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JadePhoenix
2011-12-19, 03:27 AM
I hear Monte Cook is going back to WotC.
With Cook back and 4e sales dangerously low... do you guys think we'll be seeing a 5th edition?

Totally Guy
2011-12-19, 04:29 AM
4th edition was announced at Gen Con 2007 which I think was in August. It was then released in the summer of 2008 (in time for Gen Con).

If they don't have it ready for a Gen Con release it might be announced and released the next year.

JadePhoenix
2011-12-19, 05:00 AM
4th edition was announced at Gen Con 2007 which I think was in August. It was then released in the summer of 2008 (in time for Gen Con).

If they don't have it ready for a Gen Con release it might be announced and released the next year.

But do you think we'll be getting 5th edition so soon?

Totally Guy
2011-12-19, 05:07 AM
But do you think we'll be getting 5th edition so soon?

I don't know. It's not really my sort of thing anymore. (Unless it changes so drastically that it becomes my sort of thing. :smalltongue:)

Altair_the_Vexed
2011-12-19, 05:09 AM
So soon? There were only a few years between 3rd and 3.5, and then only a few more years between 3.5 and 4th.
We've had 4th Ed now for four years, and 2012 will make it 5 years. If 5th Ed is announced in 2012 for 2013, it'll be about on schedule.

JadePhoenix
2011-12-19, 05:43 AM
So soon? There were only a few years between 3rd and 3.5, and then only a few more years between 3.5 and 4th.
We've had 4th Ed now for four years, and 2012 will make it 5 years. If 5th Ed is announced in 2012 for 2013, it'll be about on schedule.

3.5 wasn't a new game. 3.5 is to 3.0 what Essentials is to 4e.

Altair_the_Vexed
2011-12-19, 07:09 AM
3.5 wasn't a new game. 3.5 is to 3.0 what Essentials is to 4e.
Okay, so leave out 3.5 if you feel like it.

OD&D was only around for a year before AD&D came along, and then Unearthed Arcana came along after six years, changing things a fair bit. Then 2nd Ed AD&D turned up three years after Unearthed Arcana, and ran for six years before being revised again.

On the other side of the fence, Basic D&D was revised 4 years after first publishing (along with the publication of the Expert set), then again two years later - and again seven years later.

Besides, the creators tend to stress that they're all the same game, really. :smallsigh:

Mordokai
2011-12-19, 07:21 AM
I hear Monte Cook is going back to WotC.
With Cook back and 4e sales dangerously low... do you guys think we'll be seeing a 5th edition?

Emphasis mine.

You have any sources on that? I'm not challenging you on it, it's just a curiosity since I stopped paying any attention to 4e like two years ago.

JadePhoenix
2011-12-19, 07:37 AM
Emphasis mine.

You have any sources on that? I'm not challenging you on it, it's just a curiosity since I stopped paying any attention to 4e like two years ago.

No, that's just what I've been hearing. I don't have any hard numbers.

Kurald Galain
2011-12-19, 07:51 AM
You have any sources on that?
Well, the only one with solid figures is WOTC themselves, and they aren't telling. That said, the forums at Enworld have a few store owners that post regularly, and they state that Pathfinder has been consistently outselling 4E for awhile.

More to the point, 4E is running out of material to print. What splatbooks could WOTC feasibly think of that wouldn't be repeating old ground? Their catalog for 2012 is pretty thin so far (although they do have one more Heroes Of book planned, and more fortune cards, and another D&D-based board game).

JadePhoenix
2011-12-19, 07:57 AM
Well, the only one with solid figures is WOTC themselves, and they aren't telling. That said, the forums at Enworld have a few store owners that post regularly, and they state that Pathfinder has been consistently outselling 4E for awhile.

More to the point, 4E is running out of material to print. What splatbooks could WOTC feasibly think of that wouldn't be repeating old ground? Their catalog for 2012 is pretty thin so far (although they do have one more Heroes Of book planned, and more fortune cards, and another D&D-based board game).
I heard the boardgames are selling pretty well. I bought Legend of Drizzt myself.

Yora
2011-12-19, 08:14 AM
More to the point, 4E is running out of material to print. What splatbooks could WOTC feasibly think of that wouldn't be repeating old ground? Their catalog for 2012 is pretty thin so far (although they do have one more Heroes Of book planned, and more fortune cards, and another D&D-based board game).

Didn't they cancel a batch of planned books somethimes this year?

Also, we had two other threads who talked about this a lot:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=207470
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=218549

I think it's pretty certain that preparation for 5th Edition have been underway since at least early this year.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-19, 08:31 AM
Emphasis mine.

You have any sources on that? I'm not challenging you on it, it's just a curiosity since I stopped paying any attention to 4e like two years ago.

Sources are fairly hard to find from the direct sources, since WoTC has little interest in showing off their poor performing things. However, I ran an analysis a while back, and came to the conclusion that PF is performing competitively via a meta-analysis of bestseller lists. Who is actually selling more books at a given time tends to be weighted in favor of WoTC when I checked, but it varied substantially depending on who had released a book last and such.

This doesn't mean that sales are terrible overall, but it does indicate a long lived split in the customer base. Recapturing lost customers is probably something they'd love to do...I don't know if 5th is going to do it or not, but presumably they'll at least try.

I agree with the assessment that they're starting up work on 5th ed...but I don't know that it will actually be sold in 2012, since it's not even announced yet. My bet would be 2013 at the earliest for actual sales. It takes a minute to design a solid RPG.

Yora
2011-12-19, 08:39 AM
The Legend & Lore articles mostly sound quite positive to me, in regard what I'd like to get from a fantasy RPG, and these articles seem to exist entirely for the purpose of asking "If we did this, what would you think about that?".
How this will actually transfer into the finished product remains to be seen.

But right now, I plan to keep an eye on 5th Edition to see if it might be more to my tastes than Pathfinder is right now. I'm not too particularly into the system, so getting me to switch wouldn't be that hard to do. If they can provide something better.

leegi0n
2011-12-19, 08:48 AM
I know that the majority of the people I've gamed with over the past couple of decades go very hung up on AD&D, and it was a process to adjust to 3.0/3.5, but ultimately, it was a better system.

Personally speaking, I really developed in the game playing 3.0/3.5, so I'm kinda stuck there, mentally....and that's fine in my opinion.

It's kinda like how we never really get into our parents' music and our kids never really get into ours....its a new thing for a new generation.

So, admittedly, for me, it's a bit snobby and closed minded to shun a new version of the system, but in the words of Bruce Hornsby, "That's just the way it is..."

I hope the kids like it. Like they liked 4e.

Hunter Noventa
2011-12-19, 08:52 AM
Aren't they basically turning it into a CCG with 5th Edition? I thought I remembered hearing somewhere that the new gamma world game was a test run for 5e.

Not that I play anything but pathfinder these days, ti would just be really sad if they tried to go that route.

kaomera
2011-12-19, 09:03 AM
I hear Monte Cook is going back to WotC.
With Cook back and 4e sales dangerously low... do you guys think we'll be seeing a 5th edition?
4e sales are not ''dangerously low'' for Wotc. Brick and mortar stores are probably seeing a less sales of 4e than they'd like, and there is a general attitude of ''just subscribe to the DDI and don't waste your money on books that will just be errata'ed anyway.'' I think that may well be short-sighted, but it's also actually a disincentive to putting out a new edition immediately.

I don't really expect to see 5e until the economy improves - imo WotC will want to spend a fair amount of money making sure it (and the associated online side) goes much more smoothly than the 4e launch. But since we also probably won't know about it until at most a year in advance the speculation will continue...

3.5 wasn't a new game. 3.5 is to 3.0 what Essentials is to 4e.
3.5 was a simpler version of the 3e ruleset in an attempt to lure new customers with products that ought to also appeal to existing customers? I don't think I can agree with that.

I was going to say something about 3.5 invalidating many 3.0 books (iirc the X & Y series of splats got tossed out, at the very least), but maybe that's wrong? Did people keep using the 3.0 material, really? And for that matter, how many really reference the 4e PHB1 with all the errata? (Although I'd definitely argue that Essentials doesn't really have anything to do with that - it's the DDI, mainly.)

Tyndmyr
2011-12-19, 09:17 AM
3.5 was a simpler version of the 3e ruleset in an attempt to lure new customers with products that ought to also appeal to existing customers? I don't think I can agree with that.

I was going to say something about 3.5 invalidating many 3.0 books (iirc the X & Y series of splats got tossed out, at the very least), but maybe that's wrong? Did people keep using the 3.0 material, really? And for that matter, how many really reference the 4e PHB1 with all the errata? (Although I'd definitely argue that Essentials doesn't really have anything to do with that - it's the DDI, mainly.)

Definitely not correct. An update guide was published, and 3.0 stuff is RAW legal in 3.5. There are a few corner cases(ie, fullblades, etc) where it's slightly unclear how to do the conversion, but the vast, vast majority of 3.0 works fine in 3.5. The only books that were replaced were core, so no splat were tossed out.

That said, I continued to use the 3.0 core books until about...two three years ago? Whenever the choice was between buying a shiny new 3.5 book or getting a replacement with a few minor updates to a book I had, the shiny new thing tended to win out.

3 -> 3.5 was, if anything, MORE minor than 4e -> Essentials.

Kurald Galain
2011-12-19, 09:24 AM
Recapturing lost customers is probably something they'd love to do...I don't know if 5th is going to do it or not, but presumably they'll at least try.

