So the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons is coming down the pike and people have recently been asking me what I think about it.

Well, I’ve written up some of my thoughts in the past. Those thoughts are largely unchanged: The design team at Wizards of the Coast has decided to design a really amazing tactical miniatures game. (Their motivation for doing so probably has more than a little to do with the reports that the D&D Miniatures game is the most profitable part of the D&D brand.) In order to design that game, however, they have apparently decided that:

(1) They are going to fundamentally alter the gameplay of D&D. (The short version: Yes, the game has changed considerably over the years. But playing a basic fighter in 3rd Edition was still basically the same thing as playing a fighter in 2nd Edition or a fighter in 1st Edition or a fighter in BECMI. Playing a wizard in 3rd Edition was still basically the same thing as playing a wizard in previous editions. And so forth.)

(2) It’s not particularly necessary for them to actually make a roleplaying game. (Don’t believe me? Go ahead and read my previous post on this. WotC’s designers are on public record saying the only thing that matters in the game is what happens during combat.)

One of the most pernicious results of this design philosophy, in my opinion, is the prevalence of dissociated mechanics in 4th Edition.

When I talk about “dissociated mechanics”, I’m talking about mechanics which have no association with the game world. These are mechanics for which the characters have no functional explanations.

Now, of course, all game mechanics are — to varying degrees — abstracted and metagamed. For example, the destructive power of a fireball spell is defined by the number of d6’s you roll for damage; and the number of d6’s you roll is determined by the caster level of the wizard casting the spell.

If you asked a character about d6’s of damage or caster levels, they’d have no idea what you’re talking about. But they could tell you what a fireball is and they could tell you that casters of greater skill can create more intense flames during the casting of the spell.

So a fireball spell has a direct association to the game world. What does a dissociated mechanic look like?

A SIMPLE EXAMPLE

Here’s a sample power taken from one of the pregen characters used in the Keep on the Shadowfell preview adventure:

Trick Strike (Rogue Attack 1)

Through a series of feints and lures, you maneuver your foe right where you want him.

Daily – Martial, Weapon
Standard Action Melee or Ranged weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: +8 vs. AC
Hit: 3d4 + 4 damage, and you can slide the target 1 square
Effect: Until the end of the encounter, each time you hit the target you can slide it 1 square

At first glance, this looks pretty innocuous: The rogue, through martial prowess, can force others to move where he wants them to move. Imagine Robin Hood shooting an arrow and causing someone to jump backwards; or a furious swashbuckling duel with a clever swordsman shifting the ground on which they fight. It’s right there in the fluff text description: Through a series of feints and lures, you maneuver your foe right where you want him.

The problem  is that this is a Daily power — which means it can only be used once per day by the rogue.

Huh? Why is Robin Hood losing his skill with the bow after using his skill with the bow? Since when did a swashbuckler have a limited number of feints that they can perform in a day?

There’s a fundamental disconnect between what the mechanics are supposed to be modeling (the rogue’s skill with a blade or a bow) and what the mechanics are actually doing.

If you’re watching a football game, for example, and a player makes an amazing one-handed catch, you don’t think to yourself: “Wow, they won’t be able to do that again until tomorrow!”

And yet that’s exactly the type of thing these mechanics are modeling. Unlike a fireball, I can’t hold any kind of intelligible conversation with the rogue about his trick strike ability:

Me: So what is this thing you’re doing?
Rogue: I’m performing a series of feints and lures, allowing me to maneuver my foe right where I want him.
Me: Nifty. So why can you only do that once per day?
Rogue: … I have no idea.

Continued tomorrow…

Let’s talk a little bit about save-or-die effects.

If you participate in any kind of discussion around game design and D&D, the term is probably familiar to you. If you’re not familiar with it, then here’s the short version: As the name suggests, a save-or-die effect is any spell or ability which requires the target to make a saving throw or die. More generally, the term can also be applied to any spell or ability which requires the target to make a saving throw or be effectively removed from play.

For example, finger of death is a a classic save-or-die spell: Either the target makes their saving throw or they die. A sleep spell is also a save-or-die effect, however, because if the target fails their saving throw they’re knocked unconscious. On the other hand, a fireball spell is not a save-or-die effect: Although the damage from the spell might kill you, your death is not the direct result of a failed saving throw.

