D&D 5E (2024) Lorwyn: First Light Released on D&D Beyond

The D&D/Magic The Gathering crossover book Lorywn: First Light has been released over on D&D Beyond.

Lorwyn-Shadowmoor is a MtG plane which switches between its night and day aspects ever 300 years. Lorwyn is the 'day' aspect and has strong fey influences and does not feature humans.

The digital-only release includes the Lorwyn Changeling (which differs from Eberron Changeling in interesting ways) and Rimekin (an ice-person) species, and two new elven lineages: Lorwyn elf and Shadowmoor elf. Feats are Shadowmoor Hexer and Child of the Sun (tied to Lorwyn Expert and Shadowmoor Expert backgrounds).

You can grab Lorwyn: First Light on D&D Beyond for $14.99.

Travel from the Forgotten Realms into an all-new fey realm with this Magic: The Gathering crossover!

Journey beyond the Forgotten Realms to the beloved plane of Lorwyn-Shadowmoor, where eternal sun shifts into eerie moonlight. Here, you’ll discover new Fey-inspired character options, a rich gazetteer of mystical locales, monstrous incarnations of nature, and ready-to-run adventures.

 

[mamba]

I was wondering if it was meatier than Astarion or Netheril. I think I got my answer.

no, it is not, I was more thinking along the lines of how useful the content is for you

 

[Reynard]

Well, yeah, this shows that small products are just not cost effective.

No, this shows that their pricing is indefensible. Without printing, costs are linear: fewer words, less art,less time editing, etc. I am a firm believer in RPGs costing what they cost so creators can make decentmoney, but a 12k word book costing half of what a 100k word book does is predatory.

 

[Yaarel]

As an aside, I'm glad to see WoTC using Bloodied in their monster designs again! The Noggle Wild Mage joins the Cultists of Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul in having abilities that activate when the monster is Bloodied, and the Scion of the Dead Three in Adventures in Faerûn has a feature which activates when the PC is Bloodied!

4e really did have alot of good ideas. I am glad to see the best of it in 5e.

 

[mamba]

Well, yeah, this shows that small products are just not cost effective.

in print…

 

[Charlaquin]

5e is written in plain English, not legalise jargon. That’s the design principle. Thus, there is no “right” or “wrong” way to word a rule. So long as the intent is clear, the rule is clear and correct.

This has never really been the case. It’s written to sound like plain English, but there’s a very specific and intentional way that the rules are written that does have technical meaning. One of the things that always bothers me about 3rd party material is that it almost never sounds like 5e material, because the publishers actually write in plain English, without the underlying technical voice 1st party content is written in. Or, at least, that has been the case previously. It seems like that may be starting to fall by the wayside. I would guess Jeremy Crawford had a significant hand in insuring the consistency of this technical voice.

 

[Yaarel]

basically, I see $0.10 to $0.20 as a reasonable price per page, which is where most PDFs land

@Parmandur mentioned Paizo selling 256 pages for $80. That felt expensive to me. This worked out to about 3 pages per dollar. I think my limit really is at least 5 pages, generally. 10 pages would be great.

Obviously we talking about high quality pages on a subject matter one cares about.

 

[Charlaquin]

you will have to decide that for yourself…

And here we have the problem with digital-only products. If this was a physical book, you could pick it up in a store and skim it to see if it was of interest. Or even buy it, read it, and return it if you didn’t like it. Or at least try to resell it if your LGS didn’t allow returns. But as-is, the only way to “decide for yourself” if it’s worth the money is to spend the money, at which point you’re SOL if you decide it wasn’t worth it. Given that state of affairs, you can’t blame someone for asking others’ opinions of if they thought it was worth it.

 

[Charlaquin]

at a minimum the intent clearly is not a broken Dash reaction that cannot be used / does nothing, so whatever the next best interpretation is should probably be the one to take

Yes, it’s very obvious that they meant for it to let you move up to your speed as a reaction. It’s not confusing or hard to fix, it’s just a troubling sign for the quality of WotC’s editing that a mistake like this made it to… well, “print” isn’t the right word, but to publication for sale.

 

[Charlaquin]

No, this shows that their pricing is indefensible. Without printing, costs are linear: fewer words, less art,less time editing, etc. I am a firm believer in RPGs costing what they cost so creators can make decentmoney, but a 12k word book costing half of what a 100k word book does is predatory.

Yet everyone thought I was crazy for calling this obviously predatory move like I saw it from the beginning.

 

[Reynard]

@Parmandur mentioned Paizo selling 256 pages for $80. That felt expensive to me. This worked out to about 3 pages per dollar. I think my limit really is at least 5 pages, generally. 10 pages would be great.

Obviously we talking about high quality pages on a subject matter one cares about.

That's a print book. Printing is more expensive than ever.