Forked Thread: What do you want to see from 4E Publishers?

[JVisgaitis]

Forked from: What do you want to see from 4E Publishers?

It's like WoTC just... gave up. Hell, when they made "new monsters", they just updated old standards like the duegar that should've been in the Monster Manual in the first place.

Hell, have Denizens come out as a PDF. Quick reuse of art and background text and tweaking of the old game mechanics.

So a lot of people are unhappy with the current monster situation and want to see some new monsters released for 4th Edition that fill a lot of the gaps in 4th Edition. This time around I've been playing D&D and not DMing as I usually do, so I don't know where those gaps are. So I have two questions:

1. Where are the gaps? I know a lot of people (myself included) are sick of fighting all of the common humanoids. What type of monsters would you want to see?
2. If we just redid Denizens of Avadnu with news stats and all of the same artwork, would you buy it?

 

[JVisgaitis]

How many sold copies of a PDF would make you feel right about a Denizens rerelease for 4e?

It depends on what it would cost to put it all together. A lot of the material is done, but a lot of the art in there is pretty outdated and subpar in my opinion. I'd have a hard time keeping all of the art as is. I don't know, if we broke even and generated a lot of buzz for our other products I'd be fine with it. We probably wouldn't do one big book though. I'd break it down by tiers and release 3 volumes.

 

[Blair Goatsblood]

Real world animals
Prehistoric animals
Giant animals (including invertebrates)
Low level monsters

 

[JoeGKushner]

Here's what I'd want to see in Denizens.

1. Encounter groups. Just updating the monster stats would be good, but not golden. Take the fraemwork that the Monster Manual started and applly that to the Denizens book. Instead of just having an update for a monster stat block of for an adithari, how about a adithari and a grand adithari, etc... Something that gets multiple encounter levels out of a beastie so to speak.

2. Player utility. All possible player races should have not only different write ups for encounters of different levels, but rules for using them as a player. Taking a cue from the Forgotten Realms Players Guide, lots of feats and unique things for those races too.

3. More Player Utility. Taking a page from the Adventurer's Vault, put all the mounts, unique weapons and equipment in it's own section.

4. Break out the multiple cratures like the xxyth and qeh'thral into several stat blocks of various levels.

 

[JVisgaitis]

Here's what I'd want to see in Denizens...

1 and 4 we would definitely do. I had a freelancer start doing conversions to 4e and he did just redo the statblock and I didn't like it. I'd create at least 2 stat blocks for each creature. The xxyth, qeh'thral, and others would get multiple stat blocks written up. We would probably treat them like dragons.

For 2, I don't feel that a monster book would be the proper place for something like that. I'd probably do the racial traits like they did in the Monster Manual. We have expanded player utility like that in the Player's Guide to Violet Dawn that we have been working on.

For 3, I guess we would do that. I wouldn't cut any of the race specific weapons or mounts from the book. Putting them in their own section would make the most sense.

How would you feel with 3 different volumes, one monster book for each tier of play?

 

[blargney the second]

Any chance of seeing minis for Denizens?

 

[JVisgaitis]

Any chance of seeing minis for Denizens?

Funny you should say that. Yes, but probably not in the way that you are thinking. Sorry I can't really elaborate further...

 

[JoeGKushner]

How would you feel with 3 different volumes, one monster book for each tier of play?

Hmmm... I don't know. That's an interesting way of approaching it to be honest. Don't think I've seen anything like that mentioned or tried yet.

 

[JVisgaitis]

Hmmm... I don't know. That's an interesting way of approaching it to be honest. Don't think I've seen anything like that mentioned or tried yet.

There would be several reasons to do it that way:

1. It makes sense for DMs. If you need more Paragon monsters, buy the Paragon volume.
2. We don't have to do such a big buy in. If we see the Heroic volume isn't selling, we don't have to bother with the Paragon one.
3. We can get this released a lot faster. 60 monsters is a lot easier to redo than 180.

I'm going to talk this over with my crew here. I'm starting to think that it's probably a good idea to at least do 1 volume. For now, I've added a poll to our website. If you want to see us release this, go and vote and I'll see if I can make it happen.