A save-or-die effect with practical results.

THE CONTINUUM OF SAVE-OR-DIE EFFECTS

As our examples suggest, there is actually a continuum of save-or-die effects — ranging from the minor to the severe. In generic terms, I think this continuum can be defined this way:

(1) The effect takes the character out of play, but the character itself can take actions (usually additional saving throws) to put themselves back in play. For example, a hold person spell (which we’ll talk about more later) paralyzes the target on a failed save, but allows the target to make a new save each round to recover.

(2) The effect takes the character out of play, but other characters can take trivial actions to put them back into play. For example, a sleep spell works like this — another character can simply take an action to slap the character and wake them up.

(3) The effect takes the character out of play, but other characters can put them back in play if they have the right resources prepared. For example, any paralysis can be removed if you have a remove paralysis spell available.

(4) The effect kills the character.

It should also be noted that, beyond a certain point, the difference between the third and fourth categories becomes largely academic: A paralysis effect requires remove paralysis; a finger of death requires a resurrection. From a mechanical standpoint, at least, the difference is merely one of degree.

THE PROBLEM WITH SAVE-OR-DIE EFFECTS

Save-or-die effects are widely recognized as being one of the weak points in 3rd Edition. The basic problem with them can be summed up in three words: They aren’t fun.

(1) They aren’t fun to suffer.

(2) They aren’t fun to use.

(3) They break down badly at higher levels of play.

Nobody likes to have bad things happen to their characters, but the truth is that — no matter how much we might argue about hit points — D&D combat is fun. It’s stood the test of time for more than three decades now, and people are still enjoying it.

One of the things that’s fun about it is the ablative nature of hit points — the back-and-forth dynamic of dealing damage. You may not want to get caught in a fireball, but part of the excitement of playing the game is suffering that damage. I think everyone who has ever played the game has a story about the time that they managed to save the day while only having a single hit point left to their name. That’s a story that captures the simple, pure fun that Gygax and Arneson captured in the D&D combat mechanics.

But save-or-die mechanics bypass the whole ablative damage system. As a result, when a save-or-die ability hits the table you are instantly stripping away all the tactical complexity of the combat system and reducing the entire thing to a craps game.

So when a save-or-die effect is used against a PC, it’s no fun: On the basis of a single die roll, the player is no longer allowed to participate in the game. Imagine that, at the beginning of Monopoly, you had to roll 2d6 and — if it came up snake eyes — you automatically lost and didn’t get to play that game. Doesn’t sound like much fun, does it?

But it’s equally true that using a save-or-die effect isn’t particularly fun, either. Oh, sure, lots of people have stories about the time they killed an ancient red dragon with a single lucky hit from a finger of death. But while that’s fun once or twice, how much fun is it in the long-term? Imagine that game of Monopoly again, only this time if you roll box cars on the 2d6 you automatically win the game. Still doesn’t sound like much fun, does it?

And this leads to the breakdown at higher levels of play, where astronomical hit point totals and incredibly high saving throw bonuses turn combat into a giant game of: “Hey, who’s going to roll a 1 on their saving throw first?”

THE CHEAPENING OF DEATH

I have an aesthetic problem with D&D in general: I dislike the revolving door of death. This is a problem I’ve talked about before, but it’s one that has an impact on save-or-die effects at the gaming table.

Specifically, I don’t like cheapening death. Therefore, I’m unlikely to use save-or-die effects on my PCs. But my players have no such compunction — they’re perfectly free to use those spells and effects against their opponents. As a result, this creates an imbalance of power.

This isn’t strictly a mechanical problem, but it does highlight how a particular aesthetic desire can have a meaningful impact on game balance.

WotC’s SOLUTION

As I mentioned, the problem with save-or-die effects has been well understood for several years now. The designers at Wizards of the Coast have been trying to deal with the issue since at least 2002 (when they released the Epic Level Handbook and discovered that the save-or-die effects were causing a complete meltdown in high level play).

With the release of D&D 3.5 in 2003, this newfound awareness translated into some rather half-hearted attempts at fixing the problem. Lots of save-or-die effects were still left scattered all over the core rulebooks, but some of the most problematic examples were fixed.

