D&D 5E I think the era of 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons had it right. (not talking about the rules).

[Parmandur]

It is absurd because Hawkeye's assumptions are incorrect. You don't have to "keep up" with anything because the game doesn't require anything outside the core 3 to play the game. I am talking about D&D as well. I've been playing the game since 1st edition so I do know what is required and what isn't. He's claimed a problem that doesn't actually exist so yes it is all in his head.

It is not an assumption, it is a judgment born out of an actual experience; one apparently shared by a lot of other people. You are begging the question by dismissing the reality of a shared experience: circular reasoning based on assuming a universal truth for your experience and dismissing contradictory data as "wrong" because the conclusion has already been assumed. Sloppy logic.

 

[Parmandur]

Nobody is claiming it's a lie. I am claiming you are just flat out wrong which is a fact.

The only way to claim that an internal mental state is "wrong" is to claim that is a lie. You have saying that [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] is wrong in his statements about his own experience, which is to claim that he is lying. So, yes, you have dismissed his lived judgment as a lie.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Nobody is claiming it's a lie. I am claiming you are just flat out wrong which is a fact.

Your desire for more material is wrong because prior editions and the DMsGuild exist. Your desire is flat out wrong.

About 90% of this thread has been opinion. About 99% of your posts have been opinion.

 

[Corwin]

You don't have to "keep up" with anything because the game doesn't require anything outside the core 3 to play the game. I am talking about D&D as well. I've been playing the game since 1st edition so I do know what is required and what isn't. He's claimed a problem that doesn't actually exist so yes it is all in his head.

I'd rather purchase high quality books slowly, than cherry pick what I might want from a large selection of rushed books of a lower quality. So there's that.

 

[jasper]

....
[*]I haven't used all the monsters I want to from the Monster Manual, and Volo's Guide is around the corner giving me even more of them.
...[*]I haven't even bought Curse of Strahd or Storm King's Thunder yet because I've already got Princes of the Apocalypse on the shelf waiting to be started...
[/LIST]

...

Me neither. And I talking about the 1E MM. Waaaaa! As to the COS, Prince's, Storm King etc, I consider those just huge modules.

 

[pemerton]

I don't want to have to keep buying products in order to "keep up".

You never did with any edition. I think the problem is just in your head so it doesn't really exist. You have never ever needed anything outside of the core three to play and/or DM.

To play a mechanically effective STR paladin in 4e you really do need a book other than the core three - you need Divine Power.

I don't think this is because WotC was predatory in any malevolent sense - I think it's because there were some design flaws/limitations in the 4e PHB which the WotC team hadn't fully ironed out (due to rushed production schedules, I think).

My personal experience of 4e tells me that hawkeyefan's sense of the obsolescence of earlier material is exaggerated - eg no later-published character eclipsed the archer ranger, and most essentials builds are mechanically weaker than corresponding PHB builds - but the archer-ranger in my game uses some material from Martial Power and Divine Power, and I don't think any of the other character is built using just material from the core book in which the class was published. While I don't have any personal experience of Pathfinder, everything I hear about that system makes me think that the issue of "keeping up", and of trying to keep track of mechanical balance, is a bigger deal in PF than 4e.

Nevertheless, if a player or GM feels that the material available for the game is too much, and that keeping up with the current "state of play" for PC-building in the game is too much work, well that is what it is. There's no basis for saying that person is wrong, anymore than there is a basis for saying that someone who enjoys keeping up with latest splat is wrong.

These are all just consumer preferences in a market for a very discretionary product; or, looked at from a non-commercial perspective, are just differing RPGing preferences in a hobby that has always had a wide range of preferred approaches to the game.

And I think one of the cleverer features of 5e is the way that a single PHB has been able to appeal both to those who don't like splat (and who can experience, via that single volume, the game's mechancial growth as confined) and to those whol do like a wide variety of PC building options (because a lot of PC building options have been crammed into that book, although there is clearly debate around whether all of them are of comparable mechanical viability - eg there seems to be a widespread view that ranged options mechanically dominate melee ones).

<snip>

I'd like to see monster entries in 5e have more of a selection across different challenge ratings for the same creature.

