D&D 5E Wanting more content doesn't always equate to wanting tons of splat options so please stop.

[Mistwell]

Imagine how many sales WotC is missing out on by being sneeringly dismissive of the 21st century.

Come on, it is not as if they dont sell to high streets biggest online competitor who sells the rules for heavy discount already. Please dont give me that old sop about supporting retailers when you then turn around and stab them in the back like that.

Nothing I said had anything to do with WOTC's failure to sell PDFs. My point had literally zero to do with your response. You want to complain about WOTC not selling PDFs, be my guest. It's something I've noted on every single survey response in the comments section myself. But, I was commenting on how Paizo likely does consider retail sales an important part of their business.

 

[Corwin]

I'm not just talking about number of books but range of options.

Cool. Me too. And 5e accomplishes a great deal of the latter, without needing the former. Which is a win for its players. Unless "spending money" is more important to some players than "having options". I suppose that's possible.

There are characters you might have played in 1e or 3e or 4e the moment the PH dropped that aren't yet mechanically supported in 5e...

It could be argued that a great deal, majority even, of 1e, 2e and 4e mechanics aren't (and shouldn't be) supported in 5e. Because, mechanically, they are not the same. So why would anyone expect to see older things mechanically supported in the new thing? That's weird.

...in some cases, (such as MoonSongs complaints about the Sorcerer) in a fuzzy sense of not well-enough supported, in others not at all.

Anyone who expects to convert a character from a previous edition into 5e, without filtering the desired character through 5e's system expectations, baselines, and parameters, is delusional. I've managed to convert plenty of old characters and concepts into 5e. What I didn't do is look for the crunchy doodads. I took the ideas/concepts/flavor of the character and used the equivalent in 5e to bring it forward. 5e has failed to accomplish any attempt thus far. And I can't think of any that it can't do. Not unless you start getting into the quirky, late-edition splat offerings that stretched the bounds of the system they were even made for. Or the ultra-niche stuff that some peculiar settings made possible. But anything from the first few years of any edition? Not a thing I can think of that can't be done cleanly.

As far as numbers of books and pace of releases go, I think my defense of 5e is entirely valid.

I'm not attacking or defending 5e in any real sense. I'm just stating the fact, that 5e offers more character options in its first few years than previous editions managed. That's all.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It could be argued that a great deal, majority even, of 1e, 2e and 4e mechanics aren't (and shouldn't be) supported in 5e. Because, mechanically, they are not the same.

Sure, 5e doesn't need to 'support THAC0,' for instance. Not relevant to whether past player options make it into the current edition.

I can't think of any that it can't do.

When the PH1 dropped, for instance, there were no psionics, there's some in the pipeline, now, still 2 years in. When the 1e PH dropped, it had psionics.

You're right that there should be no expectation 5e psionics have the utterly weird, broken, anachronist-sounding form of 1e psionics, but they're not in the PH.

I'm just stating the fact, that 5e offers more character options in its first few years than previous editions managed. That's all.

I don't understand your commitment to this this statement. It's flatly false, and objectively falsifyable. It'd be a pain to actually dig up /all/ the material that was spewed out in the first 2+ years of each of the more prolific editions, and count up the tremendous number of classes, sub-classes, PrCs, builds, kits, backgrounds, themes & whatnot for comparison to the number of sub-classes in PH+SCAG, but if you want to force the issue...

...maybe someone else will take you up on it.


I'll just stand by the fact that where 5e sits is PH + 1 supplement with some player options, and that it compares favorably to any other prior edition at the same PH+1 point in its publication history. And, of course, that it still has years to go, at that rate, to reach its 'big tent' goals, but there's no reason to think it can't get there.

 

[Shasarak]

Nothing I said had anything to do with WOTC's failure to sell PDFs. My point had literally zero to do with your response. You want to complain about WOTC not selling PDFs, be my guest. It's something I've noted on every single survey response in the comments section myself. But, I was commenting on how Paizo likely does consider retail sales an important part of their business.