Wanna bet?

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png

Tyndmyr
2011-12-19, 09:35 AM
That is the most likely outcome, yes.

But hey...it's WoTC. They're not gonna say "no thanks, we're not gonna change systems for extra money". So...fifth ed is coming at some point, it's just a matter of when. And if you are popping out another edition, you might as well try to recapture your old customers if at all possible. So...they'll try. Success? Meh. Not holding my breath. It might be fantastic, but it might well not be.

leegi0n
2011-12-19, 09:47 AM
That is the most likely outcome, yes.

But hey...it's WoTC. They're not gonna say "no thanks, we're not gonna change systems for extra money". So...fifth ed is coming at some point, it's just a matter of when. And if you are popping out another edition, you might as well try to recapture your old customers if at all possible. So...they'll try. Success? Meh. Not holding my breath. It might be fantastic, but it might well not be.

Yeah....honestly, I'm not holding my breath on it. It would take a LOT to get me motivated to try a new edition.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-19, 10:06 AM
Oh, I'll try it. I'll try almost any game. My bookshelves are positively stuffed with RPG rulebooks, but some of them just don't see any play time in practice.

3.5 probably has the books that get the most use, followed by 7th Sea, then D20 M. Some books are relatively unlikely to see playtime ever again(2e spelljammer, say, or the kingdoms of kalimar books), and there's some books I'd LOVE to try out...but never find players for them. I suspect 5e is likely to trickle off into one of the latter two categories.

JediSoth
2011-12-19, 10:56 AM
I don't think a new edition will be coming out in 2012, but I do think there will be an announcement of some sort in 2012. Of course, they could fool me and just announce that they've nothing to announce but to stay tuned because they'll have an announcement in 2013.

I've heard speculation that there won't be anything world-shattering until 2014, though, since that is D&D's 40th anniversary. Since that coincides with my 40th birthday, it better be something good. :p

Psyren
2011-12-19, 11:00 AM
Well, the only one with solid figures is WOTC themselves, and they aren't telling. That said, the forums at Enworld have a few store owners that post regularly, and they state that Pathfinder has been consistently outselling 4E for awhile.

How sad is that? Pathfinder is basically free, and it's still outselling the game with no OGL.

Hazzardevil
2011-12-19, 12:19 PM
I think it will be announced 2012 and will be realeased 2013.
That reminds me, I think I have worked out why so many homebrewers got banned from the forum. They were invalidating 4th edition. Chances are WOTC hate homebrew.

Anyway I thought Monte Cook was working for pathfinder, to all the boos and hisses of the pathfinder community.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-19, 12:21 PM
How sad is that? Pathfinder is basically free, and it's still outselling the game with no OGL.

Actually not that surprising. I love me some OGL, and I also like physical copies of books. I'm probably more likely to buy a game that has an OGL(and I do indeed own a wide variety of pathfinder books), not less. It's not true for everyone, but I would not consider the OGL to be a liability. If nothing else, it enhances market penetration substantially, and nothing helps your game sell like actually having people playing it in the stores.

JadePhoenix
2011-12-19, 12:40 PM
Actually not that surprising. I love me some OGL, and I also like physical copies of books. I'm probably more likely to buy a game that has an OGL(and I do indeed own a wide variety of pathfinder books), not less. It's not true for everyone, but I would not consider the OGL to be a liability. If nothing else, it enhances market penetration substantially, and nothing helps your game sell like actually having people playing it in the stores.
Also, Pathfinder books are very well illustrated, very well organized and the fluff tends to be very good.

DrBurr
2011-12-19, 12:51 PM
I don't think 5e is going to come out any time soon, it just doesn't strike me as Likely. 4e has only been out for three years, four by 2012 and five by 2013. Thats pretty short life span for an entire edition.

D&D white box came out in 1974 ~ Lasted 3 Years
AD&D 1st Ed in 1977-9 ~ Lasted 8 Years until
Unearthed Arcana Expansion in 1985 ~ Lasted 4 Years, 12 Years Total
AD&D 2nd Ed in 1989-92 ~ Lasted 4 Years until
AD&D 2nd Ed Revised in 1996 ~ Lasted 4 years, 8 Years Total
D&D 3rd Ed in 2000 ~ Lasted 3 Years until
D&D 3.5 Ed in 2003 ~ Lasted 5 Years, 8 Years Total
D&D 4th Ed in 2008 ~ Lasted 2 Years Until
D&D 4th Ed Essentials in 2010 ~ Currently 1 Year Old, Total 3 Years So Far

According to the Pattern of release dates, a Revision seems to come out 3-4 years after the original release, and the entire Life span of an Edition seems to be 8 years. So its more likely that we'll get a 4.5 edition in 2012/3 than a new 5th edition. And even if you count Essentials as 4e revision then it we should expect 4e in some form to at least continue to 2016.

Also theirs still plenty of content to cover, off the top of my head

An Epic Tier focused Monster Manual
An Epic Tier focused DM Guide
A book on Primordials, seeing as they feature heavily in the Paths of Light Mythos I'm not sure why their hasn't been one yet
An Underdark setting Guide
A Shadowfell setting Guide, We have Heroes of shadow but that focuses more on Player Options than adventure hooks and lore
A Feywild setting Guide, We have Heroes of feywild but that focuses more on Player Options than adventure hooks and lore
A few more campaign settings, so far we only have Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun and Eberron
Any books on the Far Realm

Tyndmyr
2011-12-19, 12:59 PM
Also, Pathfinder books are very well illustrated, very well organized and the fluff tends to be very good.

I find the fluff to be mediocre at best, and very vanilla fantasy. However, the other things you listed are definitely true, and certainly help to sell a book.

Yora
2011-12-19, 01:02 PM
If the situation would always be the same, then the 8 year pattern could be regarded as very strong evidence.
But the point is, that 4th Edition is not just the same as the other editions before. A release in early 2013 seems still likely to me, even if they don't make it in 2012, of which I am not entirely sure. But I can't see how they would drag it out to five more years, when reception is "not that" good after just 3 years, and has been so for quite some time.
And all the restructuring they are doing just screams to me "New edition in production".

The Golarion settings seems incredibly generic and boring to me, and a complete waste of time. But that's the Campaign Setting line, which is distinct from the Rulebook line. And even the rulebooks have some fluff. Not very much expanded on, but the AGP classes introduce a number of great new character concepts to the game, as well as giving new ideas what people in the world can do. That's also a kind of fluff to me, which I like a lot about the Oracle and Witch. How I implement them in a game is my business, but they introduced very good new ideas to the game. Also many great monstes.

JadePhoenix
2011-12-19, 01:19 PM
I find the fluff to be mediocre at best, and very vanilla fantasy. However, the other things you listed are definitely true, and certainly help to sell a book.

I like vanilla fantasy.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-19, 01:23 PM
I like vanilla fantasy.

That's probably the difference then. I find their setting painfully generic, with little to distinguish it from every other world before it. For those who either like the familiarity or are just new to the genre, it's probably fine.

gbprime
2011-12-19, 01:26 PM
D&D white box came out in 1974 ~ Lasted 3 Years
AD&D 1st Ed in 1977-9 ~ Lasted 8 Years until
Unearthed Arcana Expansion in 1985 ~ Lasted 4 Years, 12 Years Total
AD&D 2nd Ed in 1989-92 ~ Lasted 4 Years until
AD&D 2nd Ed Revised in 1996 ~ Lasted 4 years, 8 Years Total
D&D 3rd Ed in 2000 ~ Lasted 3 Years until
D&D 3.5 Ed in 2003 ~ Lasted 5 Years, 8 Years Total
D&D 4th Ed in 2008 ~ Lasted 2 Years Until
D&D 4th Ed Essentials in 2010 ~ Currently 1 Year Old, Total 3 Years So Far

According to the Pattern of release dates, a Revision seems to come out 3-4 years after the original release, and the entire Life span of an Edition seems to be 8 years. So its more likely that we'll get a 4.5 edition in 2012/3 than a new 5th edition. And even if you count Essentials as 4e revision then it we should expect 4e in some form to at least continue to 2016.

But remember the product line has changed owners several times during that span. I think you have to throw out any real reference to product lifespans before Hasbro got involved. It's their show now.

DrBurr
2011-12-19, 01:43 PM
If the situation would always be the same, then the 8 year pattern could be regarded as very strong evidence.
But the point is, that 4th Edition is not just the same as the other editions before. A release in early 2013 seems still likely to me, even if they don't make it in 2012, of which I am not entirely sure. But I can't see how they would drag it out to five more years, when reception is "not that" good after just 3 years, and has been so for quite some time.
And all the restructuring they are doing just screams to me "New edition in production".


Reception? From the estimates I've seen 4e has sold just as well as Pathfinder in a recession, couldn't restructuring just show they're beginning work on 5thed, I mean it must take a while to produce the entire game if they started figuring out what they're going to change and started fleshing out the game right now I don't think it will be ready in a year, I'd guess 2014 at the earliest.


But remember the product line has changed owners several times during that span. I think you have to throw out any real reference to product lifespans before Hasbro got involved. It's their show now.

Hasbro bought WOTC back in 1999 before 3rd edition came out, if anything they created the pattern, so unless I'm missing a piece of crucial info I don't think that will effect the chances of longevity of 4e or the creation of 5e.

