D&D 5E D&D Studio Blog - Sage Advice - Creature Evolutions

There's a new D&D Studio Blog - Jeremy's posted about "Creature Evolutions": Creature Evolutions | Dungeons & Dragons

Some quick takeaways:

• Some creatures that were formerly humanoids will, going forward, be monstrosities, fey, or something else. ("Humanoid" is reserved for creatures with similar "moral and cultural range" to humans.)
• Alignment got put in a "time out".
• They've started using class tags so that DMs know that a particular NPC can attune to magic items limited to a particular class.
• Bonus actions get their own section in the stat block now.
• They've merged the Innate Spellcasting and Spellcasting traits and have gotten rid of spell slots.

Also some stuff we've already guessed based on the stat blocks and playable races in Wild Beyond the Witchlight.

There's also some Sage Advice on "rabbit hops" for harengon PCs.

 

[Charlaquin]

Well, a bit of googling turned up this:

D&D 4E Back to Press

Well Before Street Date

icv2.com

Additionally, there is this:

D&D 3E/3.5 - 4E vs 3E Sales Figures: The Facts

Interesting numbers here: http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/12654.html Basically, it looks like the print run for 4e was half again as much as 3.5E and it's already sold out. Back to the printers you go! Not sure how it would compare to 3E's first print run, to be honest. Edit: The sales...

www.enworld.org

Yep.

Make no mistake, they wouldn’t have killed 4e so early if it hadn’t been underperforming. But in this case, “underperforming” meant “not selling as well as it could be.” The brand was continuing to grow, as it always has done, the problem was that its potential for continued growth was stunted due to the competition from Pathfinder.

 

[Xethreau]

Yep.

Make no mistake, they wouldn’t have killed 4e so early if it hadn’t been underperforming. But in this case, “underperforming” meant “not selling as well as it could be.” The brand was continuing to grow, as it always has done, the problem was that its potential for continued growth was stunted due to the competition from Pathfinder.

There was also the terribly, terribly botched launch of digital tools. :|

 

[Charlaquin]

There was also the terribly, terribly botched launch of digital tools. :|

Yeah, that was definitely unfortunate. Though, I don’t know if they would ultimately have made the difference. It certainly didn’t help, but ultimately I think the Pathfinder situation would still have been untenable.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Oh, you know. Displacer beasts used to have been from a crashed spaceship up on the Barrier Peaks, which is clearly a superior origin then them being from the Feywild. Stuff like that.

Oh, they're originally from that adventure? That's cool, I didn't know that. I personally prefer them with the Feywild origin, especially with 5e's lore of them being used as domesticated hunting animals by the Unseelie Court to kill Pegasi, Blink Dogs, and similar fey creatures.

 

[Hussar]

Yep.

Make no mistake, they wouldn’t have killed 4e so early if it hadn’t been underperforming. But in this case, “underperforming” meant “not selling as well as it could be.” The brand was continuing to grow, as it always has done, the problem was that its potential for continued growth was stunted due to the competition from Pathfinder.

Everyone tends to forget that for the Hasbro overlords, success was that 50 million dollar mark. They wanted to make D&D a core brand. Which mean that 4e would have had to hit about 2017 5e sales marks to reach that goal. Or somewhere in that neighbourhood. In other words, for D&D to become a core brand, 4e would have had to have been wildly more successful than it was. Not that that means that 4e was unsuccessful. It was unsuccessful at achieving a sales target that was larger than the entire value of the industry, never minding D&D.

That's why we got 5e as soon as we did. Not because 4e was this massive failure in the market, but, because the goals set for success were, by the standards of the time, completely unattainable.

 

[teitan]

Do we know 4E outsold 3E? Honest question, because I don't remember ever seeing that stated as verified fact.

With DDI it made more money that’s for sure. 4e’s “failure” was with Hasbro’s bean counters. The product was expected to reach a certain level, 50 million, to become a core brand alongside Transformers and MLP. The team was handicapped though because of the failure of the VTT to manifest, the GSL not being as extensive and usable as the OGL, that licensed media, unlike Tformers and MLP, didn’t count towards that bottom line of 50 million. When the product failed to reach that level, after being given a massive budget off of 3.5’s success, the budget was slashed. It didn’t help that it was confusing on where to start playing the game and it didn’t really hit its stride until Essentials. I think had they let 3.5 lie a while longer and been given the OGL and then launched the more refined form of 4e that was essentials, we would probably have just gotten 5e in the last two years and a very different game.

 

[Oofta]

Well, a bit of googling turned up this:

D&D 4E Back to Press

Well Before Street Date

icv2.com

Additionally, there is this:

D&D 3E/3.5 - 4E vs 3E Sales Figures: The Facts

Interesting numbers here: http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/12654.html Basically, it looks like the print run for 4e was half again as much as 3.5E and it's already sold out. Back to the printers you go! Not sure how it would compare to 3E's first print run, to be honest. Edit: The sales...

www.enworld.org

Thanks for the info.

My impression always was that for editions 2-4, sales spiked and then started dropping off. Because of a multitude of factors, 5E just continues to grow which is pretty phenomenal. Oh, and I also agree that 4E was pushed out prematurely. I know the power structure was never really meant to be used across the board as one example. Whether the game would have had better staying power is anybody's guess.

My only concern with the anniversary edition (or whatever it's going to be called) is that they're doing it just to generate sales because nothing can grow forever and the bean counters are just trying to cash in.

 

[HammerMan]

Well, a bit of googling turned up this:

D&D 4E Back to Press

Well Before Street Date

icv2.com

Additionally, there is this:

D&D 3E/3.5 - 4E vs 3E Sales Figures: The Facts

Interesting numbers here: http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/12654.html Basically, it looks like the print run for 4e was half again as much as 3.5E and it's already sold out. Back to the printers you go! Not sure how it would compare to 3E's first print run, to be honest. Edit: The sales...

www.enworld.org

thank you I was about to post half of this

 

[HammerMan]

Yep.

Make no mistake, they wouldn’t have killed 4e so early if it hadn’t been underperforming. But in this case, “underperforming” meant “not selling as well as it could be.” The brand was continuing to grow, as it always has done, the problem was that its potential for continued growth was stunted due to the competition from Pathfinder.

to put it another way
4e was a huge break out hit BUT they saw that another company was makeing money off the OGL, and they wanted THAT money too. so they reluanched in an attempt to make MORE money...

it worked... they are a buisness in buisness to make money not to make a game... the game is always secondary to the making of MORE mony... people just keep rewriting history to make it seem like 4e failed...

Imagine you had a job you liked (but didn't love) and it was a 35 min commute everyday that sometime became closer to an hour if traffic was bad, and they paid you $100,000 a year. No one would call you a failure, you are making good money... BUT now imagine some other company 10 minutes (2-3 exits) closer to you doing the same thing for $120,000 a year and slightly better benefits (like maybe cheaper insurance and matching 1% more on 401k). if you take the new job it doesn't mean the old one was bad, or a fail... just you found a more lucrative one. In this example after a few years you MIGHT even look back and think you LIKED that other job more becuse it had better people, or a nicer boss...but it still isn't wrong to want the more money.

 

[dave2008]

My only concern with the anniversary edition (or whatever it's going to be called) is that they're doing it just to generate sales because nothing can grow forever and the bean counters are just trying to cash in.

I am sure there is an aspect of that, but it also seems to me that they are taking an honest pass at cleaning things up. Now, will everyone agree that the things they change needed to be changed or that they changed it correctly? No, they will not. But with just the items they have already discussed in the monster stat blocks all seem like helpful improvements to me.