D&D 5E Why such little content (books) for Dnd 5e?

[Staffan]

What you are saying requires two things to be true:

1) Additional supplements will not be profitable (or else that evil profits-are-everything company Hasbro would insist on more supplements.)

2) A smaller operation will not care about making a profit and will put out those supplements anyway.


I don't see those both being true....

You're missing one point. For a corporate player like Hasbro, being profitable is not enough. You must be profitable enough. If Hasbro's bigwigs see that $100,000 spent on making D&D stuff yields a return of $110,000, while $100k spent on My Little Pony yields $125,000, they're going to spend that money on MLP instead of D&D. Meanwhile, a smaller company that only deals with making D&D would say "Great, we're making 10% profit from doing this, so let's do it."

 

[Corpsetaker]

If [MENTION=7500]Nostromo[/MENTION] is not trolling, then Nostromo needs to know that we have had dozens of these thread, and this brought up in dozens of others.

Either they need to be banned or put into their own "WotC won't let me give them money and hence the world will end" sub-forum.

Why exactly do they need to be banned?

Ever thought these kinds of threads pop because there are a lot of people who have genuine concerns?

Saying these kinds of threads needs to be banned is basically saying your opinion is more valid that someone else's and that's not on. If you are tired of seeing these threads then how about not enter them?

It's kind of like all those books that were made for past editions. If you don't like them then don't buy them but just because you don't want them doesn't mean someone else doesn't.

 

[Corpsetaker]

Quit thinking in third terms and it is a lot easier. Lower CR monsters are a threat much longer and convert levelled monsters with the special class abilities as monster abilities. Also use those npcs in your monster manual with subtle modifications based on race. But yes it is easier with first and second material.

It's not all about converting just monsters.

There are things such as magic items, psionics, traps, specific campaign settings, diseases, monsters with specific abilities that aren't listed in the PHB, MM, or DMG.

Also, it's not good form to ask customers to buy their three corebooks and then have to go and buy old books and then convert everything over.

If people are willing to go and buy all the old stuff then they would most likely buy new material that has already been converted as well as add new things from new designers.

 

[DaveDash]

Odd. I made a 9th level Cleric (Death), a 9th Level Wizard (Evoker), a 7th Level Warlock (Old One), and a 7th Level Paladin (Oathbreaker) in about 15 minutes total for the Temple of Elemental Evil.

I think part of the problem is that you're over thinking it. Don't be slavishly devoted to the EL stuff. Just take what's there and figure out what CR it would be. If you need to tweak it a bit to make the CR fit the same difficulty you probably just add/remove a creature or two. Otherwise tweak the monster using the chart. Of course, monsters with classes from 3E might be trickier.

Yeah no.

It would take you about 15 minutes to write each of this classes down (or type them).

That's fine if your just plucking things from the air and using the stuff in the back of the MM as a reference. That's not really converting, that's winging it, and you still can't do that at high levels.

Also the stuff in the MM, particularly casters, are wrong. Once your group gets a bit higher level they'll simply be able to one shot most of your combat NPCs unless you build them properly, making the entire exercise pointless if you don't actually put some thought into it.

There's no buff stacking or pre-buffs, and concentration mechanics which make building NPC encounters very different in 5e, and change things dramatically.

 

[Jester David]

As I see it the main problem is something completely different:

Unrealistic profit expectations.

This because Wotc is not a small hobbyist operation driven by enthusiasm and love.

It's a corporation owned by Hasbro, for which "D&D" is a brand associated with words like "revenue", "profit margin" and "shareholder dividends".

Sorry for saying this, but the truth is that Hasbro desperately wants D&D to break out of the pnp rpg niche into the much more profitable hobby genres of... pretty much everything else.

If you want more supplements, you need to hope Hasbro gives up on D&D and sells it to a smaller operation. Preferably one with a proven track record of making pnp rpgs work for them.

If you know of any such company, be sure to mention them... [emoji10]

A smaller RPG company is less likely to produce more supplements. There's maybe two or three RPG companies that can produce more books than we're currently expecting, and most of those are already doing so and are unlikely to want to double their production (or cancel their own product lines). You can count the number of RPG publishers with multiple full-time employees that aren't run as a hobby on both hands.
Many publishers (even dedicated ones with full time stafff) rely on Kickstarter to fund books. But companies that create more than three Kickstarters in a single year are super rare. Most of the time they don't start the successive Kickstarter until the rewards from the previous Kickstarter have shipped.

Another company getting D&D would very likely mean *fewer* books. Or more PDFs and Print-on-Demand products.