I liked this feature of 4e too, but I know that others complained about it (and complained about its precursor in later 3E MMs) because they saw it as redundancy/duplication.

In 5e I think "bounded accuracy" is meant to take up some of this slack. I also think that, more generally, 5e seems not to support the mechanical intricacy that was a feature of those differing 4e creature builds.

pemerton: so, your baseline is: don't like the current state of D&D? Go and play something else

<snip>

I like 5e, i liked the settings, i liked the novels. D&D had many things i loved. So IMO it is perfectly okay to discuss and yes, even complain about how those things disappeared, because no other companies would do FR novels, or Ravenloft books. Yes, I think, voicing my opinion about the current state of the game is a valid approach, especially since they said themselves that they're following the various communities, so there's a slight chance they'll listen.

<snip>

Believe my, if I wouldn't see any change, or things even got worse from my viewpoint, I'll abandon D&D and won't look back for a long time, just as i did during the 4e era. And that's how WotC loses dedicated fans.

That is my baseline, yes: play game you enjoy! There's a lot on offer.

The idea that there is a slight chance WotC will change its publication strategy, based on a few comments on forums like this, I think is wrong. They are clearly relying on different measures of what the market is for different sorts of products, and hence what sorts of products are worth publishing. Forum feedback might be relevant for, say, tweaking some point of design, but not for deciding whether or not to publish 32 page modules, or new campaign supplements.

I think the bottom line is that WotC doesn't primarily want dedicated fans - it primarily wants to sell books at a profit. Producing a lot of material to sell to "dedicated fans" so as to maintain those "dedicated fans" has turned out to be a commercially losing strategy, so instead they have decided to produce a modest amount of material to sell to D&D players - of whom there seem to be many, and growing numbers.

My favourite edition of D&D was 4e, and my purchasing of WotC material clearly peaked in the 4e era. But the fact that they now publishing stuff for a different system, that I'm less interested in purchasing, isn't a personal slight against me. It's not any sort of dismissal of me or my fandom by WotC. The relationship between us just doesn't have that sort of nature.

 

[jasper]

It is absurd because Hawkeye's assumptions are incorrect. You don't have to "keep up" with anything because the game doesn't require anything outside the core 3 to play the game. I am talking about D&D as well. I've been playing the game since 1st edition so I do know what is required and what isn't. He's claimed a problem that doesn't actually exist so yes it is all in his head.

hmm would you two voices in my head keep down. I getting a headache. Let say over 75% of the people I gamed with since 1980 believed if Wotc/TSR published a splat book a DM must allowed it. I lost 2 gamers when switching to 3E since I said "CORE or the DOOR". This whole thread has been about WOTC putting out official material and gamers wanting more official material/options so they can play Darth Maul Jr in a D&D setting.
Do you Corpsetaker only play the core rules?

 

[PMárk]

This is a really long thread and a lot of it seems to be taken up with arguments over business practices and online tools So I apologise if this one has been listed, but one thing I thought was done very well in 4e was variations on the monsters. You could open the Monster Manual at Goblin and see half a dozen different variations all there and ready to use covering a variety of different challenge ratings too. Ditto for most other monsters. It was both great as a GM in a hurry and also broke people out of that weird (to me) situation where at Level 1-2 it's Goblins, level 5-8 it's hill giants, etc. As if these species and individuals had no variations and humans were the only thing that could progress in ability. And the minions system streamlined it nicely too. In 5e from what I've seen so far (not yet run it, am planning to), you run out of "grunts" rapidly at mid to high level. It's wall to wall special monsters. With 4th you could have a fully-detailed Hill Giant for the PCs to fight when they were lower level and then when they were mid to high level you could use the simplified Minion versions which was a good way of streamlining things whilst still being able to have the same monsters in the game which made it more realistic. ("Hey, you notice how we never see goblins, anymore?")

I'd like to see monster entries in 5e have more of a selection across different challenge ratings for the same creature. You get a smattering of it (Hobgoblin captain, et al), but it's greatly reduced. All of this also applies for templates. I loved to be able to slap a Vampire or Lich template on something.

