D&D (2024) So IS it a new edition?

[Remathilis]

Somewhere out there, there is an RPG rule whose errors will make any rule in D&D 2024 actually look better by comparison. Believe it or not. [emoji39]

I don't have to imagine it, I've played first edition RIFTs!

 

[Maxperson]

Honestly, I kind of agree. The proliferation of new resource systems and experimental class structures just...feels like that.

The Factotum is a Bard truly specialized in flexibility, for example, while Binder-type stuff is clearly the Warlock coming into its own. The Tome of Battle classes are reworks of three major martial-ish classes (Fighter = Warblade, Paladin = Crusader, Monk = Swordsage), and if the Rogue were moved in a clearly magical direction, Shadowcaster wouldn't be the worst fit for it. Truenamer, for all its horrible horrible jank, seems like an attempt to reinvent arcane casting. Etc.

When I use terms like "5.5e," I really do mean it--I see 5.5e as half a step toward a new edition. It isn't really a new edition. But it also isn't really the same edition, either. It's in the awkward no-man's-land where it's almost the same, but not the same. The skeleton is (mostly) the same, but the flesh is new.

Yeah. The later books released for 3e felt more like stealth playtests to see what might work for the next edition than books made for 3e.

 

[Maxperson]

going by the link you provided it sounds more like some of the lessons they learned from early 4e were incorporated into the Bo9S but that the book was in development for 3.5 already anyway

Unless they've learned how to time travel, I doubt lessons learned from early 4e made it back in time to the Book of Nine Swords.

I think it was the opposite. The Book of Nine Swords was a stealth playtest and the lessons learned made it into 4e.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes it was that bad I still have the books and the stack of erratic I printed from it. It was a huge pet peeve of mine when 4th was coming out. They treated it as a video game that could be fixed online afterwords.

Yeah, the errata thing was very frustrating. As I've said before, "The Complete Errata Handbook" was the phantom sourcebook of 4e (although I suppose I should call it, "Errata Power" to keep with 4e's format).

 

[mamba]

Unless they've learned how to time travel, I doubt lessons learned from early 4e made it back in time to the Book of Nine Swords.

early 4e is the early internal design that later became 4e. The point is it was not some aborted other thing that became Bo9S

I think it was the opposite. The Book of Nine Swords was a stealth playtest and the lessons learned made it into 4e.

not according to the link

 

[Maxperson]

early 4e is the early internal design that later became 4e. The point is it was not some aborted other thing that became Bo9S


not according to the link

Yes according to the link. The article says Orcus I mechanics were in the Book of Nine Swords. This was stated right after the recommendation to continue in the new direction Orcus I(the playtesting of Book of Nine Swords mechanics) had established. What we saw in the Book of Nine Swords went on to be at least in part, what we see in 4e.

In short, they put out the Book of Nine Swords with the future 4e mechanics. Why would they do that? To see how it was received by the players at large. It was an early, large playtest of 4e ideas.

The author gets it wrong with his conclusion of those paragraphs. Rather than go with what the paragraphs say about Orcus I(Nine Swords stuff) being the direction of 4e, and with what Mearls said about the ideas not being fully formed yet, and figuring out that it was an early playtest that wasn't quite on the mark, he incorrectly concludes that Nine Swords was not a test bed of ideas. His logic is bad.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Sounds to me like you've gotten two true things conflated together into something untrue.

AIUI, they did not originally intend to make 4e so soon after making 3e. Instead, they intended to go full steam ahead for 3e, but it ended up having...well, a lot of holes. So they patched up a few of the obvious ones (while leaving most of the actually serious ones), and called it 3.5e.

Now, once they had published 3.5e, they did in fact want to immediately begin ground work on a new edition. Internally, it was referred to as "Orcus," and you're correct that this new edition failed to cross the finish line properly. Instead, they published it...as the Book of Nine Swords. That's why those classes all have such a coherent, singular focus. They were the first draft of the team's efforts to fix the problems with non-casters in 3.5e. It just wasn't working out the way they wanted, so they turned it into a 3.5e product and went back to the drawing board, taking lessons learned from "Orcus" and applying them to the new project, "Flywheel," which became the seed of what we call "4th Edition" today.

You can read about this stuff here. It's somewhat interesting.


It was rushed out, but that has little to nothing to do with how much errata it received.

Hmm... you are right. I had the order of events off.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Yes it was that bad I still have the books and the stack of erratic I printed from it. It was a huge pet peeve of mine when 4th was coming out. They treated it as a video game that could be fixed online afterwords.

I liked 4e quite a bit, but I have to echo this comment. I have an editor's eye, and I found many many obvious errors in basic editing during my very first flip-through (before I even started reading it!)

We used to make fun of 4e for how poorly edited it was (apologies to the editors). They were quite sloppy.

 

[mamba]

Yes according to the link. The article says Orcus I mechanics were in the Book of Nine Swords. This was stated right after the recommendation to continue in the new direction Orcus I(the playtesting of Book of Nine Swords mechanics) had established. What we saw in the Book of Nine Swords went on to be at least in part, what we see in 4e.

I am not sure what distinction you draw between what I wrote and yours

I said Bo9S got adjusted based on some early 4e design, not some aborted mythical other version of D&D.

“Baker, Donais, and Mearls translated current versions of the Orcus I mechanics into a last-minute revision of Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords.”

In short, they put out the Book of Nine Swords with the future 4e mechanics. Why would they do that? To see how it was received by the players at large. It was an early, large playtest of 4e ideas.

As to Bo9S being a playtest for 4e that made that change direction, that is not how I read it.

“From February to March 2006, they work on “Orcus Phase 2”, but here Heinsoo writes that after playtesting, they thought that Orcus was not going in the direction that they wanted.”

“Mearls and Baker figured out what was going wrong with the design. We’d concentrated too much on the new approach without properly accounting for what 3.5 handled well. ”

So Orcus was independent of anything 3.5 and the playtest was as well. The result of it was the design inching closer to 3.5 again however, independently of anything Bo9S related

 

[Maxperson]

As to Bo9S being a playtest for 4e that made that change direction, that is not how I read it.

“From February to March 2006, they work on “Orcus Phase 2”, but here Heinsoo writes that after playtesting, they thought that Orcus was not going in the direction that they wanted.”

“Mearls and Baker figured out what was going wrong with the design. We’d concentrated too much on the new approach without properly accounting for what 3.5 handled well. ”

So Orcus was independent of anything 3.5 and the playtest was as well. The result of it was the design inching closer to 3.5 again however, independently of anything Bo9S related

You're looking at it in isolation. Nine Swords was Orcus 1 which it explicitly says was the direction they wanted to go with 4e. Then in phase 2 they determined that rather than just go with reusable abilities in the way Nine Swords presented it, they altered it a bit to be AEDU. Reusable abilities(Nine Swords) continued to be the direction they wanted to go, but rather than true north they turned northeast at some point.

Following that chain of information, Nine Swords was effectively a playtest for 4e which didn't pan out exactly as presented in the 3e book and so was changed to AEDU.