So what happened to 5e anyway?

[Voss]

So then I take it D&D is just leeching off magic profits?

D&D does make a profit, and the DDI is a pretty chunk of basically free money each month. Remember that in corporate and bean counter worlds you can lose for not being successful enough.

Does it? How do you know? Why do you consider the money 'free'? They still have to pay people for writing up the shitty dragon content, art, layout, etc, the technical staff for the site, hosting and all that crap, shipping people off to PAX (for example, since they're currently advertising pax east signings) to assure people that 5e actually exists

You've got a weird numbers bubble where things exist, but you have no inputs or outputs, just assumption that everything is good.

It sounds pretty spot on to me. I honestly think 5e will do better than 4e, but not as good as 3.x. With a bit of extra development work, I'd play 5e right now.

Would you? Had they poured another years worth of work into the last playtest document, it might have been something, but after scrapping most of the classes again and shoving most of the interesting things into feats, I wouldn't touch it now. Especially since 'feats' seems their go to answer for everything, and is a easy alternative to actually refining the basic rules, something they haven't done much of at all. Which is also a really bad sign considering how terrible they are.

As it is, 5e seems to be an amalgamation of the worst aspects of D&D throughout its existence. 4e monster bullshit, the worst aspects of the 3e feat system, the horrible basic rules of 2nd, and the bland and flavorless abilities of BECMI. They successfully avoided classes without class features (though the features are now a bit on the boring side) and race-class restrictions (though the last is because humans are the best at everything, and the other races don't matter), but that seems to be all they have learned from nearly 40 years of RPGs.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm sure if people had seen the spitballing and playtesting that went into the creation of 4E, they would have been similarly unimpressed. That doesn't make 4E "vaporware", though.

The thing is, 4E D&D had a defined methodology that went into its creation and the design team were people who -- while stupid -- had a history of releasing finished products.

Yeah, a lot of the ideas we saw were bad from the outset. That 'party dogpiles on the dragon' preview was a concrete vision for the product. Andy Collins saying that he wanted race to play a bigger role in character advance was insulting and small potatoes but it was something to work off of. David Noonan ranting about wanting to put roles into the game merely because World of Warcraft was idiotic as all get-out, but it was an idea that gave us a clear idea what they had done and what they had going for it.

4E D&D was released partially unfinished (what with its pathetic magical item, class, and epic destiny catalogue) but that's because they decided to release it unfinished. If they were willing to spend another two or three weeks on it they could have beefed up the content because there was a structure to it. It wouldn't have been good, but it could've been done.

We call 5E D&D vaporware because there's no clear vision or direction for the product. There's a feel for the game, but they're emergent properties rather than something that feels deliberate. Now, it's totally possible that even though there isn't actually a methodology to the product we still get a more-or-less finished game that's on time. But they're already way behind schedule and the man helming the product has a track record of hackery and fail.

[Mistborn]

The way people talk it seems like any of us could at least do better than Mearls, why does Castles and Cocks not already exist?

[Red_Rob]

Because Mearls is paid to do this all day whilst we have day jobs and education commitments.

Because Mearls is part of a corporate structure where he can pull rank to get people to do stuff whilst we are a bunch of people on a message board that do stuff when we damn well feel like it.

Because Mearls has a financial incentive to keep working when he gets burnt out on the grindy bits, whilst we don't.

Because Mearls has carte blanche to re-use whatever ideas he likes from D&D's history, whereas us writing the next D&D is inevitably going to involve lots of potential legal issues with copyrighted terms etc. if we ever try to release it.

Because Frank is busy with medical school, mostly

Really though, the only way anything gets done on a message board is if one person decides to make something and just canvasses opinions or asks specific questions whilst doing the lions share of the work themselves. Which inevitable limits what can be produced because of the factors above. But if you want to give it a shot, go for it.

[Hicks]

I would like to point out that Dungeon: the Dragoning 40,000 7th edition already exists. It is not balanced, but it is pretty epic and cool, and I would totally play it over 4th edition D&D and over whatever 5th turns out to be.

[Previn]

Does it? How do you know? Why do you consider the money 'free'? They still have to pay people for writing up the shitty dragon content, art, layout, etc, the technical staff for the site, hosting and all that crap, shipping people off to PAX (for example, since they're currently advertising pax east signings) to assure people that 5e actually exists

BASICALLY free. The cost of providing content once created through DDI is minmal. Most of the cost of creating content for DDI is pretty low, or basically, if not actually, free as well. The biggest real costs are technical.