I just want to reflect on the template thing: since they did templates in the MM, I just can't understand why other things, like vampire, lycanthrope, lich, ghost, etc. are not templates. One thing I liked about the earlier monster design is the templates it made things easier and more interesting IMO.

 

[hawkeyefan]

To play a mechanically effective STR paladin in 4e you really do need a book other than the core three - you need Divine Power.

I don't think this is because WotC was predatory in any malevolent sense - I think it's because there were some design flaws/limitations in the 4e PHB which the WotC team hadn't fully ironed out (due to rushed production schedules, I think).

My personal experience of 4e tells me that hawkeyefan's sense of the obsolescence of earlier material is exaggerated - eg no later-published character eclipsed the archer ranger, and most essentials builds are mechanically weaker than corresponding PHB builds - but the archer-ranger in my game uses some material from Martial Power and Divine Power, and I don't think any of the other character is built using just material from the core book in which the class was published. While I don't have any personal experience of Pathfinder, everything I hear about that system makes me think that the issue of "keeping up", and of trying to keep track of mechanical balance, is a bigger deal in PF than 4e.

Nevertheless, if a player or GM feels that the material available for the game is too much, and that keeping up with the current "state of play" for PC-building in the game is too much work, well that is what it is. There's no basis for saying that person is wrong, anymore than there is a basis for saying that someone who enjoys keeping up with latest splat is wrong.

These are all just consumer preferences in a market for a very discretionary product; or, looked at from a non-commercial perspective, are just differing RPGing preferences in a hobby that has always had a wide range of preferred approaches to the game.

And I think one of the cleverer features of 5e is the way that a single PHB has been able to appeal both to those who don't like splat (and who can experience, via that single volume, the game's mechancial growth as confined) and to those whol do like a wide variety of PC building options (because a lot of PC building options have been crammed into that book, although there is clearly debate around whether all of them are of comparable mechanical viability - eg there seems to be a widespread view that ranged options mechanically dominate melee ones).

To clarify my earlier comments...it may very well be that my assessment regarding 4E is off. It was attmitedly limited, and much of it came second hand once we abandoned the edition for Pathfinder. My comments were more about the marketing approach...the publishing schedule and the focus on selling many products to an established audience, and the reliance on the subscription based material as support of that model. My actual experience about the later material rendering earlier material out of date is likely exaggerated...but it is also the most minor factor in my assessment of the 4E marketing approach.

I'm much more familiar with Pathfinder, and I do think that the crunch bloat was much more of an issue for my group in that game. We enjoyed it for a few years...but then eventually, it just started getting out of hand, and issues started coming up. So my preference for the approach taken in 5E is due to both 4E and to Pathfinder...but ultimately, I think Pathfinder was the bigger factor.

 

[PMárk]

I've already explained what I meant. When playing Pathfinder, my players would randomly pick up books (or just find options on the PFSRD) that I was unfamiliar with, and that would affect my game. They'd have feats or class options that I had no idea about. I would then feel like I had to keep up with all the books in order to understand what options my players may bring to the table. Because if one of them spent money on a book, the last thing I'd want to do is tell them they can't use it. But ultimately, it was too much for me to be able to keep track of even if I had the books. So 5E has proven to be a great approach for me.

I have a very simple rule for that: conversing with the GM before/after making the character and leveling up. I expect the same from my players when GMing.

My opinion is that the 3e/PF system is pretty modular. A couple of feats and/or spells per character, or an archetype is not so much a material the GM couldn't keep up with, IMO.

If the specific thing the player want to use uses a specific subsystem my game doesn't using, like for example sanity-specific things from PF's Horror adventures when the game isn't using the sanity rules, in that case it is simply off-limit, because without the additional system the whole thing is moot.

But taking a feat from here, a spell from there, I don't see it as big a problem, especially with the PRD. In the recent 3.5 underdark game I'm playing in i made my character from literally 5 books and the GM had zero problems with that and he's a very casual one, with many other responsibilities and a little child etc. I was just upfront with my character and shared with him where i got this and that from. It's not even a low-level game, we're 7th level without taking into account the more powerful races.