The Gaming Den

Don't get me wrong - I'm like 95% sure we're going to see nothing but Essentials content on DDi going forward. They're going to lube up the fans and then try and slip it in there without telling them they're doing ana~~~a new edition.

I *love* the quotes from 2003 about how 3.5 doesn't really change 3.0, and everything is trivially backward compatible....and how they're the same thing being said about Essentials.

If people believe that, it lessens the blow.

3.0E wasn't that backwards incompatible with 3.5E, at least at first. The biggest negative-backwards changes in the rules itself was the stealth-overhaul of the Monster Manual 2 and the retarded-ass weapon sizing system. A few (prestige) classes had suddenly nonsensical or nonfunctional class features, like the Shaman, it really wasn't all that bad.

Where 3.5E started stepping on the toes of 3E was the fact that they decided to re-release old content with across-the-board nerfs. That's when it stopped being backwards-compatible. If 3.5E just updated the core rulesbooks and released completely new content no one would've notice. Funny thing, that. When you talk about the best books that came out of 3.5E, all of those books were ones that stayed as far away from copying or trying to enhance old material as much as possible. The ones that tried to stealth-nerf or ripoff older books were the ones that really, really sucked.

D&D Essentials however is immediately bounding out of the gate re-releasing old material. There's no way that's going to be backwards compatible. For fuck's sake, the power schedules are completely different; D&D Essentials characters don't have dailies anymore.

I wonder if they'll give pdf's another try for the Essentials line? Or if they have any plan at all to deal with all the massive errata making actual books obsolete resentment they've been getting lately.

You know the crowning moment of ENW patheticness? A mod telling off people in the thread, and locking it.

Even if he is telling off trolls, Christ, keep your cool or do it with no comment. Locking a thread for the last word just makes you look like a tool.

-edit-

Unless fbmf locked this thread here and called me a dick. That'd be kind of awesome.

sake wrote:I wonder if they'll give pdf's another try for the Essentials line? Or if they have any plan at all to deal with all the massive errata making actual books obsolete resentment they've been getting lately.

Links, plz.

Oh hell no, let's not start that 'post stupid WotC threads' thread again. Just look at the first page of their general decussion forum. Heck the stupid rage thread I made questioning the validity of using errata to make 'because one of the Devs still masturbates to old 2E PHBs' changes like the recent Magic Missile overhaul has already hit 20 pages and has had multiple mod edits already.

People are getting really pissed that the PHB has received so many changes after three years that the hard copy is no longer relevant AND they're pissed that latest cool character option book of the month they just bought has everything they bought it for castrated within a month of release.

Could you PM me the threads, then?

Or just wander over to the official forums...even the 4vengers are hard pressed to bully people into not pointing out just how horrid the 4e problems are now.

Urgh, the whole game is a complete mess. Wizards should just publish 4.5 and get over with it. It's all about the money anyway..

sake wrote:Oh hell no, let's not start that 'post stupid WotC threads' thread again. Just look at the first page of their general decussion forum. Heck the stupid rage thread I made questioning the validity of using errata to make 'because one of the Devs still masturbates to old 2E PHBs' changes like the recent Magic Missile overhaul has already hit 20 pages and has had multiple mod edits already.

Yeah seriously. I look at 4E errata solely for the purpose of laughing at the fact that they're just changing shit for the sake of change now. They even have errata to the May errata in the July errata.

Yeah 4E is a ridiculously stupid mess right now.

Well, once it became obvious that they didn't run the numbers at all on original 4e and that nobody was playtesting the RAW, did anybody expect better? I mean, they've been firing a lot of the people responsible (though apprently not Mearls), but there's no indication that they've got competent people waiting in the wings. In the short term, there's nowhere to go but down.

Absentminded_Wizard wrote:Well, once it became obvious that they didn't run the numbers at all on original 4e and that nobody was playtesting the RAW, did anybody expect better? I mean, they've been firing a lot of the people responsible (though apprently not Mearls), but there's no indication that they've got competent people waiting in the wings. In the short term, there's nowhere to go but down.

