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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Poll: How will the US Class Feature Variants be brought to Market?
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 7847183" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>Sooner or later, PHB+1 was always going to be untenable, so I don't really see that as plausible reasoning. It's unlikely they get integrated because that does make this 5.5 (or like, 5.1, really but people will call it 5.5), in that everyone even Beyond people (like me) will have their expensive hard-copy PHB partially invalidated.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>75 vs 34, interesting - I guess if we see a whole lot more, a Xanathars becomes more likely, but if we don't some kind of setting book does.</p><p></p><p>Re: "Gonzo Sword and Sorcery", the big problem is, <em>nothing about Greyhawk is gonzo </em>(yeah not even expedition to the Barrier Peaks - it's actually totally MoR by modern standards and this is 2019 so modern standards apply). I know you're going to try and come up with examples, but no. Metal, maybe. Some (not much) stuff in Greyhawk is kinda moderately metal, like sub-Metallica levels of Metal, not really that metal at all. Dad-metal. But gonzo? Gonzo is a high bar. It makes me think of things like Over The Edge, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Underground, SLA Industries. Even we lower the bar to the say, Dark Sun and the wackier end of the Planescape spectrum (which to me don't reach "gonzo" but I guess I could sort of squint and see it), that's not just Greyhawk. Greyhawk is basically someone's dad. Sure, you can give him a Keith Flint-from-the-Prodigy haircut to hid his bald spot, give him some piercings and tats, some OTT eye-make-up. But he's still someone's dad. It's fundamentally a very generic setting full of very generic stuff. Amping up a couple of "Metal" bits and using some edgier-than-usual artwork will not fix that (plus has WotC got the balls to do that with artwork? I give 50/50 at best).</p><p></p><p>Now, maybe you could fix that, but you'd basically be writing an entirely new setting, riffing off Greyhawk. As far as I know, neither TSR nor WotC has ever dared to do something like that with any D&D setting. The closest was perhaps the 4E FR, and much as I like 4E, that was a bloody car crash. I do think there is the potential for a cool, "Greyhawk-inspired", very metal, perhaps near-gonzo setting, but that requires you to burn a lot of Greyhawk stuff, and probably to piss off an awful lot of Greyhawk fans.</p><p></p><p>Further, even for a setting book, I don't think you could get away with this material. Not only are many of the subclasses not "Greyhawk-friendly" (at least for the "old" Greyhawk - they don't draw from Greyhawk ideas or traditions), but them plus this stuff just isn't enough. You'd need a class, and the only likely class soon after Artificer is Psion (and even that is questionable, sadly), and if you're making Psion a class in a Greyhawk book you're nuts.</p><p></p><p>Dark Sun is somewhat more plausible, but again many of the subclasses aren't good fits (giant-viking-themed warrior for example).</p><p></p><p>Planescape or a "Manual of the Planes" could probably stitch together the subclasses, though, so perhaps that's the most likely if we're going with settings.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 7847183, member: 18"] Sooner or later, PHB+1 was always going to be untenable, so I don't really see that as plausible reasoning. It's unlikely they get integrated because that does make this 5.5 (or like, 5.1, really but people will call it 5.5), in that everyone even Beyond people (like me) will have their expensive hard-copy PHB partially invalidated. 75 vs 34, interesting - I guess if we see a whole lot more, a Xanathars becomes more likely, but if we don't some kind of setting book does. Re: "Gonzo Sword and Sorcery", the big problem is, [I]nothing about Greyhawk is gonzo [/I](yeah not even expedition to the Barrier Peaks - it's actually totally MoR by modern standards and this is 2019 so modern standards apply). I know you're going to try and come up with examples, but no. Metal, maybe. Some (not much) stuff in Greyhawk is kinda moderately metal, like sub-Metallica levels of Metal, not really that metal at all. Dad-metal. But gonzo? Gonzo is a high bar. It makes me think of things like Over The Edge, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Underground, SLA Industries. Even we lower the bar to the say, Dark Sun and the wackier end of the Planescape spectrum (which to me don't reach "gonzo" but I guess I could sort of squint and see it), that's not just Greyhawk. Greyhawk is basically someone's dad. Sure, you can give him a Keith Flint-from-the-Prodigy haircut to hid his bald spot, give him some piercings and tats, some OTT eye-make-up. But he's still someone's dad. It's fundamentally a very generic setting full of very generic stuff. Amping up a couple of "Metal" bits and using some edgier-than-usual artwork will not fix that (plus has WotC got the balls to do that with artwork? I give 50/50 at best). Now, maybe you could fix that, but you'd basically be writing an entirely new setting, riffing off Greyhawk. As far as I know, neither TSR nor WotC has ever dared to do something like that with any D&D setting. The closest was perhaps the 4E FR, and much as I like 4E, that was a bloody car crash. I do think there is the potential for a cool, "Greyhawk-inspired", very metal, perhaps near-gonzo setting, but that requires you to burn a lot of Greyhawk stuff, and probably to piss off an awful lot of Greyhawk fans. Further, even for a setting book, I don't think you could get away with this material. Not only are many of the subclasses not "Greyhawk-friendly" (at least for the "old" Greyhawk - they don't draw from Greyhawk ideas or traditions), but them plus this stuff just isn't enough. You'd need a class, and the only likely class soon after Artificer is Psion (and even that is questionable, sadly), and if you're making Psion a class in a Greyhawk book you're nuts. Dark Sun is somewhat more plausible, but again many of the subclasses aren't good fits (giant-viking-themed warrior for example). Planescape or a "Manual of the Planes" could probably stitch together the subclasses, though, so perhaps that's the most likely if we're going with settings. [/QUOTE]
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Poll: How will the US Class Feature Variants be brought to Market?
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