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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5576763" data-attributes="member: 82106">No, there's no doubt that they took Essentials into account, obviously, but there's only so much change in direction that can be accomplished and it can't all be done at the drop of a hat. I'd also say that what we see in HoS is in large part material that was (as Klaus has clearly stated) originally commissioned and conceived pre-Essentials. Thus there was almost certainly a considerable amount of adaptation that was done. Heck, neither of us is over at WotC HQ, we don't know exactly how that works, but it is plain that it takes a good long time to generate a new book and they start working on them at least a solid year ahead.I did say that the Binder is nice thematically. It is. I also agree that ALL of Essentials style stuff is, quite obviously, treading old thematic ground. In that respect I'm not running around jumping for joy, but at least it is stylistically distinct. Honestly at some point what else are they going to do? There are only so many basic concepts out there. I'd have been happy with a different order of things myself, but I completely understand where WotC is coming from with what they're doing. Are they always putting out exactly what I want? No, not especially. However I accept that what they are doing has a rational set of reasons for it. I don't think the quality is actually less than the quality of material that they released in the first three PHBs either. I recall a lot of things that were slightly 'off' in those books mechanically. At least they aren't releasing new stuff that is overpowered, that would really suck. Vampire will want for some DDI support, and so will Binder, but neither one is 'broken', just in need of a couple tweaks. That's par for the course.I know you won't accept my position on item rarity either, but there it is. Rarity works fine. There certainly should be a whole bunch of rare items, and they can refine the common/uncommon division a bit, but largely what is common vs uncommon is a specific choice that needs to be controlled on a level of individual games. Given that they have envisaged most new players coming in through Essentials where they have considered each item's rarity more carefully I think the basic approach has made sense. I'd still expect them to revisit this with a replacement for the AV books at some point, but I'd rather they take their time with that and do a good job and come to a clear definition of what they want items to do in 4e than slap something out that won't cut it.</blockquote>

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