They might run costs for DDI up to ~180k a month if they're doing things wrong on the high end (4 techs guys at 85k each, 6 full time writers at 55k each etc). At a minium of 81,000 subscriptions, they bring in ~481,950. So DDI brings in roughly 300k month, or almost 3.6 million a year, just for DDI.

And that's close to a worse case in terms of how much they make. Really, they probably only pay around 110k supporting DDI and rake in around 370k in profit a month (~4.5 million a year). You could seriously run DDI, including new content by 2 guys in a basement.

I believe, though I'd have to check (and it would take a lot of digging), that under the above assumptions, DDI may bring in more money a year that Battletech.

It sounds pretty spot on to me. I honestly think 5e will do better than 4e, but not as good as 3.x. With a bit of extra development work, I'd play 5e right now.

Would you? Had they poured another years worth of work into the last playtest document, it might have been something, but after scrapping most of the classes again and shoving most of the interesting things into feats, I wouldn't touch it now. Especially since 'feats' seems their go to answer for everything, and is a easy alternative to actually refining the basic rules, something they haven't done much of at all. Which is also a really bad sign considering how terrible they are.

Let me repeat myself: With a bit of extra development work, I'd play 5e right now.. It has issues, my biggest complaints are the classes being boring/unbalanced. Guess what? So were 3.0, 3.5, 4e and Essentials. And yet people can and do have fun with those, because of in spite of the systems. I'm not saying it's the bets thing ever, but it's going to sell, due to the D&D name, even if it's only a mediocre game.

Clearly you wouldn't, but guess what? You are not me. You don't speak for me.

[Wrathzog]

a easy alternative to actually refining the basic rules, something they haven't done much of at all.

What do we mean by Basic Rules? If we don't include feats in that definition, then I'm assuming we're cutting out other Content like Classes, Races, and Spells. That leaves us with HowToPlay.pdf and I don't remember seeing anything really offensive in there.

[nockermensch]

You can actually check the minimum number of people subscribed to DDI who also have created a community account. I believe that it's around 81,000 right now.

I have a WoW account. I haven't payed a subscription fee for it in many years, but it still exists. Do you have any reason to believe that all 81,000 community accounts created are still paying subscription?

If you stop your subscription you no long show up as part of that group (you are actively removed by an automated process). This was actually specifically tested because of just such a question.

I mention community accounts because if you have DDI, but don't have a community account, you're not in the group and don't show up as part of the ~81,000 current DDI accounts that do. Thus why saying there are 81,000 minimum accounts for DDI.

If this number is true (and after the test you mentioned, I see no reason to doubt it), then this can probably count as yet another source of inertia and delays for 5e.

I mean, they're sitting on this revenue stream and could feel that by finally releasing the turd, the subscribers could give up and leave.

[hogarth]

It becomes more and more apparent that Frank was right and the 5E is Vaporware

I'm sure if people had seen the spitballing and playtesting that went into the creation of 4E, they would have been similarly unimpressed. That doesn't make 4E "vaporware", though.

That sound overly optimistic

It's overly optimistic to say that 4E wasn't vaporware?

Just to clarify: I agree that a 5E D&D rule set based on the current playtest documents may well end up being "vaporware", but I haven't seen any particular evidence that they won't come up with some new version of D&D by August 2014, say. And I have no doubt that someone could point to a version of the rules from early in the 4E development cycle that has little resemblance to how 4E eventually turned out. That's how it works when you're trying to rewrite something from scratch; you sometimes end up running down blind alleys and having to scrap big chunks of what you've already written. As opposed to Pathfinder, where it was clear from the start that the changes to 3.5E were going to be mainly cosmetic.

[Voss]

Does it? How do you know? Why do you consider the money 'free'? They still have to pay people for writing up the shitty dragon content, art, layout, etc, the technical staff for the site, hosting and all that crap, shipping people off to PAX (for example, since they're currently advertising pax east signings) to assure people that 5e actually exists

BASICALLY free. The cost of providing content once created through DDI is minmal. Most of the cost of creating content for DDI is pretty low, or basically, if not actually, free as well. The biggest real costs are technical.

Based on what? What magical world do you live in that you think the writers and artists and crap are creating content for nothing? Why the balls do think this stuff is free? Or even 'basically' free, whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean.

You could seriously run DDI, including new content by 2 guys in a basement.

