Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 5490472" data-attributes="member: 7006">Now I didn't get the impression "We're not going to support less popular classes" at all.What I got was "We haven't gotten very many worthwhile articles and/or writers for these things."Here's what I took away from letter #2 and what it sounds like WotC would like to receive in order to accomplish it.The letter says they want articles that take existing crunch and use it in new ways, rather than adding new crunch.  This is certainly understandable... because every new Class Acts article that focuses on a new organization or that puts together a race/class combo (like last months's Bards of Wolfstone or the previous month's Sword Guard of Astrazalian) usually consists of several new powers, several new feats and/or a paragon path.But the thing the article does not include are example of existing powers or existing feats that a person in this organization would also usually take to help fill out this character.  Now my guess the reason for this is word count.  WotC doesn't have the money to pay for the article to have both things.  So if it comes to "new and hopefully interesting crunch" versus "a list of crunch you already own"... the impression is that the former is more worthwhile to people subscribing and more of a reason to keep DDI.  After all... why subscribe to DDI if all you're getting from it is lists of things you already own and could put together yourself?However, my impression from Steve's answer to question #2 is that an article such as that would be useful and printable... assuming they got some good writers to actually put those proposals together.So for example... an article that recreated the thief's 'Thug' kit from 2E's Complete Thief's Handbook.  If you wanted to make a character that was the muscle for a thieves guild.  It's a pretty standard archetype and certainly doable using 4E.The article would then talk about what being the hired muscle for a thieves guild entails, the types of person who would become a Thug, and the build options to create this 'kit'.  You start with the Brutal Scoundrel or Ruthless Ruffian rogue tactic... you list several Backgrounds the Thug might have, the skills a Thug would most likely lean towards, several rogue powers at each level that the Thug could take (with fluff reasons why they would be chosen), a list of feats that lend itself to building a Thug, and finally the two or three paragon paths that emphasize his Thuggishness.  Voila!  An article that highlights a specific character concept without having to generate all-new crunch.  And this kind of thing could be done across the board.  Take any 2E kit from any of the Complete X Handbooks and write articles about creating these archetypes using existing crunch.***I think the biggest stumbling block for this kind of article though... is making sure that the writer is good enough and makes the fluff to explain all the choices interesting enough that a person doesn't read it and immediately say "Well, duh!  I could have come up with that!  You're not telling me anything I don't already know!  Why am I paying for this crap?!?"  Because god knows we'd certainly get plenty of people who would make that complaint unless the info given was just so cool or used in such a creative way that they'd forget to get mad.And finding those writers who want to take on this kind of challenge is probably not that easy.</blockquote>

Verification