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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 2249874" data-attributes="member: 3586">I quite agree with Colonel Hardisson - 10 years was far too long to wait for the previous new editions.How long was there between oD&D and AD&D? Five years, and oD&D was being rapidly changed by each supplement it gained. AD&D pulled all the pieces together into a more coherent game.The gap between 1e and 2e is interesting because official development on AD&D pretty much stopped for the first few years of AD&D. Unearthed Arcana was the first supplement (1985) that actually changed things - and there were some significant changes in that book. Oriental Adventures brought the next set of big changes, and with the NWP expanded upon in the Dungeon and Wilderness Survival Guides, 2nd edition was suddenly required - although, to my mind, the major flaws in presentation of rules had meant a 2nd edition would have been very welcome several years earlier.2e revised 1e fairly successfully, although the books were purged of most of the good reading material, and some of the revision of the class abilities leaves much to be desired. Mind you, the actual game mechanics are much cleaner. Unfortunately, immediately thereafter started the Complete Books of *. Several significantly altered the game from the core books. Of course, once the Player's Option books came out, if you used them you were playing in a different edition, anyway! The Player's Option books, although eventually failing in several areas, do pull together the scattered threads of options that had been developed during the first five years of 2e. D&D had progressed from a game of limited player choices in the method of approach to one of a myriad of available choices.Pity that the game was now the plaything of min/maxers, powergamers and rules lawyers.The designers and developers of 3e sat down and tackled the problems that had become apparent in 2e. Choices for players and DMs were considered good, and so were kept, but the structure was dramatically revised so that there actually was a structure to the choices that could be made. Amazingly, the structures of race, class, combat and spell-use are very close to the original D&D.With 3.5e, holes in the design of 3e were patched. Several of these were significant from a design perspective - work on Savage Species had revealed many holes in 3e. The builder books (Sword and Fist, etc.) had also found holes in the game - or had been badly designed. Just because of the time frame, certain problematic areas couldn't be properly addressed in the revision. You may have seen reference to problems with Metamagic that needed to be fixed, but couldn't be because a great deal of playtesting needed to be done.Although there may well have been business reasons for the release of 3.5e, there were also some solid design reasons. For one thing, the prestige classes of the builder books could also be revised and made more balanced. That is, either less overpowered or actually useful in the first place. You can see in the early books, especially Sword and Fist, that 3e was still very new to the designers and many mistakes were made in design and development.I'm also sure that the redesign of the DMG also helped the release of the Environment books. (Sandstorm, etc.)So, 3.5e is the perfect game, right? No, not at all.Turn Undead and Metamagic still need to be addressed. Although design killed the problem with rampaging DCs (see Red Wizard and the Spell Focus feats), instead the problem was transferred to Caster Levels. This normally isn't a problem, but there are a couple of spells (see Holy Word) that become ridiculous with high caster levels.However, in the great scheme of things, these are minor issues, not needing immediate attention. Will 4e come along? Absolutely. In my opinion, it won't be as big a change as from 2e to 3e. Most of your 3.5e books will probably work with the new ediiton, although certain areas will be tinkered with. I actually think that 3e->3.5e is a pretty good idea of what 3.5e->4e will be like: some big changes, but mostly minor stuff.Issues discovered in play and development of new products will be addressed.And when can we expect this?At present, I think that 3.5e has enough product ideas to easily make it through 2006. Assuming the worst case scenario, December 2006 ends the current run of D&D products.During 2007, only a few 3.5e products are released, and design, development and playtesting of 4e gets underway.Then, in 2008, 4e gets released.However, if Wizards keeps on coming up with interesting ideas for D&D books, we might see that extended. Or, Wizards might decide that 2007 or 2008 is the right year for a new edition for reasons I haven't seen.Cheers!</blockquote>

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