Kenneth
2011-12-19, 01:45 PM
I might be going off topic here a bit.. .. Buut if they do make a 5th ed D&D i hope that they use the old TSR ALternity ruleset. for me at least that was the greatest game rules system I have ever had teh pleasure fo playing.. too bad it came out at the end of TSR's life and so.. never really go the credit or the exposure I feel it should have garnered.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-19, 02:34 PM
Reception? From the estimates I've seen 4e has sold just as well as Pathfinder in a recession,

Yes. That's a BAD trend for WoTC. 3.5 had nothing even vaguely close to it, and utterly dominated the RPG market. 4e has a competitor on approximately equal terms.

So, in relative terms, they're doing worse now.

DrBurr
2011-12-19, 04:53 PM
Yes. That's a BAD trend for WoTC. 3.5 had nothing even vaguely close to it, and utterly dominated the RPG market. 4e has a competitor on approximately equal terms.

So, in relative terms, they're doing worse now.

The markets for 4e and 3.5 are entirely different though, 3.5 had no competitor because no one could emulate wizards success yet, when 3.5 was retired Paizo took the opportunity to expand the market. We're looking at a more competitive market right now and if anything that's more reason not to drop your top product at the moment to release a new version Hasbro would likely lose even more ground to other companies which would emulate what Paizo did 3 years ago.

Now if 4e was lagging behind Pathfinder in sales drastically then it would be in Hasbro's best interest to release a game to attempt to recapture the market, but that not the case instead 4e is still a strong system which still has consumer interest.

Kurald Galain
2011-12-19, 06:56 PM
That reminds me, I think I have worked out why so many homebrewers got banned from the forum. They were invalidating 4th edition. Chances are WOTC hate homebrew.
Wait, what? Do you have a link that tells more about what happened there?


I don't think 5e is going to come out any time soon, it just doesn't strike me as Likely. 4e has only been out for three years,
And so? Just because the previous two editions lasted eight years each doesn't mean that this one has to. Four points of measure is not a very strong base for statistics.



An Epic Tier focused Monster Manual
An Epic Tier focused DM Guide

It turns out that only a tiny minority of players ever plays epic tier (which is why WOTC has printed almost exclusively for the heroic tier in the past year or so). So I don't think this would be such a good marketing strategy.



A Shadowfell setting Guide, We have Heroes of shadow but that focuses more on Player Options than adventure hooks and lore
A Feywild setting Guide, We have Heroes of feywild
So we already have both of these (and also The Plane Below and the BOVD for more shadowfell-related stuff).


A few more campaign settings, so far we only have Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun and Eberron
The only one I'm surprised to be missing is Dragonlance, but there's probably some rights issues involved. Both Planescape and Ravenloft have been featured in some splatbook, and of course there's Neverwinter (which, yes, is technically part of FR, but it's featured as its own setting). If anything, I'd expect more splats that focus on some particular region of FR.

kaomera
2011-12-19, 09:14 PM
Definitely not correct. An update guide was published, and 3.0 stuff is RAW legal in 3.5. There are a few corner cases(ie, fullblades, etc) where it's slightly unclear how to do the conversion, but the vast, vast majority of 3.0 works fine in 3.5. The only books that were replaced were core, so no splat were tossed out.
Fair enough, must have been more or less a house rule.

3 -> 3.5 was, if anything, MORE minor than 4e -> Essentials.
This, I just do not get. ''Essentials'' was a much less significant change in 4e than PHB2 or PHB3. Um, but maybe that's the point - I may just be overestimating the change from 3e -> 3.5.

Aron Times
2011-12-19, 09:18 PM
From what I've heard, the idea behind the Essentials series is that some players actually want to play simpler classes compared to the more complicated ones in the three Player's Handbooks. Basically, Wizards realized that although the 3.5 wizard was king, some people still enjoyed the less mechanically complex 3.5 fighter.

Fortunately, the power gap between Essentials classes and traditional 4e classes is not as wide as that of the 3.5 fighter and the 3.5 wizard.

GoatToucher
2011-12-19, 09:18 PM
I am curious as to what people feel is missing from pathfinder fluff. It is a variation on a very popular genre with close to a hundred years of history.

Is it catgirls? It's catgirls, isn't it?

Kurald Galain
2011-12-19, 09:30 PM
This, I just do not get. ''Essentials'' was a much less significant change in 4e than PHB2 or PHB3. Um, but maybe that's the point - I may just be overestimating the change from 3e -> 3.5.

Yes :)

Also, 4.4 is not just the new classes in HOFK/HOFL; they made substantial changes to the rules to print the RulCom, and they started changing powers not for balance reasons but because they felt things should be different (e.g. the tiefling and magic missile). Then they introduced item rarity and powers that require specific DM adjucation, stopped printing tier-based and racial feats, and stopped making game balance a design priority.

Now I don't think this is that big a deal either, but the result is that there are many campaigns that either ban all books before HOFL, or ban HOFL and all later books. It's a broken base (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BrokenBase), really: I think the reactions from the player base are much stronger than they were to the 3.0 - 3.5 change years ago.

kaomera
2011-12-19, 09:37 PM
Fortunately, the power gap between Essentials classes and traditional 4e classes is not as wide as that of the 3.5 fighter and the 3.5 wizard.
There really is no power gap strictly between the Essentials classes and the PHB-series classes. At least some of the Essentials sub-classes are definitely up there with the most potent classes from other sources. Other than that the field is generally pretty level in 4e to start with.

I am curious as to what people feel is missing from pathfinder fluff. It is a variation on a very popular genre with close to a hundred years of history.
Well, first of all, there's a difference between the fluff of the Pathfinder rules and the Pathfinder setting. But both are, beyond just being generic, kind of direction-less. This is just as much an issue with any edition of D&D, really (imo, the most significant example of this would be the Forgotten Realms). It's actually of great benefit if you are primarily interested in maximizing the number of options available to the players. But for some (including myself) what you end up with seems not so much a setting as a bunch of conflicting settings all crowding out one-another for the spotlight. Ideally you could focus on one specific region or what-have-you, but in practice I've found that's not what most players want. I feel that, in their quest to make their characters ''special'' they tend instead to create a situation wherein nothing actually feels ''special'' at all.

navar100
2011-12-19, 10:10 PM
WOTC will rehire me as a customer if 5E warriors fight like Tome of Battle, and I mean Tome of Battle not 4E despite the similarity and 5E spellcasters cast like 3.5 Psionics, and definitely do not add fatigue. Ok to fine tune stuff, such as have a stance progression that correlates to when you get stances. Other than that, I reserve judgement and remain a fired customer.

Aron Times
2011-12-19, 10:53 PM
Yes :)

Also, 4.4 is not just the new classes in HOFK/HOFL; they made substantial changes to the rules to print the RulCom, and they started changing powers not for balance reasons but because they felt things should be different (e.g. the tiefling and magic missile). Then they introduced item rarity and powers that require specific DM adjucation, stopped printing tier-based and racial feats, and stopped making game balance a design priority.

Now I don't think this is that big a deal either, but the result is that there are many campaigns that either ban all books before HOFL, or ban HOFL and all later books. It's a broken base (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BrokenBase), really: I think the reactions from the player base are much stronger than they were to the 3.0 - 3.5 change years ago.

It is important to note the much wider access to the Internet during the release of 4e and the first Essentials book compared to when 3.0 and 3.5 were released, so it only seems like players complained a lot more about the 3.5 to 4e transition compared to the AD&D to 3.0 transition. In reality, there were also broken bases during other edition transitions; it's just that they weren't as visible as the recent ones.

This is a link I have bookmarked as evidence of how broken the base was during AD&D to 3.0:

http://www.gamegrene.com/node/20

Note the similarities between the arguments of 3e's detractors then and those of 4e's detractors now. It seems that the more things change, the more they remain the same. :smallsmile:

kaomera
2011-12-19, 11:20 PM
Also, 4.4 is not just the new classes in HOFK/HOFL; they made substantial changes to the rules to print the RulCom, and they started changing powers not for balance reasons but because they felt things should be different (e.g. the tiefling and magic missile). Then they introduced item rarity and powers that require specific DM adjucation, stopped printing tier-based and racial feats, and stopped making game balance a design priority.
I disagree with all of this besides magic missile, or at least I'm not really seeing it as an issue. The rule changes where so ''substantial'' that despite playing with them since last year I didn't actually remember that they had made them before I fact-checked my earlier post. The tiefling's racial was changed because it supposedly never got used - that matches my experience and imo it's a balance issue, albeit not a universal one. Item rarity got announced and then immediately forgotten about - which is my personal complaint about Essentials, WotC got everyone riled up and then backed off of their attempts to make the game more accessible to anyone who doesn't use a computer at the table without actually gaining anything. I'm not sure what powers ''require specific DM adjucation'' any more than earlier powers, they haven't stopped require specific DM adjucation, and I don't think that game balance has reduced priority as far as design goes.

Now I don't think this is that big a deal either, but the result is that there are many campaigns that either ban all books before HOFL, or ban HOFL and all later books. It's a broken base (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BrokenBase), really: I think the reactions from the player base are much stronger than they were to the 3.0 - 3.5 change years ago.
I disagree. At least IME there are quite a lot of players who don't even know there is any fuss over this issue, they just tend to be in the majority of D&D players who don't hang out on message boards or read anything in Dragon or Dungeon that isn't a power or item that their character could use. And I've had to explain what ''Essentials'' is to quite a few players, as they simply use the online tools and don't actually buy any physical products (or in some cases do neither). To these players there's just ''what's in the character builder'', there really is no other categories. So they don't have any reaction to the issue at all, because to them there is no issue.

