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

[Alzrius]

Well, D&D in general has "damage on a miss" in the sense that it's always had "save for half damage". Remember that 4E was also making Fireball an attack roll against Reflex and "half damage on a miss" at the exact same time as it was letting Fighters also have a 5th level daily power (like Fireball) which did half damage on a miss.

Which showcases what I was talking about, in terms of using similar mechanics (though at least this time they're different operations that function similarly, rather than being the same thing) while defining them as being different results from an in-character perspective. A fireball spell is presented to the effect that (so long as it's targeted at the proper square, and the target doesn't have some sort of special ability to negate/avoid it) its inflicting damage on the enemy is a foregone conclusion; it's going to injure them, and the only question is if they can at least minimize the wounds they take.

Fighters being able to do damage on a miss functions in a mechanically similar way, but presents an entirely different paradigm in terms of what's happening in the game world, because we're flat-out being told that the attack didn't injure the enemy (whether or not it failed to connect entirely, or made contact but didn't transmit any damaging force thanks to the armor/shield/magic the target was using, isn't clear since "Armor Class" unhelpfully conflates those two different defense modes), but still caused a loss of hit points, because under that paradigm hit point loss is both injuries taken and depletion of stamina (with "stamina" being shorthand for "ability to continue fighting or otherwise taking action"). If you're hit with a fireball, you're not being demoralized, or losing divine protection, or pushing your luck to where it finally runs out, etc. You're being burned.

Some of this is compounded by the overall shift to how attacks worked and the aligning of magical and non-magical attacks to work the same.

Which I see as a trend in the wrong direction. While I can understand the desire to simplify and consolidate, there's a point at which it becomes reductive, or at least jejune, in having things that are (sometimes wildly) different in what they connote being similar (if not nearly identical) in operation. It's not at all surprising to me that a lot of people found that to be an unpalatable manner of trying to bridge the martial-caster divide.

I don't find minions generally more disturbing to my suspension of disbelief than Evasion giving creatures/PCs "save for no damage" against a Fireball. Saving Throws in general have always required the DM/players to tweak the narrative to explain how exactly the victim mitigated the damage, as Gary colorfully illustrated in the 1E DMG with the example of the fighter chained to the rock vs. the dragon's breath. For me "damage on a miss" requires no more mental exertion than saving throws. YMMV, of course.

Again, that's a symptom of the issue, rather than being the issue itself. Yes, you can say that the missed attack "grazed" the individual being targeted, causing a small scratch that's worth 2 hit points of damage, the same as 2 hp worth of damage on a successful attack would have been denoted as a scratch. The problem is the attendant presentations that such a game operation wasn't a scratch at all, but was the enemy being demoralized, and so those hit points lost can be recovered by the warlord shouting at them, which gives them their mojo back, etc..

That's far more egregious than giving someone an unstoppable attack power, where they will injure any opponent whom they try to injure, presuming that there's an adequate presentation for the how's and why's that works. That the 5.5E playtest is at least naming their damage on a miss power "graze" is a nod in the right direction.

 

[Alzrius]

@Alzrius

Before anything else, I want to note that your @ didn't show up in my notifications. Did you edit it in after the fact? Because that's the only reason I can think of why I didn't get an alert; otherwise, I may need to make a post in Meta about that.

I think I might be having a bit of an epiphany, so, bear with me for a moment while I meander for a bit. I will get to the point, I promise.

Looking at the development of 5e, WotC has been very, very careful to make sure that everything they do has at least the implied, if not straight up explicitly, the approval of most of the fandom. When D&D Next was being developed, there was no way they could straight up say, "Hey, we're going to add a bunch of 4e ism's into the game" because tempers were far too high. People were seriously pissed off.

So, they were very cagey. They did the playtests, gathered the feedback, and came out with 5e. Then, as 5e progressed, and they added new ideas, classes, rules, whatever, they've again, with a tiny drip feed, double and triple checked that the fandom will accept these ideas. If someone doesn't like some concept, they can always step back and say, "Well, the majority of people we polled seem to like this, so, we're doing what the fandom is telling us they want. Yes, we understand that you might not like it, but, we have to go with what the fandom is telling us they want."

And that drip feed is important. Like you said, the issue with 4e wasn't really any specific change, but, rather that so many changes came all at once. No one can point to any one thing and say, "Well, that's the bridge too far" because that bridge is different for everyone.

Now as we head into OneD&D and the 2024 revision, we're seeing stuff being added into the game that people absolutely lost their poop over. Damage on a miss as a perfect example. They put it into the playtest. Now, you're right, it might not make the final cut. True. But, if it does, then WotC can again say, "Look, 82% (a totally fabricated number for the purposes of example) of the respondents said they really like this. We're just doing what YOU are telling us to do." It totally diffuses any real push back because no one want's to be "that guy" badwrongfunning and yucking in everyone else's yum.

Another perfect example. 4e dropped gnomes. This, again, became a HUGE rallying cry. Something that totally blindsided WotC because, everything they knew said that virtually no one played gnomes, so, dropping them wouldn't be an issue. But the whole Gnome Effect became a very real thing.