You could. But we know they aren't, so the numbers you pulled out of your ass don't seem all that relevant.

What do we mean by Basic Rules? If we don't include feats in that definition, then I'm assuming we're cutting out other Content like Classes, Races, and Spells. That leaves us with HowToPlay.pdf and I don't remember seeing anything really offensive in there.

Offensive? Not generally, just mechanically dull and bad. Also skills, which are mechanically pretty horrible and off in the land of 'make up some numbers and fake it'.

Take DCs vs saves, and then look at actual numbers for monsters and player characters. You can shove DCs pretty high with the right construction (up into the high teens) and then you match it up with a stat. If it is something the target is good at, you've got something like a 40-50% chance of success, if it is something they are't good at, the odds drop to shit levels really fast., as in 20-30% chance of success. The party illusionist is going to face-roll ogre-type monsters and then go 50/50 on illithid/lich type monsters. But it doesn't matter because half the party is going to get stuck on the first wall or pit trap, because mechanically, they seem to be aiming at 50% failure rate for competent people.

And then stealth, grapple, awareness and all of that sort of crap- like 4e, if you don't have the relevant stat maxed out, you don't get to play that minigame. At least not with a reasonable chance of success.

[hogarth]

They still have to pay people for writing up the shitty dragon content, art, layout, etc, the technical staff for the site, hosting and all that crap, shipping people off to PAX (for example, since they're currently advertising pax east signings) to assure people that 5e actually exists.

Interesting. I had assumed that they had given up producing 4E content. But you're saying they're still producing 4E Dragon/Dungeon columns, correct?

[infected slut princess]

The way people talk it seems like any of us could at least do better than Mearls, why does Castles and Cocks not already exist?

Most people lack motivation. They tend not to go beyond the grind of their job/school.

Realistically, very very few people are so busy that they can't devote some time to a side-project. Instead, they allocate their time to watching 100 episodes of anime per month, or racking up thousands of posts on message boards.

Some people talk about making games and actually make games. Which is impressive compared to the far more numerous non-producers who only talk about making games.

Because Mearls is paid to do this all day whilst we have day jobs and education commitments.

Because Mearls is part of a corporate structure where he can pull rank to get people to do stuff whilst we are a bunch of people on a message board that do stuff when we damn well feel like it.

Because Mearls has a financial incentive to keep working when he gets burnt out on the grindy bits, whilst we don't.

Because Mearls has carte blanche to re-use whatever ideas he likes from D&D's history, whereas us writing the next D&D is inevitably going to involve lots of potential legal issues with copyrighted terms etc. if we ever try to release it.

If you think Mearls and WotC represents competition that is just too hardcore, you need to reconsider your perspective.

People have so many deluded fantasies about making an RPG that is the ultimate fantasy heartbreaker / D&D killer, but that's hard so they don't bother doing ANYTHING. Sure, you might not be able to make the ultimate, perfect game. But an ultimate perfect game that never gets produced is inferior to a flawed but decent game that actually gets made.

You don't have to be a full-time salaried RPG designer at a big game company with a bunch of staff to make a game in a few years of dedicated work.

Look at the 5e team's output. 5e was announced more than a year ago. They probably did some work on it before it was announced. But let's just say they've been working on it for a year.

If you worked on an RPG for merely two hours per day for a year (a modest commitment to a side-project), you could certainly get to the point that 5e has reached after a year. For the amount of resources they have available, the 5e team's output is clearly pathetic, especially if you ignore the playtest adventure modules, which are superfluous anyway.

[Previn]

Does it? How do you know? Why do you consider the money 'free'? They still have to pay people for writing up the shitty dragon content, art, layout, etc, the technical staff for the site, hosting and all that crap, shipping people off to PAX (for example, since they're currently advertising pax east signings) to assure people that 5e actually exists

BASICALLY free. The cost of providing content once created through DDI is minmal. Most of the cost of creating content for DDI is pretty low, or basically, if not actually, free as well. The biggest real costs are technical.

Based on what? What magical world do you live in that you think the writers and artists and crap are creating content for nothing? Why the balls do think this stuff is free? Or even 'basically' free, whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean.

You really don't have any idea of the relevant costs of this stuff do you? Before I get into the numbers more, because you're too lazy to do even a basic search before spouting off, 'basically free' means that you really don't have to do much of anything to make lots of money, in terms of work or capital expenditure. The amount of actual work that goes into DDI is pretty minimal.

