Proposal: Disallow sources not listed in the DDI Compendium

Son of Meepo · Aug 18, 2012

This came up during a discussion regarding the Talon Amulet, which was an item in Treasure of Talon Pass, the 2008 Free RPG Day adventure published by WotC. The adventure is no longer available and is not listed as one of the sources available in the compendium.

I am one of the senior reviewers and I have not purchased a hardcover 4e book in almost 2 years, relying exclusively on the online tools.

It would be much easier on reviewers if we didn't have to rely on the availability of printed materials to review characters.

As such I am proposing the following:

A. Printed sources are only legal for L4W once they have been included in the DDI compendium. We could keep a list of sources on the L4W wiki for those reviewers who do not have DDI access.

B. For digital sources such as Dragon or Dungeon, we could take 1 of two approaches:

B1: Continue to allow them 1 month after article publication date as we do now.
B2: Allow them once they are listed as a source in the Compendium, whether that is shorter or longer than 1 month from article publication.

I personally favor B2 to keep things consistent.

To deal with the ramifications should the above pass I propose:

C: Anyone possessing a now illegal rules element except for magic items are allowed an immediate retraining of that element, even if the element is not normally re-trainable such as class features.

D: Anyone possessing a now illegal magic item may immediate exchange it for another legal item of the same category of the same level or less or sell it (at 20%) even if they are not at a location where they could normally acquire such an item (in an adventure for example).

BedLlama · Aug 18, 2012

My 2cp, for what that's worth from a player who hasn't gotten a chance to play yet.

EDIT: OK, so the Compendium isn't quite what my context clues lead me to assume it was (ie a big list of sources). I still don't like the idea of something that prevents you from taking options just because they aren't on DDI's list. Of course, without having access to said list, I can't tell what is and what is not included, and why. Is material that shows up in published adventures available? How would this rule affect the Dungeon Master? This proposal was clearly intended with players in mind, but as written might also prevent DMs from using non Compendium monsters (or cause new DMs to assume as much). Some sort of rider that specifies that only player options are impacted by this proposal seems appropriate.

Son of Meepo · Aug 18, 2012

It's intended to affect players. DMs can draw on whatever source they want, even their own imagination

We would maintain a list of sources allowed on the wikia, so those with only books could reference them.

Luinnar · Aug 19, 2012

About how many items would be disallowed?

BedLlama · Aug 19, 2012

Son of Meepo said:
We would maintain a list of sources allowed on the wikia, so those with only books could reference them.

I think I'm missing something here then. If we're going through the effort to maintain a list of DDI Compendium approved sources, then why limit things to just those sources? Shouldn't a source and a page number be enough? I'm not entirely convinced that a source not being available in digital format should be enough to preclude it as an option. If someone has a hard copy of an official product, I think that they should be able to use stuff from it.

Mind you, this issue seems to be minor enough that I don't care particularily strongly about it. It just strikes me as a bit off to restrict sources based on the obscurity of the source material rather than the quality of the content. All of the material currently unavailable for use has been discluded because of flavour or game balance.

Son of Meepo · Aug 19, 2012

Luinnar said:
About how many items would be disallowed?

Unsure. I think it would be something the reviewers would come across when they review things. For now, the Talon Amulet is the only one I know of.

BedLlama said:
I think I'm missing something here then. If we're going through the effort to maintain a list of DDI Compendium approved sources, then why limit things to just those sources? Shouldn't a source and a page number be enough? I'm not entirely convinced that a source not being available in digital format should be enough to preclude it as an option. If someone has a hard copy of an official product, I think that they should be able to use stuff from it.

The problem is most character reviewers probably don't have a copy of Treasure of Talon pass nor a way of getting it unless they want to delve into torrents.

The compendium was updated a while ago to remove items from adventures that are not commercially available, such as the Living Forgotten Realms adventures. This proposal means custom items created for that campaign would not be available in L4W.

Luinnar · Aug 19, 2012

I understand the problem reviewers can have, but I think changing the system may be too big of a step for something only covering a couple items.

I rather just ban items from that adventure if it is an issue.

Son of Meepo · Aug 19, 2012

Luinnar said:
I understand the problem reviewers can have, but I think changing the system may be too big of a step for something only covering a couple items.

I rather just ban items from that adventure if it is an issue.

It's not just that adventure. There were many adventures (mostly Living Forgotten Realms) removed from the compendium at one point and several more adventures that were never added. The problem is we can't rely on reviewers to know every source WotC has produced for 4e and I'd rather not have to create a new proposal to ban an item every time I come across something not in the compendium.

Dekana · Aug 19, 2012

I don't have DDI either, so I can't check what sources are in it or not. I'll echo Luinnar's question about how many items would be banned as a result of this proposal. It's hard to vote for something when we don't know what the real effect of it would be (not that I get a vote or anything).

Maybe we need to make a distinction just for adventure items? I think hard cover books (Heroes of the X, Complete Whatever, etc) should follow the current rules, being approved automatically after 1 month. If adventure path items are the problem, then only those should be subject to this DDI-only rule.

renau1g · Aug 20, 2012

Where does DM-provided items fall?

i.e. Sharpe's Dragon, isn't in the compendium as an item.

I'm fairly certain the only item that anyone's ever selected was the Talon Amulet, which had some moderately useful abilities.