But, 2024 5e may very well drop half-elves and half-orcs as mechanically distinct races. We'll see if that gets past the sniff test of the polling. If it does, again, they can turn to people who are complaining with a shrug and simply say, "Look, we're doing what people want us to do".

It's actually quite ingenious. But, (and here's where I get back to the point, sorry) it also goes a long way towards explaining why these massively, huge issues that were endlessly problematic, to the point where they are STILL considered problematic suddenly stopped being a problem. Many 4e players moved on to 5e. So, they were part of the numbers that approved of the changes that WotC made with Next. Added to that, the compartementalization of the changes done in Next, where it was a few changes (or quite a few in some cases) in each playtest package where instead of getting hit with all these different changes at once, it was broken down into bite sized chunks, none of which individually was really a problem.

I dunno if that makes sense to anyone else, but, it does seem to explain the inconsistencies to me.

Leaving aside my disagreement that there's a lot of 4E-isms in 5E (to be sure, there are some, but while there's no good way to quantify such things, let alone measure their overall importance/impact, my take is that there aren't very many, nor are they particularly salient to what gave 4E its distinctiveness), I think you've raised some good points here about WotC's taking a more measured approach to try and soften up the metaphorical ground. Playtesting can give people a chance to make peace with changes gradually, rather than dealing with them all at once (much like paying $5 for coffee each day before work, rather than paying $1,250 up front for the entire year).

As I noted before, 4E had no single central failing that caused its widespread rejection by the D&D community; different people had different issues, which they cared about to different degrees, but there were so many issues presented in such rapid succession that it was enough to hit a lot of people's threshold for completely rejecting it. If 5E simply doesn't have as many issues (not all of which were about the game's operations or presentation; things like third-party licensing were, and are, very real issues for a lot of people), then even if particular issues remain, that might not be enough to drive (many) people away so long as they don't have enough other issues to compound their dislike.

 

[Iosue]

If you're hit with a fireball, you're not being demoralized, or losing divine protection, or pushing your luck to where it finally runs out, etc. You're being burned.

Except you’re not. Your clothes and equipment are still intact, you don’t have any scarring from the burns, your ability to fight, cast magic, etc. is completely unhindered. All that has happened is that you’ve lost hit points.

And that’s all that ever happens. Characters lose HP. Spells, potions, resting restore them. Everything else is justification after the fact.

 

[Alzrius]

Except you’re not. Your clothes and equipment are still intact, you don’t have any scarring from the burns, your ability to fight, cast magic, etc. is completely unhindered. All that has happened is that you’ve lost hit points.

And that’s all that ever happens. Characters lose HP. Spells, potions, resting restore them. Everything else is justification after the fact.

I've spoken to this before: D&D is not a reality-simulator, and never has been; that your injuries don't present a concomitant loss of personal ability (or damage to your gear) is because characters are being presented in a manner consistent with pulp stories, action movies/shows, and myths and legends. They're still hurt, it just doesn't slow them down, nor ruin their stuff. John Rambo, not John Average.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

As I noted before, 4E had no single central failing that caused its widespread rejection by the D&D community; different people had different issues, which they cared about to different degrees, but there were so many issues presented in such rapid succession that it was enough to hit a lot of people's threshold for completely rejecting it. If 5E simply doesn't have as many issues (not all of which were about the game's operations or presentation; things like third-party licensing were, and are, very real issues for a lot of people), then even if particular issues remain, that might not be enough to drive (many) people away so long as they don't have other issues to compound someone's dislike.

I would go farther. I think that many people misunderstand what "presentation" really means when they say, "Oh, it was just a mistake in presentation." Or, "They shoulda coulda woulda marketed it better."

I've previously discussed the origin of the term "Mother May I" and how it was first introduced into RPG discourse by Mike Mearls just prior to joining WoTC- he was, of course, talking about the use of miniatures and how DMs needed to be more constrained. I think that this is germane to the topic; earlier, people mentioned that, for example, 3e was easier to run as a grid-based game than ToTM, which is certainly true. But 3e never demanded that you run it as a grid-based system in the corebooks, even if it was easier (despite this, of course, 3e's new design direction is what led to the rise of OSR).

4e's presentation was both its strength and its weaknesses; it was, easily, the edition that had the strongest point of view in terms of saying, "This is how you play." This came out in both the presentation of the rules, as well as the marketing. Arguably, the marketing went overboard on this at times in saying that the "old ways" were silly. The point is, however, that while 3e (for example) made ToTM harder to play, 4e simply announced in the DMG that you were required to use a grid and miniatures. Period. Could you somehow play 4e without it? Eh, sure. With a lot of work. But the game itself was telling you ... this is what you are going to do.

Same with the division of authority. I completely agree that 4e was easier to DM for many people ... because it took a stance in the division of authority, and a strong one at that. The role of the DM was minimized- which was a great thing for a lot of people! Trust the players. Then again, for groups that didn't want to play that way, it didn't offer much.

