Rule of Three 4/25/11

[GMforPowergamers]

You know I like the idea of monster vault: threats of the astral sea... Imagin gith and angles and other goodies and maybe an astral jammer full of pirates...it can go from lv 1-25 with most of them being 16+

Then monster vault: threats from beyond... Full of things from the stars and far realms

 

[Aegeri]

@ Aegeri: #1: The question was: Support besides powers that older classes can just take... so this excludes only mage builds, as they are exctly in this category...

I wouldn't put it past Wizards to be dumb enough to think that would be a viable answer. Most of the "Heroes of Shadow shows there is support for old classes stuff" comes entirely out of the fact it has powers wizards/clerics can take. That's not really a satisfying answer to me and I'm increasingly believing print products won't offer support for non-essential classes. So if it doesn't fall into something a knight/slayer/mage/thief/warpriest etc could take, I've got a distinct feeling there won't be support. Now if they support old classes solely through DDI and not in books, that could be an interesting situation to plant themselves in.

He's just making a joke. Since Nentir Vale is supposed to be what is essentially a heroic tier setting, the threats to it would be mostly heroic tier; based on the assumption that at paragon you end up going to the Feywild/Shadowfell, and once you get to Epic you start dealing with the Astral Sea and the Nine Hells, etc ...

Actually I have wrote two campaigns now, which don't have anything planar at all anywhere. From levels 1-30. Of course the epic tier gets really impossible for one of these games and I'm staring at a 90% "all my own work" workload with that. At the moment I'm seriously considering curtailing the campaign at level 19 or 20, because the amount of work will be murderous. At least my Dark Sun campaign will have a good selection of level 21+ antagonists to work with. Well, if I want a lot of elites and solos anyway (but better than nothing)...

In any event, Threats to Nentir Vale isn't strictly heroic. It actually goes to paragon and the preview they showed was of a paragon monster (Wandering Tower). The wandering tower was pretty great at that, doubling my disappointment there might be no epic monsters in it.

I'm sure they have the idea that most GMs who want to do Epic level stuff are skilled enough to do it themselves and the rest are doing Heroic tier stuff.

If this is their logic then it is seriously completely stupid logic. I may be more than skilled enough to do it all myself, but then the workload involved is really going to kill me in terms of time. Unfortunately skill =/ time, so regardless of my ability to actually do it the time I have becomes the limiting factor. I can run - every week almost - two campaigns side by side quite happily. I've been able to do this all the way up to epic as well. Once I hit epic it's like running into a brick wall: Suddenly all the options and choices (and potential reworkable adventures) go out the window. This massively increases the amount of work I have to do to make a viable epic tier campaign.

To be 100% fair though, my next epic efforts are going to be nowhere near as painful as previously (Due to monster design being infinitely better). But in terms of being a huge time sink, epic is going to take just as much initial work anyway in building new monsters, traps and similar. All things that should be addressed in products like upcoming monster vaults, which Wizards has stupidly decided shouldn't have significant epic tier content in them anymore.

I am looking forward to the adventures though, but now you've reminded me they might just throw out a two encounter delve and call it an epic tier adventure I don't think I'll get too optimistic yet...

You know I like the idea of monster vault: threats of the astral sea... Imagin gith and angles and other goodies and maybe an astral jammer full of pirates...it can go from lv 1-25 with most of them being 16+

Then monster vault: threats from beyond... Full of things from the stars and far realms

I see great room for all tiers in both of those product ideas and think they would be a great idea. This means Wizards will never do it. Instead we'll get threats from the shadowdarkfell gloomshroud, which will have more heroic tier vampires, liches and mummies than you've ever needed before!

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I like your more positive post better...

 

[Mirtek]

I wouldn't put it past Wizards to be dumb enough to think that would be a viable answer. Most of the "Heroes of Shadow shows there is support for old classes stuff" comes entirely out of the fact it has powers wizards/clerics can take.

But how else would they support old classes if not with feats/powers/PPs? Sure, they could go out of there way to relase only feats/powers/PPs that the essential classes can not take, but I don't see a difference in the "support-value" of a power that can be taken by both a binder-warlock and a classic-warlock.