EDITED TO ADD:
I really should not get so worked up about this issue. Or maybe I should, I dunno, but I'm not sure how much anyone else is really going to care. It seemed to me that PHB3, in particular, was bad design rushed into production, which seems to be a problem in general with 4e. And everyone made excuses for it, insisted that ''support'' could suddenly make the non-concepts in several of the classes interesting. Fine, that's entirely subjective. For me it was just more junk I didn't really want dragged into my campaign, pretty much par for the course with almost every D&D supplement since 1e Unearthed Arcana.

And then Essentials was first announced and then released. And people kept making assertions about the products that, to me, seem completely unreasonable. And, honestly, I liked the stuff (well, except for the Red Box). It seemed like WotC finally had some idea what it was doing, and it didn't seem like a bad idea to me.

Only WotC folded. I have my doubts how much the ''outrage'' on the internet had to do with it (and it's almost odd how much difference there seems to be between the realm of the forum-users and the average DDI subscriber, except that I've played WoW so I've seen this before), but they back-tracked just enough that any real benefit they might have gained was lost. And of course, the ''outrage'' was unchanged, so complete loss for WotC.

Or maybe it was a loss anyway. I'm not sure it wasn't too late to begin with. The end result of all the errata is a game that's better in some ways, but it's still not what it was supposed to be back before it was launched and they had these exciting articles about all this stuff they where doing with the design... And no-one really knows how to play it anyway. Enough to play, generally, but with the real chance that if you have to look something up everyone at the table has it wrong.

So, a bit back on topic: I'm sure I'm going to end up buying 5e. And I'll probably be annoyed with some of the design choices that they make, and some of the compromises I'm sure it will include. But it'll be pretty cool.

Right up until they publish the first supplement and ruin everything all over again.

Sorcerer Blob
2011-12-20, 12:34 AM
And then Essentials was first announced and then released. And people kept making assertions about the products that, to me, seem completely unreasonable. And, honestly, I liked the stuff (well, except for the Red Box). It seemed like WotC finally had some idea what it was doing, and it didn't seem like a bad idea to me.

I agree here, personally I don't get the Essentials hate as it got me back into 4e at the beginning of this year after a two year hiatus. As much as the content/choose your own adventure aspect of the Red Box sucked, you have to admit it was marketing gold that appealed to a sense of nostalgia. I like both the 4E and 4EE classes and don't see an issue between the two of them or a real power creep (except in some themes..)

That said, the 5e discussion that has been raging on for months now does a few things: 1) it angers me and 2) i find it silly. For the first one, I realize that it's a sense of Grognardia that I similarly felt when 4e first came out and I was still stuck in the world of 3.X. So, my bad. Recognizing what my reservation is based on, I will likely enjoy a new edition, despite the fact that I too agree that it is way too soon for a new release.

That said, 2014 does make the most sense, as much as I wish they'd give the edition a few more years...

Psyren
2011-12-20, 02:26 AM
It is important to note the much wider access to the Internet during the release of 4e and the first Essentials book compared to when 3.0 and 3.5 were released, so it only seems like players complained a lot more about the 3.5 to 4e transition compared to the AD&D to 3.0 transition. In reality, there were also broken bases during other edition transitions; it's just that they weren't as visible as the recent ones.

This is a link I have bookmarked as evidence of how broken the base was during AD&D to 3.0:

http://www.gamegrene.com/node/20

Note the similarities between the arguments of 3e's detractors then and those of 4e's detractors now. It seems that the more things change, the more they remain the same. :smallsmile:

Thank you for that link, I needed a good laugh :smallbiggrin:

I especially love the "factoring in weapon speeds made initiative easier!" argument.

Eldan
2011-12-20, 07:58 AM
I am curious as to what people feel is missing from pathfinder fluff. It is a variation on a very popular genre with close to a hundred years of history.

Is it catgirls? It's catgirls, isn't it?

Originality. My problem is this: there are dozens of Standard Fantasy Worlds out there. That's why they are called standard. Unless a setting brings something really new and interesting to the table, chances are I won't care about it in the least.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-20, 09:12 AM
Fair enough, must have been more or less a house rule.

This, I just do not get. ''Essentials'' was a much less significant change in 4e than PHB2 or PHB3. Um, but maybe that's the point - I may just be overestimating the change from 3e -> 3.5.

The changes from 3 to 3.5 are pretty minor. The biggest change was that DR/+x became DR/magic, and frankly, that was pretty much just a monster manual change. IIRC, the net change in the wizard class entry was that the Toad familiar swapped from +Con to +3 hp. It was...extremely minor fixing of little annoyances. The comparison with Essentials is to emphasize that, not to portray Essentials as a game sweeping change.

Hell, a lot of people can't identify which books are 3.0 and which are 3.5. Book of Vile Darkness is technically 3.0 for instance, but plenty of people are fairly unaware of that, and the book certainly sees lots of good use today.


I am curious as to what people feel is missing from pathfinder fluff. It is a variation on a very popular genre with close to a hundred years of history.

Is it catgirls? It's catgirls, isn't it?

Creativity and new things. Trotting out the same stuff with a hundred years of history(ie, ripping off tolkein and everyone else who ripped off tolkein) does not get you high marks in these areas from me. I'm not saying it's any worse than the dozens of other rip-offs on the same basic concepts, but it's lacking in things that make it stand out. Which means...I already have settings that do that. I don't need to buy this one.

Treblain
2011-12-20, 12:40 PM
This is a link I have bookmarked as evidence of how broken the base was during AD&D to 3.0:

http://www.gamegrene.com/node/20

Note the similarities between the arguments of 3e's detractors then and those of 4e's detractors now. It seems that the more things change, the more they remain the same. :smallsmile:

Thank you for this. Some of those comments are just amazing to read. "3rd Edition is not a new edition, it's a different game!" "It's like a video game RPG!" "It's so easy, 13 year olds can figure out how to play!" "2e was just a money-making venture!" "You haven't actually read the new edition!" "Fighters are actually good in the new edition!" "The editions aren't as different as you think!"

I think that all future edition wars should only be allowed to use text copied from that thread, with the edition names changed as appropriate. I honestly don't see why we need new arguments.

JadePhoenix
2011-12-20, 12:48 PM
Thank you for this. Some of those comments are just amazing to read. "3rd Edition is not a new edition, it's a different game!" "It's like a video game RPG!" "It's so easy, 13 year olds can figure out how to play!" "2e was just a money-making venture!" "You haven't actually read the new edition!" "Fighters are actually good in the new edition!" "The editions aren't as different as you think!"

I think that all future edition wars should only be allowed to use text copied from that thread, with the edition names changed as appropriate. I honestly don't see why we need new arguments.

What.
Can't believe someone said that. Fighters were awesome in AD&D 2nd edition. Grand Mastery was sweet.

Kenneth
2011-12-20, 04:47 PM
while i almost had my head explode form somebody having said (apparently that is) that 3rd ed fighters were better than they were in 1st/2nd, and I ams till getting over the healing process of that..

anyways.. being one of the players who lived through 1st to 2nd to revised 2nd to 3.0 to 3.5 and to what ever 4th ed is supposed to be....

Yeah there was always a bit of the old timer's who were like ' my edition i better blargh!" most of the time its just that human nature bit that for some reaosn makes everything in the past seem rose colored.

while some of the argument had a foot in reality ( 3rd ed being a much simplied rule systen you just roll a d20 and go to town) and 13 year old COULD figure out to play.. but serisouly.. i was 5 wen i learned D&D so that argument to me is moot... But for me I do feel that 3rd ed was made to draw in a larger crowd and expand with an easier to use rule set, now instead of being based around rulings and player creativity it based around rules and character creativity.

for myself and the others i have played with that has went though the every edition change. 1st, 2nd and 3rd sitting down and playing it still felt like D&D so after we all worked out the kinks to play the game like how we like ( i.e conan is an actual bad @$$ and you cna be a successful Robin Hood etc etc) it was still the game we loved and ejoyed spending hours and hours playing, talking about, and creating within..

AT the local gaming/hobbie stores peopel would have their spats but these were all minor. like the argument 3.5 was a money making venture.. DUH!! WoTC is a buisness EVERYTHING they do is a money making venture.. even TSR was doing that.. any body remember DRAGON DICE? ugh.. that is all I am going to say about that. but back on subject... yeah there were spats during the 1st through 3.5 and PF some peopel actually belvie that PF is 100% original and is nothing liek D&D...) but they were all friendl and over time we all go to a loving and cozy middle ground, ive yet to find a group that plays D&D that doesn't have some odd mix of 1st/2nd/3rd ed rules thy play with.

That is completely not the case with 4th ed.. Not only do people get in heated arguemnt over it.. nobody has found a middle ground. and for me.. its not even worhty of the name D&D anymore.. I tried it.. THREE TIME! i was liek ugh it just new edition jitters i'll try again.. the 2nd time i was like. uh.. maybe I am just having a bad day.. but the 3rd time i knew "is this even D&D.. i mena it says D&D..." and a lot of the guys I play with seem to agree with my same sentiment. idc if it plays like a MMO, id dare any of you to name 1 MMO out there that does not draw inspiration from D&D ..

anyways that is my 2 cents and what my own persona experivne has been in the so called edition wars.