The solution they came up with was, basically, to weaken the save-or-die effect and move them down the continuum we talked about earlier. For example, in 3.0 hold person was a save-or-die effect of type #3: If you failed your save, you were paralyzed until either the spell ended or someone used a remove paralysis spell on you.

In 3.5, on the other hand, hold person was turned into a type #1 effect: If you became paralyzed, you could continue making saves every round until you succeeded (and stopped being paralyzed).

In 4th Edition, this remains their solution of choice. For example, in 3rd Edition a sleep spell was a save-or-die effect of type #2. In 4th Edition, if the spell successfully affects its target it only slows them. Only an additional failed save results in them falling asleep, and then they can continue making saving throws every round until they wake up.

Plus, in 4th Edition saving throws are always strict 50/50 affairs — there are no modifiers. So you can quickly calculate that there’s only a 50% chance a victim who has been affected by the spell will fall asleep at all; and only a 0.9% chance that they’d stay asleep for even 1 minute.

You can quickly see how watering down save-or-die effects remove most of their pernicious effects. There’s only one problem, though: This watering down also tends to remove most of their utility and flavor, too.

This is part of a wider trend at WotC in which efforts to make the tactical combat portion of the game as perfectly balanced as possible cause them to offer up every other part of the game on a sacrificial altar.

A DIFFERENT SOLUTION

I think the wider problem with WotC’s solution of choice is that it’s basically like saying, “Man, this soup tastes like crap! I think I’ll try adding some more water to it.” The taste of crap is now a little less intense, but it’s still crap.

The problem with save-or-die mechanics is that they bypass the ablative combat mechanics that work so well. So here’s my thought: Instead of just watering these effects down, let’s change the paradigm entirely and tie them into the ablative damage system.

The simplest solution is to simply have save-or-die effects deal ability score damage. For example, in my house rules all death effects deal 4d6 points of Constitution damage. If the spell has a secondary effect — such as turning the victim into a pile of dust — this effect only happens if the victim is killed by the Constitution damage. Similarly, you could have paralysis effects dealing Dexterity damage.

If I was completely overhauling the system, I would — at the very least — vary the amount of ability score damage depending on the power of the effect in question. For example, death effects might vary from 2d6 to 4d6 points of Con damage depending on whether you were talking about a 6th-level spell or a 9th-level spell.

But you can also get fancier: For example, if I were redesigning hold person I would make the spell deal 1d6 points of Dexterity damage per round until the victim made a successful save. If the victim is reduced to 0 Dex as a result of the spell, they are paralyzed (as the magical energies of the spell bind their limbs completely).

Similarly, a victim of a medusa’s gaze would feel their limbs turning to stone as they medusa repeatedly inflicted them with 2d4 points of Dexterity damage.

Under this paradigm, there would be no need for a “paralysis” condition — paralyzed creatures are simply those which have been reduced to 0 Dex. Similarly, a spell like remove paralysis would just be a quick way of healing Dexterity damage.

A sleep spell would be a mental assault, inflicting 1d4 points of Wisdom damage per round until the victim makes a save or drops into a magical coma. When the sleep spell wore off, this Wisdom damage — like the damage from a ray of enfeeblement — would be restored.

Since ability score damage no longer exists in 4th Edition, this solution won’t work for that game. But if I end up making the switch, I’ll be looking for some similar means to change the paradigm of save-or-die effects — rather than just watering them down.

UPDATE: If you’re thinking about using a system featuring ability score damage, you might want to check out Super Simple Ability Score Damage.

DM: With a leering grin, the orc turns towards Eldath the Arcane!
Peter: Shit! That axe will kill me quicker than spit!
Bob: I grab him!
Peter: NO!
Bob: What’s wrong? You want to stop the orc, right?
DM: Okay, what page were the grappling rules on, again?

What do you call a rule that people don’t use because it’s too much hassle to use it?

Useless.