And the ONLY companies - RPG or otherwise - that do not care about "revenue" and "profit margin" are ones being run as a hobby. Nobody runs a publishing house as a charity. Nobody published books for the fans that are going to cost them money. Green Ronin, Cubical 7, Kobold Press, Pelgrane Press, and Monte Cook Games are all in it for the money. If some product isn't going to make them money, they're not going to do it. Yes, they could be making *more* money doing anything else and gaming is a labour of love, but they're not going to lose money in the process.
And unlike WotC, these smaller companies are focused on short term profits. They can't invest lots in a product that will take time to make a return of investment. Because they need rent money now. So the products will likely be safer, less experimental, and with reduced costs (art, production, printing, binding) to shorten the time before a profit is made.

 

[Jester David]

3.) I think the Mountain-out-of-a-molehill flack Mearls got for "cancelling something we didn't previously announce" (IE the Adventurer's Handbook) led to A LOT of this radio silence. We got no warning/hype for Dragon+ for example; you'd think the spiritual successor to Dragon Magazine would have gotten some fanfare! I'm convinced if there is a non AP book coming out this year, it will be announced at GenCon and be ready for sale in Sept/Oct.

This.
WotC was already gun shy about announcing content too soon (following the fansplosion of 2011), and this really just confirmed that they were doing the right thing by under-promising and over-delivering and keeping things quiet.

 

[Umbran]

If [MENTION=7500]
Either they need to be banned or put into their own "WotC won't let me give them money and hence the world will end" sub-forum.

Why exactly do they need to be banned?

Folks, from past experience, this branch of the discussion is very likely to end in acrimony. I strongly suggest you let it be at this point.

 

[DaveDash]

True, but that is why ACs don't climb fast. Seemed to me the game was set up so most critters are a legitimate threat for some time in modest sized groups. Sure the band of bandits don't matter so much after a few levels, but they can still plink the PCs while allied half ogres tear them up and having send the fireballs at said bandits to keep them from pincushioning soft targets creates tactical considerations.

It is set up this way, but there is still a lack of NPCs and hero type monsters at higher levels. You can't just throw endless waves of lower CR creatures at your group.

Also there is the consequence of having too many creatures slows down combat quite a bit, and also it's not practical in some circumstances. For example, right now my group is exploring a tower. I simply can't fit 5 creatures into a room.

How many high level casters do you plan for the players to fight. Those types generally are not common unless one frees / summons a bunch from the underworld. Also a handful of lower level casters and a couple mid power mages might be better foe group rather than a single higher level caster doomed to being outgunned in the action economy.

I'm running City of the Spider Queen, which is D&D Forgotten Realms Cannon. There are a lot of casters. There's actually 42 pages of stat blocks to convert (which I have almost finished, after 8 months now). But do note that the majority of classes in D&D are casters, even Fighters are "casters" in a sense that unless you just want them to be a boring bag of hit points at CR16, you actually need to give them something cool to do, like legendary actions. All this takes time.

Low level casters taken straight out of the Monsters Manual will basically die the first round. They're not constructed very well, far too low defensive CR.

Believe me, I've gone through all this.

But i'll agree, CRing an NPC can be a bit fiddly because the system has a modest bit of precision.

Edit: There is a bunch of new NPC foes in the Princes of the Apocalypse. Many are heavily elemental themed, but still a decent mix.

Now this last bit is the nail on the head. Back in 3rd edition you built a class from the PHB and it's EL was that + 1. 5e its WAY different and much more accurate. However, the way the game plays it's not really a good idea to build PHB classes and use them as monsters for various reasons (lack of HP, lack of buffs, concentration, etc), which adds time, complexity, but it does add accuracy.

If you don't care about providing a challenge to your players, and/or don't use XP and just like to wing things, sure, 5e can be pretty fast to "convert" at the higher levels. Although I don't really consider that converting a module, that's more just winging it.

I'll give you an example. City of the Spider Queen uses lots of vampires and undead. Let's look at the Vampire example first.

They have a range of Drow and Drider vampires that range from named NPCs to rank and file warriors. In 5e you have the option of using the legendary vampires and CR5 vampire spawn. That's it.

Useless endless ranks of CR5 vampire spawns would be mind numbingly boring for my players, and also pretty easy for them to take out (they are level 16 now). Even the CR13 "legendary" Vampires are basically dead in 1 or 2 rounds now to them. So how would you propose I set up a BBEG fight that the module calls for hmm? You actually have to roll up your sleeves and make something using the DMG rules. All this takes time.