To analogize it to a campaign setting, D&D is normally Forgotten Realms, or Greyhawk. 4e was more akin to Dark Sun- the strength was the point of view, but that same point of view was also a weakness to the extent you weren't on board.

When you combine that with a number of other issues (abandoning the OGL, the great recession, issuing a new edition with a lot of new and recurrent expenditures so soon after the glut of 3e material, killing off certain sacred cows, etc. etc. etc.) it just was too much. Any one of those issues might have been enough; combine that with a presentation telling a certain segment of gamers that the way that they play is no longer supported was too much.

Which is why it remains divisive; the people that love it will continue to love it because it had such a strong point of view that is matched in its design, and that plays into its strengths. The people that don't like it will continue to not like it because that strong design excluded them from its ambit. Such is life.

 

[Clint_L]

We've used a grid and minis since before I started in 1982, mostly to avoid the bolded piece. 10' squares, though; nothing "snapped to grid", circular things are circular, and in an open area you can move any direction you like (assuming no obstruction) and we'll just measure the distance by eyeball or a bit of string rather than count squares if your movement doesn't happen to line up either straight or diagonal sacross the squares.

Same.

Changing feet to squares always seemed like an unnecessary complication when we already have a measurement (feet) that works just fine and is more relatable to real life. I can easily visualize in my mind what a 20-foot distance looks like, but to do the same in squares (or meters, for that matter) I first have to convert it to feet - an extra step.

My students are the opposite, so this is a generational thing in Canada. I'm an in-betweener; I think metric for some things and imperial for others (mostly just feet and pounds, but only in relation to people). So, weirdly, I will think of distances in terms of millimetres, centimetres, inches, feet, metres, and kilometres. And I think of weight in terms of grams, pounds, kilograms.

When I'm measuring to do drywall or something I alternate between inches and centimetres with little rhyme or reason.

But most younger folk only seem to use imperial for human height and weight. And then there's the rest of the world. So switching to squares made sense, IMO.

My guess is the 'squares' bit was done to appeal to metric types who don't use feet.

Yup. I always have to translate 5e's distances into squares for my young players; i.e. 30' movement equals 6 squares. Roughly ten metres so they can visualize it.

 

[Clint_L]

Which is why it remains divisive; the people that love it will continue to love it because it had such a strong point of view that is matched in its design, and that plays into its strengths. The people that don't like it will continue to not like it because that strong design excluded them from its ambit. Such is life.

This was me. For me, it just didn't feel like D&D, it felt like D&D trying to be World of Warcraft. Which was the point, I guess, but I just didn't like the design. And I loved WoW, so that wasn't the issue. To me, 4e feels more "game-y." I like the ambiguity that is intentionally built into 5e. I like it a lot.

 

[Iosue]

I've spoken to this before: D&D is not a reality-simulator, and never has been; that your injuries don't present a concomitant loss of personal ability (or damage to your gear) is because characters are being presented in a manner consistent with pulp stories, action movies/shows, and myths and legends. They're still hurt, it just doesn't slow them down, nor ruin their stuff. John Rambo, not John Average.

That is precisely my point, and why your fireball argument doesn’t make sense. You were saying that HP loss from a successfully saved fireball simulated something different from a martial attack that dealt damage even on a failed attack roll.

My point is, neither simulates anything. Both just remove hit points, the abstract combat pacing/character advancement mechanic used in D&D. There’s no difference in how either can be explained in terms of what happened in world to the characters. (In fact, I would argue that it’s best to not even try to explain it “in fiction” and treat it like the background music to an action scene.)

 

[Red Castle]

That is precisely my point, and why your fireball argument doesn’t make sense. You were saying that HP loss from a successfully saved fireball simulated something different from a martial attack that dealt damage even on a failed attack roll.

My point is, neither simulates anything. Both just remove hit points, the abstract combat pacing/character advancement mechanic used in D&D. There’s no difference in how either can be explained in terms of what happened in world to the characters. (In fact, I would argue that it’s best to not even try to explain it “in fiction” and treat it like the background music to an action scene.)

I always found it quite funny that you can somehow dodge part of a 20ft radius fireball when you are right in the middle of the impact zone with no cover at all around you... or a dragon breath... or any area attack that allows you a save... suspension of disbelief I guess... or some mental gymnastic to try to explain it.

But honestly, I don't mind. Just like I don't mind damage on a miss. For me, they are pretty much the same thing. You can't totally dodge/parry a fireball just like the enemy can't totally dodge/parry your masterful sequence of strikes.

 

[James Gasik]

I always found it quite funny that you can somehow dodge part of a 20ft radius fireball when you are right in the middle of the impact zone with no cover at all around you... or a dragon breath... or any area attack that allows you a save... suspension of disbelief I guess... or some gymnastic thinking to try to explain it.

But honestly, I don't mind. Just like I don't mind damage on a miss. For me, they are pretty much the same thing. You can't totally dodge/parry a fireball just like the enemy can't totally dodge/parry your masterful sequence of strikes.

Unless you have Evasion, of course.