Mearls: The core of D&D

[BryonD]

Well, my point was pretty simple, namely, that finding a +1 dagger or +1 arrows, even in classic D&D, was in my experience not generally a semi-major event. So it's quite relevant to my point to indicate that finding a flametongue is different - different from finding a +1 weapon, and different in classic D&D from in 4e.

I've never said that my experiences with classic D&D and 4e were, overall or even on the whole or to a significant extent the same.

Sorry. I understood those details, but presumed they were just tangents to the point. I did not assume they were the point as you see it.

 

[Gentlegamer]

I think all the points have been hit on this thread's sub-subject.

Har! Har!

 

[Ultimatecalibur]

Incidentally, 4e is entirely playable without +x weapons and with only super rare magic items, and is in fact the first edition to openly support it with inherent bonuses.

"Inherent bonuses" are just magic weapon and item benefits relocated and dressed up differently. The +x equipment is still there it is just invisible and can not be removed.

It is also possible to run pre-3.X editions of D&D magic item free without having to hide where the bonus are coming from. In some editions it is quite possible for a fighting-man in the mid-teens to reliably kill a red wyrm while naked.

 

[Beginning of the End]

Scaling it to the hit points rather than level of the recipient would seem to make the most sense. Which is what 4e does, as every healing surge or equivalent restores 1/4 of the hit points of the target.

Well... Not really. Some hit points -- the ones based on larger HD and Con bonuses -- DO represent the ability to withstand or endure greater injury (which will then take longer to heal).

It's the recovery of hit points, particularly magically, that seems to me the point where hit points stop being a sensible way to handle conbat resolution and become something rather peculiar. If you're really not taking much physical injury, instead becoming slower/unlucky/feebler/cursed, then what does magical healing restore? Well, apparently it's "dissociated".

Well, to play devil's advocate, one could say that the spells heal a number of specific wounds -- paper cut or gaping gash in your side, the spell doesn't care. (Magic is finicky that way.) And since those with more hit points have, in fact, suffered a larger number of less severe wounds (by turning each blow that lands into a less severe wound), it requires progressively more powerful magic to close up the progressively larger number of wounds.

But, yeah. I generally agree that the cure spells are not tightly associated with the game world.

However, cure spells are still more associated than healing surges (which have all the same problems of abstraction, but also tack on a strange limit on the amount of healing you can receive in a day) and abilities that allow you to physical wounds by yelling at people (only slight hyperbole there).

They're also, IMO, better game design than the hard limits of healing surges. I'm not a big fan of the 15-minute adventuring day, and it completely baffles me that the designers of 4E included a mechanic which, for the first time ever, mandates a short adventuring day.

But here we begin to go a bit further afield than the original topic.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

They're also, IMO, better game design than the hard limits of healing surges. I'm not a big fan of the 15-minute adventuring day, and it completely baffles me that the designers of 4E included a mechanic which, for the first time ever, mandates a short adventuring day.

Man, I wish you had posted this a while ago, because I could have pointed it out to those insisting that 4Ed had been set up to avoid just that issue.

 

[Ultimatecalibur]

...What.

Yes, exactly. It's the boring benefits of "+1 to attack and damage" without sucking up the magical item space. It's the math without the boring magical items.

A +1 to hit and damage or +1 to AC is not inherently boring. They become boring when players start assuming that they and their opponents will have them.

That's the point. The +x equipment is not still there, because you aren't wielding any +x equipment. You could in fact, play a game with no magical equipment whatsoever with inherent bonuses.

My point is that using inherent bonuses is not in fact removing the bonuses received; it is covering them with a cloth and saying let's pretend they are not there. With both inherent bonuses and magic items you still receive a +1 bonus per 5 levels to hit, damage and the 4 defenses.

Two 4e characters of the same level, one using inherent bonuses and one using 'normal' magic items, are equally effective. Play style does not change and they will face similar opponents.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you flat out need magical weapons to harm many types of monsters?

Yes, there are monster that require +x weapons to harm, but those monster tend to be on the supernatural side of things (undead and other worldly beings) and a DM does not have use those monsters in every campaign.

 

[Tuft]

A +1 to hit and damage or +1 to AC is not inherently boring. They become boring when players start assuming that they and their opponents will have them.

Or the DM. "Now most of my players have +1 to hit, so I must raise monster AC by one to ensure future fights don't become to easy..."

 

[Bluenose]

They're also, IMO, better game design than the hard limits of healing surges. I'm not a big fan of the 15-minute adventuring day, and it completely baffles me that the designers of 4E included a mechanic which, for the first time ever, mandates a short adventuring day.

I don't think it's easy to spend all your healing surges in one or even two encounters. A second wind, and if the party has one leader they can trigger two more, and perhaps one in a short rest. That would restore 100% of your hit points, and a little extra, and uses four surges. The only class with less than that is the vampire, and that's got some sort of replenishment mechanic - don't ask me how it works, I haven't got the book. Most characters I'd expect to run out of dailies before they run out of healing surges.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I almost never run out of either, FWIW.

 

[mmadsen]

Ask 10 people what the essentials of D&D are to them and you will get 10 different answers.

Not only will people give you different answers, but they don't actually know, before they see a new edition, what really matters to them -- and the people playing the current version aren't necessarily the only people who might play a new version. For instance, 3E was a pretty significant change from 2E, but it brought many old players back into the game.

Also, people will tend to list specific, concrete game-elements rather than intangibles -- and even if they list intangibles, those things might not make sense to anyone else. So, players say they want AC and hp, because that's what they know, when what we really want is a combat system that isn't an accounting exercise, that doesn't get them killed for no "good" reason, etc.