Another example is they're fighting a lot of revenants who have different flavours. Some are Fighter types, some are Wizard types, and some are Fighter/Wizard types with an anti-caster flavour. Using endless ranks of CR5 revenants from the MM again would become mind numbingly boring for my group, and also would lose a lot of the original modules flair of having these intermingled groups who provide layers of tactical defense to each other.
So one encounter - EL17 - you have a Drow Cult Champion (meant to be a tough Drow Fighter/Cleric), four Revenant Officers, one Ethereal creature (which I substituted with the ghost straight from the MM). Then in the next room, which a very high chance of joining the fight, you have Four Revenant Shattered Tower Guards, which are meant to be Fighter/Wizards.

How are you going to whip that up in 15 minutes?

• First of all, there's nothing in the MM that will give you an interesting encounter that's meant to challenge by 16th level group using nothing but hoards of CR1-5 creatures.
• Second of all, using large hoards of low level CR things slows down combat too much, and just won't fit on the map.
• Thirdly, you have to keep the flavour of the original encounter. Having a Cult Champion that dies in one shot (or doesn't stand up to the party in a challenging way) won't really work very well in terms of the flavour of the module, so she has to be *at least* CR10.
• Fourhtly, then you have to fiddle around with numbers and CRs, because numbers of creatures in 3rd edition are handled completely different from number of creatures in 5th edition. But what I am finding is that the numbers multiplier in the DMG doesn't really work *at all* when creatures are more than 5 or so CR below the party level. x2-x3 for encounter difficulty when you have say a CR12, 3xCR8, and 1xCR4 is quite frankly wrong against a party with the resource level that a level 16 group has. So you've got to basically just throw all that away anyway and do it by feel, which only comes with experience.

So again - at the higher levels when converting a module - it's not quite as simply as pulling out the MM, tweaking a couple of things, and away you go. It's tedious work.
Then there is also added work if you are using digital tools, and using a lot of older stuff, that you basically don't have any maps and have to make them yourself.

Using the back catalog to support D&D moving forward is putting a huge amount of work in the arms of DMs, especially given the faster level advancement now as well.

I'm very much looking forward to running pure 5e stuff when I have finished this campaign.

 

[Elvish Lore]

Basically, what Bayonet said in post #19 above.

Personally, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE that they've decided to publish three core books and go very lite on supplements. Like many people, I don't have a huge amount of time to devote to gaming. I can't keep up with huge amounts of rules and supplements. I've got nothing against people who do but I can't. And inevitably it becomes a supplement chase as well as power-creep as books need to justify their existence, DMs especially are persuaded to buy everything to know everything. No one 'forces' us to buy these books but when my players want to play Amazing Prestige Fighter Class from PHB 4 or want to learn the most bad-ass new spells from Ultimate Guide to Magic 2, it becomes a race with players to learn and digest the content of these books.

With core books for me to focus on, I have learned the game and can focus on telling cool stories. I don't have to worry about reading new rules, options and content to merely keep up with my players. Yes, I can prohibit books and content but that feels like it forces the DM into an uncomfortable position and players are always looking for the new and shiny, power-creeping advantages for their characters.

With 3x and Pathfinder, I was never free from rules/options bloat. 4e was better but their publishing strategy was weird and there too options became to pile up. Even as a player, if I focused my energies only on the core books, I'd quickly become eclipsed in the campaign by other players showing up with the latest/greatest/more powerful and effective versions of whatever it is I was playing. I hated it and both as a DM and a player, I abandoned 3x/Pathfinder/4e because I didn't have the time to keep up with ever-evolving system mastery.

But to me, 5e now feels like the game of my youth -- a small set of core books from which great stories and campaigns can be created. I've been running a campaign since last summer which will probably end soon but I know I'll probably be able to come back to the game in a year or two and not by overwhelmed by a doze rules and options books. The game will still be accessible and the core 3 books will still be as valid as ever.

I know I'm probably in the minority here but I love the current approach of 5e. I've been buying their adventure content and using encounters and ideas in my own campaign and right now this is working out great. I'd buy more adventure content if they offered more.

 

[miniaturehoarder]

• Second of all, using large hoards of low level CR things slows down combat too much, and just won't fit on the map.
• Thirdly, you have to keep the flavour of the original encounter. Having a Cult Champion that dies in one shot (or doesn't stand up to the party in a challenging way) won't really work very well in terms of the flavour of the module, so she has to be *at least* CR10.

These feed into one another, groups force PCs to divide their focus and makes PCs decide to use stronger resources to get past the lesser foes faster or use up table time taking them out one at a time.

Also fewer high XP foes accelerate advancement. If one used the assumption the bulk of PCs foes will be around their level, XP will basically snowball.