Loss of Ki - More Harm Than Good?

[DEFCON 1]

I've posted in several other threads here on ENWorld where the discussion has been about WotC's current direction of D&D... the release of Essentials, the upcoming release of Heroes of Shadow, what was supposed to be the release of Heroes of Sword And Spell. As I've consider these things, it's made me think about how things originally were "going to be." And it's made me wonder that perhaps WotC had made a mistake (now looking back on it) with one simple change that might have actually screwed up their sales in the longer term.

Anyone who reads me here on ENworld knows that I tend to find the most obvious middle ground when it comes to WotC's decisions, so for me to actually come up with a criticism like this I'm sure is going to surprise some people. (And let me also state right now that this opinion of mine might be very tainted by my own opinion of what I considered to be the lackluster product I will be discussing... which means that those of you who really liked the product will probably think I'm full of crap and that my dissertation is ridiculous. Which I freely admit is quite possible.)

***

When the first round of books were released for 4E... it was stated quite clearly that the intention was to release new Player's Handbooks each and every year... adding new classes to all-new power sources like Primal, Elemental, Shadow, and Ki. The first PH in the summer of 08 gave us 4 Martial classes, and 2 Divine and Arcane. The second PH in the late winter of 09 gave us 2 more Divine and Arcane, as well as 4 Primal. By this point everything was good. By filling out the Martial source off the top... they were able to release Martial Power in the fall of 08... Arcane Power was able to be released shortly after the Arcane source was filled out following PH2 in 09... and then Divine Power and Primal Power were sprinkled in that summer and fall. WotC's schedule looked good through the end of 09 for most of the big books they knew they could release to pretty good sales.

The first four power sources were taken care of by having full PH and splatbook support (except for Eberron's Artificer class-- but we all figured a third build would appear in Dragon anyway so it wasn't that big of a deal). There was really nothing "missing" per se with those four power sources. They were good. Some even got a little extra from things like MP2 and the occasional Class Acts column.

However, it was the decisions made for PH3 that I believe might've been the stumble that cost them in the long run.

Everybody all around pretty much expected PH3 to match the format of the previous two PHs. A 4 class power source to take care of quickly... and then either another full 4 class power source to match, or perhaps 2 classes from two of the remaining power sources. Everyone assumed the Psionic source once Eberron was released and Dark Sun was announced as they both had strong psionic ties. And by getting the Psionic source taken care of in early '10... Psionic Power could be released several months later to help with the publishing schedule.

But things got changed. And in many ways, I think got screwed up for the worse. The Ki power source was announced to be discontinued because they couldn't find a good story hook or unifying theme to bring the classes of the Ki source together. As a result... the keystone to the Ki source, the Monk, was shoehorned into the Psionic power source, and two "new" classes (the Runepriest and Seeker) were created and given to the Divine and Primal sources respectively.

Nevermind the fact that I think practically nobody was clamoring for new Divine or Primal classes...

Nevermind the fact that for a supposed Divine class, the Runepriest did not share the one unifying thing that made all Divine classes unique... the Channel Divinity Feature...

Nevermind the fact that the Monk did not share the one unifying thing that made Psionic classes unique... the power point resource...

Nevermind the fact that to get additional support to the Runepriest and Seeker that WotC would now probably need to produce a Divine Power 2 and Primal Power 2...

And nevermind the fact that if they weren't going to produce DP2 or PP2, the one product they would have produced (Ki Power) was now no longer able to be on the schedule for a later summer / early fall release and help bridge the publishing gap.

***

Do I think that what they did with Player's Handbook 3 was a mistake? Yes I do. Half the classes were fine... the three "real" psionic classes. (I would step in here and say I actually preferred the original class name 'Empath' rather than Ardent though, but that's just personal nitpicking on my part). However, the other three classes did very little in the long run. They had no themes together, they fit no themes with their respective sources, and the most interesting thing about any of them was the 'Full Discipline' mechanic for the Monk... but we didn't get a chance to see that mechanic used elsewhere in any other Ki classes. They really were three islands unto themselves. And in my opinion they did not help inspire players enough to actually go out and BUY Player's Handbook 3.

