D&D 5E Splatbooks in 5E, way or no way?

[Falling Icicle]

I want splatbooks. I want more options. I want more ways to customize characters. I just want quality over quantity.

 

[Li Shenron]

I hope they stick with their "low-publishing rate" purpose for as long as possible*, also because this encourages people to come up with their own home-made material.

*not counting fantasy settings and adventures, they can publish as many as they want!

 

[Morrus]

I never want stuff not to be published. I won't necessarily buy it all, but it's existence doesn't offend me. We played Age of Worms in 3.5 with just core, despite a hundred other books existing.

I agree that published adventures requiring them would be a bad idea.

 

[Gargoyle]

I love options. The only issue I ever had with these books is with 4e DnD Insider. Having _all_ the options in an electronic format slowed down character creation to a crawl, made it more likely to have unbalanced options, encouraged min/maxing a bit too much for my tastes, and put me in a position of saying "no" more than I like as a DM. With physical books you could have exactly the same issues, but in my experience we did not have it to that extreme.

So while I love options, I'm hoping that future electronic tools make it easier for me to filter out the options I don't like, and I'd be happier with fewer, higher quality options. I like to say yes to my players, not no.

 

[Jake Johnson]

Hiya.

I used to abhore the idea...now I don't really care/mind. Sometimes they are entertaining to read (sometimes "Ooo....cool!" way, more often than not in a "[spews cola through his nose] WTF?...bwa-ha_ha-HA_HA!!!" way).

I have no problem at all with WotC putting out a 'splatbook' every two months (max). What I *DO* have a problem with is that 'splatbook' info getting put into adventures/setting/supplements. I don't want to EVER see an adventure that has an NPC listed as "Grenko Salmanis; Legionnaire 6th (Complete Fighters Book of Romanesque Warriors)" with the stats/etc. for that class from that book. "Grenko Salmanis; Fighter 6th (Legionnaire 6th if you are using the CFBoRW" would be totally fine.

The very moment I see this happening, I'm done with 5e buying and will just use what I have at that point.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

PS: This also goes with "Optional" rules in the core books...yes, Feats, I'm looking at you! The moment "(Optional Feats: -list of...-)" shows up in an adventure or supplement...I'm done with 5e.

PPS: Yes, I believe my 5e buying will end at the MM or DMG...whatever is last produced of the 3 core...I don't have high hopes for WotC in this regard.

PPPS: I actually like 5e (much to my surprise, really). DM'ed my first 'full' (5 hour) game Sunday. Flows more smoothly than I thought, and definitly had a 1e/BECMI feel to it, overall.

You raise good points, Paul. I didn't think about modules being dependent on splatbooks. That would seem to make them less "optional", and more "it depends on the game you're running". I'm hoping the adventures stand on their own, requiring only the core rules to run.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I played 3.x with just a subset of the books, and would do the same with 5e, but I would prefer the announced slower publishing rate. It will probably produce better material and keep the edition going for longer. 4e really swamped the market, making me pretty uninterested.

 

[Wolfskin]

I definitely want splatbooks, but not more than twice a year- actually, I'd be happy with one 200+ pages splatbook once a year. Quality over quantity and all that.

Regarding adventures requiring splatbooks, I'm pretty sure we're not going to see that. HotDQ doesn't even require the MM and DMG, since WotC made the stuff referenced in the adventure available online for free.

 

[Zaran]

I don't see a need to have much more than the PHB. I don't see there to be much need to have say an Eberron Player's book despite not having warforged. A psionics book would be good but to me that's should be a bit more than just player material.

What I really want to see are GM aids like Settings, adventures, and tools for adding to our games. I'm sorry but I just don't see every player buying many splatbooks for 5e. I think 4e told WotC that sort of thing was a mistake.

 

[Crothian]

Splat books are pretty much the business model for a successful RPG product line these days. There are plenty of options in the PHB but there are also a number of character concepts I've seen in the past few years that cannot be created yet.

 

[Zaukrie]

I want psionics. And I want warforged. And lots of other cool ideas. Then I can pick the ones I like.