WotC_Shoe: A tiny, tiny hint on new weapons post-PHB

[Ruin Explorer]

Putting new material in new books? Definitely a ploy. Just like the scary-evil Sword and Fist, Arms and Equipment Guide, and Complete Warrior.

You mean the books with the super-retarded weapons that made no sense and were extremely boring, by and large?

Sheesh, I'd rather they kept "normal" weapons back and made us pay for them in expansion books that drown us with more idiot weapons that don't exist in the real world solely because they're both uncool and impractical. Not that the 3E mainbook didn't have a few of those...

 

[Lord Zardoz]

I wonder if this a ploy to sell more books.

My God.... What if this whole RPG-Publishing-Complex is nothing more than an elaborate plot to manipulate normal every day people into spending money on RPG materials thereby enhancing share holder value for Hasbro by means of increasing the operating profits of Wizards of the Coast!

On a less alarmist note, I suspect that tis is not a case of shipping an edition of the game unfinished. This seems more like an attempt to complete a core that can handle all (or nearly all) the typical D&D tropes, and then add other elements to that core afterwards.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[TerraDave]

Im glad that people thought this was postworthy, but lets not jump to too many conclusions...putting "classic" weapons in the core, and then adding more out there weapons (either from history, fantasy, whatever) makes some sense. And it may not just be weapons, but various (fighter) manuevers tied to them...

as always, we will have to see.

 

[mhensley]

I hope they keep the stupid weapons like spiked chains and double axes in splat books and away from the phb. That way I'll never have to look at them.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

but various (fighter) manuevers tied to them...

I have to say, I think that's more likely. It's quite possible we won't see Fighter manuevers for various "semi-popular" weapons in the PHB, quarterstaves, daggers, flails etc. (I'd expected at least a Weapon + Shield style, a sword style, a spear style, a hammer/mace (not flail) style and an axe style in the PHB, and maybe a polearm style, and/or a ranged weapon style for non-rangers, but that still leaves a ton of weapons).

 

[TwoSix]

You mean the books with the super-retarded weapons that made no sense and were extremely boring, by and large?

Sheesh, I'd rather they kept "normal" weapons back and made us pay for them in expansion books that drown us with more idiot weapons that don't exist in the real world solely because they're both uncool and impractical. Not that the 3E mainbook didn't have a few of those...

You can have my mercurial greatsword when you can pry it from my cold, dead hands.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You can have my mercurial greatsword when you can pry it from my cold, dead hands.

Severian executes a puppy every time a D&D character swings a Mercurial Greatsword.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Welcome to capitalism.

That's kind of a limited view of "capitalism."

WOTC wants to make money selling books. They can do that by getting more customers, or by selling more books to each customer.

The more books I have to buy to just play 4e without having my character (comparatively) suck, the less likely I am to buy ANY.

 

[frankthedm]

Could be bad, could be good. 3.0 actually had some decent granularity to them in the weapon system. Sadly the crit ranges though were not exactly balanced once all factors were added in. 19-20 had the edge over x3 unless nothing the wielder ever attacked died in fewer than 3 hits. By high level 18-20 crit was a LOT more valuable than a die step unless one faced a lot of crit immune foes. x4 was brutal , but even if you land the crit, you overkilled the foes most of the time unless the attack was against a PC or BBEG. So as a player if the DM ONLY threw a few significant foes at you every single encounter, it could work out. Otherwise your giga-crit killed the mook that was going to die anyhow.

 

[MaelStorm]

I don't know if you mean that as sarcasm, but yeah, the ever growing list of splatbooks was one of my problems with later 3rd edition. Alot of dross with the pearls in that list.

Thanks for pointing this out.

This is why I never made the jump to 3E (and said it looked anarchic in my other post). I hope WotC will be more careful with their 4E. It sure looks beautiful on the shelves of the store but just by seeing the shear amount of books they've put on for 3E might have scared a lot of potential newcomers.