Voadam said:
I think this was the first time that anything mechanical was dropped in the transfer from draft to released srd.
You have brought up a valid point that this recent revision from draft to finalized SRD section excludes mechanical material while others have only made cosmetic changes (names, how something is labeled, but not how something works). It appears that WotC's concerns about just changing things cosmetically are somewhat warranted, given the suggestions of some to simply use a different name and create new mechanics that do virtually what the removed ones did. It's my opinion that the creative energies used to reproduce or mimic that which has been removed would be better channeled toward creating new materials in other areas. I see no limit to imagination and don't feel that pursuing something that has been closed is worthwhile. Certainly others may see things differently and to each their own.
Voadam said:
I thought everyone was surprised when the spells came out without even the abbreviated name from the draft version. In fact I have a file I believe you wrote up to rename the spells so that they would still be in the same rough alphabetical order, although that was definitely derivative of the originals.
I like to think that was a stop-gap method to tide us over between 3 and 3.5. I'm fairly certain the intention on WotC's part was simply to remove the names from circulation (Mord****, Bigs***, etc) and not to disallow like-minded spells. If this hadn't been their intention, I believe they would have yanked the full spell with those names, rather than simply dropping the names from them. As you point out, my intention was to use common adjectives to maintain an alphabetic order to the spells (while things were sorted out through the next revision of the rules). It can be suggested that the spells with common adjectives are derivitive of the spells mechanics left in the SRD by WotC that excluded their IP (which I do not believe to be a problem nor against the intent of WotC), while a renaming of the spells with misspelt the proper names is actually deritive of the IP and spells in the draft version where WotC had proper names (IP) still included (which I felt/feel is less in the spirit of WotC's intent and concerns).
Voadam said:
After that I thought everybody thought the individual character names would be removed but that the underlying stats would still be released as happened in the magic item and spell sections.
You've hit the nail right on the head with this statement. It's a matter of trying to follow WotC's intent. I do not believe it serves anyone's best interest to try to find away around their method. In the case of the spells, their intent was to still include the spells but protect IP. In the case of these creatures they still want to protect the IP but they aren't intending to help other companies merely create knock-offs of their IP as may have happened with the spells where they merely removed the IP and left the mechanics.
In the case of the spells there was a school of thought that side stepping the intent, perhaps, by simply misspelling the names that were removed was a more useful way to go. I believe that this method was counter to WotC's intent and would prove to be deriative of the removed IP names rather than deriative of the spells' mechanics themselves.
Now with the creatures, if the stats had been left in the SRD but the names had been changed I have no doubt that some companies would be including "Mind Frayers" and other such side steps. I do not believe this is in the spirit of WotC's wishes or intent and it appears that they have removed the full mechanics of the creatures to leave no doubt this time around.
