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

[Reynard]

It's a strange feeling to be left behind by a hobby that you've supporting for 27+ years but that's life. C'e st la vie.

What gets me is the people that say "Good riddance". Hopefully, there will be enough of us for at least a few companies to support 3.x. After all, if there are enough 1E groups out there (mine included) to make publishing OSRIC compatible stuff viable for small companies and hobby publishers, then there should be plenty of incentive for some companies to continue to support d20, Revised.

 

[dagger]

I will buy the 3 core and the FR books to complete my collection. It is really going to have to blow me away, but we do play SAGA.

 

[Odhanan]

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.

I'm a huge fan of the Book of Nine Swords. I like some of the options presented in the Tome of Magic, even if I thought most of the realization was either too complex or out of whack balance-wise. I love all these things... as D&D supplements. NOT as core.

There's a huge difference between the two, IMO.

 

[Odhanan]

Denied.

>>>Access Override<<<
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LOADING...

 

[AllisterH]

re: Magic

I think this is the D&D designers actually looking at the problem of what mid to high level magic can do.

There were two ways to either go about this. Either increase the power of martial classes or nerf magic-users. Given the response by many who hated the "over the top nature" of ToB, the latter option seems like the only good choice.

 

[Emirikol]

If it's too anime/video gamey, I'll be disappointed. Otherwise I expect LOTS OF IMPROVEMENTS. I'll be disappointed if I'm purchasing 3.0 with a book cover change.

Not to threadjack, but: putting Anime-like art in the books is like http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=what+is+southwestern+art&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi in that it's unchanging and confined by rules that limit it's style. It's like out of date clothing. You put out of date clothing on a new model and you still have an out of date appearance. Anybody want to argue the artwork? Some of the artwork over the editions has been classic and timeless (Holiday) and some of it very dated and 80's looking (Elmore..only because he actually put "styles" in his artwork). Jeff Dee's stuff was clearly 70's with the bell-bottom boots and whatnot..speaking of out of date

There are out of date rules too. The game has evolved and probably because of two things: 1) all the house rules people have done,and 2) all of the 3rd party products that "bettered" the rules. To ignore that and continue to operate in an out of date way will more-quickly spell the end of our hobby.

jh

 

[scruffygrognard]

What gets me is the people that say "Good riddance". Hopefully, there will be enough of us for at least a few companies to support 3.x. After all, if there are enough 1E groups out there (mine included) to make publishing OSRIC compatible stuff viable for small companies and hobby publishers, then there should be plenty of incentive for some companies to continue to support d20, Revised.

I'm not saying good riddance to D&D. I just won't be buying 4th edition and materials that support it. 3.X will be alive and well for me. As I've posted elsewhere, I've been scoffing up 3.x materials like a man possessed, just so I'll have materials to use "down the line".

Should any publisher put out 3.X stuff that I find useful, I'll happily buy it. Sadly, it seems that WotC leads the way and I hate the path that they're on.

 

[Wardo]

Heh. A lot of the recent "Doom and Gloom" is based off of "Races and Classes". This is a dead tree product, finished weeks ago, before the PH was pushed back. Our only source is a paraphrase by a non-native English speaker. The book itself is handwavey and non-crunchy.

Won't someone please listen to this person!?!? Getting this worked up over a non English speaker's paraphrase of an out-of-date preview of the rules is ridiculous.

 

[Fifth Element]

3E to 4E is a bigger change than 1E to 2E, but it's not by any means a bigger change from 2E to 3E.

QFT. Were the drastic changes made from 2E to 3E "too many changes"? No, because we're all used to the 3E ways of doing things now.

When we finally see 4E as a whole, and are able to see the stuff that stayed the same alongside the stuff that changed, I don't think it will seem nearly as drastic as it may appear now.

2E to 3E was the big change. I don't see anything to suggest that the 4E changes will be as drastic as the 3E changes.

 

[Reynard]

2E to 3E was the big change. I don't see anything to suggest that the 4E changes will be as drastic as the 3E changes.

I certainly can't argue with your perception of the level of change, any more than you could argue with mine. I wonder, though, if perceptions about exactly how much is changing are related to whether someone is a "rules person" or a "fluff person". I think that rules changes are by and large and evolution of 3.5, and therefore probably about as significant as the 2e to 3e change, but there's a huge change in the fluff/flavor text/implied setting that has *never* been seen in a D&D edition change before. Usually this degree of fluff change is reserved for campaign settings, not the Core.