D&D 5E fighters and wizards both getting new toys?

[GMforPowergamers]

OK, so now that we know the battle master will have a list of maneuvers, do you think later books will build more maneuvers the same way we know (and has always been the case) we get new spells?

SInce the entire calls of wizard (I doubt we will get a sub class without them) will cast spells, but only 1 fighter sub class (somewhere between 1/3 and 1/10 of the class) will get maneuvers, will it be unbalancing to give that one build more then others in options?

 

[Mistwell]

I am unconvinced that the premise of splat books will actually be the case for this edition.

I suspect such expansions will be more setting-related. So an Oriental Adventures setting might have more maneuvers with a more Eastern flavor to them, but I am not sure we will ever see a generic Book of Martial Might or whatever you might call it.

 

[Shiroiken]

I don't know. They've talked about attempting to keep the splatbooks to a minimum to avoid bloat, but splatbooks have traditionally been decent sellers. Hopefully if they do splatbooks, it will be more like the 2E splatbooks, which were more focused on fluff than crunch.

 

[Minigiant]

I see it more of setting and theme books having the goods.

Like a book on sea and naval adventuring would have water, ice, and mist spells as well as some piratey swashbuckling maneuver and a ice hockey check maneuver. And the water cleric and sailing skills fore rogues. And sea monsters. And a ton of fluff for sea games. And... JUST TAKE MY MONEY NOW.

I expect more setting books and adventure theme books than a raw class crunch books. I think theme books would sucker us fans into purchases more than class books.

 

[Li Shenron]

OK, so now that we know the battle master will have a list of maneuvers, do you think later books will build more maneuvers the same way we know (and has always been the case) we get new spells?

Yes, but they will never be as many as spells.

SInce the entire calls of wizard (I doubt we will get a sub class without them) will cast spells, but only 1 fighter sub class (somewhere between 1/3 and 1/10 of the class) will get maneuvers, will it be unbalancing to give that one build more then others in options?

No, I don't think balance will be an issue, unless maneuvers work like clerical spells (i.e. all are automatically known).

 

[n00bdragon]

Are you guys kidding? The economics of the situation means generic splat books are practically guaranteed. Sure, it might be nice if we had lots of books like Oriental Adventures but the problem with those sorts of books is that if you don't happen to be running an Oriental Adventures type game then the book is utterly useless to you. You are thus unlikely to buy it. Now, a book like Complete Fighter or Arcane Power, these books could potentially be useful to any game. Why shut out a huge part of your market? Let's not forget that this is a business, a business selling books.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

There definitely will be generic splatbooks, no doubt about it.

The key is to see if they just have one splatbook covering a group of classes instead of many, stop at Complete Arcane and not release Complete Mage a few years after.

 

[Blackwarder]

I'd rather they will go with more adventures and adventure paths than go with tons of splat books.

I would rather have the following books:
The Complete Book of Dwarves.
The Complete Book of Haflings.
The Complete Book of Elves.

Thos books are about everything you want to know about those societies, from subraces to architectural practices (I love the Dwarven towns in DL) to how they orgenize their armies and everything in between, it should be 20% crunch and 80% background and should be usefull with every edition.

The DM Books:
The Dungeoneer Guide.
The Wilderness Survival Guide.
The Urban Survival Guide.

This books should focus exclusively on this three play settings and should cover things like dungeon design, type of adventures in each setting, the impact of weather of travel and encounter designs and things like that.

Other than that I would rather if they produce setting books and adventure books and I would rather have them publishing new material for players in the setting books, for example a DL setting book will have new subclasses for paladins to represent the various knights orders and a pirate centered book will have info about pirate subclasses for all the classes, etc.

I also realy like the format of the last sundering adventures, the adventure coupled with a setting book is awsome IMO and they should continue to do this.

Warder

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I see it more of setting and theme books having the goods.

Like a book on sea and naval adventuring would have water, ice, and mist spells as well as some piratey swashbuckling maneuver and a ice hockey check maneuver. And the water cleric and sailing skills fore rogues. And sea monsters. And a ton of fluff for sea games. And... JUST TAKE MY MONEY NOW.

I expect more setting books and adventure theme books than a raw class crunch books. I think theme books would sucker us fans into purchases more than class books.

They may do this again, but then they'll again learn the lessons that TSR learned. Mixing DM and player content in one book is annoying, its harder than heck to find stuff later, generally each subtopic can only get poor coverage, and the prime problem that most people only want to buy a few theme books, but will buy almost endless splat books.

I'm not saying its a bad idea, the splatbooks have equally serious issues. There is just no single 'best' approach. However, looking at the late 4e product output with things like DSG, HotFW and HotEC it seems likely that they'll try the same mostly player-oriented theme books with heavy enough flavor that they also provide a lot of ideas for the DM. New rules systems can be presented in the form of themes, feats, etc and then reused in monster blocks etc to produce some solid usable DM material. This technique does rely on there being additional background books like a Manual of the Planes etc, though I would note that HotFW is the main source for the Feywild.

 

[Mistwell]

Are you guys kidding? The economics of the situation means generic splat books are practically guaranteed. Sure, it might be nice if we had lots of books like Oriental Adventures but the problem with those sorts of books is that if you don't happen to be running an Oriental Adventures type game then the book is utterly useless to you. You are thus unlikely to buy it. Now, a book like Complete Fighter or Arcane Power, these books could potentially be useful to any game. Why shut out a huge part of your market? Let's not forget that this is a business, a business selling books.

It's better to sell 10 PHBs than 7 PHBs and 5 splat books. Because ultimately, the extra PHBs turn into more players, who eventually buy 7 more PHBs. The splatbook treadmill is great in the short term, but turns off a lot of players long-term. It's easier to maintain the core books as evergreen products if there isn't a huge library of splatbooks being associated with them, and players who are all playing a game with options that are hardly recognizable relative to the core books.

This is why I think, long-term, adventures, settings, and support products are better than splatbooks.