Proposal

KarinsDad · Feb 23, 2010

With how quickly WotC releases material, I think it doesn't make sense to allow a class like the Assassin one month after it comes out in Dragon and not allow Hybrids for 8 months after they come out in Dragon, just because they have the word "Playtest" attached to them.

Like Errata-ed material, playtest material will generally be released as official material and it may or may not be modified.

So my proposal is that we allow any character building material one month after it becomes official material in either Character Builder or in hardback, not one month after it comes out only in hardback. In other words, once the material is no longer considered by WotC to be playtest anymore. In the case of Hybrids, it showed up as PHB 3 material at the beginning of February (IIRC).

This allows people who have Character Builder to start building a character with Character Builder hardback material and only wait a month to actually play that PC instead of waiting 2 to 3 months until a month after the hardback comes out.

From my perspective, material is material. The door is wide open at this point here, so why close the window when the door is wide open? It seems kind of silly to make such an arbitrary distinction when the material is just going to be allowed anyway.

The idea is to encourage people to have cool new character concepts and join in, not to discourage them with a "you must wait 3 months because this particular set of material has some caveat on it".

Note: I am not saying that we should auto-allow playtest material, I am saying that we should auto-allow Character Builder hardback material before it actually comes out in hardback form.

Velmont · Feb 23, 2010

Assassin is an exception over the general rule, and an exception made by WotC itself.

Assassin is a preview of the PHB3 released for people who have bought D&DI. It was not a playtest. Sure, there will be some errata over time, like all materials, but the change we can expect should be little.

Hybrid, just like Psion, Ardent, Monk, Skill powers, etc... are all playtest materials. That means we can expect to have huge change over time.

Personally, I think it is always hard to remove something people already have than give them after we make sure it good. Let's just see the Minotaur, even if everyone tells it is broken to have them wielding oversized weapon, there is still a few of them in L4W. Now, with PHB3 releasing the Minotaur race with feats and etc... what will happen?

It's not perfect, we just need to look at the Battlerager or more recently at the pacifist healer, who both saw themselves being nerfed more than once because they were too strong compare to others. It is always frustrating for players to get nerfed.

At first sight, I would think Hybrid are not broken, I would say even a bit weak, but I don't like the idea to create exception, neither to give playtesting material. And the problem with playtesting material is WotC will released the correction only with the sourcebook, and that's what happening with the hybrid classes, they were released very early compare to the PHB3.

Velmont · Feb 23, 2010

For your information, if you look inside the Character Generetor (if you have it), Assin Source is listed as Dragon#379 (which is out for longuer than a month), while the Hybrid (as Psion, Ardent, ect...) source is listed as PHB3 (which is not released yet).

KarinsDad · Feb 23, 2010

Velmont said:
Assassin is an exception over the general rule, and an exception made by WotC itself.

Assassin is a preview of the PHB3 released for people who have bought D&DI. It was not a playtest.

If it is true that Assassin was a preview, then it should not have been allowed:

Material marked "playtest" or "preview" is not approved.

My point is that I do not see the need for the rule:

Material published online but marked as a "debut" from an upcoming print product is not approved until one month after the print product is published.

The instant it goes online is the instant that it starts getting discussed online and people can start making proposals to ban it. I do not see the need to wait until it comes out in actual print.

No different than Assassin which was allowed.

Where is there a substantial difference V? It's going to be auto-allowed anyway. I'm not asking for it to be approved one month after it comes out in Dragon, I'm merely asking for it to be approved one month after it becomes official WotC content online. In this case, for PHB III which is already in the Compendium and Character Builder. What's so special about waiting for the hardback book?

Kalidrev · Feb 23, 2010

I agree with Velmont completely. The Assassin was never playtest material, will NEVER see publication in hardback form (it is DnDi ONLY), and will get regular updates through DnDi. The Hybrid options, and all other PHB3 material will be published in their most recent form in hardback, which means that there may even be changes between the hardback form and what is in DnDi CB. Because of this, it really is best to just wait until the playtest material is released. I treat playtestmaterial the same way that beta software should be treated: an awesome little peak at what may be to come, but not official. It's there so that players can mess with it, look at it, play around with it, and submit "bugs" to WOTC. After WOTC has had a sufficient amount of playtesters "debug" their playtest material, they look the material over again and then publish it in hardback form, after which they update DnDi CB with what is in the hardback form.

Now granted, in this SPECIFIC case, the current revision of Hybrid rules HAS been released for DnDi subscribers in the same form that will be released in the PHB3, HOWEVER, if you remember, there were also 2 other versions of the Hybrid rules as playtest/"debut" material. The same has happened to the Artificer, the Barbarian, and the Monk. They all were included as playtest material, and then had some pretty significant changes before they were released.

I would hate to see people use some playtest material, like it, then get the giant nerf bat when it is released as hardback. What's worse, is that there won't even be an errata listing for it, showing the changes, so we would have to figure all of this out ourselves. Better to just create the character using the official material in the first place.

I'm leaning very heavily towards a no vote on this one, but I'll give you the chance to persuade me otherwise.

KarinsDad · Feb 23, 2010

Kalidrev said:
I'm leaning very heavily towards a no vote on this one, but I'll give you the chance to persuade me otherwise.

Cool.

