Beyond Essentials... Ampersand Article

[Neuroglyph]

I notice a lot of folks weighing in on the errata changes, but not much was said about the big announcement about monster stat blocks being changed.

And the changes are fairly dramatic - organizing powers by action type or as a trait seems fairly logical to me, and it certainly reads easier than the old stats.

But after publishing two monster manuals, and dozens of modules, sourcebooks, and campaign books, isn't this just a bit crazy to be making a drastic change now? I really don't feel like replacing books just to have updated stats...

And I certainly hope that Monster Builder gets the same face-lift and starts displaying the stat blocks in the new way as well. Obviously they are still showing in the old format until the change becomes official as of May. But I really hope the program follows suit, so at least we have correct stat blocks on all pre-May 2010 monsters.

 

[Nytmare]

God damnit, and I just finished programing my stupid freaking DM control panel to parse Adventure Tool monster stat blocks...

The same thing happens to me every time I break it open to reteach it how to read Character Builder files too.

 

[Neuroglyph]

God damnit, and I just finished programing my stupid freaking DM control panel to parse Adventure Tool monster stat blocks...

The same thing happens to me every time I break it open to reteach it how to read Character Builder files too.

*ducks*

Do not kill the messenger... please!

Sorry about your program tho... that really bytes.

 

[Nytmare]

ALL YOUR FAULT.

I've learned not to upgrade things on my main computer till I figure out what all of the changes are. The first time I couldn't figure out what it was that I could have broken.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

lol. I think he needs a dose of XSLT and some perl-fu

The monster stat blocks are not THAT big a deal. It looks like the new ones are a good bit more readable and that's appreciated, but they don't affect the rules in any way. Its just MM3 will be better laid out is all. Update some HTML templates and things will be mostly back to normal except nicer looking. I know I won't be changing over all my Maptool macros right off. Maybe eventually though.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I notice a lot of folks weighing in on the errata changes, but not much was said about the big announcement about monster stat blocks being changed.

And the changes are fairly dramatic - organizing powers by action type or as a trait seems fairly logical to me, and it certainly reads easier than the old stats.

But after publishing two monster manuals, and dozens of modules, sourcebooks, and campaign books, isn't this just a bit crazy to be making a drastic change now? I really don't feel like replacing books just to have updated stats...

And I certainly hope that Monster Builder gets the same face-lift and starts displaying the stat blocks in the new way as well. Obviously they are still showing in the old format until the change becomes official as of May. But I really hope the program follows suit, so at least we have correct stat blocks on all pre-May 2010 monsters.

They have been experimenting with their stat blocks in 3rd Edition, too. I don't see this as problematic if the changes result in better layouts.

 

[MrBeens]

I notice a lot of folks weighing in on the errata changes, but not much was said about the big announcement about monster stat blocks being changed.

And the changes are fairly dramatic - organizing powers by action type or as a trait seems fairly logical to me, and it certainly reads easier than the old stats.

But after publishing two monster manuals, and dozens of modules, sourcebooks, and campaign books, isn't this just a bit crazy to be making a drastic change now? I really don't feel like replacing books just to have updated stats...

And I certainly hope that Monster Builder gets the same face-lift and starts displaying the stat blocks in the new way as well. Obviously they are still showing in the old format until the change becomes official as of May. But I really hope the program follows suit, so at least we have correct stat blocks on all pre-May 2010 monsters.

It's just a layout change, you won't need to buy new books.

 

[Turtlejay]

It feels like 2010 is going to be the year of stealth 4.5e. Tweaks to statblocks, new versions of rulebooks with updated info, a new boxed set. I think its a good thing. It also makes me less inclined to buy the crunch heavy books ( Power books, AV's) as the DDI has all the important parts already, and more inclined to buy the fluff books (Planar books, Draconomicons, Race books) since fluff doesn't get erratad. Not that I'm a huge purchaser of books anyways, but I wonder if other folks feel the same way.

Jay

 

[DEFCON 1]

I've always gone under the assumption that the DDI was priced the way it was to be a full-on replacement for the books for a certain facet of the D&D gaming population. That WotC's money-people have figured out that for a certain segment of the populace, buying the books is all they need and that is what they'll do, and another segent will buy DDI and get their books that way... as though DDI (via the CharBuilder, MonstBuilder and Compendium) was the functional equivelant of the books in PDF form. And they've worked out the print-runs and pricing on everything such that they can run their business via these two revenue streams.

It's the small segment of the populace that buy both the books and the DDI subscription that are the very happy accident, and one that I would assume they don't base their numbers around. That way, when they do get this "double-dip"... it's extra unexpected money in the coffers rather than this path being an intregal part of the company's financials.