Essential dailies

[ggroy]

I think it'd be neat if that were the case; I'd love to see the power sources have more impact on the mechanics and flavor of the classes.

(If I were designing the dreaded 5E, I might be tempted to have different power/class feature advancement rates/charts for each power source, but have all the classes within the source use the same one.)

But as I said, I couldn't say for sure one way or the other.

*** Top Secret Memo ***

Mouseferatu has been secretly contracted by WotC to design 5E D&D over the last two years.

*** (end of memo) ***

 

[drothgery]

I think it'd be neat if that were the case; I'd love to see the power sources have more impact on the mechanics and flavor of the classes.

Hmm... I was just speculating along those lines because it seems like martial dailies are one of the concepts in 4e that a lot of people have trouble with conceptually, and Mearls has all but came out and said some of the Essentials classes will not have dailies. I certainly can't see wizards without dailies, but fighters or rogues or rangers (and there doesn't seem to be an Essential Warlord so far) are another matter.

 

[jbear]

Well, most of the martial daily powers i prefer are stances, as opposed to one shot high damaging powers. I doubt we're going to see encounter stances, so I will probably continue to prefer my dailies over encounter build only options.

 

[Pseudopsyche]

The real question I have with Essentials is will I be able to legally mix and match powers from an Essential class and its PHB1 equivalent?

Can an Essentials wizard choose from the same list of powers that the PHB1 wizard does and vice versa?

I would wager yes. It would just be too silly to create a whole other dimension of categorization for powers.

The new powers may have some keywords or riders that synergize best with the Essentials builds, but my guess is that they'll be available as options to existing builds, in the same way that existing PCs can take powers intended for new builds in a Power book. Perhaps some will be more specific, such as the Ranger powers with the Beast keyword in Martial Power.

If a build does remove dailies, I suspect the compensating boost will be external to the individual powers: some kind of class feature.

 

[Solvarn]

Less emphasis on 5E?

I think it'd be neat if that were the case; I'd love to see the power sources have more impact on the mechanics and flavor of the classes.

(If I were designing the dreaded 5E, I might be tempted to have different power/class feature advancement rates/charts for each power source, but have all the classes within the source use the same one.)

But as I said, I couldn't say for sure one way or the other.

I can't speak for other gamers, but I know that with 4E my investment in books and materials has been significantly less than in previous editions due to Insider. A new edition wouldn't really put me out at all as long as they maintain the same subscription scheme.

This being the case it makes me wonder if producing new corebooks will be as instantly profitable as it has been in the past. Will they get as many people purchasing initially, or will they have a bunch of Insider people just downloading the Character Builder?

 

[Shroomy]

Well, most of the martial daily powers i prefer are stances, as opposed to one shot high damaging powers. I doubt we're going to see encounter stances, so I will probably continue to prefer my dailies over encounter build only options.

There are already encounter stances. They came out in Dragon a few months ago.

 

[Echohawk]

I can't speak for other gamers, but I know that with 4E my investment in books and materials has been significantly less than in previous editions due to Insider. A new edition wouldn't really put me out at all as long as they maintain the same subscription scheme.

This is a bit of a threadjack, but I've been keeping half an eye on the DDI group numbers on the WotC forums and here's what I've observed (or theorized) :

• There are currently at least ~36000 DDI subscribers, working on the basis that there are that number of members of the WotC community DDI group, and you need to be a DDI subscriber to be part of that group. (Obviously, there are a whole bunch of people who are not registered members of WotC's community forums, but who are DDI subscribers, hence the "at least" part.)
• Six months ago that number was ~24000, so we have seen an average climb of about 2000 per month since February.
• The current minimum subscription fee per month is US$6, so we're looking at at least US$2.6 million in income for DDI per annum at the moment. Sadly, I have no idea what to compare that to as far as book sale revenues goes.

It would be very interesting to know if there is any correlation between DDI subscriptions and book sales, but I'm not sure even WotC can measure that with any degree of confidence.

And as a contrary anecdote, the DDI has increased the purchases for our group. Those with access to the Character Builder tend to want hard copies of books containing the options in the CB, mostly for browsing purposes.