Moving on to the numbers:

85k is high end for the type of job that would be supporting DDI, let alone paying 4 people that. It's realistically more likely 2 maybe 3 guys making about 72k. That's not a random number, that's what we pay our guys to do basically the same work.

55k for full time writes is pretty meh, but DDI doesn't employ fulltime writers. The starting rate for articles for Dungeon and Dragon in DDI is $0.06 per word. The cost of 6 writers at 55k each doing 1 month of work (i.e. $27,500) would be almost half a million words. That's the equivalent of putting out 2.25 4e PHBs every month. They do not put out that much content a month.

Cover art from Wayne Reynold runs about 1000$ per piece. If their online costs match up to print costs, which I think is reasonable, they probably pay between 50-250 for any internal color piece depending on size and the artist. However a lot of the DDI art is recycled, or used for books later, meaning that they are typically greatly reduced, or no cost to DDI.

Now, I don't know the actual hardware/service they're hosting on, nor the bandwidth they use, so 45k a month for hosting is a guess on my part, it's massively inflated, but I really don't care as you can throw in additional support, logistics and new hardware in EVERY MONTH with that. I really cannot go into how over inflated I made this just to cover it. You can get a couple servers and 40 TB of bandwidth a month for ~6,000$.

So, more realistic numbers gives 18,000 for 3 tech staff, maybe 14,000 for article content (~160,000 words with an extra 4k for high pay), 5,500 for art (3 cover quality, 5 large color interior pieces), 45,000 for hosting because why not blow the money, and slap on an extra 28,000 for whatever and you get... ~110,500 a month.

Again I still think that is high. I also think they pull in more than the minimum of ~480,000 a month as well.

You can do some google searches and find this info yourself.

[Slade]

Looking at the new classes the Barbarian seems actually decent.

Thick Hide gives reason they don't wear armor in stories often.
Reckless Attack is great chance to hit, but drawback is bad.
Level 5 Deadly Strike means you always deal double damage (it is 1/turn but are they multiple attacks in this? Or does it means AoO will be 1x damage), 10th level 3x damage, 15th level 4x damage, 20th level 5x damage.

Relentless Rage: Make DC 10 Con save to not be knocked from an attack, instead restored to 1 hp (exceprt if it killed you outright). So it doesn't kill you, you live.

And it goes on with Fearless, Regenerating, etc Raging ability (no limit to uses/day unlike Pathfinder ones)

Cleric domains abilities seem better

Druids know Wildshape at 1st (into a dog or riding dog basically), Rodent (2nd level), Horse/fish 4th level, etc.
Limited but it is gained earlier.
Like a Cleric Domain, you get Druid Circles:
Moon Circle gives bear form 1st, 3rd level lion form, etc wildshape (not possible otherwise).
Other Circle listed is Oak (spellcaster boosting)

Fighter? Bonus feats, hit bonus, Stole some Warlord abilities, Deadly Strike from Barbarian,

Monk: Ki 1/day +1/3 levels, Deadly Strike,
12th level abundant step at will, Monastic traditions (Cleric domain/Druid circle seperation thing),
1) Mercy Path gives Stunning fist, heart stopping strike, wholeness of body
2) Pheonix Path: Flames of Pheonix, Fiery Soul, Vengeful Flame
3) 4 storms path: Warrior's gale, Hurricane Defense, Vortex Punch
4) Stone's endurance path:Grasp of Stone, Stone's defense, Touch of Stony Doom
Now the abilities sound cool, but are they?
Well: All require Ki to use.
Fiery Soul just acts like Flame shield in 3.5 but costs Ki each time you want to hurt enemy (5 + level damage).
Flames of Pheonix: 2d6+level; 15 ft cone, so okay for levek 3 maybe.
Grasp of Stone: Hit enemy grapples them and deals your unarmed strike each rd grappled.
Heart Stopping Strike deals max damage (combined with Deadly Strike it might be decent)
Hurricane defense: throws enemy 30 ft, they are prone and take 3d6 damage.
Stone Defense: reduce an attacks damage to 0.
Touch of Stoney Doom makes enemy vulnerable to Blunt damage

So some are okay.

Paladins are Lawful evil, neutral, or Good (to satisfy Anti-Paladin lovers I guess). 3 orders to take giving different powers.

Rangers: Limited in Favored enemy choices but targets more than one type

Rogues might be okay

[Previn]

They still have to pay people for writing up the shitty dragon content, art, layout, etc, the technical staff for the site, hosting and all that crap, shipping people off to PAX (for example, since they're currently advertising pax east signings) to assure people that 5e actually exists.