It's at this point that I would also comment that with 20/20 vision we can look back and say that they probably shot themselves in the foot with their choices of new races to include too... as the wilden and shardmind are probably two of the most 'meh' races I've heard talked about here on these boards... but fans would have probably given that a pass if a second new power source besides Psionic had been released and gotten players excited to see the upcoming stories about it, both in Dragon articles and the upcoming Power book.

Unfortunately though... their decision to remove Ki made the third PH less interesting to people I think, and gave us nothing to "look forward to" later on in '10. And had there actually been THREE new sources in PH3 (4 Psionic, 2 Ki, 2 Shadow)? Excitement for the other halves of the Ki and Shadow sources (plus the arrival of the Elemental source) probably would have carried people's excitement through the entirety of '10... even through and past all the Essentials releases had they still gone through... right up until the release of Player's Handbook 4 which would have been happening in about a month. I'm of the opinion that many people's disappointments with the state of the game right now would not be as strong if PH4 was on the horizon.

***

The big question of course though is whether 4 Ki classes (or 2 Ki and 2 Shadow) would have made PH3 a more memorable and worthwhile product over what they did decide to do. Personally, I'd say yes. Regardless of whatever story focus they would have put together to justify the Ki source's existence... it could in no way be worse than the three stories that tenuously connected the Monk to Psionic, Runepriest to Divine, and Seeker to Primal. (Not to mention of course the Assassin's release in Dragon, which I will go down to my grave believing was going and supposed to be the Ninja before Ki went up in smoke). Just having the Full Discipline mechanic over 2 or 4 classes would have been cool to see in itself.

In the end... WotC lost a fourth Player's Handbook, lost two or more Power books, lost the impetus to release Kara-Tur and/or Ravenloft campaign settings, and most importantly just lost player's excitement for upcoming products. How many months did we spend trying to divine what Mike Mearls meant when he said for PH2 the classes were going to be 'A, B, B, D, I, S, S, W'? Countless. And how much speculation and excitement was there when we were trying to figure out the power sources to be released in PH3? Again, countless. But what excitement do we have now? Barely any. Sure, Heroes of Shadow occasionally drops some info that makes us go 'huh... that sounds cool'... but it certainly hasn't inspired the same fanaticism that we had towards the Player's Handbooks. And that's because WotC made the decision to basically blow up the format they had cultivated, and replaced it with... nothing of substance. And as a result, the story focus going forward is...

...no story at all.

 

[Nullzone]

Re: Heroes of Shadow-

You might think differently if you got to see the new classes and races in action; they were featured at the D&D Classic at DDXP and they were just all around awesome. The new classes and races both added a lot of flavor to even just that simple oneshot adventure.

I am seriously clamoring for the sourcebook now, just to see what other stuff they're adding since they claim it has "something for everyone" and not just specific race/class combinations that are already "shadow based".

 

[Klaus]

Ki = Psionic.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Yes, maybe those words are true...

There was speculation that the seeker was the ki archer who summons spirits and the runepriest was originally a ki powered priest.

but there would still have not been a uniting theme in there, which may have powered the decision of cancelling the ki power source.

The elemental and shadow sources were undermined by their attemts to please the audience:

shadow power source would have been perfect for illusions and necromancy. Elemental source for evokers and summoners. But this is all subsumed under arcane now leaving only so much design space.

There are threads which speak about loss of focus. And maybe the efforts to please whiners was something that hurt them in the short and long run.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Ki = Psionic.

'Nuff said.

 

[korjik]

Ki: Samurai, Monk, Shugenga, Ninja

There, was that so hard? Took me about 30 seconds. You would think that someone getting paid to think about this sort of thing might have been able to do that.

As for those who think that Ki is the same as Psionic: Ki is an internal use of body and soul, and psionic is external.

