D&D 4E Combining Vancian and Will/Daily from 4E

[TimA]

um I don't belive you...at all. Wizards is not looking to sya "well 4e players don't matter" and that can be seen in the latest rule of 3.

I find the idea that pathfinder is even close to more players then 4e laughable at best, and a sad sad attempt at edtion waring.

I would like to know what you consider selling poorly, when the DDI group has SOOO many memebers...

First off, 60,000 people isnt . It just really isnt.

Secondly those people are paying a small fee for an online service rather then a large amount for a print book. Over a very long period of time it might be a good financial move but over short and medium periods the whole subscription idea is stupid financially. Its not as bad as free torrents on their bottom line, but its certainly not adding to it either.

3rdly. Wheres a link to this group. I seriously doubt the 60k number is even accurate.

 

[TimA]

As to how I think they should mix the 2 ideas.....

Use 4e's free cantrips and ritual concept. Both are good concepts.

Go over the spell list with a fine tooth comb and take all the game breakers, timestop, teleport, Long term flight, major summonings etc etc and make them rituals.

Rituals dont have to take a very long time though. White wolf games have an interesting mechanic where the stronger a mage is the faster he can perform ritual magic.

Maybe allow anyone to try ritual magic but if its a spell of higher level then they can cast it takes a long time and has a risk with failure associated with it.

If you remove most of the problematic spells from combat then balance is much less of an issue and you strengthen the entire theme of magic in the game.

Then you take regular casting, maneuvers, the whole thing and slap a STAMINA system on.

Let stamina be based on CON. Fighter maneuvers, non-ritual, non-cantrip spells should ALSO use CON.

That way you get the "its fatiguing" effect of daily and encounter maneuvers and spells but without the "damn I can only trip once?" game breaking stupidity.


Hell it could even add to combat in a serious way by making defensive maneuvers more viable.

Imagine that you lose 1 stamina pt per round that you do anything but walk your normal speed. And 1 stamina per round if your taking defensive actions.

Actively fighting takes 2 per round, Spells, Maneuvers, Charging, etc etc all use up much more stamina.

Naturally these points would have recharge at a fairly quick rate once you sit still so its not too limiting.

Lets you use lighter faster combatants in a defensive way that simulates a lot of real combats and story heroes ducking and dodging a giant monster until they get tired and make an opening.

You dont really have to take it to that level. But just having a stamina count that maneuvers and spells affect might solve a lot of problems.

 

[DogBackward]

Honestly, I'd prefer to see a small set of spell slots, and an even closer connection between prepared dailies and at-will spells.
Remove 0-level spells, and simply give mages class features that allow them to detect magic, and use minor magic effects (similar to prestidigitation) at-will. For the record, detecting magic should be, at least in part, reactive. You should be able to be walking down a hallway, pause, and in a very sage tone say "Hold, my friends. There is magic here!" And have your buddies laugh at you for being all dramatic and silly.
Other than that, you can prepare a total number of spell levels equal to your caster level.

Then, and here's the big part... then, you have each and every spell have an at-will use. Except that, for the sake of immersion, we'll call them "Echoes" or something. As long as you have a spell prepared, you can use its Echo any time you want. A Magic Missile Echo would let you use a free action to add +1 attack and +1 force damage to any ranged weapon attack you make. A Sleep Echo would cause a single target within 30ft. to make a Wisdom save or be unable to make attacks of opportunity for one round. A Burning Hands Echo would let you make a single touch attack for 1d6 fire damage.

You would increase the power of Echoes only slightly with higher level spells. Scorching Ray's Echo might let you make a ranged touch attack for 1d6 damage, instead of a melee touch like Burning Hands's Echo. A Fireball Echo might let you make a 5ft. burst within 30ft. for 1d6 fire damage. And so on and so forth.

This still requires you to keep track of resources. You can use Fireball's Echo all day... until you actually cast Fireball. Once the spell is no longer prepared, you lose access to its Echo version. So you'd have nova mages who prepare big-damage spells and use them willy-nilly... completely dominating one encounter in a day. But you'd also have more cautious mages who prepare spells with Echoes in mind. They'd rarely cast a full spell, relying on clever use of Echoes and only using full castings when they really need a full spell effect. I think this covers the best of both worlds, and fairly well.

(For the record, D&D does not use Vancian magic, it uses a magic system inspired by Vancian magic. In a truly Vancian system, wizards would have a very small number of spells prepared at one time, not per day. So if your 10th level wizard blows his three prepared spells in the first encounter, he can sit down for a few minutes and prepare new spells in those slots, instead of waiting until tomorrow to have spells again. I would also accept this option instead of my idea above.)

