D&D 4E 4Ed Dragon Compendium & DDI
- Thread starter Dannyalcatraz
- Start date
The Little Raven
First Post
Indeed. 25 issues of Dragon in the current archive, and 24 issues of Dungeon. $10 gets you all that, plus any of your friends that don't use a Mac can get AT and CB installed (and hopefully AT will get its update this Tuesday to the MM3 format/math).
That is an incredible deal.
If it isn't in physical form, I don't want it. When Dragon went digital, I cancelled.
knightofround
First Post
Honestly, I feel that the Dragon annual was a bust. There is a *lot* of good warlock-y stuff in Dragon though. DDI is totally worth it for someone who's really interested in a Warlock, or for any other class really. Your opposition to digital content is puzzeling. You know you can print out all of Dragon/Dungeon, right? Ten bucks plus the cost of paper and ink is going to be cheaper than buying the physical product.
If you're dead-set against digital content though, I'd say forget it. The Dragon annual is no substitute for Dragon itself.
If you're dead-set against digital content though, I'd say forget it. The Dragon annual is no substitute for Dragon itself.
And it will be of inferior physical quality to a professionally printed and bound physical book. Getting it printed in a comparable form would be MUCH more expensive. Economically speaking, it is a shift of costs from an entity who would get economies of scale resulting in the production of a better product.
I deal with photocopied stuff all the time and I hate it. They're not as durable as professionally produced books. I still have my D&D books from the mid-1970s. None of my photocopied & bound tomes from that era survive...nor do the ones from the late 1980s that I had made to replace the ones that were falling apart.
I deal with pdfs for business reasons and hate it. I don't want to have to turn on my computer to use them.
IOW, a hardcover or softcover book is what I want.
Can we PLEASE get beyond all of this?
I didn't expect it to be.
I'm just trying to gauge the general acceptability of Dragon content vs other DDI stuff, so when my current DM starts to expand his campaign's source list, I'll be able to figure out if the annual would stand a good chance of being added.
Shroomy
Adventurer
All the content in the Dragon Annual is from the DDI magazines and the compilation does include some of the best articles from the first year of 4e. In terms of power level, the DDI content is no better or worse than content published in the actual books, especially after its compiled at the end of the month (and the content of the Dragon Annual was errata'd each time it was compiled). The DDI content really expands character creation on a conceptual and thematic basis; I find it personally indispensible when creating characters.
The star pact warlock in our last campaign made extensive use out of the "Wish Upon a Star" article. It worked out pretty well for him, especially at the paragon levels with Twofold Pact and Sacrifice to Caiphon.
This came up in a recent thread. Technically, this would be against the license agreement. You are allowed to install/update several computers, but they are all supposed to be *yours*. You are not supposed to share your password with other people.
This is where I must mention that EN World does not support copyright infringement, and we don't want folks using the forums to encourage others to do so.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Well, all I can say is that the Dragon stuff in general is pretty solid. I think now and then they put out something that makes me scratch my head, and then they errata it in the compiled PDF. Dragon Annual is a pretty good round up of a lot of the best stuff from the first year or so of 4e Dragon material. The starlock stuff was nice and quite usable. Personally I'd want to have ALL the stuff that is in DDI but that's just me.
The Windows only AT/CB issue is pretty annoying, I agree. OTOH its is what it is. Buying a copy of Windows would irk me too, though you can use Virtualbox (which is free) to run it. OTOH just having Compendium access and having a chance to read Dragon/Dungeon articles when I get the urge now and then is worth the $7 a month. I finally did work out a way to run the apps though, it was worth the bother (though it didn't end up costing me any $, which I would not have wanted to pay for sure just for that).
Overall though if you are not DMing I'd say all pitch in a few bucks and get one of the players that has windows get a sub and let that person run your characters through CB and print them out, it definitely saves a lot of effort.
The Windows only AT/CB issue is pretty annoying, I agree. OTOH its is what it is. Buying a copy of Windows would irk me too, though you can use Virtualbox (which is free) to run it. OTOH just having Compendium access and having a chance to read Dragon/Dungeon articles when I get the urge now and then is worth the $7 a month. I finally did work out a way to run the apps though, it was worth the bother (though it didn't end up costing me any $, which I would not have wanted to pay for sure just for that).
Overall though if you are not DMing I'd say all pitch in a few bucks and get one of the players that has windows get a sub and let that person run your characters through CB and print them out, it definitely saves a lot of effort.
