D&D 4E Bridging the cognitive gap between how the game rules work and what they tell us about the setting

[Alzrius]

D&D characters taking lots of fire damage and not dying and not getting burned.

GIFs do not a snappy point make, since in all of those examples they're either taking no damage, or very little damage.

The way you know that is because they're not burned.

 

[billd91]

If you were in the first camp and you sort of played 3e as though it was 2e (or you skipped 3e altogether) then I can totally see how 4e was a shocking divergence.

I think this is a particularly good observation. We played a lot of AD&D over the years and played 3e much like we played AD&D. In fact, we were playing a lot of AD&D adventures in our 3e campaign. We never made the jump to everyone toting around their own wand of cure light wounds to top up after every encounter. We had a magic item crafter or two, but didn't engage in it too heavily. We didn't have wizard players writing up scrolls for utility spells all the time and undermining the rogue's usefulness.
And so 4e was pretty jarring.

 

[Voadam]

GIFs do not a snappy point make, since in all of those examples they're either taking no damage, or very little damage.

The way you know that is because they're not burned.

That seems to be assuming your conclusion that fire damage is necessarily physical burns to prove your conclusion that fire damage is physical burns.

 

[Alzrius]

That seems to be assuming your conclusion that fire damage is necessarily physical burns to prove your conclusion that fire damage is physical burns.

You're suggesting that the real danger of red dragon's breath is dehydration? Or is it heat stroke?

"Good news, guys! It's not very humid out today, so the dragon's breath weapon only deals minimum damage to your body's moisture levels!"

 

[Voadam]

I think this is a particularly good observation. We played a lot of AD&D over the years and played 3e much like we played AD&D. In fact, we were playing a lot of AD&D adventures in our 3e campaign. We never made the jump to everyone toting around their own wand of cure light wounds to top up after every encounter. We had a magic item crafter or two, but didn't engage in it too heavily. We didn't have wizard players writing up scrolls for utility spells all the time and undermining the rogue's usefulness.
And so 4e was pretty jarring.

This always strikes me as odd.

I played 3e as I did AD&D, engaging in the rules available and trying to eke out RAW advantages and strategies to survive the dangerous adventuring situations. 3e just presented more options to use.

Scroll scribing and wand crafting, had they been available as easily in 1e using gold and time at low levels instead of requiring a dozen bespoke hard to get ingredients determined by the DM and only at mid to high levels would definitely have been part of the AD&D repertoire.

If the 1e magic marketplace had been like the 3e one with easy access to cure light wound wands for 750 gp instead of the 1e marketplace being maybe a wizard with three items for possible sale who can possibly fence odd things you find for the DMG list prices, and there being no cure wands at all, we would have loaded up on cure wands all the time. The same incentives to do so exist in both versions of the game.

 

[Voadam]

You're suggesting that the real danger of red dragon's breath is dehydration? Or is it heat stroke?

The heroes are good at not dying and getting out of the death zone through skill or luck or plot. They are more being shaken by the near miss and the incineration that would have happened if it got them.

"Good news, guys! It's not very humid out today, so the dragon's breath weapon only deals minimum damage to your body's moisture levels!"

The real threat is it takes away your hit points to the point where instead of it being scary close calls, you get actually burned and incinerated.

 

[Alzrius]

The heroes are good at not dying and getting out of the death zone through skill or luck or plot. They are more being shaken by the near miss and the incineration that would have happened if it got them.

The real threat is it takes away your hit points to the point where instead of it being scary close calls, you get actually burned and incinerated.

So this is a roundabout way of saying that you subscribe to the "hit points are a bunch of different stuff all at once" idea, in other words.

That's fine, but do mind the gap.

 

[Micah Sweet]

GIFs do not a snappy point make, since in all of those examples they're either taking no damage, or very little damage.

The way you know that is because they're not burned.

Clearly the real problem here is that D&D should never have used the words "hit", "miss", and "damage" in their combat rules, since none of the effects actually mean those things.

 

[Alzrius]

Clearly the real problem here is that D&D should never have used the words "hit", "miss", and "damage" in their combat rules, since of the effects actually mean those things.

I mean, I still think the wound/vitality points idea (from UA 3.5 and the Star Wars d20 RPG) was a very artful way of doing what a lot of people seem to want; it just came about thirty years too late.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, I still think the wound/vitality points idea (from UA 3.5 and the Star Wars d20 RPG) was a very artful way of doing what a lot of people seem to want; it just came about thirty years too late.

I'm cool with a decent fatigue that doesn't make your players flip the table (Level Up does that for me), combined with an injury system that kicks in after you drop to zero. Best I can do and still use hit points more or less as is.