Which is the fate of the grappling rules in many, many gaming tables. Action movies are full of heroes and villains grabbing each other, throwing each other around, and generally wrestling of all kinds. When we see Indiana Jones grab a Nazi and throw him off a zeppelin we cheer. But if Bob’s character tries to leap on the back of the dragon and hurl the dragonrider to the ground, we cringe at the thought of looking up all those rules.

What’s the problem here? Why are so many people leery of the grappling rules?

The rules for actually initiating a grapple are relatively simply (being largely similar to the rules for bull rushing, disarming, and the like). The problem is that, once you’re in a grapple, there’s a whole slew of new rules to determine what you can and cannot do in the grapple.

If you look at any one of these rules, you can easily see the logic of why the rule works that way. But the system, as a whole, doesn’t follow any kind of consistent pattern: You can’t just take what you know about Action A in normal combat, apply the “when in grappling” rule, and know what happens when you attempt Action A while grappling.

Sometimes you can’t attempt the action. Sometimes you have to make an opposed grapple check in addition to the normal check. Sometimes you make an opposed grapple check instead of the normal check. Sometimes the scope of the action is limited (attack, but only with a light weapon; cast a spell, but only if the action is no more than 1 standard action). Sometimes the rules aren’t changed at all.

And then, on top of all that, there’s pinning… which introduces a completely different set of conditional rules. These aren’t as complicated as the rules in a non-pinned grapple, but they’re kind of a cherry on top of it all.

The net result of all this is to, effectively, double the complexity of the combat system. It’s essentially a completely new combat system which is just similar enough to the combat system you already know to add a little extra confusion to the mix.

This set of optional rules tries to fix that problem by applying a simple, consistent rule to actions attempted in grappling. You’ll find that, despite the streamlining to make them easy-to-use, they play very similarly to the existing rules for grappling.

GRAPPLING

GRAB: A character can attempt to grab another character by making a successful melee touch attack. This provokes an attack of opportunity from the target. If the attack of opportunity deals damage, the grappling attempt fails.

STARTING A GRAPPLE: Once they have grabbed an opponent, a character can immediately attempt to start a grapple by taking a free action and making an opposed grapple check. If the character fails, their grab is broken and the attempt fails. If the character succeeds, they move into their opponent’s space and begin grappling.

IN A GRAPPLE:

Characters in a grapple do not threaten opponents they are not grappling.

Characters in a grapple lose their Dexterity bonus to AC (if any) against opponents they are not grappling.

When attempting any action, a character in a grapple must first succeed at an opposed grapple check against everyone else in the grapple. This check is a free action. Opposing characters can choose to automatically fail their checks. (Note: When making a full attack you must make an opposed grapple check before each attack.)

ESCAPING A GRAPPLE: Escaping a grapple requires an attack action. As with any action in a grapple, the character must succeed at an opposed grapple check against everyone in the grapple.

MULTIPLE GRAPPLERS: Up to five combatants of the same size can grapple each other at the same time. Creatures smaller than the largest creature involved in the grapple count for half.

PINNING

A character in a grapple can attempt to pin their opponent for 1 round by making an opposed grapple check as an attack action. If the check is successful, the opponent cannot take any action except trying to escape the pin (by making an opposed grapple check as an attack action).

A character performing a pin can take additional actions normally (although they are considered to be in a grapple and must succeed at an opposed grapple check).

The character performing a pin can release it as a free action.

GRABBING WITHOUT HOLDING

When initiating a grapple, a character can attempt to grab an opponent without holding them. They (but not the opponent they are grabbing) are considered to be grappled: They do not threaten other opponents, gain no Dexterity bonus to AC against opponents they are not grabbing, and can’t move normally.

Each round, the character performing the grab must either release the grab (as a free action), use an attack action and make an opposed grapple check to maintain the grab, or use an attack action and an opposed grapple check to initiate a grapple.

Characters being grabbed can attempt to break the grab by making an opposed grapple check as an attack action. If the character being grabbed moves, they must carry the character grabbing them.

Hit points have been around for more than 30 years now. (Longer if you count their antecedents in wargaming.) So you might think that, by now, people would have a pretty firm grasp on how these mechanics worked, what they represented, and what it means to lose hit points.

You might think that. But you would be horribly mistaken.

