D&D General New Interview with Rob Heinsoo About 4E

[mamba]

I doubt it...at least in any useable way.

that would only be true if they released the full books as they are into the OGL instead of creating an SRD

I don't know being able to say "We promised X and delivered X" will bring some good will.

they never promised it…

 

[overgeeked]

Some 4e things are mentioned at: Reddit Link on Various Clones for Different Editions


When it's come up in the past, I think one of the 4e clone issues was really wanting the online character builder to go with it.

That's why I think cloning 4E fails when the designers try to be too specific. Don't clone the specific powers, clone the underlying framework the powers are built on. Don't clone the specific feats, clone the underlying framework the feats are built on. Ditto classes, paragon paths, epic destinies, etc. That's the beauty of a well-balanced system. Dig just a little bit beneath the surface and you can see the frameworks used to build the specific instances. Do that and you won't "need" an online character builder.

 

[mamba]

When it's come up in the past, I think one of the 4e clone issues was really wanting the online character builder to go with it.

that won’t be solved by WotC releasing an SRD for 4e either… if there are clones, what good is an SRD at this point then?

 

[pemerton]

Right. That would make more sense. But this isn't an ability on the first round of combat. Presumably, the gargoyle strategy is to alternate turns to "power up" attacks.

Did you read the replies you got from me, from @EzekielRaiden and from @niklinna?

Do you have trouble narrating non-from-hiding sneak attack damage?

I do understand that 4e is highly gamist, but moments like the gargoyle really drive home that you're controlling a piece in a game.

You use the second person when I think you intend the first person. I have no trouble understanding what is happening, in the fiction, with the gargoyle.

It works really well in a tactical grid. The mechanics played beautifully as a tactical miniatures game. It felt like the old D&D miniatures game that I ran extensively at game stores as a WOTC rep.

I see a lot of people say, hold the line. This works on a grid or in a narrow space like a dungeon. It is less so when there is more open space to maneuver.

Really? Field sports are played in open spaces. And yet there are athletes who can control the field around them.

None of the fighter powers are wrong or bad. They serve a purpose in the game if that's the type of game you want to play. You can just accept them as pure game mechanics put in their to support the fighter's role and move on. You can accept that the game mechanics have priority over the simulation, that they don't have to have a passing resemblance to (action movie) reality. Then you don't have to come up with flimsy reasons why a fighter can do what they do. Or you can just say that martial powers are still supernatural, just from a different source. I assume everybody accepts that characters in Anime are doing things not humanly possible, that they are inherently supernatural and that's okay.

Or I can do what I actually do, which is imagine the fighter using their physical prowess and unrivalled weapon training to dominate the field of battle, intercepting and blocking those who try to move through or past them.

Again, you seem to be using a second person construction when you are actually referring to your own thoughts and imagination.

stop telling me that I just don't understand how these things work because you happen to think the game mechanic is a good one to have.

I'm not telling you that. I'm just saying that I don't have the problem in imagining what is going on in the fiction that you appear to have.

 

[Cadence]

Really? Field sports are played in open spaces. And yet there are athletes who can control the field around them.

Or I can do what I actually do, which is imagine the fighter using their physical prowess and unrivalled weapon training to dominate the field of battle, intercepting and blocking those who try to move through or past them.

[I guess more to @Retreater @Oofta @Belen ]

I wonder if part of the problem is the starting point. Is the person thinking about a turned based system and then asking about how you would explain something in it, or are they asking how to put what one sees in reality I to a turn based system.

I wonder if the names of some of the abilities don't help with the it? Or in some cases even, who makes the roll?

In any case, it sure feels like "in real life a defender can try to shift over to block someone from easily slipping past" isn't well modeled by a few hit points of damage from an attack of opportunity.

(And now I want to go out the escape/chase scene from Crouching Tiger on).

 

[pemerton]

In any case, it sure feels like "in real life a defender can try to shift over to block someone from easily slipping past" isn't well modeled by a few hit points of damage from an attack of opportunity.

In 4e D&D, a fighter who hits with an opportunity of attack causes their victim to stop moving.

 

[Manbearcat]

The fighter is not necessarily more threatening. They are more skilled. They dominate the field.

I've been involved in four donnybrook-equivalents in my life (to what should be no surprise, three came on the basketball court...which is one of the more dangerous places in the 1st world imo!...the other was a bench-clearing-brawl in baseball...which is almost exclusively just male peacocking and no action.).

The three on the basketball court were all enormously dangerous situations that I didn't want to be in (and certainly didn't start). Dealing with two to three able-bodied, testosterone-fueled, fighting-age males leads you to have a better understanding of what this situation looks like. At the point in my life that these events occurred, I wasn't new to this kind of thing and I was in grappling and BJJ for many years so it wasn't terribly difficult to assess who was the most dangerous person and/or what was the most dangerous dynamic.

In one of those situations, the primary thing that drew my attention was the guy that instigated had been relentlessly goading me (totally looking for a fight from literally the moment he came into the gym...the fact this occurred was zero surprise; I predicted it would happen to my friends before it did), physically and verbally, for a good hour. Things set off when he goaded me into a fight with a huge cheap shot and then running his mouth. No matter how poised of an individual you think you are, when someone chest-passes a basketball at your head (as hard as they can) from the side when you aren't looking and then immediately is mouthy about it, that is the person who is going to have your attention (even if his two buddies are jumping you).

In the other two it was a combination of who pressed me and who presented me with an opportunity to attack their legs to initiate a grapple which would, in turn, allow me to control them while using their own body to protect myself against their friends (ok, you want to stomp me, kick me, or punch me while I have your buddy's back...have at it...but he's going to eat the collateral).