Sure, from time to time there will be game-items that can only be taken by either essential or pre-essential classes, but otherwise I don't see any value in artificially making sure that they turn out this way.

 

[Aegeri]

But how else would they support old classes if not with feats/powers/PPs? Sure, they could go out of there way to relase only feats/powers/PPs that the essential classes can not take, but I don't see a difference in the "support-value" of a power that can be taken by both a binder-warlock and a classic-warlock

I am thinking of classes that don't have an essentials counterpart, such as the Runepriest, Seeker, Artificer and such forth. I don't see books giving them any support frankly, because they have no essentials classes. On the other hand Wizards love publishing mage builds while claiming it's "support" for older classes.

We shall have to see, but I am extremely skeptical right now.

 

[WalterKovacs]

I wouldn't put it past Wizards to be dumb enough to think that would be a viable answer. Most of the "Heroes of Shadow shows there is support for old classes stuff" comes entirely out of the fact it has powers wizards/clerics can take. That's not really a satisfying answer to me and I'm increasingly believing print products won't offer support for non-essential classes. So if it doesn't fall into something a knight/slayer/mage/thief/warpriest etc could take, I've got a distinct feeling there won't be support. Now if they support old classes solely through DDI and not in books, that could be an interesting situation to plant themselves in.

Well, the entire reason the question was worded the way it was is because previous "are you going to support old classes?" questions were answered with "but we are, look at Heroes of Shadow". So this question was explicitly worded to ask for support that was different than what was offered in HoS ... and they said there would be, in DDi. I do think that they will probably keep that kind of explicit support to online, because they want stuff in the books to work with recently published books and their evergreen product. In other words, Essentials.

Actually I have wrote two campaigns now, which don't have anything planar at all anywhere. From levels 1-30. Of course the epic tier gets really impossible for one of these games and I'm staring at a 90% "all my own work" workload with that. At the moment I'm seriously considering curtailing the campaign at level 19 or 20, because the amount of work will be murderous. At least my Dark Sun campaign will have a good selection of level 21+ antagonists to work with. Well, if I want a lot of elites and solos anyway (but better than nothing)...

In any event, Threats to Nentir Vale isn't strictly heroic. It actually goes to paragon and the preview they showed was of a paragon monster (Wandering Tower). The wandering tower was pretty great at that, doubling my disappointment there might be no epic monsters in it.

I have no idea what the book will actually contain. The poster who made the comment about Threats of the ... was just pointing out that Nentir Vale is basically supposed to be where the PCs start out, and thus, heroic based. It may contain epic level threats as well, but it would presumably be focused more on "earth" based enemies instead of extraplanar threats, like stuff from the feywild, shadowfell, astral sea, etc. That may mean few if any epic monsters, or just monsters that fit in the 'normal' world. OR, the name "threats to the nentir vale" is really just a name, and it's basically a monster book without any actual theme to it (unlikely).

Ultimately, if it doesn't have much epic stuff in it, that wouldn't be unexpected. It would be like complaining there is no seeker support in the Heroes of Shadow book. Yes, they need support, but they don't really "fit" into that particular book.

I see great room for all tiers in both of those product ideas and think they would be a great idea. This means Wizards will never do it. Instead we'll get threats from the shadowdarkfell gloomshroud, which will have more heroic tier vampires, liches and mummies than you've ever needed before!

I would guess that most of the gloomshroud box set would revolve around paragon tier play, since that seems to be the 'spot' where travel to the shadowfell and feywild is expected to occur quite often. If Wizards hadn't basically created the concept of tiers being tied to the various planes, than perhaps they would have done all tiers of play in each book detailing the various planes, but they made it so that, in terms of the POL setting, you travel to the 'parallel' planes in paragon, and the 'upper/lower' planes in epic.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I wouldn't put it past Wizards to be dumb enough to think that would be a viable answer. Most of the "Heroes of Shadow shows there is support for old classes stuff" comes entirely out of the fact it has powers wizards/clerics can take. That's not really a satisfying answer to me and I'm increasingly believing print products won't offer support for non-essential classes.