Basically I’m writing this little mini-essay because I’m tired of engaging in the same painful debate every two months. I want to be able to simply point people to this essay and say, “Look, this is the way it works.” (This won’t actually have much effect with people who prefer to be mired in fallacies and foolishness, but it will at least delay the day on which I will inevitably succumb to a lethal case of carpal tunnel syndrome.)

So, first I’m going to repudiate the two primary fallacies which lead the innocent astray when it comes to understanding hit points. And then I’m going to pull my Big Reveal an explain the beautiful abstraction which lies at the heart of the hit point system.

(It should be noted that this essay specifically deals with the type of inflationary hit point system found in D&D. The term “hit points” may also be used for very different damage tracking systems, to which this essay probably won’t apply at all.)

FALLACY THE FIRST: THE AXE TO THE FACE

The first fallacy goes like this:

1. Dupre has 100 hp.

2. A goblin with an axe has hit him 10 times and done 78 points of damage.

3. Clearly, the goblin has hit Dupre in the face 10 times and Dupre is still alive! That’s ridiculous!

The fallacy lies in the illogical leap from point 2 to point 3. A moment’s consideration clearly reveals that there is absolutely no reason to assume that, every single time the goblin landed a solid blow, it meant that the goblin planted his axe straight between Dupre’s eyes.

For example, imagine that you’re talking to someone in real life and they said, “Did you know that Bill was actually shot three times during a mugging a few years back?” Given that Bill is still alive, would you immediately assume that, during the mugging, Bill was dropped to his knees, a gun held to his head execution-style, and the trigger pulled three times?

Of course not. You would assume that Bill was probably hit in the legs or the arms. If he was hit in the chest, you’d assume that he only survived because he got prompt medical attention. And if one of the bullets actually did take him in the head, you’d know that it was a medical miracle that he was still alive.

Similarly, there’s no reason to assume that Dupre was hit in the face ten times with an axe. In fact, quite the opposite is true: There is every reason to assume that he wasn’t hit in the face ten times with an axe.

FALLACY THE SECOND: DEATH BY DODGING

The second fallacy is most often committed because, after escaping the trap of the first fallacy, people go to the other extreme:

1. Dupre could not have been hit 10 times in the face with axe and survived.

2. Therefore, Dupre was never hit with the axe.

3. Dupre won’t be hit by the axe until a blow causes his hit points to drop below 0. When that happens, the goblin will have finally hit him with the axe.

The fallacy here lies in the leap from point 1 to point 2.

Let’s go back to the example of Bill’s mugging. If you friend said to you, “Did you know that Bill was actually shot three times during a mugging a few years back?” Would you assume that he meant, “The guy mugging bill shot his gun three times, but never actually hit Bill.”?

Of course not.

In terms of D&D, the nature of this fallacy is more explicitly revealed when you look at something like poison. If the orc’s axe is coated with poison and we embrace this fallacy, then Dupre has been exposed to the poison 10 times despite the fact he’s never actually been hit by the axe.

And you can reproach this fallacy from multiple directions: If the hit point loss from blows that don’t “really” hit is because Dupre is wearing himself out from dodging, why is dodging a +1 flaming sword more exhausting then dodging a +1 sword?

And, of course, you also have the oddity that, apparently, dodging a blow from a sword can be even more deadly to you than being hit by the sword.

THE BEAUTIFUL ABSTRACTION

The trick to understanding the hit point system is understand that a hit point is not equal to a hit point. In D&D, 1 hit point of damage always represents a physical wound. However, the severity of the wound represented varies depending on how many hit points the victim has.

For a character with 1 hp, that 1 hp of damage represents a serious wound — a punctured lung, a broken leg, or something of that ilk.

For a character with 10 hp, that 1 hp of damage represents a meaningful wound — a deep but or a broken rib.

For a character with 100 hp, that 1 hp of damage represents an essentially inconsequential wound — a scratch, a bruise, or the like.

The reason any particular character has fewer of more hit points (and, thus, varying the severity of any given wound they receive) is abstracted. For some characters its skill; others luck; others physical toughness; others divine grace; others magical protection; and so forth. For most PCs, it’s some combination of all these things.