I dont know who has been saying that retail sales are not an important part of business. Maybe you quoted the wrong person?

 

[Corwin]

I don't understand your commitment to this this statement. It's flatly false, and objectively falsifyable. It'd be a pain to actually dig up /all/ the material that was spewed out in the first 2+ years of each of the more prolific editions, and count up the tremendous number of classes, sub-classes, PrCs, builds, kits, backgrounds, themes & whatnot for comparison to the number of sub-classes in PH+SCAG, but if you want to force the issue...

Nothing to force. And you call it "false", even "objectively falsifyable". Yet you know I'm right. That's as strange a statement as I've seen.

...maybe someone else will take you up on it.

You mean take *you* up on it. Since you are asking for someone to do the checking for you. I'm content to know, having experienced every edition of D&D, that there are more options and archetypes available to me in 5e than in the beginnings of any of those that came before. Between the races, classes, sublasses, and backgrounds, the number of unique character "builds" is truly staggering.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm content to know, having experienced every edition of D&D, that there are more options and archetypes available to me in 5e than in the beginnings of any of those that came before.

I've already given you the example of psionics. In the 1e PH1, missing from the 5e PH.

Maybe you think you can count 'number of options' creatively enough for there to be 'more,' but there are definitively options that are missing.


(Psionics is a particularly good example, because it's in the pipeline, illustrating that the missing options are going to be added back in, in 5e's own good time.)

 

[Sacrosanct]

When the 1e PH dropped, it had psionics..

If you want to call it that, sure. It also had the bard class. But both were shoehorned at the end of the book as an afterthought, and were so god awful that they needed to be ejected into space. Both things were extremely difficult to make happen for your PC, and if you did manage to qualify for psionics, it was a giant PitA to use. The DMG also had rules for guns and sci-fi. So just because 1e PHB had them, doesn't make it a good idea

 

[Sacrosanct]

I've already given you the example of psionics. In the 1e PH1, missing from the 5e PH.

Maybe you think you can count 'number of options' creatively enough for there to be 'more,' but there are definitively options that are missing.


(Psionics is a particularly good example, because it's in the pipeline, illustrating that the missing options are going to be added back in, in 5e's own good time.)

Those aren't mutually exclusive. Just because core 5e doesn't have the psionist, doesn't mean that 5e also can't have more options. The bottom line is 5e does have more options than 1e did. More races, more classes/subclasses, etc.

 

[Tony Vargas]

But both were shoehorned at the end of the book as an afterthought, and were so god awful that they needed to be ejected into space. Both things were extremely difficult to make happen for your PC, and if you did manage to qualify for psionics, it was a giant PitA to use. So just because 1e PHB had them, doesn't make it a good idea

Well, psionics have made it into every other edition, and are in the pipeline to be added to 5e, so they can't've been that bad an idea...

Those aren't mutually exclusive. Just because core 5e doesn't have the psionist, doesn't mean that 5e also can't have more options.

True. As an answer to the objection that 5e needs to come through with missing player options, saying it has 'more,' if taken literally, could still be lacking, even were it true.

 

[Corwin]

I've already given you the example of psionics. In the 1e PH1, missing from the 5e PH.

You will never see the 1e style psionics system in 5e. I hope not, anyway.

Maybe you think you can count 'number of options' creatively enough for there to be 'more,' but there are definitively options that are missing.

Huh? I *have* been saying number.

(Psionics is a particularly good example, because it's in the pipeline, illustrating that the missing options are going to be added back in, in 5e's own good time.)[/QUOTE]
<shrug> GOO warlocks have psionic powers.

But even then, we've been talking about the breadth of choices to make at character creation. 1e psionics had nothing to do with any of that. So I'm not sure why you even keep trying to insert it into the discussion. You might as well be complaining that percentile strength is missing, because that's on the same level as 1e psionics. It was a die roll made to see if you tacked something on to the end of your character.