My warlock would disagree on all points here. There's no Essentials Warlock with compatable powers and yet there were pages of Warlock powers independent of the binder (plus the binder powers). Wizards and wis-clerics don't need anything that can't also be taken by their essentials equivalents.

So if it doesn't fall into something a knight/slayer/mage/thief/warpriest etc could take, I've got a distinct feeling there won't be support.

Except hexblades can't take warlock encounter powers. And warlocks were in HoS. So you're predicting that there won't be support when there demonstrably is. I do think that the majority of future support will be for essentials characters; the non-essentials martial classes have two entire splatbooks to play with and everyone else except the poor runepriest and seeker have one. And I do think they may Binder-ise support for non-essentials classes, which not only gives the pre-essentials people support but allows those on essentials only to play too.

Is your objection really that support for pre-essentials classes is mixed in with support for essentials classes? (I'd be surprised and disappointed not to see the Bard in Heroes of the Feywild - and expect an essentialised bard build which not only supports existing bards but allows others to play bards).

 

[Walking Dad]

Presumably, in print they want to make sure new content is accessible to all. So, it needs to 'require' the evergreen products (i.e. HotFK/HotFL and Rules Compendium). If you have access to DDi, you automatically have access to all the content, so a new build for the runepriest is something you can conceivably use, because you have access to the runepriest content. In book form, a new runepriest build would require someone have a copy of PHB3 available, which some stores may no longer stock, and as a non-evergreen product, wouldn't be getting it back in.
...

Is this confirmed anywhere, that the HotFK/HotFL and Rules Compendium is the new evergreen and no longer the PHB line?

 

[WalterKovacs]

Is this confirmed anywhere, that the HotFK/HotFL and Rules Compendium is the new evergreen and no longer the PHB line?

I'm looking through the archives for an official quote, but it was repeated several times. Basically, Essentials was pitched as 10 products that would form the new foundation.

That was Red Box, Rules Compendium, The Dice Set, HotFK, HotFL, DM Kit, Monster Vault, and the three Tile sets (City, Dungeon and Wilderness). The idea was these things would always be in print (instead of needing to constantly make new forest tile sets every once in a while because the previous set went out of print).

Just found something: Wizards Play Network Official Home Page

It's basically a sales pitch thing targetted to stores:

The Dungeons & Dragons Essentials line of products was designed to be the core of every store’s D&D offering. Not only do the Essentials contain everything a new or returning player needs to get started, but they provide existing players with new content, easy reference, and invaluable accessories that will greatly enhance their game play. And, because all 10 D&D Essentials products are “evergreen,” you (and your players) should expect to always have them available.
Of course, the Essentials are just the beginning. Customers will want to expand their gaming experience with the newest front-list D&D rulebooks, board games, and more.
So, be sure to keep all 10 D&D Essentials products in stock and on display. Make your merchandising interesting and inviting—when the D&D Essentials are easy to find and flip through, customers will be more inclined to check them out, pick them up, and come back for more.

But yeah, basically, the goal was telling stores "these are the things you should always keep in stock. Before, with things like PHB2 or 3 ... some stores didn't know if they needed to keep the original PHB in stock, or if PHB3, for example, would be good enough. Well, with something like Martial Power 2, you basically needed PHB1 (although it supported races from the later books, including the campaign settings, etc).

With Essentials, if the expectation is that those books are evergreen, then if a new book needs you to have other books to function, pointing to one of the Essential products is a safer bet the store will have it in stock. [Similarly, adventures will probably show maps using the 'core' tile sets most of the time, etc].

 

[Aegeri]

My warlock would disagree on all points here. There's no Essentials Warlock with compatable powers and yet there were pages of Warlock powers independent of the binder (plus the binder powers). Wizards and wis-clerics don't need anything that can't also be taken by their essentials equivalents.

Warlocks are an essentials build and so seeing support for them in the book does not surprise me. I actually should have just thrown warlock in, but I assumed my point was clear enough on essentials builds. Bear in mind that the Warlock is being redone in the class compendium articles (like the Cleric), so will be available to essentials only players making that support useful.

Call me when there is print support for the artificer, sorcerer, barbarian, shaman, runepriest, seeker and such forth in future books.