D&D 5E Storyline Seasons, Adventure Paths, and New Character Options

[The-Magic-Sword]

Generally speaking it seems like we'll get at least some amount of character options with each AL Story Season, Adventure Path to come out- Princes of the Apocalypse and Out of the Abyss (Player Companion and SCAG respectively) both came with some form of splat that included character options- and they've been looking at new options in the UA articles, presumably at some point they'll want to publish things like Favored Soul Sorcerers, Mystics, Deep Stalker Rangers, etc. As well as variant ranger material, unless they plan to release that online as a free "patch" for those that want it.

What are your thoughts? How and when do you feel 5e material ought to be released? Will the impending OGL for 5e have a major effect on the availability of our splat? I think they should continue with the current model, personally, so long as options continue to be released at a steady if slower than 4e rate. The game could also stand to have more spells overall as well.

 

[delericho]

What are your thoughts? How and when do you feel 5e material ought to be released?

These days I want three things from WotC:

- Conversions of as many older monsters as possible. I'm less interested in new monsters (because I can get those elsewhere) but there are a lot of monsters that are WotC IP and so can only come from them. And some of the settings really need their own monsters - Dark Sun being a prime example.

- The finalised updates for the Eberron material, preferably including an Artificer class (the current approach doesn't suit me), and also anything that wasn't covered, such as the Kalashtar and the monsters.

- Psionics rules. Almost entirely because they're built in to Eberron and the setting is weakened without them.

I'm becoming increasingly inclined to ignore anything else they put out anyway. Though I would pay for a revised set of Core Rulebooks that had (1) no rules changes, beyond incorporating errata, but (2) been rewritten for better ease of use (things like the monster building rules are okay, but could do with a rewrite; the character sheet is poor; and the index is poor).

Will the impending OGL for 5e have a major effect on the availability of our splat?

I suspect not. At this point, I suspect whatever license they produce has actually missed the boat.

 

[wedgeski]

I like the current model and it suits my group. The big adventures are great for mining. Trickling monsters and PC options into the mix works very well for me. As long as the mega-adventure hardbacks are continually built with an eye for snapping out material and dropping it into home-brew, they could do that for the next ten years and I'd be happy. I'd have a shelf full of hardbacks with thousands of pages of usable stuff.

I yearn for Dragonlance, but knew it was way down the list of priorities even before CP talked about a sliver of a sliver. I doubt it'll happen for years, if ever.

I also miss the electronic tools. Not so much the character builder, as 5E builds are straightforward and we're not yet drowning in so much material that one is needed, but the Compendium in particular, and the monster builder in its final form was brilliant.

I never thought WotC would release an open license for 5E, and the longer we go without one, the more certain I become. A decent 3rd-party content market seems to be emerging anyway, and now they have the best of both worlds: control of their IP, and a thriving network. Why do they need an OGL again?