This is a beautiful abstraction because it allows for quick, simple, and entertaining gameplay. One could certainly design a system with variances in skill, luck, toughness, divine favor, magical protection, and the like were all separately modeled. Many such systems exist. But none of them are as simple, easy, or fun or as hit points have proven to be.

IS IT PERFECT?

No. The system is an abstraction, and that brings with it both advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are simplicity and completeness. The disadvantage is that you can’t reliably pull concrete information back out of the abstraction — and, if you try, you’ll eventually find corner cases where seeming absurdities crop up.

For example, it’s theoretically possible for a sufficiently weak character to deal no more than 1 hp of damage per attack. Such a character could, theoretically, land 100 blows on a character with 100 hp before taking him down. Add poison to the scenario, and you’ve now locked yourself down to a scenario where the weak character is, apparently, whittling his opponent to death.

Such corner cases are statistical oddities, but they’re going to reliably crop up in any system which doesn’t require several additional orders of complexity.

Which leaves the only significant and intractable problem with the hit point abstraction: The cure spells. Despite the fact that the number of hit points required to represent a wound with a particular severity varies depending on the character’s total hit points, a cure spell heals a flat number of hit points. Thus, a cure light wounds spell used on a 1st level fighter will heal grievous wounds. When the same spell is used on a 10th level fighter, on the other hand, it can’t handle more than a scratch.

This is a legacy issue which has been retained for reasons of game balance. But if you want to fix this, simply have cure spells work more like natural healing: Multiply the number of hit points cured by the creature’s HD.

Hit points aren’t a one-size-fits-all solution to tracking wounds in roleplaying games. There are lots of reasons why you might want a more concrete representation of actual wounds or a realistic modeling of incapacitation.

But hit points are often attacked for the most erroneous of reasons. And, as I said up front, I don’t necessarily expect this little essay to make any sort of huge dent in that tidal wave of ignorance and faulty logic. But it might help me keep my blood pressure down.

As you may have already heard, the D20 Trademark License is being revoked with the release of 4th Edition. WotC considers the D20 mark to have been a failure due to the lack of quality control: In their opinion, the value of the brand had been diluted because consumers associated it with a lot of bad products.

That may or may not be true, but the utility of the D20 Trademark License was never about identifying quality products: It was about identifying compatible products.

This leaves third-party publishers (like myself) in something of a bind: Without the D20 Trademark License, we have nothing that we can use to quickly and easily identify our products as being compatible. (The D20 Trademark License not only covers the use of the trademark itself — it also covers the “Requires the Use of the yada yada yada” language which is the second-most common way of identifying a compatible product.)

This sudden yanking of the D20 Trademark License only complicates a situation which was already on the verge of being completely muddied by the advent of 4th Edition: To whit, there’s no easy way for a publisher to indicate that their new product is compatible with the new edition. (Or, if the market forks, that their product is compatible with 3rd Edition and not with 4th Edition.)

In order to solve both of these problems, Dream Machine Productions has created two trademark logos that can be used to indicate compatibility: The Seal of the 3rd Edition and the Seal of the 4th Edition.

The Seal of the 3rd Edition is being immediately released under a free license so that anyone who wants to use it — whether a professional company or amateur designer — can use it freely.

3rd Edition Seal – Color
3rd Edition Seal – Black
3rd Edition Seal – White
3rd Edition Seal – Grayscale
3rd Edition Seal – Full Size
3rd Edition Seal – PSD File

Seal of the 3rd Edition Trademark License – Version 1.0
Seal of the 3rd Edition Trademark Guidelines – Version 1.0

The Seal of the 4th Edition will be released under a similar license as soon as the 4th Edition SRD becomes public. (Until the SRD of the new edition becomes public, we can’t finalize the compatibility guidelines.) (EDIT: The GSL actually released for 4th Edition made this project untenable.)

4th Edition Seal – Color
4th Edition Seal – Black
4th Edition Seal – White
4th Edition Seal – Grayscale
4th Edition Seal – Full Size
4th Edition Seal – PSD File

If you have questions, suggestions, or concerns, please feel free to drop me a comment or an e-mail.

Similarly, if you have a need to use the Seal of the 4th Edition trademark logo before the 4th Edition SRD becomes public, simply contact me for permission.