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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Urbannen" data-source="post: 998463" data-attributes="member: 7643">My 2 cpI was very gung-ho about 3.5 because I see a lot of little problems with 3.0 that I would like changed.  I like/can live with the vast majority of changes in 3.5.  However, if 3.5 is what I read it is, I think I agree with a lot of Mr. Cook's criticisms.  It doesn't seem that backwards compatibility is of utmost importance to this new edition, regardless of what WotC might say.  It's not like they are just fixing some of the glaring problems that most players can already list by name, or adding some features to the problem classes.  They are changing the basic functioning of many, many spells, spells being the bread and butter of the game.  They are changing gnomes' favored class, fundamentally altering many existing characters.  They are changing the weapons system in what seems will be a fairly drastic way.  I like the current mechanic of weapon size - maybe the new system will be an improvement, but right now it seems a profound change that would only be appropriate under a totally new edition.  I am also disturbed by some of the editing errors that Mr. Cook mentioned, mainly the omission of the fact that PrCs don't evoke XP penalties and the fact that the given magic items aren't priced under the revised system.  I understand that WotC is there to make money for Hasbro, but I think that there is a fair amout of manipulation going on.  It seems that the PHB has been tweaked just profoundly enough that really you do have to have the new books.  They do have a monopoly on this intellectual property after all.  It is in their best interest to change the official d20 rules periodically to ensure continuous sales.  A multitude of little tweaks and a few profound ones is a good formula that ensures continuous sales.  People won't really be able to play the old version as a stand-alone à la 1st Edition because newer revisions will be so similar to older ones, and if they want to continue to play, they will want to get the newer version because of the profound changes.   "That'll be 29.95 a piece, thank you for shopping at WotC, source for your "official" Dungeons & Dragons rules set.  Oh, and make sure to visit our website to pick up all the latest errata, completely free of charge."  The criticism isn't really for the new edition's design and editorial team - nothing is perfect and they have a lot of different people to please.  I do like a lot of the changes and would expect some of them in a 4th edition at the proper time.  The criticism is for the corporate business practices, which right now feel kind of icky.    <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f621.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":mad:" title="Mad    :mad:"  data-smilie="4"data-shortname=":mad:" /></blockquote>

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