Interesting. I had assumed that they had given up producing 4E content. But you're saying they're still producing 4E Dragon/Dungeon columns, correct?

Dragon 421, released 3/11/2013

Incidentally an article from it: Alternative Multi-classing Rules, by Robert J. Schwalb and Matt Sernett

[Juton]

The way people talk it seems like any of us could at least do better than Mearls, why does Castles and Cocks not already exist?

I think Bulmahn has done and will do a better job than Mearls. Considering my generally low opinion of Bulhman your argument that no one on here could do better than Mearls rings pretty hollow to me.

EDIT:Spelling

[hogarth]

They still have to pay people for writing up the shitty dragon content, art, layout, etc, the technical staff for the site, hosting and all that crap, shipping people off to PAX (for example, since they're currently advertising pax east signings) to assure people that 5e actually exists.

Interesting. I had assumed that they had given up producing 4E content. But you're saying they're still producing 4E Dragon/Dungeon columns, correct?

Dragon 421, released 3/11/2013

Incidentally an article from it: Alternative Multi-classing Rules, by Robert J. Schwalb and Matt Sernett

And today: Dungeon #212

Featuring The Village of Hommlet. Now if you want to talk about RPG vaporware, The Temple of Elemental Evil is a classic!

[Kaelik]

The way people talk it seems like any of us could at least do better than Mearls, why does Castles and Cocks not already exist?

I think Bulmahn has done and will do a better hob than Mearls. Considering my generally low opinion of Bulhman your argument that no one on here could do better than Mearls rings pretty hollow to me.

To be fair to mearls, part of his job is leadership and organization, and while many of us might be better designers than him, I think it is pretty fair to say that most of us would be worse at managing other people.

Obviously there are still several people who could do better than Mearls, because the bar is so low, but there is more than design work, and some of us are complete dickheads.

[Koumei]

Organisation and management and bossing people around is basically why "D&D: Our Edition, Fuck You" did not actually get completed before 4E was released, or indeed at all ever. Because the project needs a leader and no-one here actually wants to be bossed around by someone, we just individually make whatever crap we individually feel like making.

[Wrathzog]

Incidentally an article from it: Alternative Multi-classing Rules, by Robert J. Schwalb and Matt Sernett

Intredasting.

-e-
So, if I'm reading through this right, this new method of multiclassing is basically, "You get the class features of the class you pick at level 1. After that you can pick any power from any other class because Fuck it." Then there are a collection of paragraphs for Exceptions to the system as long as the description of the system itself.
Very Shrug.

[fectin]

The way people talk it seems like any of us could at least do better than Mearls, why does Castles and Cocks not already exist?

I dare you to name five Denners you'd be willing to work with for that long.

[Chamomile]

The way people talk it seems like any of us could at least do better than Mearls, why does Castles and Cocks not already exist?

I dare you to name five Denners you'd be willing to work with for that long.

Hard mode: Those Denners must also be willing to work with you.

[Lokathor]

The way people talk it seems like any of us could at least do better than Mearls, why does Castles and Cocks not already exist?

I dare you to name five Denners you'd be willing to work with for that long.

FrankTollman
K
hyzmarca
Ancient History
fectin

[Kaelik]

Hard mode: Those Denners must also be willing to work with you.

Thread victory awarded.

[Whatever]

The way people talk it seems like any of us could at least do better than Mearls, why does Castles and Cocks not already exist?

I think Bulmahn has done and will do a better job than Mearls. Considering my generally low opinion of Bulhman your argument that no one on here could do better than Mearls rings pretty hollow to me.

EDIT:Spelling

You took the time to edit for spelling, but still didn't bother to notice that you completely misread his post? That's actually kind of impressive.

Evaluating 5E classes misses the point. Sure, some abilities may seem "flavorful" or whatever, but without consistent challenges, we can't rate anything for mechanical effectiveness. At that point, we're just emoting about what feels right.

That said, giving the druid shapeshifting of any kind at level one is a giant "fuck you" to the idea of balancing noncombat utility across the classes. That, alone, suggests that they're outright ignoring the problem, if they're even aware of it (after 4th, they might not be). And no, that's not a problem you can fix by resorting to magic tea party. If you are "a dude" and I am "a dude who can also turn into an animal" then it sucks to be you.