I hope the do come out with a 5th edition soon, becuase I want my old D&D back,

the_other_gm
2011-12-20, 05:52 PM
here is another gem (http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.frp.dnd/browse_thread/thread/a3f111bccd393cc4/21c6c22a1ab12aed) from one "Halaster Blackcloak" on August 18th 2000

Kenneth
2011-12-20, 06:33 PM
actually for me at least that is 100% true.. the max HP at 1st level was probly the most common of all 2nd/1st ed houerules ( in fact it wasn't until i read this articel that i thought othwerwise)

in 2nd ed the PCs were andveturerd first and heroes 2nd. 3rd ed changed this up and made them heroes first and adventureres 2nd, which is all right. but if you look at the monsters and then at teh PC and what each ste had in terms of abilities.. how cna anybody ever define that the ruler slid waay towards the PC sides in any given fight?

it i just the way the game plays. not that it is a bad thing or a good thing, you can still be challenenged by monsters but apart from 1st level (maybe 2nd) you only have the fear of getting seriously hurt,; death at least ive found is a non issue in the 3rd ed days. Unless 1) your dm is trying to kill you or 2) you or your party just did something really really stupid.

Aron Times
2011-12-20, 07:33 PM
The idea that hardcore death encourages roleplaying is a myth.

A system with high lethality, and thus, a high turnover of player characters is not conducive to roleplaying. What's the point of writing an elaborate backstory and fleshing out your character's personality when you can't keep him anyway? Such a high turnover only leads to characters named Aron Times II, III, IV, V with very little in the fluff department because the players don't want to get too attached to them.

I remember an old Neverwinter Nights server called the City of Arabel. It was advertized as an HCR server (hardcore roleplaying). Basically, you started out with very little gold, and you would be unlikely to ever see or even keep a +1 item. Basically, when you die, you drop all of your items and cash on the ground. Did I mention that the server had full PvP everywhere? And that you lose 1/3 of your total XP when you respawn? And that a DM has the right to declare permadeath at his discretion?

This hostile environment resulted in a small, elite cadre of high-level characters (over level 7) while everyone was stuck at the lower levels, losing level after hard-to-reach level because dying made you lose everything. Basically, if you were somehow blessed by the RNG gods, you could reach a high level and sit there so you don't lose your items. Perhaps a realistic simulation of an adventurer's life in the Realms, but seriously not fun for most.

Fortunately, all the HCR servers died over time, their players siphoned off by the much more forgiving servers.

Person_Man
2011-12-20, 08:41 PM
And even if you count Essentials as 4e revision then it we should expect 4e in some form to at least continue to 2016.


I concur with this conclusion.

Also, keep in mind that we're in the midst of the worst economic recession in 80 years. It's unlikely that Hasbro would launch a major product line in this climate. If 4E is profitable, they will continue to print 4E. When 4E becomes unprofitable, they will most likely cancel 4E, fire most of the people who work on it, refocus their WotC product lines on things that are profitable (card games, board games, licensing agreements) and wait until the economy comes back. Then they'll survey the field of game design, find out whatever is hottest and/or has the most potential, and either rip it off directly or buy it out, and then use it to publish 5E.

stainboy
2011-12-20, 08:49 PM
here is another gem (http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.frp.dnd/browse_thread/thread/a3f111bccd393cc4/21c6c22a1ab12aed) from one "Halaster Blackcloak" on August 18th 2000

I lol'd.

What's really disappointing is that these old 2e grognard posts never hit on real problems. I keep hoping to find a post about how clerics are overpowered, or the item economy was ported from Diablo/Baldur's Gate and won't work well in tabletop, or the level adjustment rules are a ham-fisted effort to kill Dark Sun and Planescape, Hell, I'd settle for someone noticing that big creatures almost never miss their attacks.

But no, 3e sucks because 1st level PCs are invincible.



This hostile environment resulted in a small, elite cadre of high-level characters (over level 7) while everyone was stuck at the lower levels, losing level after hard-to-reach level because dying made you lose everything. Basically, if you were somehow blessed by the RNG gods, you could reach a high level and sit there so you don't lose your items. Perhaps a realistic simulation of an adventurer's life in the Realms, but seriously not fun for most.

Fortunately, all the HCR servers died over time, their players siphoned off by the much more forgiving servers.

That seems to be pretty common when a small persistent world has meaningful consequences for PvP. Eventually the server reaches equilibrium with a small group of "haves" who pre-emptively stomp anyone else who tries to advance to their level. Shadowbane had that problem. I guess the lesson here is either make it easy to recover from a loss in PvP, or make the world huge so it's hard to hunt newbies.

Also, HCR was dumb. That can be a lesson too.

Yora
2011-12-21, 05:14 AM
I lol'd.
Somehow the name Halaster Blackcloak triggers some deeply burried memories of, let's say "controversial oppinions".

Kurald Galain
2011-12-21, 06:45 AM
What's really disappointing is that these old 2e grognard posts never hit on real problems. I keep hoping to find a post about how clerics are overpowered,
To be fair, it took the internet several years to figure that out. It's always easier in retrospect.

I do recall reading over the 3.0 PHB for the first time and immediately spotting some glaring problems, though. For example, the pointlessness of skills like Innuendo, and the fact that classes like Bard or Paladin were so front-loaded that most builds could easily be improved by dropping a level of bard or paladin in there. It took WOTC years to fix those, but they eventually did. Actually I had the same reaction to the 4.0 PHB.

Eldan
2011-12-21, 07:26 AM
The way I remember it, they mentioned that the Ranger was frontloaded (They got, like, four feats on level one), so they moved combat style to level 2 in 3.5.

Knaight
2011-12-21, 07:33 AM
Actually not that surprising. I love me some OGL, and I also like physical copies of books. I'm probably more likely to buy a game that has an OGL(and I do indeed own a wide variety of pathfinder books), not less. It's not true for everyone, but I would not consider the OGL to be a liability. If nothing else, it enhances market penetration substantially, and nothing helps your game sell like actually having people playing it in the stores.

For that matter, look at the indie market. FATE has been highly successful, largely due to Spirit of the Century. Which has an SRD, and is released under OGL. It is based on Fudge, which is reasonably successful at selling paper products, despite having a free and complete .pdf - it also released under OGL. It's hardly a liability to make it easy for people to start playing your game, as people who start playing are more inclined to actually buy stuff than people who are just picking a game from the sold options.

kaomera
2011-12-21, 09:00 AM
As much as the content/choose your own adventure aspect of the Red Box sucked, you have to admit it was marketing gold that appealed to a sense of nostalgia.
I have to say that to me the new Red Box was much more of a missed opportunity. The new Pathfinder starter box is much more what this should have been - new players are picking it up and starting campaigns, and experienced players are picking it up and showing new players how to play. It sells not only itself, but further products (much like the OGL does). 4e has Encounters (when it's run well / to this purpose) and the DDI, but the Red Box was not actually a good way to get new players into the game / new consumers buying the products.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-21, 09:07 AM
I lol'd.

What's really disappointing is that these old 2e grognard posts never hit on real problems. I keep hoping to find a post about how clerics are overpowered, or the item economy was ported from Diablo/Baldur's Gate and won't work well in tabletop, or the level adjustment rules are a ham-fisted effort to kill Dark Sun and Planescape, Hell, I'd settle for someone noticing that big creatures almost never miss their attacks.

But no, 3e sucks because 1st level PCs are invincible.

Yeah...I recall there being a bit of whining among the older types...but I and people like me were gleefully in the "ooh shiny" phase for 3.0. I still don't have anything against 2e, and frequently raid the materials for ideas, but I certainly didn't consider their arguments to be especially merit-based. It passed quickly, though. 3.x rapidly became the dominant game, and those who played 2e were unusual retro groups that were fairly inclusive and isolated.


That seems to be pretty common when a small persistent world has meaningful consequences for PvP. Eventually the server reaches equilibrium with a small group of "haves" who pre-emptively stomp anyone else who tries to advance to their level. Shadowbane had that problem. I guess the lesson here is either make it easy to recover from a loss in PvP, or make the world huge so it's hard to hunt newbies.

I've also noticed this trend, yeah. It's definitely a design problem.

Knaight....agreed on all counts. Hell, I'd say the 3.5 SRD was part of the reason for it's acceptance. Not directly, perhaps, since the internet wasn't as big of a thing back then, but a lot of players I know had some mongoose books or other stuff. More support is always a good thing. Hell, the SRD even led to pathfinder, which you could easily argue as an indicator of just how popular 3.5 became as a result of open licensing.

It's a powerful tool...but it does make it harder to kill the product if you no longer want it to exist. Totally a win from a gamer perspective, but I suppose that's a trade-off from WoTC's perspective.

Jayabalard
2011-12-21, 05:23 PM
OD&D was only around for a year before AD&D came along, and then Unearthed Arcana came along after six years, changing things a fair bit. Then 2nd Ed AD&D turned up three years after Unearthed Arcana, and ran for six years before being revised again. On the other side of the fence, Basic D&D was revised 4 years after first publishing (along with the publication of the Expert set), then again two years later - and again seven years later.That's not really accurate

OD&D released in 74.

After that, the game got split into 2 products, with the basic D&D boxed set released in 77, and AD&D released toward the end of 78/early 79

So OD&D had been around for ~4 years before AD&D was released, not a year

Nor did UA change things any more than any other book released; OA had several significant additions, as did the dungeoneer's/winderness survival guides. The stuff in it was pretty much 100% compatible with the previous stuff, basically just a set of optional rules. And, as I recall, much of the stuff in UA had shown up previously in the dragon, so it was a gradual, not sharp change. All in all, it's not really comparable to the 3.0 to 3.5 change or even the 2.0 to 2.5 edition change.