 

[Steely_Dan]

I really hope there is no assumed number of encounters a day, one, or six encounters a day or what have you, should be supported.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

First off, 60,000 people isnt . It just really isnt.

Secondly those people are paying a small fee for an online service rather then a large amount for a print book. Over a very long period of time it might be a good financial move but over short and medium periods the whole subscription idea is stupid financially. Its not as bad as free torrents on their bottom line, but its certainly not adding to it either.

3rdly. Wheres a link to this group. I seriously doubt the 60k number is even accurate.

How can you distrust 60,000 when you said it was 60,000? And why ask for a link if you have the numbers?


I don't consider ddi instead of book sales but WITH book sales... Yes the frosting is not a cake, but it sure taste good on top of one.

 

[Arlough]

I don't know if it is frosting, I think it may be another cake.
Consider, with DDi, you get, for a year's worth of subscription, between $72 and $120 from someone. That is what WotC gets, directly.

In books, assuming someone bought all the books (no tiles, screens, miniatures, etc.) available for 2011, that person would have spent between $160 and $275, assuming that they were immune to taxes and had a resist all to shipping costs. (The other assumption here is that the places advertising the books for the cheapest actually have the books for that price.)

Those prices are marked up because the said retailers would like to make money. So we can assume that WotC is making less than the $182 off that, given that is what it would cost to buy all these from Amazon, pre-tax.

Let's figure that Amazon is marking the price up by 10% as a conservative estimate, and that all the retailers that are offering it cheaper are just trying to go out of business. That puts WotC income at about $160 for a full set of books for 2011. These are full color books, so figure at least $25 for printing, binding, and shipping, and you come out at $135.

Now, most players are not going to buy every book, so let us assume they only buy half. (That's significantly more than any of the players I know would buy, but only a little high if we also assume that every player is a DM in another group.)

My estimated WotC revenue off of an average player/DM for a year is now $67.50
WotC could take that to the bank and I believe they would slowly go the way of TSR.

Or, WotC could offer customers an online service, that includes (basically) a Google search of all the books, a program that helps you create and optimize your character, and a VTT to play on that lets you play over distance, reduces clutter, and is your collection of maps and figs for less than the price of half the books, that makes WotC more money. Top it off with complete DRM controls (something that they have been very worried about) and the facts that customers have to keep buying to keep using (unlike the books) and subscriptions have proven to be more profitable than single sale due to people being lazy (see Netflix history) and you now have a consistent money stream from a player of about $70 that costs you relatively little to maintain. As a bonus feature, you have free ad space to sell the next product or idea.

Hell, maybe the books are the frosting.

While I feel they have missed many opportunities, and their execution has been slipshod at best, I have to argue that DDi is a brilliant idea from a business standpoint.

Of course, there is always the possibility that I am wrong. I think all my assumptions are reasonable, but that in and of itself is an assumption. And you know what assumptions do, don't you...

 

[TimA]

LoL at the ignorance of how retail marketing works here. 25$ a book to mass print? Try closer to 5$ per book.

And very few people who are members of DDI are paying the month to month fee so you can only assume the 70 a year price.

Theres between a 10 and 20% markup on books in a store. And 20% is so high as to be fairly rare.

So when you buy a WoTC book for 30$ about 19 of it is before tax profit for the company.

The idea that somehow DDI is free for WoTC is also somewhat laughable. They have to have huge server space and processing speed to handle that. That costs money. They need staff to populate it with info and maintain it. That costs money.

Out of the 5.95$ a month you pay DDI for a membership they probably profit 3$ of it pre-tax (yes internet ventures are taxed too. And in some cases, like members in Illinois, double taxed).

So that 70$ a year is more like 30$ a year in their pocket.

If WoTC can sell you 2 books a year they make 25% more then by selling you a DDI subscription. And if they cant sell you at least 2 books a year then they should probably focus more on putting out decent books.


DDI is a dud as a main profit line and anyone with a shred of business acumen could have and probably did tell them that before starting it.

As a side venue. Something with a few goodies and maybe games that you pay 5$ a month for it could help pad the bottom line a little but thats about it.

 

[Arlough]

LoL at the ignorance of how retail marketing works here. 25$ a book to mass print? Try closer to 5$ per book.

My turn to LoL, did you read? The $25 is for for printing, binding, and shipping for all the books that came out in a year.
Of course if you want to go by your estimate of $5 per book, I can adjust that number from $25 to $45. That would strengthen my argument unfairly, though.