I totally understand the playtest idea.

But here's the rub.

Once it goes into Character Builder as PHB III material, it's not going to change. The book has already been sent to the printer.

Can they have a last minute "Hold the Presses" change? Possibly. But the cost to have a print change is huge. It would have to be something monumental and WotC is not going to do that since they have an errata process.

Even if they have errata on it, they already have errata on every approved source.

The Ardent and Hybrid and other PHB III material in Character Builder today is the exact same material that will come out in PHB III with one possible exception. If they have official errata on the material, the errata might actually show up in Character Builder early.

If we were talking material that is malleable (outside of early errata), then I would think that Velmont has a point. We are not. We are talking about material that WotC stamped approval on months ago. WotC is not (significantly) working on PHB III material anymore, they have moved on.

I see playtest material as material of concern. It is no longer playtest material and has not been since WotC put it into the Compendium and Character Builder as PHB III material.

I don't understand the need for the source to be an official book and not official online.

Velmont · Feb 23, 2010

Kalidrev said:
I agree with Velmont completely. The Assassin was never playtest material, will NEVER see publication in hardback form (it is DnDi ONLY), and will get regular updates through DnDi.

For some reason, I always thought we would see them in PHB3, but I knew, from what I had read from the article, that the Assassin was a kind of unique case for D&DI and was a more stable article than playtest.

KarinsDad said:
If we were talking material that is malleable (outside of early errata), then I would think that Velmont has a point. We are not. We are talking about material that WotC stamped approval on months ago. WotC is not (significantly) working on PHB III material anymore, they have moved on.

True, WotC is not working anymore on the PHB3 material. As we speak, the should be printing it to have enough copy for the release next month. But the problem is we don't know what changes they have done to the hybrid rules since they release the rules eight month ago. All the errata they will have created for those material will be show for the first time in the PHB3.

Also, if we accept that, I see no reason to not allow people to create Psion, Seekers, Battlemind or use the skill powers. It will create a precedent that I do not like.

Assassin is a Dragon magazine material while hybrid is a PHB3 material. Dragon have been out for over a month, not PHB3. We are many to wait with impatience (yeah, me too, I want to try the Battlemind as my 3rd PC in L4W), but I prefer the give give candy later philosophy than the take back candy.

KarinsDad · Feb 23, 2010

Velmont said:
Also, if we accept that, I see no reason to not allow people to create Psion, Seekers, Battlemind or use the skill powers. It will create a precedent that I do not like.

Why not?

What is your rationale?

There is a player bfiggins who came into the Tavern and wanted to play an Ardent. The Ardent has been out online for close to a month, just like the Assassin was out online for a month before approved.

bfiggins cannot play this PC because of this rule.

Isn't that special?

Velmont said:
Assassin is a Dragon magazine material while hybrid is a PHB3 material. Dragon have been out for over a month, not PHB3. We are many to wait with impatience (yeah, me too, I want to try the Battlemind as my 3rd PC in L4W), but I prefer the give give candy later philosophy than the take back candy.

What is the difference Velmont?

Why is an Assassin "stable" and an Ardent "not stable"?

Where are your facts for this difference?

I think the exact opposite is closer to true. Over and over again, Dragon magazine material is less playtested and more prone to problems whereas core material tends to be controlled better. There is more errata for core material, but that's because for the most part, WotC doesn't care about Dragon content. Dragon content is the icing for the cake where it's supposed to be sweet.

Kalidrev · Feb 23, 2010

The difference, KD, is that the Assassin, from the get, was labeled as OFFICIAL material once it was released in DnDi, and is one of the few "goodies" that only DnDi subscribers would get (since it will not appear in any other publication other than DnDi). It was fully fleshed out and was never released as playtest material. It's as official as is possible for it to be, since the class itself will never be featured in hardback form.

The others are still not official material yet since they have not been officially published, and even the RPGA will not allow them yet.

Here's another way to look at this:

Look inside of the Character Builder in the Clas "tab": Each of the Player's Handbooks have their own section when they are official material. Currently, the PHB and the PHB2 have their own section, while all of the PHB3 material is still listed with the Artificer, the Assassin, and the Swordmage. When it becomes official material, all of the PHB3 items will fall under its own category, much like the PHB and the PHB2. Until we see that, I don't see it as being official. Until we get the whole kit'n'kaboodle (ie, both builds of a given class), I don't see it as official material. Though I could see an argument for why the one build could be official material without the other build needing to be present, it's just not my opinion.

renau1g · Feb 23, 2010

Now, I do think there's a difference between playtest and debut material. Ardent is debut, same as assassin. Now this is different than monster PC's (which there was a nice warning about in the MM about not balanced as PC races). I'm leaning towards yes on this. Allowing Debut material, with the caveat that the final hardcover rules will trump/update the article.

Also, with Hybrids we are allegedly seeing the final rules in Dragon 383 "you’ve seen playtest versions of the hybrid rules, but now we can present the final version slated for inclusion in Player’s Handbook 3. These rules incorporate feedback from readers just like you. This debut content also presents the hybrid artificer class for the first time ever. We haven’t forgotten about the assassin; that class will get its own special hybrid treatment right here in the pages of Dragon magazine before long!"

Oh, and ardents are also available for RPGA play as they are debut