Chainsaw Hobbit
2011-12-21, 11:49 PM
I wrote a blog post on the subject. (http://ultimatejosha.blogspot.com/2011/12/dungeons-dragons-fifth-edition-what-to.html)

WitchSlayer
2011-12-22, 08:15 AM
I wrote a blog post on the subject. (http://ultimatejosha.blogspot.com/2011/12/dungeons-dragons-fifth-edition-what-to.html)

Pretty good post, actually. I don't entirely agree with you and would argue you on some of the finer points but overall a pretty good job.

On the other hand...

I'm really hoping 5e will be a percentile based system.

Aww yeah, %e

Tyndmyr
2011-12-22, 08:45 AM
That's not really accurate

OD&D released in 74.

After that, the game got split into 2 products, with the basic D&D boxed set released in 77, and AD&D released toward the end of 78/early 79

So OD&D had been around for ~4 years before AD&D was released, not a year

Nor did UA change things any more than any other book released; OA had several significant additions, as did the dungeoneer's/winderness survival guides. The stuff in it was pretty much 100% compatible with the previous stuff, basically just a set of optional rules. And, as I recall, much of the stuff in UA had shown up previously in the dragon, so it was a gradual, not sharp change. All in all, it's not really comparable to the 3.0 to 3.5 change or even the 2.0 to 2.5 edition change.

*shrug* If anything, it's a bit like the 3.5 Unearthed Arcana. Tons of options, but certainly not an edition change. I wouldn't count that as something that's predictive of when 5th Ed will be released.

Chainsaw Hobbit
2011-12-22, 12:19 PM
Pretty good post, actually. I don't entirely agree with you and would argue you on some of the finer points but overall a pretty good job.

On the other hand...

I'm really hoping 5e will be a percentile based system.

Aww yeah, %e

Play BRP (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=226098).

Jayabalard
2011-12-22, 03:24 PM
Pretty good post, actually. I don't entirely agree with you and would argue you on some of the finer points but overall a pretty good job.

On the other hand...

I'm really hoping 5e will be a percentile based system.

Aww yeah, %eI'd be shocked if it were... the d20 is an iconic part of D&D... not having that be the primary resolution mechanic would be like not having dungeons or dragons in the game.

Kurald Galain
2011-12-22, 03:50 PM
I'd be shocked if it were... the d20 is an iconic part of D&D... not having that be the primary resolution mechanic would be like not having dungeons or dragons in the game.

Well, 2E had various resolution mechanics not involving d20s...

the_other_gm
2011-12-22, 04:33 PM
i've read the blog post and there are two things i take issue with:

1) magic items.

this isn't an issue with 4th ed, but one with D&D in general. while you had the occasional neat little item, for the most part the ones you wanted to look for was the +(N+1) sword/armor. i would posit that the worst offender is 3rd edition, but that's a whole other kettle of fish that i don't feel like boiling right now.

in D&D there's always been a reliance on getting the next best shiny, even going back to AD&D with it's "SPECIAL QUALITY: requires a +X weapon to hit" line on many monsters.

my solution would be to simply kill the +X sword altogether and simply keep the base qualities like "flaming" or "frost". the less numbers to need to meet the baseline requirement and the less number to can mash together to break the norm, the easier it is to start focusing on taking options that are either thematically appropriate or simply making up for something you're lacking.

the +1 sword simply wasn't interesting in any edition.

2) balance.

i would much rather classes that work off the same base and look annoyingly similar (which i honestly don't find is the case) and play quite differently then work off different bases and have wildly divulging power curves.

i also don't see the point of using different subsystems to handle the same basic concept of "those neat things your characters can do".

i see no reason to have a game that allows the BMX bandit to play alongside the Angel Summoner (www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw) and expect them to contribute the same amount... as a player it's kinda insulting to be told my thematic choices are expected to contribute the same as someone else's, yet have his be obviously superior. as a GM's it's annoying and the very reason i will never GM pre-4th ed again: trying to balance the game for the casters & non-casters was getting a hassle when 7th level came around and almost impossible to do around 10th without ample amounts of fiat.

The Troubadour
2011-12-22, 07:00 PM
Also, 4.4 is not just the new classes in HOFK/HOFL; they made substantial changes to the rules to print the RulCom, and they started changing powers not for balance reasons but because they felt things should be different (e.g. the tiefling and magic missile). Then they introduced item rarity and powers that require specific DM adjucation, stopped printing tier-based and racial feats, and stopped making game balance a design priority.

Naw, I'd say game balance is just as much of a concern now as it was in the beginning. If anything, they seem to be so worried about making overpowered classes that the Binder and the Bladesinger are, unfortunately, true failures from a mechanical point of view.

Also, I actually laughed out loud at the comments on the change to 3rd Edition. It brought back memories, to be honest. :-)

WitchSlayer
2011-12-22, 07:41 PM
I'd be shocked if it were... the d20 is an iconic part of D&D... not having that be the primary resolution mechanic would be like not having dungeons or dragons in the game.

Yes.

However, it would keep up the tradition of having Shift + the number of the edition sum up the edition.

horseboy
2011-12-22, 09:55 PM
2) balance.

i would much rather classes that work off the same base and look annoyingly similar (which i honestly don't find is the case) and play quite differently then work off different bases and have wildly divulging power curves.

You could fix that by +X weapons being only +X damage instead of +X Hit and damage. That way you don't have to worry about half the party not being able to hit it, but even a "magic" sword would still be better than a mundane sword against, for example, a fire sword vs a fire elemental.

Oracle_Hunter
2011-12-22, 10:11 PM
Yes.

However, it would keep up the tradition of having Shift + the number of the edition sum up the edition.
You mean like 1st = !

...what does it mean that 2nd = @? And 3rd = # ?

Man, now I'm both confused and intrigued :smallcool:

Kurald Galain
2011-12-23, 06:17 AM
However, it would keep up the tradition of having Shift + the number of the edition sum up the edition.

So you're saying 2E involved e-mail a lot since it's an @ symbol, and 3E is about, er, telephone numbers with a #?

(edit) Except if you're in the UK, because then 2E is " whereas 3E is a £.

:smalltongue:

Psyren
2011-12-23, 11:21 AM
And 4th is... oh ho! I get it.

Eldan
2011-12-23, 12:14 PM
And 4th is... oh ho! I get it.

What is on an American 4? On my keyboard, it would be ç, and I doubt 4E is particularly French.

Oracle_Hunter
2011-12-23, 12:16 PM
What is on an American 4? On my keyboard, it would be ç, and I doubt 4E is particularly French.
4 = $
5 = %
6 = ^
7 = &
8 = *
9 = (

And I learned that there are a wide variety of number row to symbol systems in the world. Delightful! :smallbiggrin:

Psyren
2011-12-23, 01:32 PM
What is on an American 4? On my keyboard, it would be ç, and I doubt 4E is particularly French.

Dollar sign, i.e. money. I was being facetious.

Doug Lampert
2011-12-23, 02:03 PM
I lol'd.

What's really disappointing is that these old 2e grognard posts never hit on real problems. I keep hoping to find a post about how clerics are overpowered, or the item economy was ported from Diablo/Baldur's Gate and won't work well in tabletop, or the level adjustment rules are a ham-fisted effort to kill Dark Sun and Planescape, Hell, I'd settle for someone noticing that big creatures almost never miss their attacks.

Level adjustment wasn't in 3.0 till very shortly prior to 3.5. Instead you paid the XP cost of what would now be a level adjustment and after that just paid for HD.

So if you had what would now be a +4 template you paid 10,000 XP and after that your were free and clear. About 10,000 more XP and you were dominating all the base characters.


To be fair, it took the internet several years to figure that out. It's always easier in retrospect.

I do recall reading over the 3.0 PHB for the first time and immediately spotting some glaring problems, though. For example, the pointlessness of skills like Innuendo, and the fact that classes like Bard or Paladin were so front-loaded that most builds could easily be improved by dropping a level of bard or paladin in there. It took WOTC years to fix those, but they eventually did. Actually I had the same reaction to the 4.0 PHB.

I caught wish loops based on SLA wish and the availability of Gate abuse on my first read-through. But missed gobs of other things. (Was Candle of Invocation in 3.0? I'm not sure, but I missed it even in 3.5.)

Tyndmyr
2011-12-23, 02:15 PM
I caught wish loops based on SLA wish and the availability of Gate abuse on my first read-through. But missed gobs of other things. (Was Candle of Invocation in 3.0? I'm not sure, but I missed it even in 3.5.)

Pretty much the same. Genie's granting wishes is a pretty notable thing, and the "wishing for more wishes" trope is sufficiently popular that it was a fairly frequent find.

But candle of invocation didn't stand out particularly. It was never something I really looked at for whatever reason.

stainboy
2011-12-23, 04:09 PM
Level adjustment wasn't in 3.0 till very shortly prior to 3.5. Instead you paid the XP cost of what would now be a level adjustment and after that just paid for HD.

So if you had what would now be a +4 template you paid 10,000 XP and after that your were free and clear. About 10,000 more XP and you were dominating all the base characters.

That's more or less true and I'm exaggerating the complaint to phrase it like an angry 2e grognard. Nonetheless, if you were coming from Dark Sun or Planescape, it was annoying that you had to jump through hoops to play a tiefling or thri-kreen. People complained for 3e's entire lifespan that it supported monster PCs poorly, so I would say anyone who caught on to that in 2001 was complaining about a real problem.

