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

[Mannahnin]

In the vanilla version of WoW, cooldowns largely fell into 3 groups; short, medium, and long.

Short cooldowns were mostly in the 4-10 second range so they could be used multiple times on an instance boss encounter. Medium cooldowns were in the 1-5 minute range typically, so you could use them once per instance boss encounter and by the time you cleared the trash monsters between boss encounters, they'd be back up again for use.

Then you have the long cooldowns. For a warrior, this included stuff like Shield Wall (reduced damage taken by 75% for 10 seconds) and Recklessness (increased crit rate and made you immune to fear for 15 seconds). They had a 30 minute cooldown so you wouldn't be able to use them on every boss encounter and they also shared a cooldown, so you had to pick which one you wanted to use (though usually that was kinda chosen for you based on what specialization you were).

Translating that concept to a TTRPG would be abilities you could use a couple times per encounter, abilities you could use once per encounter, and abilities you could use once a day (assuming you're building your game around X number of encounters per day).

I don't think that's an accurate translation or equivalence, though. Which is Voadam's point.

The cooldown periods you've given for WoW are 1) multiple times per fight, and a bunch of times in a big fight, 2) multiple times per big fight, and 3) multiple times per day, not every encounter if the encounters are close together.

That's a distinctly different schedule than 4E's 1) every single round if you want, 2) once per fight, or less if the fights are too closely spaced, and 3) once per day.

Edited to clarify the comparison between WoW and 4E.

 

[delericho]

I admit to being a prude who turns up his nose at a lot of 3PP content for two reasons; one, I'm a veteran of the d20 era, where everyone and their cousin was cranking out a sourcebook, many of dubious quality (not that WotC didn't have some whoppers themselves...).

Yeah, I remember those days.

It's fair to say that a huge amount of the current 3pp is likewise of indifferent quality. But, as in the d20 days, there are some gems to go along with the dross. The difficulty, as always, is finding them.

And two, I'm used to DM's who, for whatever reason, consider 3PP to be the Devil, but will grudgingly accept (and gripe about) "official" products.

Makes sense. One of the benefits of being a permanent DM is that that's not something I have to deal with.

 

[Mannahnin]

Not to be pedantic, but that's an encounter-based ability. We all play 5e. Short rests, whether you love them or hate them, is not five minutes.

It's required uninterrupted downtime of at least an hour.

In 4e, short rests are what defines the border between different encounters. That's in the name. In 5e, a short rest is an affirmative action that must be taken.

So I don't agree with you. It is not literally (or even figuratively) the same thing as a short rest. Conceptually or actually.

The only difference between a 4E short rest and a 5E short rest is that one takes 5 minutes and the other 1 hour.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

The only difference between a 4E short rest and a 5E short rest is that one takes 5 minutes and the other 1 hour.

You literally provided the text to me that I just told you.

There is a difference between five minutes and one hour. If you don't want to understand why this is a salient difference between 4e and 5e in terms of their design, and why the AEDU system uses E for encounter (and how this plays into encounter-based design pacing, and why this is not used in 5e) then I can't help ya.

 

[Velderan]

I dontt think that's an accurate translation, though. Which is Voadam's point.

The cooldown periods you've given are 1) multiple times per fight, and a bunch of times in a big fight, 2) multiple times per big fight, and 3) multiple times per day, not every encounter if the encounters are close together.

That's a distinctly different schedule than 1) every single round if you want, 2) once per fight, or less if the fights are too closely spaced, and 3) once per day.

I'm not sure where you get the bolded part from, when I said "abilities you could use a couple times per encounter". We can get into the debate on should I have said couple when in most cases it's probably more than 2 but I'm not sure where you're drawing every single round from anything I said.

For the second, I went with the assumption most D&D fight ends in 5 or less rounds so using an ability that once per encounter seems about right to me.

For the third, I went with once per day assuming a certain number of encounters per day being what a game is built around to ease the number of things people need to track time for. Given the number of abilities that exist in different editions of D&D on some version of a long rest recharge, I'd say many designers employed by WotC and formerly TSR would agree with that assessment.

 

[Imaro]

The only difference between a 4E short rest and a 5E short rest is that one takes 5 minutes and the other 1 hour.

I find it strange that the difference in time for cooldowns is being used as both an argument for 4e's difference from WoW and also 4e's similarity to 5e...

 

[Micah Sweet]

I find it strange that the difference in time for cooldowns is being used as both an argument for 4e's difference from WoW and also 4e's similarity to 5e...

People who like 4e like to emphasize 5e's similarities to it, since 5e is active and popular and 4e is less so. That's pretty natural.

 

[Mannahnin]

Moving to the AEDU example, it's pretty simple. Let's concentrate on the "E". The issue a lot of D&D players had with the "E" (refresher- "E"ncounter) power system is that while it solved a problem that D&D has always had (the issue of "going nova" in combats) by making giving powers different cooldown periods (at will, per encounter, and daily) it make explicit and unavoidable that this was no longer interested in verisimilitude. For the first time, the game provided resources that would be regained not through the passage of time, but due to the needs of the fiction.

Now, there are many people that might say, "FINALLY!" But that isn't the same as a short rest. Which is, again, time-based.

Here you state twice that that Encounter powers in 4E are not reset through a rest or the passage of time. Which is simply false. It's a shorter time than 5E short rests, but the concept of the two is exactly the same except for how long they take.

It's a different name than a short rest, but it literally is the same thing as a short rest. It is the rest and passage of time which refreshes them. An Encounter power in 4E resets after a short rest of five minutes. And you can spend Healing Surges (the less-random predecessor to 5E Hit Dice) during a short rest. If multiple encounters come closer together than that and you never get a rest, your Encounter powers don't reset.

It's purely the name.

Not to be pedantic, but that's an encounter-based ability. We all play 5e. Short rests, whether you love them or hate them, is not five minutes.

It's required uninterrupted downtime of at least an hour.

In 4e, short rests are what defines the border between different encounters. That's in the name. In 5e, a short rest is an affirmative action that must be taken.

So I don't agree with you. It is not literally (or even figuratively) the same thing as a short rest. Conceptually or actually.

In the rules of 4E, you can have multiple encounters without getting a short rest between them. I've seen that many times.

In 4E a short rest is an affirmative action that must be taken.

 

[Parmandur]

For the second, I went with the assumption most D&D fight ends in 5 or less rounds so using an ability that once per encounter seems about right to me.

Minor point, rhe average is about 2-3 rounds, or 12-18 seconds of narrative time.

 

[Mannahnin]

I find it strange that the difference in time for cooldowns is being used as both an argument for 4e's difference from WoW and also 4e's similarity to 5e...

Two of these games have "short rests".

The other one doesn't.