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

[James Gasik]

Oh yeah, the racial caps on Strength were something I not only despised from 1e, but sometimes didn't make sense- Half-Orcs get a +1 to Strength that's capped to 18/99, but Humans with no bonus can have 18/00? Showing your human bias there, Gary!

 

[Lanefan]

Think I saw it rolled legit once or twice and it wasn't done in 1 roll.

I've seen it done (legitimately) twice, in different campaigns. One of the characters went on to a good career. The other didn't get out of its first adventure.

Bedt character I ever saw rolled legit was 12,14, 17,17 17, 18 I pulled it off in front of the DM first try.

A player once rolled 15-15-17-17-18-18 in front of me (I was the DM). Another one that didn't get out of its first adventure.

18/anything was a lot better than 18. Probably made Half Orcs very popular.

I legit. had 18/94 once for a character of mine; that's the best I've done. That said, though we still roll the d% at roll-up we split those gradations out into full numbers for all other purposes (e.g. 18.41 = 19, 18.70 = 20, and so forth up to 18.00 = 24); this to allow our percentile increment system (as per the 1e Cavalier except for all classes) to work as intended if one of the advancing stats is strength.

 

[MockingBird]

I've only ever rolled a 18/00 in BG1...after hitting reroll for 30 mins lol.

For real though, I pretty much self taught myself 2e (with help from the starter set audio CD). At first I was pretty strict on rolling in order. Those characters didn't really last long. It was only after researching the newish internet that I figured out I could "house rule". Good times haha

 

[DarkCrisis]

18/00 strength should have been super-rare, since you had to roll 3 6s , followed by a 00 result on percentiles.
Despite this in my years of playing 2nd edition I saw it all the time! In fact, 18/00 seemed to be more common than any other 18/percentile amount.

But sure, they were all legitimate rolls. "I did it at home and got it first try"

In 30 years I’ve had it happen once and I named this new Fighter “Adam Greyskull”

 

[QuentinGeorge]

In 1e, it was always the same guy who happened to roll a 17 for charisma too.

Yeah, I'm talking about you Derek.


Slightly real note. I swear that the most common "roll" I saw was 18/92. It is something about the cheater's mind. I think that every single cheater must have gone through the same process....

Hmmm. If I say I rolled an 18/00, they'll know I cheated. So I can't write that. But I can give myself the next best score! Yeah, that's the ticket. So 18/91 is the worst of the best. But wait, that's too obvious. So ... 18/92! Perfect.

Seriously, I always, always, always assumed that 18/92 was fabricated. And I saw it all the time.

 

[thenightgaunt]

I've just had a look at the 3E conversion book, for the first time in probably two decades. It's nonsense!

Eg on p 3, it says "Record the character’s existing ability scores." And on p 8, it says "If you created your character with the 2nd Edition AD&D rules and you used the optional proficiencies rule, you can use your character’s selection of nonweapon proficiencies as a shopping list for skills. Just purchase skills similar to your character’s proficiencies (a list follows)."

In many, perhaps most, cases, following these steps won't produce a character who plays anything like the AD&D character. Just as one obvious example, fighters will have significantly weaker saving throws and non-combat abilities.

A 3E character can be "converted" to 4e by recording their existing ability scores and using their existing build as a guide to their 4e build, too. Voila! A conversion guide!

Speaking of bad edition conversion/compatibility advice from WotC, this might be another "my memory is terrible" moment, but it came up recently with WotC's claims that the new thing will be fully backwards compatible with current 5e.

Does anyone else remember 4e marketing claiming that it was going to be "Backwards compatible" with 3/3.5? This would have been during that window between when they announced 4e and when the playtesting started. But I'd swear I read that claim somewhere back then but then the claim disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.

 

[Red Castle]

Speaking of bad edition conversion/compatibility advice from WotC, this might be another "my memory is terrible" moment, but it came up recently with WotC's claims that the new thing will be fully backwards compatible with current 5e.

Does anyone else remember 4e marketing claiming that it was going to be "Backwards compatible" with 3/3.5? This would have been during that window between when they announced 4e and when the playtesting started. But I'd swear I read that claim somewhere back then but then the claim disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.

I have no memories that they ever said that 4e would be fully compatible with 3/3.5 and quite frankly, the systems are so different that I wonder what they would have meant by that.

When they talk about compatibility between 5e and OneDnD, I expect the same kind of compatibility between 4e and Essentials. Essentials came with a new rulebook and a new version of a lot of classes included in 4e PHB and PHB2 and you could combine both together. You could have both the fighter from PHB1 and from Essentials together in the same group and it did not break the game.

 

[Pedantic]

Speaking of bad edition conversion/compatibility advice from WotC, this might be another "my memory is terrible" moment, but it came up recently with WotC's claims that the new thing will be fully backwards compatible with current 5e.

Does anyone else remember 4e marketing claiming that it was going to be "Backwards compatible" with 3/3.5? This would have been during that window between when they announced 4e and when the playtesting started. But I'd swear I read that claim somewhere back then but then the claim disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.

I don't recall this at all, they were as I recall much more focused on showcasing design decisions made in 4e. I don't think anyone was expecting straight compatibility of existing books, but original marketing copy did suggest to me more direct translation of existing material. That is, I think there was an impression we might see a different version of something like the Bear Warrior, maybe expressed differently than a prestige class, but translated as an existing concept into the new design language.

That might be biased in my particular recording though. I remember roles feeling like they increased in prominence over time in particular, becoming increasingly definitional for each class as we got closer to release.

 

[Voadam]

I remember speculation that 4e would be similar in design to design decisions made in late 3.5 (in particular Tome of Blades, Monster Manual V) and Saga Edition Star Wars. I don't remember statements about it being compatible with 3.5. Given the numbering scheme I think expectations for a full 4e were that it would be a big rehaul of the system like AD&D to 3e not a variant on the same d20 3e core like 3.5 or d20 modern or pathfinder 1e as 3e to 3.5 was considered a half edition and this was a planned full edition number change.

I remember a bunch of people being excited for a possible Saga edition style 4e.

 

[Pedantic]

I remember a bunch of people being excited for a possible Saga edition style 4e.

I definitely recall people looking to ToB and Saga Edition as "preview" materials for 4e.