There is an easy lesson to draw here on what a donnybrook would look like when it comes to a D&D Fighter and its exactly what you've written above:

* The most skilled at goading (via signalling which can be cheap shots, feints, actual words, or the combination).

* The most skilled at presenting as dangerous/threatening (even if they aren't the most dangerous/threatening).

* The most skilled at pressing the action, managing distance/connection, and forcing a decision upon you (if I don't try to initiate a grapple or engage with this person, I'm perhaps losing an opening or creating an opening for them or another person that I'm going to regret).

That is the skillset of melee control (Defender suite) that a D&D Fighter would possess within the dynamics of a donnybrook. It just so happens that the D&D Fighter can also kick the hell out of you at the same time (its not just Advanced Peacocking +).

 

[SteveC]

I do not hate 4e, I do not care about it one way or the other, but this ‘it was the best selling edition ever, if only WotC did not have these unreasonable, greedy goals’ is what is getting tiring for me

You either hate 4E or I have to honestly ask what are you spending time on, here?

And your argument is 100% straw man: no one is saying 4E is the best selling edition ever, only that the core books sold more than previous editions. I'm 100% sure 5E has sold a ton more because the PHB was in the Amazon top 100 for about nine years.

When 5E launched, I didn't like it. I played through one campaign and then moved to something else because it wasn't my thing. I could have been posting angry stuff for all those years, but I like the mods here and I also have too many important things going on in my life, including a kiddo. There's nothing like trying to teach your kiddo kindness and then coming online for a good Internet fight.

I post on Enworld now because I've played through three more campaigns with the material that has come out since, and I think it's a perfectly cromulent game. I want to learn about the game and see where it's going because I'm having fun playing it.

I honestly don't know what else to engage on because I'm going to border up on things the mods will have to deal with, and I want them not to have to spend time on something so trivial.

 

[pemerton]

But please stop dismissing my opinions as if I haven't thought them through and don't understand what "legacy" means.

I'm not dismissing your opinion. I've replied to it more than once!

I am disagreeing with you. I don't believe that contravenes any rule of the boards, or of discussion more generally.

I mean, you keep asserting that there's no inherent design reason, but I've pointed out that there is: preserving class identity and balance. Rolemaster goes in the other direction - it's the system I first switched to when I got tired of AD&D. My experience with Rolemaster is that the granularity of character design actually led to more homogeneity, not less, and one of the things that led me back to D&D was that I decided I preferred a system with more distinct class identities that, in my experience, leads to a greater variety of player experiences.

I have never found RM to produce homogeneity. I generally did find that AD&D MU-builds were quite homogenous.

But in any event, "class identity" where that identity is defined by access to healing magic, or not, is a legacy thing.

Saying it's only there as a legacy is dismissive

No it's not! It's offering an explanation that you happen to disagree with. That's your prerogative. But I'm not obliged to agree with you in circumstances where I think my reasons are more persuasive than the ones you're putting forward.

I understand that the specific set of classes used by D&D are, if not arbitrary, not ordained by God or something. I'm not stupid. I just don't agree that the specific decision to keep wizard-style classes away from healing spells is down to mere legacy. I think it is an intentional design choice that has been evaluated, experimented with, and renewed for 5e.

<snip>

Keeping wizards away from most healing magic is a design choice that has been assessed by the designers and continues to be seen as good design for D&D. It is not kept just because of legacy, other than to the extent that D&D originally chose to call the class with fireball magic-user and the class with cure light wounds cleric, and has broadly stuck with that nomenclature, other than allowing "magic-users" to evolve into "wizards." But the design decision, to use healing spells as a distinct dividing point between certain types of classes, is the issue here, not the names of the classes. That design decision is not mere legacy.

What is the reason then, other than "class identity"?

The notion of holy magic being healing and arcane magic being...other...is a long tradition across many cultures, particularly Christianized ones, though it goes back further. So really, all Gygax and co. did was see a gap in their game design (healing magic), take a common tradition (healing magic associated with Gods), and create a new class.

Healing with a touch is a Christian trope. But the literature that informs D&D is full of other approaches to healing also - eg empathic healing, alchemy and herbalism, etc.

Do you have some documentation of designers asserting that "gee, we just keep healing spells away from wizards because that's how it's always been?" I don't think so. I think you are just dismissing the possibility that it is good design to not give wizard-type classes much access to healing spells.

<snip>

Is it possible that maybe the designers looked at the feedback about 4e and decided that some of those choices turned out to not be great design for D&D?

There is a tension here, between leaning into the notion of what is good for, or counts as, D&D while denying the role of "legacy". The lead-up to 5e D&D's publication was absolutely replete with discussions of what was really D&D, what "felt like" D&D, etc. The legacy of the game.

You also seem to be attributing to me a view that I've never asserted, namely, that there is something wrong with the design that keeps healing spells away from wizards. I'd prefer that you not do that.

 

[mamba]

You either hate 4E or I have to honestly ask what are you spending time on, here?

I am interested in what people have to say about it. If I had any indication that 4e sold better, I would say so, I really do not care one way or the other, and I do not consider pointing out sales numbers (or the closest thing we have to that) as hating either

And your argument is 100% straw man: no one is saying 4E is the best selling edition ever, only that the core books sold more than previous editions.

that is what I meant, we were talking core books… and the proof for that is?

Also, you are saying more than that…

I keep seeing this. Multiple people from WotC who were there at the time have said that each editions core books have sold more than the one before it.

and we have good enough numbers for 1e, 2e and 3e to know that this is false. We basically know 1e > 2e > 3e > 3.5 in terms of core sales, so regardless of how 4e sold, this statement is false

It might very well be true for initial sales in the first 3 or 6 months or so, that seems plausible, it definitely is not true for total sales