And very few people who are members of DDI are paying the month to month fee so you can only assume the 70 a year price.

Which would still be profitable in my estimate.

Theres between a 10 and 20% markup on books in a store. And 20% is so high as to be fairly rare.

So when you buy a WoTC book for 30$ about 19 of it is before tax profit for the company.

As I said, I was basing this off of the fact that almost all of these books can be found for 10% - 20% cheaper than Amazon, who is already selling them for 10% - 30% off the cover price. Since Amazon's business plan most likely does not involve hemorrhaging money, I feel pretty safe assuming the price they are selling the books for is at least cost.

But you may be as in the know as you believe. Can you point me towards anything that indicates the wholesale price of the D&D books published last year?

The idea that somehow DDI is free for WoTC is also somewhat laughable. They have to have huge server space and processing speed to handle that. That costs money. They need staff to populate it with info and maintain it. That costs money.

Granted, I didn't account for server costs, nor IT. But given the number of customers they serve, they would have to have the most expensive IT department I can currently imagine being staffed by human beings in order to have the cost per person exceed $0.05 per month.

Again, though. I would gladly review any references you have to the contrary.

Out of the 5.95$ a month you pay DDI for a membership they probably profit 3$ of it pre-tax (yes internet ventures are taxed too. And in some cases, like members in Illinois, double taxed).

I admit being suprised that you have the gall to laugh at my logic while you propose a 49% tax on a web database and app set. Even at 24.5% state and 24.5% local, that seems far beyond credible.

So that 70$ a year is more like 30$ a year in their pocket.

If we accept your figures, then yes. Your math is correct. Your claims, though, I doubt somewhat.

<snip>
And if they cant sell you at least 2 books a year then they should probably focus more on putting out decent books.

I will never disagree with increased quality, but it isn't nessasarily the fault of the book if it doesn't sell. Betamax was superior to VHS, Sega was superior to Nintendo, the Tucker was superior to any other car at the time, yet all failed.
Nonetheless, if they cannot produce a profitable product, then yes, the market will have spoken.

DDI is a dud as a main profit line and anyone with a shred of business acumen could have and probably did tell them that before starting it.

"Well there's your problem."
Obviously, nobody in WotC or Hasbro has a shred of business acumen, or at least, they keep all those people in the mail room...

No, I think instead we can say this. Obviously they believe differently than you based on the information they have available.

As a side venue. Something with a few goodies and maybe games that you pay 5$ a month for it could help pad the bottom line a little but thats about it.

So, Facebook? Don't they have a D&D thing now. (I honestly don't know, I abandoned my Facebook account ages ago.)

 

[Janaxstrus]

My turn to LoL, did you read? The $25 is for for printing, binding, and shipping for all the books that came out in a year.
Of course if you want to go by your estimate of $5 per book, I can adjust that number from $25 to $45. That would strengthen my argument unfairly, though.


Which would still be profitable in my estimate.



As I said, I was basing this off of the fact that almost all of these books can be found for 10% - 20% cheaper than Amazon, who is already selling them for 10% - 30% off the cover price. Since Amazon's business plan most likely does not involve hemorrhaging money, I feel pretty safe assuming the price they are selling the books for is at least cost.

But you may be as in the know as you believe. Can you point me towards anything that indicates the wholesale price of the D&D books published last year?



Granted, I didn't account for server costs, nor IT. But given the number of customers they serve, they would have to have the most expensive IT department I can currently imagine being staffed by human beings in order to have the cost per person exceed $0.05 per month.

I work on the IT side for a printing company (lots of technical manuals, some text books, etc). Depending on the type of printer used, it can go from 20 cents (digital color) a page to as low as less than a penny a page (black and white). Due to the costs being all over the place, it's hard to guess what it runs for a book.

As for the IT costs, you are seriously underestimating them. Assuming only 4 people support all of DDi from the IT side, you'd be looking at 16-20K a month in just salary. This would mean over 3K subscribers are needed JUST to pay the salaries. Hosting, bandwidth and infrastructure costs would increase that. So, 1% of their costs being IT would be, in my opinion, a gross underestimation.

That being said, I doubt they are losing money or even just breaking even. DDI is obviously a moneymaker, just a question of how much compared to book sales. That we will likely never know unless they list it all seperately in their tax filings.

 

[Arlough]

[MENTION=3201]Janaxstrus[/MENTION]
Thank you for responding.
So far we have only been working with assumption, and deductive reasoning based on the admittedly sparse facts readily available.

I am splitting this to another thread, given how far we have moved from the topic.

Speaking of the topic, which idea proposed so far is one you would be most likely to play?