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

[James Gasik]

I didn’t really played 3e, I kinda skipted it, so I didn’t knew this kind of mechanic existed… that’s… something… I’m glad they didn’t kept it, I think there is not much worst than stealing success from players…

Most DM's didn't care much for it either, when players employed miss chances. Using foes without access to specialized senses or Dispel Magic could be an exercise in futility.

EDIT: I do recall having a DM flip out on me once because I'd quaffed a Blur potion and had Fortification armor.

Imagine the sequence of events. First you roll a 20. Then you have to roll again to confirm the critical hit. Then you check miss chance. Then you check fortification chance....

 

[Pedantic]

Most DM's didn't care much for it either, when players employed miss chances. Using foes without access to specialized senses or Dispel Magic could be an exercise in futility.

EDIT: I do recall having a DM flip out on me once because I'd quaffed a Blur potion and had Fortification armor.

Imagine the sequence of events. First you roll a 20. Then you have to roll again to confirm the critical hit. Then you check miss chance. Then you check fortification chance....

My mind rebels at conceiving of this as complex. This was just how combat worked at the time, and stabbing different kinds of defense (and getting counters to those defenses) was simply a best practice. Entropic Shield, Blur, Blink if you were daring or desperate.... catching people before they could buff, or overcoming/cancelling those buffs was an important part of planning.

I dearly miss critical confirmation rolls though, they were an elegant piece of design.

 

[billd91]

I’m glad they didn’t kept it, I think there is not much worst than stealing success from players…

Because, as a rat bastard DM, it was glorious to watch that PC’s crit come up only to be thwarted by a concealment miss! It was every bit as fun as when my crits missed a PC for the same reason.

Honestly, is it that different from rolling with disadvantage and one of the dice comes up with a 20?

 

[Red Castle]

Because, as a rat bastard DM, it was glorious to watch that PC’s crit come up only to be thwarted by a concealment miss! It was every bit as fun as when my crits missed a PC for the same reason.

Honestly, is it that different from rolling with disadvantage and one of the dice comes up with a 20?

To be honest, I’m not a fan of the way advantage/desadvantage work in 5e either, I’m much more a fan of a flat +2/-2 modifier like in 4e.

As for it being different than in 5e, yes I think it’s a little worst in the sense that in 5e at least you roll both dice at the same time, so there is no moment where you think you hit just to get « robbed » of it seconds later…

 

[Jacob Lewis]

I'm taking damage every time I look at this thread.

 

[Alzrius]

I'm taking damage every time I look at this thread.

That means that no one misses you here.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I didn’t really played 3e, I kinda skipted it, so I didn’t knew this kind of mechanic existed… that’s… something… I’m glad they didn’t kept it, I think there is not much worst than stealing success from players…

The simplest solution is to roll it first. Then its just immunity-on-an-activation, and people were used to the former.

 

[Voadam]

My mind rebels at conceiving of this as complex. This was just how combat worked at the time, and stabbing different kinds of defense (and getting counters to those defenses) was simply a best practice. Entropic Shield, Blur, Blink if you were daring or desperate.... catching people before they could buff, or over trips grown through those buffs was an important part of planning.

I dearly miss critical confirmation rolls though, they were an elegant piece of design.

It was a bit like Palladium where it was roll to hit, they then roll to parry or dodge or roll with a punch. A little speed bump in the flow of combat every action which slows down resolution time. One of the nicer things about AD&D over Palladium was just declare action roll and it resolves then on to the next so that combat flows quicker with less stopping and extra steps to resolution.

For our group having played both AD&D and Palladium systems a lot it was a noticeable impact on combat flow and resolution time.

In d20 I preferred incorporeal half damage, which I believe is how Pathfinder 1e did it, instead of 50% miss chance. Took out the little combat speed bump and the whole frustration of taking multiple steps to get a no action resolution.

 

[Lanefan]

It's certainly how it worked in 4e, where being Invisible gave you +5 AC.

And 1e, where either the invisible target had a 4 AC bonus or the attacker had a -4 penalty to hit; I forget which is the RAW version, I've always used the to-hit penalty.

The way I see it, when you have stuff like the original 3e Shield spell handed out something ridiculous like +7 AC, you kind of painted yourself into a corner with regards to defensive buffs. If you have Blur as a 2nd level spell, and it's less effective than a 1st level defensive spell, that's a problem, and piling on more AC on top of that might be problematic, especially with how they wanted melee weapon warriors to work, with multiple attacks of descending success rates.

Rather than scaling things down (like how the 3.5 Shield was equal to a Tower Shield), they elected to have a second line of defense separate from AC. Which really affected play a big deal- enemies with miss chances were obnoxious, and so you had to find ways to combat them, while trying to find your own miss chance abilities, and I don't think anyone really liked the mechanic. It slowed down play, was often a feel bad moment, could turn off abilities like Sneak Attack- just a mess, really.

I wasn't much of a fan of the way 3e did that either. I don't care much about the feel-bad aspect but it did mean more dice-rolling.

While I understand being invested in 3.5 (I know I was) when 4e came out, 3.5 was plagued by a lot of rules that seemed to exist largely to make the game less fun, and 4e took steps to eliminate a lot of cruft.

In my view, the biggest overall problem with 3e (and its direct successors) was the steepness of the overall power curve from 1st level to xth level, where x could be any number you like. Most of its smaller issues IMO stem from that one element.

5e has flattened this out fairly significantly, from what I can tell; it's more like 1e-2e in that regard.

The easiest way to check the flatness/steepness of the power curve is to look at how much level variation there can be between the characters in a party and have the game remain playable. 3e didn't really tolerate any variation at all, while 1-2-5e all tolerate it to a fairly wide extent (1e almost expects it). 4e, from what I've seen/read/heard, falls somewhere between.

 

[Lanefan]

My mind rebels at conceiving of this as complex. This was just how combat worked at the time, and stabbing different kinds of defense (and getting counters to those defenses) was simply a best practice. Entropic Shield, Blur, Blink if you were daring or desperate.... catching people before they could buff, or overcoming/cancelling those buffs was an important part of planning.

All true, but also all a bit beyond the pale for those of us just looking to roll some dice and bash some imaginary heads.

I dearly miss critical confirmation rolls though, they were an elegant piece of design.

Same here. They also served to make crits much less frequent, which opens the door to have them potentially do something spectacular when they do occur.