Give me a competent arguement that WotC is "changing rules for the sake of change"

[Sundragon2012]

Allow me to be a heretic....So what if they are doing it for the money?

Of course that is part of it. However, I have no reason to believe that WoTC isn't trying to improve the game overall to create both a better play experience for current D&D players, but also in order to attract new players which the hobby needs if it is going to survive.

Doing it for the money and doing with an eye towards improving the game are not in any way mutually exclusive.

If WoTC decided to leave 3.5 as the final edition of D&D ever the game would die. If WoTC cannot make money on the D&D IP as a tabletop RPing game, D&D as a tabletop RPing game will die. it will be sold to another company by Hasbro and then they will either make sure D&D grows and changes or it will simply die in their hands as well.

I don't think for a second that the changes I am reading about are changes for changes sake. I might not like all the changes (most I do like however based upon what I've read) but I didn't like all of what AD&D, AD&D 2e, 3e and 3.5e did either but interestingly enough I have been able to run successful campaigns in all of them as have many, many others despite misgivings about certain rules and mechanics.



Sundragon

 

[Rechan]

Given that you said they are rare, "Greater numbers" could mean rare +4.

 

[pawsplay]

Given that you said they are rare, "Greater numbers" could mean rare +4.

In the campaigns I run, they are rare enough they would be difficult to generalize about, much less care what class would most suit them.

 

[Wolfspider]

OK, you win. Congratulations! Feel better?

So can we go back to talking about how much the new edition will suck now?

 

[Rechan]

In the campaigns I run, they are rare enough they would be difficult to generalize about, much less care what class would most suit them.

If my campaign world has dwarves and elves so rare that they can't be generalized about, I'm still not going to be upset over emphasis in WotC products of elves and dwarves in greater numbers.

I may be playing in a Savage Worlds campaign, and thus the classes are restricted to Ranger, Druid, Barbarian, Sorcerer, Rogue and Dragon Shaman, despite other classes being present in other source books.

Just because they are rarest of rare in your campaign doesn't mean that the option should not be presented, even in Core.

 

[pawsplay]

If my campaign world has dwarves and elves so rare that they can't be generalized about, I'm still not going to be upset over emphasis in WotC products of elves and dwarves in greater numbers.

If your campaign world has dwarves and elves that rare, it already diverges from the usual D&D setting. This represents a change. Basic D&D had no tieflings at all, not even Outer Planes. AD&D had no tieflings until Planescape, which was a variant setting.

 

[Sundragon2012]

Here are two things I do not like...

Tieflings and Warforged as races in the PHB1. But I am not necessarily the only person WoTC is marketing 4e to and I understand that.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter what is in the PHB1 or II, III or IV. I decide what races and classes exist in my setting and my campaign. Only those who play in the ambiguous 'Points of Light' setting (which isn't really a setting of course) have to concern themselves with being true to RAW or canon assumptions for their own games.

What DM, outside of one completely new to the hobby, is going to toss Thor, Vecna, Asmodeus and Zeus around into their pantheon without rhyme or reason? Does any DM really think that just because tieflings are a core race they must be in every setting? WoTC will have to stick them in every setting they make so as not to invalidate their own core books, but I bet you will see 3rd party publishers create settings without tieflings in them.

D&D as an IP has a lot of D&Disms whether its certain classes, monsters, races, magical systems, cosmology etc. that are a mad jumble of weird and sometimes contradictory assumptions. D&D at its most simplistic can be used out of the box as is, I did it for years with AD&D until I discovered Dragonlance and never, ever DMed a core game again. Even the Forgotten Realms, which is pretty vanilla, had to change certain rules to maintain its flavor...and that flavor is IMO not too exotic.

D&D as per the core books is a DMs toolkit. Use what you like and dump what you don't until you get the setting you want. I am not talking mechanics here which are often much harder to dump than a core race, god, class, cosmology, magical tradition, etc.

Nothing WoTC's designers write is sacred scripture. If you don't want eladrin or warlocks in your game take them out. You're the DM.


Sundragon

 

[Rechan]

If your campaign world has dwarves and elves that rare, it already diverges from the usual D&D setting. This represents a change. Basic D&D had no tieflings at all, not even Outer Planes. AD&D had no tieflings until Planescape, which was a variant setting.

And 2e had no monks except as a variant kit tied to the cleric, but 3e had Monks right there in the PHB. This represents a change. Sorcerers had not existed in previous incarnations of D&D. This represented a change. Clerics could suddenly cast 8th and 9th level spells. This represented a change. Kobolds were draconic instead of dog men. This represented a change.

 

[RigaMortus2]

I think the tenor of your response kinda proves me right.

Hmmm, I didn't read any "negative" tenor in his response. Maybe you are only seeing what you want to see in his response (that being, something negative or argumentative)?

 

[pawsplay]

And 2e had no monks except as a variant kit tied to the cleric, but 3e had Monks right there in the PHB. This represents a change. Sorcerers had not existed in previous incarnations of D&D. This represented a change. Clerics could suddenly cast 8th and 9th level spells. This represented a change. Kobolds were draconic instead of dog men. This represented a change.

I still don't like the kobold change.

Anyway. Clerics going to 9th level spells is not the same kind of change as "Suddenly, Planescape had invaded your D&D. Access to the Outer Planes is not difficult, and people go around breeding with demons with some frequency." Adding Klingons as a D&D race would be a change, too, not the same as including gnomes or not.

The monk is an excellent example... a lot of people did not feel the Oriental monk fit into D&D, and he got kicked out. I'm not saying that's good or bad. I happen to like monks, but I feel there are cultural touchstones that have to be present for them to make sense.

Sure, I can not use tieflings. But it's significant to me to say, "Okay, we're playing D&D. Since we're playing something other than Forgotten Realms, I should warn you one of the core races is not available. And gnomes are NPC only since we have only limited stats for them, so leave all those AD&D and D&D 3e gnome minis at home."