B09S displaced Fey-book or Giant-book

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It's pretty cheap, compared to most products, which helps.

Your preview, sir.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Here's hoping a Giant book is on the cards sometime in the near future. I'd love to see one of those.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Razz]

Well, in the interests of accuracy, I'd say go back and listen to the show again. Perkins was basically pulling off the top of his head.

"Oh, probably something like...a book of feay, a giantnomicon...something like that...."

Grain of salt.

But of all the "big ideas" they had ready to go, why did he particularly mention those two?

If you listen carefully, he specifically says some ideas are so awesome that they rip a project off of a time slot in order to put in the "super awesome" project: in this case, Tome of Battle was that "super awesome" project and it completely replaced a book slated to be due that month instead.

When asked which book it was, he said either a Fey or Giant book...something along those lines. Point was, they probably have such books in the works but now we're stuck waiting longer for it.

Hopefully, BOTH are 2008 products. I've been wanting a Fey and Giant book to be released almost forever.

 

[Nellisir]

With the quality of some of the other fey books I would not call them generalized. It is actually Wizard that seems to make things a bit more general to fit into the many aspects of D&D.

My experience also.

 

[Nyeshet]

Yeah but I'd rather have a "core" D&D fey-book as opposed to a generalized one from a 3rdf party publisher. I'd like to see how WotC handles a Feynomicon.

Poorly.


Well, you did ask . . .


The problem with WotC doing a fey book is that they have painted themselves into a corner with the various MMs out already. Many creatures long considered fey in traditions, legends, and myths are not fey in the MMs. If they re-engineer these creatures they will have to make them fey type, meaning potentially major changes to the creatures (in hp, bab, good/poor saves, skill pts, etc). WotC is very unlikely to do this - meaning that they would likely just deal with the fey creatures already present, add a few more not yet stat'ed out (few that they are), and likely focus much of the book on the light and dark courts of fey and perhaps have a few sidebars suggesting a fey template or subtype that can be applied by a DM to the various fey creatures they do not wish to go to the to convert.

All in all, such would come across as lacking, overly focused on a few areas of little interest to me, and rather jumbled in general.

I have most of the non-WotC books on fey. I have no intention of wasting money on a WotC version that cannot begin to address the problems already existent in the [creature] system, let alone do a good job on addressing the complexities of the fey.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Yep, some of the 3rd-party books have real nice fluff, but virtually none seem to get the crunch aspect of D&D, and that's what interests a lot of folks.

With the guys I'm talking about from personal experience, its not about the crunch/fluff distinction or the quality of the product. For them its all about it simply not being WotC. Even "Official" stuff from Paizo or licensees like KenzerCo gets tossed unless its tied into a setting the DM is using (like Ravenloft or Dragonlance).

IOW- if it ain't WotC, it ain't gettin' used, period, don't even ask.

 

[jmucchiello]

IOW- if it ain't WotC, it ain't gettin' used, period, don't even ask.

And if you call them on being narrowminded what happens?

 

[Aaron L]

And if you call them on being narrowminded what happens?

Then you get into an argument with a really good friend over a game that you'd rather not have?

My DM, who is a really good friend that I've only recently started speaking to again, uses only WotC stuff that he owns. Since I've been gaming again I've been truly amazed that he let me play a Duskblade and a Psychic Warrior. Before he was core books only, and all the books I had bought were useless to me except as reading material.

You have to realize that a LARGE segment of the gamer base uses ONLY WotC material. Most gamers DO NOT frequent ENWorld or any other online site, and simply regard third party material as meaningless. Which includes everyone I play with, regardless of what I tell them or show them.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The problem with WotC doing a fey book is that they have painted themselves into a corner with the various MMs out already. Many creatures long considered fey in traditions, legends, and myths are not fey in the MMs. If they re-engineer these creatures they will have to make them fey type, meaning potentially major changes to the creatures (in hp, bab, good/poor saves, skill pts, etc). WotC is very unlikely to do this - meaning that they would likely just deal with the fey creatures already present, add a few more not yet stat'ed out (few that they are), and likely focus much of the book on the light and dark courts of fey and perhaps have a few sidebars suggesting a fey template or subtype that can be applied by a DM to the various fey creatures they do not wish to go to the to convert.

All in all, such would come across as lacking, overly focused on a few areas of little interest to me, and rather jumbled in general.

I have most of the non-WotC books on fey. I have no intention of wasting money on a WotC version that cannot begin to address the problems already existent in the [creature] system, let alone do a good job on addressing the complexities of the fey.

The latest D&D podcast -- which was a pretty good one -- addresses this very point. I don't remember which of the two folks on it brought it up, but they said that, if they had to do it over again, the whole CR and creature type system would have been built the other way around. Instead of setting up hit dice and skill points and so on based on various types and then try to work all that out into a sensible CR system, they would have started with the CR system and balanced monster creation around it. It sounded, essentially, like they were talking about creating monster classes based on type and balancing them at every level against one another, with each level of a monster type being the CR score.

A top-to-bottom reevaluation of monsters like this would hopefully sweep a few monsters into more rational categories along the way. I'm not sure that goblins will ever not be humanoids in D&D (damn you, JRRT!), but there are certainly things like the will o wisp that could stand reclassification.

 

[Echohawk]

there are certainly things like the will o wisp that could stand reclassification.

And the roper, which should definitely be an aberration and not a magical beast.