D&D 4E 4e - Too much change?

[Reynard]

It's only a lot of change if you've not been using the late 3e books, particularly Tome of Battle. If you are, it's practically no change at all.

This is probably true, and a fundamental aspect of why I won't be going on to 4E. A lot of the stuff in the last 2 years has been interesting in its own way, and some of it is worth integrating, but taken as a whole the "4E warmup" period has seen, for me, the worst 3.5 changes and additions.

But, that is also means I don't much matter to WotC, and nor should I. i gave up on new WotC books (for the most part) a couple years back because the new stuff wasn't doing it for me. So, while I am a player, I am not much of a consumer, so my "vote" doesn't really count. 4E is going to be what it is going to be not because I didn't buy books, but because other people did -- enough people, it'd seem, to decide that some of the nascent elements appearing in the second round of the Complete books or the PHBII and the DMGII, not to mention Bo9S, get to be "core" now. There wasn't much I could do about it when it was being decided, and there's not much i can do about it now.

I guess the only thing that concerns me is how alone am I in this. If polls here are to be taken as anything resembling the general outlook of the potential consumer base -- I know, i know -- then upward of 25% of current customers will not be future customers. that's a pretty big hit. Where are the replacements coming from? I am really interested to see what kind of marketting blitz WotC enacts when release gets closer, because ads on website banners and blog posts aren't going to cut it-- you're just marketting to the people who already know, and have probably already decided.

 

[Banshee16]

QFT.


d20 licence and logo is gone as of ... soon. The logo to be is Paizo's 3.5 OGL compliant logo. Maybe they're interested in licencing that logo *hopeful*

Does this mean that it will not be *possible* to buy 3.0 and 3.5 stuff with the D20 license, if it was published before the license disappeared? As in, "if there's a book still out there that you wanted, buy it now, before it's no longer allowed to be sold to you"?

Banshee

 

[Fifth Element]

Look at the change from core OD&D in 1974 to the 1e PHB 4 years later. Elves, dwarves and hobbits became races instead of classes. Seven new classes appeared - druid, paladin, ranger, illusionist, thief, assassin and monk. And the first prestige class, the bard. Several new races - gnomes, half-elves and half-orcs. These are far more extreme than the changes between 3e and 4e, which took place over 8 years, twice the time gap.

QFMFT. It's easy to see there being a lot of changes, if you are only looking at changes. If you also consider the things that are staying the same, the changes are not so drastic in perspective.

Part of this is WotC is far more likely to announce something that is changing, rather than staying the same. It gets more attention.

 

[Fifth Element]

If polls here are to be taken as anything resembling the general outlook of the potential consumer base -- I know, i know --

If you know, then you know that's a really dangerous thing to base anything on.

 

[Droogie]

My game only needs a small number of things to make it feel like D&D:

1: Classes, with the major roles represented. Check.
2: Levels. Check.
3: The classic races of previous editions (elves, dwarves, halflings). Check.
4: A quasi-medieval sword n' sorcery setting. Got it.
5: Dice. All the pretty, shiny d20s, d8s, d4s, etc. Check!

If they changed everything else, and the game was fun and easy to play, I'd play it.

 

[dmccoy1693]

In the long run most people are going to come around (so long as the game isn't borked in actual play).

For a while I thought this, but after hearing the wizard change, ... no. This, IMO, is the final nail in the coffin. The wizard is no longer a generalist but a video game character. I remember a wizard that sounded like this. It was in a classic video game, 4 player, the wizard threw spells, the fighter/barbarian type threw axes, there was something like a rogue and something else. Each one was in a different color. I think the rogue type was in green (maybe blue). Wish I could remember the video game's name. But yea everyone ran around in a dungeon and the view was from straight up.

 

[Banshee16]

i think the news we are getting, like the news we got back with 3e, is too disjointed and out-of-context for me to make a judgement about whether or not it will be good.

That is something we need ot remember - back with the 3e release, there were people saying pretty much the same thing - that there were too many changes for it to be D&D - who came to love the new game.

Which is not to say you will love 4e. It merely suggests that making final judgments before you can see the entire set of rules is perhaps not the most wise course. There is no need to decide now whether you'll like the new game, so why do so without complete information.

Well, in the lead up to 3E, I had two primary concerns....because I was actually really excited about a lot of the changes.

1-I was concerned about the focus on dungeoneering, as very few of my games have ever used dungeons. My games were usually in cities, castles, and outdoors....in woodlands, forests, on the decks of ships etc. I think the last true dungeon I ran was Undermountain, and I found it really, really boring. So, I was upset about that for 3E.

2-I had issues with what they were saying about multiclassing. Back in 1999, when all those articles were coming out about the new multiclassing system, I remember posting that it would work for everyone except those trying to split a spellcaster with a non-spellcaster. And that's exactly what happened.

I also remember being excited about the changes from 1st Ed. to 2nd. I wasn't happy about getting rid of the subraces, but we ended up getting those back in the end anyways. But I was happy about the higher level limits, and several other things.

Out of the 4 edition changes I've gone through (2E, 3.0, 3.5, and 4.0), this is the first time that I've disliked so much of what I'm hearing.

I *really* hope that they're simply doing a piss-poor job of marketing the new edition....otherwise, I don't think I'm going to make the changeover this time around.

Banshee

 

[Doug McCrae]

Wish I could remember the video game.

Gauntlet

 

[dmccoy1693]

Gauntlet

YEA!!!! THAT'S THE ONE!!! GOD I LOVED THAT GAME!!!

But yea, this description of a wizards kinda sounds like the Gauntlet Wizard.

 

[Banshee16]

For a while I thought this, but after hearing the wizard change, ... no. This, IMO, is the final nail in the coffin. The wizard is no longer a generalist but a video game character. I remember a wizard that sounded like this. It was in a classic video game, 4 player, the wizard threw spells, the fighter/barbarian type threw axes, there was something like a rogue and something else. Each one was in a different color. I think the rogue type was in green (maybe blue). Wish I could remember the video game. But yea everyone ran around in a dungeon and the view was from straight up.

Yes....that game was called "Gauntlet".

It does feel a little like what's going on here. They've figured that they have to dumb it down, and make it "easier" to get into, because they're losing players to WoW (among other things). But games like WoW have simplified roles like this less because it's a better way to have the game work, and more because it's *expensive* to develop a game on the computer with the kind of unlimited options you can get in an imagination-based tabletop game. And that's a core frustration I'm having with the change this time around. I don't like the fact that things are being siloed *this* much.

Banshee