Proposal 1 - dragon#364 made legal

Ozymandias79 · Nov 14, 2008

Proposal 1: Dragon #364

Greetings all! I, Ozymandias79, hereby propose the following amendment that Dragon issue 364 shall be included to the legal material since it was published 16 june of 2008 and thus has been out for almost 5 months now.

Dragon 364 contains the following material:

Features
Demonomicon of Iggwilv: Yeenoghu
By Robert J. Schwalb
Vor Kragal: Lost City of Bael Turath
By Nicolas Logue
Playing Warforged
By Chris Sims
Ashen Covenant
By Ari Marmell
The Wolves of Maldeen
By Nicolas Logue
Creature Incarnations: Kobolds
By Mike Mearls
Roll vs. Role: Goblins
By Bruce Cordell and Chris Sims

Columns
Campaign Classics: The Hazards of Dark Sun
By Gary Astleford
Class Acts: Wizard
By Rodney Thompson
Expeditionary Dispatches: Forest of Flesh
By Keith Baker
Design & Development: The Dungeon Master's Guide
By James Wyatt
Confessions of a Full-Time Wizard
By Shelly Mazzanoble
RPGA Report
By Chris Tulach
Ampersand
By Bill Slavicsek

By adding this material you bring the full rules of warforged (and latest) into game and some illusionary options to the wizard players

Ozymandias79

stonegod · Nov 14, 2008

I believe the question is not how long it has been out, but how long L4W has been operational. I do not think its been the 3mos yet.

Halford · Nov 14, 2008

Correct no additional material will be officially considered until december 15th, three months after the founding of Living EnWorld. But we will certainly look at it then.

garyh · Nov 14, 2008

Stonegod and Halford have the right of it. This does make me think of a question that needs answering, though...

Will we approve entire sources of materials, or do item by item approvals?

In this case, do we review and approve the entire issue, or - say - the warforged article by itself, the goblin article, etc? For the FRPG, do we approve the whole thing, or look separately at, say, the genasi, the swordmage, dark pact, etc?

Item by item provides much more control over what's allowed, but takes more work. Still, item by item is my preference. It lets us use the best parts of things without worrying about parts that don't fit / we don't think are balanced.

Also, I think items should only be reviewed when a player intends to make use of them and so nominates them. I don't wanna waste a lot of time reviewing the gnoll article if we have no gnolls or anyone even want to play one, for example.

Finally, there's issue of retconning in-play elements if new rules are approved. Does Incarnation upgrade to the new warforged rules automatically? Does Brudd's weapon shrink if we approve the minotaur rules? Etc.

Note - by "item" I'm refering to a rules element, not a piece of equipment.

stonegod · Nov 14, 2008

garyh said:
Will we approve entire sources of materials, or do item by item approvals?

We do both in LEB: We list all the items in a source and discuss them, or just have them one at a time when someone wants them.

garyh said:
Finally, there's issue of retconning in-play elements if new rules are approved. Does Incarnation upgrade to the new warforged rules automatically? Does Brudd's weapon shrink if we approve the minotaur rules? Etc.

Do it at level up or end of addy.

garyh · Nov 14, 2008

stonegod said:
We do both in LEB: We list all the items in a source and discuss them, or just have them one at a time when someone wants them.

Do it at level up or end of addy.

Flexibility on "all at once" versus "item by item" is probably best.

My concern on retconning existing characters is when the article takes things away. The warforged and gnoll Dragon articles and drow FRPG write-up purely add things. The minotaur article (and by all indications from designer comments, any future bugbear article) takes away Oversized. That's kind of a big deal, in my book. Maybe give existing characters the option of being grandfathered in (keeping Oversized, but not being allowed to use material from said article either)?

Disclaimer - my character, for those unaware, is a bugbear.

Ozymandias79 · Nov 14, 2008

ok, sorry for jumping the gun didn't know it was so, thought it was from the released product publishing date not L4W's publishing date.

I suggest that they take the new version but can retain the old ability by taking a feat for it. I mean some people like having large weapons , personally i dont care but i think the option should be there, so I am for brudd and hrav keepin their oversized weapon.

Halford · Nov 14, 2008

One problem is that not everyone is a subscriber, I do not have access to dragon, etc., nor can I simply borrow a book or peruse in store - shameless individual that I am

. So how do we tackle this? We don't want a situation where those who pay for insider have a tacit advantage over other players.

This also applies to books of course, and I have to admit to being in two minds over the issue. More choice would probably make L4W more appealing, which is a good thing... So what do we do?

I need some pondering time...

Ozymandias79 · Nov 15, 2008

I checked up on that and it seems that dragon issues older 2 months is for free that up to dragon#367 is free for download and D&D doesn't require you to login either with the exeception for material that is found in dragon
but you can download it after 2 months wait.

covaithe · Nov 15, 2008

I think we'll need to have the opportunity to do things on a rule-by-rule basis as well as book at a time. E.g. I think this proposal would probably be better as just requesting the Warforged change, but I'll be damned if I'm going to read item-by-item proposals for the Adventurer's Vault when it's time for that.

Not terribly happy about the concept of grandfathering in old rules for some players. We should all be playing from the same set of rules, regardless of when the character was made.