As for those who think that Ki is the same as Psionic: Notice a sort of theme with the names of the classes? Might that same theme be used for the of the whole PHB they would be in? Might this not be another popular basis for a fantasy game other than the standard western Europe-ish setting?

It was pretty obvious to me that if you have Psi and Ki as power sources, that the Ki source was a good way to have an oriental adventures type PHB. Then you could have a DMG that was stuffed full of the differences in culture between the classic setting and an oriental one, and entire chapters on customizing campaign worlds. Then you could have a MM stuffed full of oriental type monsters, and filled in with other non-western mythos monsters from around the world.

So, to me, dropping the Ki source basically dropped three books that could pretty much have written themselves for plant-guys, crystal-guys, a Monk that is functionally different than the rest of the power source, a power source that is functionally different than the rest of the game, and a couple mishmashed classes of dubious value.

So, yeah, more harm than good.

 

[Skism]

Ki: Samurai, Monk, Shugenga, Ninja

There, was that so hard? Took me about 30 seconds. You would think that someone getting paid to think about this sort of thing might have been able to do that.

...

It was pretty obvious to me that if you have Psi and Ki as power sources, that the Ki source was a good way to have an oriental adventures type PHB. Then you could have a DMG that was stuffed full of the differences in culture between the classic setting and an oriental one, and entire chapters on customizing campaign worlds. Then you could have a MM stuffed full of oriental type monsters, and filled in with other non-western mythos monsters from around the world.

I do remember that when they announced the death of Ki they specifically called out that they didn't want a stereotypical "Asian" power source, they wanted to avoid 4e Oriental Adventures. I can understand that concern coming up and finding it difficult to sell the higher ups on a year full of fairly culturally specific content.

 

[Mapache]

Ki: Samurai, Monk, Shugenga, Ninja

There, was that so hard? Took me about 30 seconds. You would think that someone getting paid to think about this sort of thing might have been able to do that.

Oh, is that all there is to it? Warmain, Mimic, Deceiver, Strategist—there, I just created the Excrucian power source. I guess it does leave out writing up class features and 30 levels of powers for each class as well as class- and power-source-specific feats, making sure that they're unique and interesting (instead of Asian Fighter, Asian Priest, Asian Wizard, and Asian Rogue), writing up another two builds for thirty levels for each class for the apparently-mandatory Ki Power book without which everyone will complain about "lack of support", and publishing the occasional Dragon article with stuff for them that people will complain is useless for other classes, but that's all just details, right? No need to sweat it.

As for those who think that Ki is the same as Psionic: Ki is an internal use of body and soul, and psionic is external.

What does that actually mean? How does it translate into clear, distinctive flavor and unique mechanics that are deep enough to fill out four whole classes per power source? How exactly is Ki different from both Martial and Psionic? (Note that Elemental has this same problem with Arcane and Primal.)

So, to me, dropping the Ki source basically dropped three books that could pretty much have written themselves…

Given the posts the designers made about dropping the Ki source, the books didn't write themselves. In fact, the designers tried writing the first one and decided that it wasn't going to work because the end result would have been forced and uninteresting.

 

[OnlineDM]

I didn't start playing D&D until around the time last year that PHB3 came out, so I'm not familiar with all of the backstory. But if the speculation is that a Ki theme would have led to a bunch of Asian-themed books and WotC was worried whether those would sell or not, I wonder how much of that worry might have been tied to the Magic: The Gathering Kamigawa block.

It must have been at least five or six years ago now, but the Kamigawa block was a year of Magic sets that were all themed around Japanese mythology. It is widely looked upon as one of the biggest failures among Magic set releases. It wasn't popular thematically, and the cards didn't really grab players mechanically, either, at least compared to other sets from around that time. They might have been burned by Asian-themed gaming products and therefore reluctant to go back to that well.

 

[The Little Raven]

As for those who think that Ki is the same as Psionic: Ki is an internal use of body and soul, and psionic is external.

Being empowered by your own mind is not external. Exactly the opposite, in fact.