In fairness, the edition war thread from earlier (the one with the hideous Geocities-era blue-green) is about a preview. They didn't have access to anything but a few classes and part of the combat engine.

MukkTB
2011-12-23, 04:22 PM
I'm not a major fan of healing surges. They only work conceptually if you think of HP as some kind of evasion pool and you finally take a mortal wound when its gone. Nobody should be able to recover from a gaping sword wound by strength of will alone.

That said, what turned me off to 4e in the long run wasn't the minor technical changes. It was this: The Game feels less like an attempt to enable roleplaying and more like an attempt to mix a board game and an MMORPG. Theres a word I'm looking for but cant remember. Basically a lot of the abilities explain what happens mechanically, but totally fail to explain how a character would see it in the game. I'll see if I can get a link to some dude complaining about it in detail.

Before 4e came out I used to hear about the edition wars. I'd think I'm not one of those guys who can't handle change. But I'll admit that one of the first things that turned me off was the fact that a lvl 1 fighter with average stats seemed to have just under 100 HP when you factored in their healing surges. Well that and the massive number of pages devoted to samey 'at will' / 'once per day' / 'once per encounter' abilities. The problem wasn't a couple changes. The problem was the more I looked when I was trying to get past my initial problems the more I found I didn't like. I came to the conclusion that #1 I fundamentally disagreed with their design philosophy and #2 It didn't feel like D&D, just some other fantasy roleplaying system.

I feel that I am justified in not liking 4e. I don't have just one or two complaints. If I had to, I could list a ton of superficial complaints, and I could try to grasp the underlying disconnect.

But to assuage my feeling of being a reactionary I got PF when it came out. And I will at least read the rules on 5e. Those grubby businessmen aren't getting my money unless I'm satisfied with the rules. But I'm at least looking forward to giving it a shot.

horseboy
2011-12-23, 04:40 PM
That said, what turned me off to 4e in the long run wasn't the minor technical changes. It was this: The Game feels less like an attempt to enable roleplaying and more like an attempt to mix a board game and an MMORPG. Theres a word I'm looking for but cant remember. Basically a lot of the abilities explain what happens mechanically, but totally fail to explain how a character would see it in the game. I'll see if I can get a link to some dude complaining about it in detail.
Verisimilitude?

the_other_gm
2011-12-23, 05:00 PM
sorry if i wasn't clear in my post about the +X weapon, but the issue isn't the value of the X, it's the fact that there is a scaling bonus that makes it the must-have item... barring corner cases you're simply better with it then without it.

in any edition, you're almost always better off with the +3 frost sword over the +1 flaming sword, and you're always better using the store-bought, mass-produced Cannith Co.+1 sword over you're family's ancestral weapon, even though the second is much more flavorful.

that's the actual issue at hand. people will always be looking for the better + weapon.

by changing the focus of weapons to "how can this make the character capable of affecting some creatures/baseline effective" to "how can this add extra options to the character"

one of the main sticking point in 3rd ed (for me) is that options = power and how these options were generally skewered towards the privileged (casting) few. while there are many ways to get a single number or two up really high, with some optimization but for the most part that number is only really useable in two, three situations at best. for the rest of the time, you're probably dead weight.

on the flip side, the real power of casters (and i'm talking strait out of the gate, no splatbook required or pun intended) is their ability to be ludicrously versatile given some prep-time and foreknowledge... they simply had too many options at their disposal.

4th ed, on the other hand, upped the ability of non-casters and gave the casters the kick to the nads they very much required. everyone generally has the same overall ability to contribute in any given situation, though will be more adept then others, but very rarely have i looked at my character sheet and went "whelp, might as well whip out the DS and play pokemon".

on the flipside, 4th ed's tighter math does place a higher benefit for maxing out that "to hit" then 3rd ed did.

consider that in 4th ed the overall gap of effectiveness between each individual defense is going to be much smaller IME then that of 3rd's, at least on the enemy's part. while it's possible to feel out the weaker one, it's generally far less of a "you need a 16 or better to save/to hit the enemy/whatnot", usually hovering around the "you need a 10 +/-3 to hit, depending on the defense". on the flip side, this much tighter math means that those rare instances of constant, non-situational +1s are pretty valuable.

and magic items, which are factored in the assumed math are going to be the first thing players look at to upgrade when possible.

now, i'm not saying that's all players in any edition will be doing is upgrading their gear. there are ways to mitigate this, between good use of terrain/tactics, have a leader who can throw out lots of bonuses, a controller or striker who can lay debuffs, the "math fix" feats, etc... but the incentive to get the next best item has always been there, just like how in previous editions you always wanted the next +X weapon, +Y stat boost, +Z unnamed, etc...

but as i said right at the start, it's the +X is the problem in and of itself. if there is X then there is a good chance X+1 exists, which is more desirable.

keep the magic sword as a "magic sword" that simply adds extra options to the character and make it so the attack bonuses and whatnot are inherent to the character.

horseboy
2011-12-23, 05:23 PM
Well, there's also "scaling" options. You know, that your gear can grow with the character. That way you keep your ancestral kit and it stays relevant. It can be done either by "unlocking" levels of magic or as a secondary skill that gives the bonuses thus making it moot what weapon your wielding.

the_other_gm
2011-12-23, 06:36 PM
you can do scaling gear without needing to add bigger numbers to the character's abilities though.

a flaming sword that in the hands of a level 1 character and allows you to throw a single target fireball and eventually erupts into a flaming pillar at paragon with a small radius to a massive, explosive blast at epic or simply unlocking different abilities, like instead of simply wrapping the blade in fire at first, you could swing it around to envelop yourself in a protective aura of fire that harms attackers or shields you from fire/ice by create a flaming tornado around yourself (by melting the ice or absorbing the flames).

you need to have the abilities of a tier/level of item to be roughly as useful as one another, otherwise people will tend to flock to obtain the better ones and it'll become the next X+1 must-have sword/armor/amulet/cloak/pants.

Oracle_Hunter
2011-12-23, 06:47 PM
you can do scaling gear without needing to add bigger numbers to the character's abilities though.
You can, but it is (a) difficult and (b) unnecessary.

Look at 4e's Magic Items. While in practice the execution was flawed, the theory was sound:

- Magic Items generally have effects aside from pure numerical bonuses. Numerical bonuses alone are boring and "not magical."

- Powers within Tiers (i.e. Heroic, Paragon, Epic) are balanced. While Heroic Tier powers are improved as the items are scaled through the tiers, new types of powers are also added with each Tier.

Numerical bonuses merely add an incentive for people to improve their gear and give the Players an easy-to-understand benefit from doing so. Without bonuses you have to rely on having much better powers to encourage the Player to spend the resources to upgrade. Additionally, numerical bonuses allow for continual upgrading of items within a tier -- if you get an Enchanted Firesword at LV 1 and can't find a better version until LV 11 you'll be using the same sword for the entire tier. While this was accepted in AD&D it turns out people like getting new and shiny things from time to time.

The Christmas Tree Effect is a problem, to be sure, but only inasmuch as it proves a burden on Players. It was annoying in 3e because items were designed to either give a needed boost or have a neat power. This is easiest to see in the rules for enchanting weapons and the awkward work-around of people casting Greater Magic Weapon instead of actually having a greater magic weapon.

Numerical boosts aren't the problem; developing cool & balanced powers and dispersing them widely is the problem!

Flickerdart
2011-12-23, 06:55 PM
I'm really hoping 5e will be a percentile based system.

Aww yeah, %e
Would that make 4th Edition $e? :smalltongue:

horseboy
2011-12-23, 07:28 PM
you can do scaling gear without needing to add bigger numbers to the character's abilities though.

a flaming sword that in the hands of a level 1 character and allows you to throw a single target fireball and eventually erupts into a flaming pillar at paragon with a small radius to a massive, explosive blast at epic or simply unlocking different abilities, like instead of simply wrapping the blade in fire at first, you could swing it around to envelop yourself in a protective aura of fire that harms attackers or shields you from fire/ice by create a flaming tornado around yourself (by melting the ice or absorbing the flames).

you need to have the abilities of a tier/level of item to be roughly as useful as one another, otherwise people will tend to flock to obtain the better ones and it'll become the next X+1 must-have sword/armor/amulet/cloak/pants.

Actually, this brings up another problem. Do you want an item with an okay ability for 90% of the campaigns you're going to play, or for that 10% of the time your playing at other levels. Personally I'd think that having a "swap out" once per tier would be fine. Then you only have to scale it for 10 levels instead of 30.

WitchSlayer
2011-12-23, 09:01 PM
Would that make 4th Edition $e? :smalltongue:

That's what I hear anyway :smalltongue:

1st edition is new and exciting !e
2e is where it's AT @e
3rd edition, well, sometimes, it seems like it is an edition all about numbers. #e

And well, it goes on.

MukkTB
2011-12-23, 10:48 PM
I always felt it was kind of odd that merchants buy items at 50% by RAW 3.x. My group totally ignores that. Merchants might buy for 90% and sell for 110%. If there was a shortage of a needed item the price may inflate heavily. If its way too common and unneeded it may head down towards 50%. Haggling becomes important. Characters aren't so likely to be stuck with things they don't want. And the DM doesn't have to hand them tailor made objects.

The Troubadour
2011-12-24, 12:27 AM
I'm not a major fan of healing surges. They only work conceptually if you think of HP as some kind of evasion pool and you finally take a mortal wound when its gone.

