paralysis, I really haven't looked, but it seems they don't have to be.

In a similar vein, the idea that 5e allows me to use spells like Confusion on the undead is a breath of fresh air, since I haven't been able to do that since 2e, lol.

That's a very 5e thing, where creature types aren't fully keyworded, but in practice might as well be.

 

[Aldarc]

It's been years, but I seem to recall that some of the issue with Come and Get It came down to to it targeting AC originally, before it was errata'd?

That is the errata from what I recall as well.

 

[James Gasik]

A non-magical way someone could taunt creatures into acting recklessly in D&D? Only WotC could create such a travesty!