Although I don't think you meant to imply it, nobody is getting fired because 4e was shitty. People are getting fired because WOTC is essentially a revolving door that refuses to keep you employed for more than about 7 years.

Or more likely Hasbro is the revolving door. When a bunch of people left a couple years after 3e, it was mostly Hasbro's decision, IIRC.

Their tears sustain me. Delicious, life-giving tears.

EDIT: Ooh, WotC Shill Squad out in full force. This is going to be interesting reading.

So they posted up one of their first classes. It's 4.5.

I don't know why the WotC shill squad shits acid blood every time someone points out that this is really obviously a change of magnitude at least as extensive as 3.5 was to 3e. It makes them look retarded.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote: I don't know why the WotC shill squad shits acid blood every time someone points out that this is really obviously a change of magnitude at least as extensive as 3.5 was to 3e. It makes them look retarded.

Yeah, especially given that each class is getting its own table for power progression for some reason.

Really, I'm disappointed that they didn't change more. For a system that's supposed to be streamlined and simplified, Essentials doesn't really feel like they've cut anything out. The powers look exactly the same, ability scores apparently still exist, feats still exist, I can't see any measurable change to the skill system. I totally don't see the point to D&DE, it could just have been the PHB4 with remakes of the base classes.

All D&DE is 4.5, it's not even simplified. Really, it looks more complex since each class now needs a table for ability progression.

Also, note that the cleric gets 2 encounter powers, 3 daily powers and 3 utility powers over 10 levels. 2 encounter powers... over 10 levels. Wow. What a bunch of fail that's going to be.

I thought they were getting rid of daily powers, but the sample cleric in the linked article still has them. Did they change their mind?

Archmage wrote:I thought they were getting rid of daily powers, but the sample cleric in the linked article still has them. Did they change their mind?

They also indicated that classes don't necessarily work the same way as each other any more. So it's quite possible that the Essentials Fighter (say) doesn't have any daily powers. Who knows?

FrankTrollman wrote:So they posted up one of their first classes. It's 4.5.

I don't know why the WotC shill squad shits acid blood every time someone points out that this is really obviously a change of magnitude at least as extensive as 3.5 was to 3e. It makes them look retarded.

-Username17

T_D argued that "hundreds of thousands" is more than "a million."

Psychic Robot wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:So they posted up one of their first classes. It's 4.5.

I don't know why the WotC shill squad shits acid blood every time someone points out that this is really obviously a change of magnitude at least as extensive as 3.5 was to 3e. It makes them look retarded.

-Username17

T_D argued that "hundreds of thousands" is more than "a million."

That's hilariously unsurprising. Link/context?

The fail begins here. Most of the way down. It was when the WotC boards were down and T_D made his way over to TGD's corner of the Internet. We had been discussing Dark Sun and how 4e is unsuitable for such a system, and the conversation got sidetracked (as it is liable to do). Well, Frank pointed out that WotC said, under oath, that WotC's "total sales of Core Books were in the hundreds of thousands."

And, as far as shills go, T_D is damn good at his job. He decided that, "[d]epending on the phrasing, that could well mean more than a million."

Things went downhill from that point onward. Eventually, he left.

Archmage wrote:I thought they were getting rid of daily powers, but the sample cleric in the linked article still has them. Did they change their mind?

The statement was that some classes would do away with Daily powers. Presumably Fighters won't have dailies and casters will.

GiaH wrote:That's hilariously unsurprising. Link/context?

The context was a discussion about the relative success or failure of 4e from a financial standpoint. WotC had said in court documents hat they had sold "hundreds of thousands" of books. Titanium Dragon apparently felt that he simply had too much credibility and argued that could have been chosen because it "sounded like more" than "millions."

-Username17

hogarth wrote: They also indicated that classes don't necessarily work the same way as each other any more. So it's quite possible that the Essentials Fighter (say) doesn't have any daily powers. Who knows?

Yeah my guess is they're going back to the idea that some classes have more encounter powers and some are more daily based. Perhaps the fighter types are going to be all ToB style with just encounter powers.