But... That's how it's always been! To my knowledge, HP was never portrayed as a purely physical representation of health, except maybe in the earliest stages of the game.


Basically a lot of the abilities explain what happens mechanically, but totally fail to explain how a character would see it in the game. I'll see if I can get a link to some dude complaining about it in detail.

Actually, on this point I agree with you. 4th Edition's core rulebooks were very dry reads. I mean, the powers WERE described, but the descriptions were, for the most part, bland. Honestly, though... Can anyone really say that any D&D core rulebook - no matter the edition, and not taking into account setting books - was fun to read? Fortunately, they've been trying to move away from that tendency ever since the Essentials line first launched.


But I'll admit that one of the first things that turned me off was the fact that a lvl 1 fighter with average stats seemed to have just under 100 HP when you factored in their healing surges.

But why is that a bad thing? More HP means more time spent adventuring, instead of recovering!

Morithias
2011-12-24, 12:34 AM
I always felt it was kind of odd that merchants buy items at 50% by RAW 3.x. My group totally ignores that. Merchants might buy for 90% and sell for 110%. If there was a shortage of a needed item the price may inflate heavily. If its way too common and unneeded it may head down towards 50%. Haggling becomes important. Characters aren't so likely to be stuck with things they don't want. And the DM doesn't have to hand them tailor made objects.

What happens if someone takes the merchantile background feat? (Sell items at 75%, once a month buy an item for 75%)

Salbazier
2011-12-24, 02:13 AM
But... That's how it's always been! To my knowledge, HP was never portrayed as a purely physical representation of health, except maybe in the earliest stages of the game.


Most of the time, Hp-restoring ablities are flavored as healing of physical wounds, from natural healing to cure wounds line and so forth. That infers that HP are measure of physical health. I know there are some hp-restoring ability that isn't exactly healing but I can't remember what. HP are always an abstraction, but its often hard to think of it as something other than 'health' point.

In Star wars RPG (forgot which one..) it is explicitly called as capability of evading damage from being actually lethal. I don't remember if its explicitly stated in 4e, but the existence of hp-restoring ability that isn't magical/natural healing (surge, Warlord) indirectly represent HP as some measure of fatigue instead of 'how much sword wounds or flesh burn you can take before you are down'

Kurald Galain
2011-12-24, 04:49 AM
Look at 4e's Magic Items. While in practice the execution was flawed, the theory was sound:

- Magic Items generally have effects aside from pure numerical bonuses. Numerical bonuses alone are boring and "not magical."

- Powers within Tiers (i.e. Heroic, Paragon, Epic) are balanced. While Heroic Tier powers are improved as the items are scaled through the tiers, new types of powers are also added with each Tier.

These are sound, yes. But on the other hand, WOTC makes two assumptions that are incorrect. First, that any +3 weapon or armor is always better than a +2 weapon or armor with a good property (and consequently, that low-level items aren't useful to high-level characters). And second, that a once-per-day power is more desirable than an always-on property (and as a result, hundreds of items exist that are mostly useless).

Of course, these are not things that can be fixed within an edition; such fundamental changes require the blank slate of a new edition, just like how fixing that "end of next turn" powers are better than "save ends" powers requires a new edition.

Eldan
2011-12-24, 08:50 AM
That's what I hear anyway :smalltongue:

1st edition is new and exciting !e
2e is where it's AT @e
3rd edition, well, sometimes, it seems like it is an edition all about numbers. #e

And well, it goes on.

I can't wait for &E, then (that's 6 on a swiss keyboard, at least). The one that will somehow unite all earlier editions into one.

/e (7) will be aimed primarily at internet trolls.

Saph
2011-12-24, 09:01 AM
That said, what turned me off to 4e in the long run wasn't the minor technical changes. It was this: The Game feels less like an attempt to enable roleplaying and more like an attempt to mix a board game and an MMORPG. Theres a word I'm looking for but cant remember. Basically a lot of the abilities explain what happens mechanically, but totally fail to explain how a character would see it in the game.

Dissociated mechanics.

gkathellar
2011-12-24, 09:03 AM
Most of the time, Hp-restoring ablities are flavored as healing of physical wounds, from natural healing to cure wounds line and so forth. That infers that HP are measure of physical health. I know there are some hp-restoring ability that isn't exactly healing but I can't remember what. HP are always an abstraction, but its often hard to think of it as something other than 'health' point.

Indeed, HP has never made any sense and its portrayal has always been inconsistent. Nonetheless, thinking of it as a "stamina" pool in the only thing that comes even close to work conceptually.


What happens if someone takes the merchantile background feat? (Sell items at 75%, once a month buy an item for 75%)

Does anyone actually do that?


/e (7) will be aimed primarily at internet trolls.

So ... no difference from 3E? :smalltongue:

kaomera
2011-12-24, 12:51 PM
But... That's how it's always been! To my knowledge, HP was never portrayed as a purely physical representation of health, except maybe in the earliest stages of the game.
Yes and no. The further back you go the less description of what hit points where exists, but things like calling loss of hit points ''damage'', calling a successful attack a ''hit'' (and therefore to-hit rolls, etc.), calling the restoration of lost hit points ''healing'' and ''curing'' - these all lead a lot of players to the belief and expectation that hit points equate directly to physical damage.

IMO it's not something that the system has ever really supported in any meaningful way. But for a lot of players it seems easier to ignore certain inconsistencies than it is to ignore others.

MukkTB
2011-12-26, 06:20 PM
I don't think the system has been consistently clear. This applies most directly to third edition.

You could look at HP as the ability to mitigate incoming damage. That thrust for 10 damage that would've impaled a lesser swordsman (10 HP lvl 1 warrior) instead scratches you (100 HP Fighter). 100% of your HP damage is a serious gaping wound, 10% is a nasty cut. Except if healing cures wounds, why is it much harder to cure a cut on a lvl 100 HP fighter (who took 10 damage) than on a lvl 1 warrior (who took 1 damage)?

You could look at HP as a way to dodge damage. I don't get stuck through until my last HP is gone. Except Healing gets really weird then. How do you cure light wounds somebody's ability to dodge the damage? What about fire damage or falling damage?

It gets really silly if you declare each wound of equal value to be the same level of physical damage. 10 damage is a good impalement. Only the hardiest lvl 1 characters can keep going after being impaled. But are you seriously saying a 100 HP fighter has to be impaled 10 times before he goes down?

Then you could just declare HP as a kind of luck system. When your luck runs out is when you take that deadly bullet. This works really nice in situations that should IRL be like rocket tag. IE You want your players to willingly engage in a gunfight but you also want bullets to be appropriately deadly.

Then there's the stamina system. HP represents your ability to suck it up and keep moving. Except there are things you cannot physically suck up by force of will and stamina alone. For example you cannot walk it off when your lungs have been punctured. Therefore the stamina system has to pair off with an interpretation that doesn't allow things like punctured lungs while HP remain. Otherwise its pretty silly.


I subscribe to the what I'll call the Movie Narrative Interpretation. Imagine that the story is a movie. Imagine that HP is a measure in the writer's mind of how able the character is to go on. Full health is rested and fresh, -10 is dead, 0- is unconscious. Furthermore when the writer wants to show a hit on a character he goes ahead and has something hit the character. If he had the guy step out of the way we assume the character had just normally dodged. We wouldn't have any reason to believe his HP had been reduced. But the writer will not impale the character to show minor or moderate damage either. So it seems that a writer would follow some kind of curve when assessing the state of a character at specific levels of HP remaining.

I propose this formula: Damage_Shown = Max_HP/Current_HP - 1

Damage_Shown = 1/3 -> Character is disheveled maybe scratched, and his clothing is probably damaged.
Damage_Shown = 1 -> Character is bruised and appears beaten but doesn't show significant wounds.
Damage_Shown = 2 -> Character Character takes a moderate wound that causes him to bleed or otherwise visibly signals damage.
Damage_Shown >= 3 - > Character takes a severe wound such as a deep cut He acts to show how painful the wound is.

Hmm this formula isn't quite right. 1 HP/100 would have a damage shown value of 99. I'll think about how to fix it. One kludge might be: Damage_Shown = Min(5,Max_HP/Current_HP - 1)

Psyren
2011-12-26, 07:36 PM
Drop everything and read this article. (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/features/9292-The-Ghosts-of-D-D-Past) This is the first source of actual data on D&D's success vs. Magic's, and the changing of the guard that happened between the OGL and 4e, that I've seen in these discussions.

Apparently there are two more scheduled (D&D Present and D&D Future), the latter of which will of course be directly relevant to this thread's interests.

Morithias
2011-12-26, 10:03 PM
Does anyone actually do that?


Yes. It's one of the most popular feats in my group. Especially when combined with a dark creature or a shadowcaster and the nightshade covenent. As long as the items you buy don't create light you sell AND buy at 75% for magic items. A.k.a you can literally whenever you're in a town where the nightshade covenent is active you can swap out all your gear for other gear of equal value. What's that we're going to be fighting a lich? this +5 longsword won't do much, how about a +5 morningstar or other blungening weapon.

Plus since money is real item that means all multiples work together so with the nightshade AND the feat, you can once a month, buy an item for a mere 56.25% market price.

KosherInfidel
2012-01-02, 12:35 PM
Emphasis mine.

You have any sources on that? I'm not challenging you on it, it's just a curiosity since I stopped paying any attention to 4e like two years ago.

It has been this way for a bit. http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/21403.html