Even Wotc can't fail all the time.

sake · Post by **sake** » Mon May 11, 2009 9:12 am

In the latest Design & Development feature, the developers mention that they've finally realized that making a seperate power source for a bunch of classes that had no damn connection besides being quasi-asian was a really stupid and vaguely racist idea ( well... also they just couldn't come up with ways to make the classes seem different enough from the martial/divine/arcane classes).

So thankfully we won't be seeing a 'Ki' power source, the monk has been turned into a psionic class (which works just fine given their fluff) and the rest will probably be turned into builds for existing classes or folded into one of the other new power sources. Although in light of this change, I expect that some of the other planned power sources will also be cut.

Also, it only took like, nine years and two and a half editions, but they've finally added a mechanic for Monks to simply get their fists enchanted, instead of using clumsy class-based bonuses, magic gauntlets, or what ever the hell knick-knack Pathfinder is using.

Caedrus · Post by **Caedrus** » Mon May 11, 2009 9:38 am

sake wrote: Also, it only took like, nine years and two and a half editions, but they've finally added a mechanic for Monks to simply get their fists enchanted, instead of using clumsy class-based bonuses, magic gauntlets, or what ever the hell knick-knack Pathfinder is using.

Oh snap.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon May 11, 2009 10:07 am

No, it's still making monks the have to suck the cocks of wizards to get anything done and/or making them set fire to a pile of money to punch rocks harder.

Really, this just highlights the retardedness of the magical item system. Hopefully when people realize that throwing away a hundred thousand gold pieces just to make your fists glow is fucking bullshit we'll put something more sane in its place.

By the way, I have the monk playtest and the class's legacy of suckage continues. Get this: they have a weaker damage bonus than the rogue, they have a smaller attack bonus, can't double up on an enemy except for one power, and their powers have piss-poor rider effects (no stuns, dazes, restrains, etc. at any level).

So yes, WotC can fail all of the time, in the same reason that when Andy Collins falls asleep at night his fail doesn't go away for the six hours of his unconsciousness.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon May 11, 2009 11:57 am

Multiple attacks may be more powerful than +5d6 damage, though, especially since you're adding all your bonuses to the damage.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon May 11, 2009 4:18 pm

Sake wrote:In the latest Design & Development feature, the developers mention that they've finally realized that making a seperate power source for a bunch of classes that had no damn connection besides being quasi-asian was a really stupid and vaguely racist idea ( well... also they just couldn't come up with ways to make the classes seem different enough from the martial/divine/arcane classes).

About fucking time.

Lago wrote: By the way, I have the monk playtest and the class's legacy of suckage continues.

Yeah I figured. I really can't see any way for them to represent the Monk in their system other than giving the Monk a damage or to-hit penalty (or both) in exchange for being impossible to disarm. Which is an even shittier deal in 4e than ever before because there are only like 5 things in the whole game that can disarm you and you'll probably never encounter any of them.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon May 11, 2009 5:39 pm

Monks don't have multiple attacks.

They have a combination of weapon and implement powers that are single-target except for a handful of them. They have a bonus damage feature which is seriously +WIS bonus damage to an enemy once per round, which later adds up to +WIS bonus damage to two people.. then everyone! And if they weren't the target of your standard action you get to slide them one square adjacent to you.

That's their only class-feature based bonus to attack or damage rolls. None of their powers does above 3W damage except for at level 29 and no weapon does above 1d8 damage.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue May 12, 2009 5:25 am

Still, at least there is the one good thing: Ki gets the boot. It can totally be a regular Martial thing or a Psionic thing.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Tue May 12, 2009 5:34 am

What does power source do, anyway? What would happen if you changed the Warlock's power source from arcane to divine, or the Barbarian's to psionic?

Absentminded_Wizard · Post by **Absentminded_Wizard** » Tue May 12, 2009 6:11 am

That's the million-dollar question. AFAICT, power source is purely fluff. Then again, I never subscribed to the super-secret D&D Insider, so there's a remote chance that there's some piece of game-design sagacity I missed out on.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Tue May 12, 2009 6:40 am

Well the big one is that there a bunch of feats and items that give benefits to any Arcane power.

Martial Power also introduced feats and destinies available to any Martial class.

Absentminded_Wizard · Post by **Absentminded_Wizard** » Tue May 12, 2009 7:03 am

I forgot to mention that I haven't bothered to look at any noncore 4e books either. Thanks, it is nice to know that they introduced some stuff to make power source mean a little something.

sake · Post by **sake** » Tue May 12, 2009 7:39 am

It's just fluff, a way to organize classes besides by class roles, and each source sort of leans to a particular secondary role Arcane is Controller, Martial is Striker, Divine is Leader, Primal is some kind of hybrid thing and so on.

As for the Monk, I was glad to see that actually put up 30 levels worth of powers and a few paragon paths this time instead of the lv 1 to 3 crap they did for the PHB 2 classes; but I would have rather they waited till they could have at least put up all the damn class features and options. They only have the one so far and its some sort of crappy striker/controller hybrid.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Wed May 13, 2009 5:51 am

EDIT: Nevermind, upon rereading, I realize that the fail was preempted.

sake · Post by **sake** » Wed May 13, 2009 8:54 am

Is it really that hard to miss the line about it not stacking? I'm not mocking you for it or anything, I'm just honestly curious. I didn't think it was hard to find, but I've seen dozens of people miss it.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Wed May 13, 2009 5:21 pm

I guess it is, heh. I stopped where I was reading and was like, "GODDAMNIT WOTC."

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Wed May 13, 2009 8:59 pm

Absentminded_Wizard wrote:I forgot to mention that I haven't bothered to look at any noncore 4e books either.

Fun fact: Player's Handbook 2, Adventurer's Vault and Monster Manual 2 are core. The GSL license logo listing all the required books (currently six) looks ridiculous.

Absentminded_Wizard · Post by **Absentminded_Wizard** » Thu May 14, 2009 8:04 am

That's odd. I can see the PHB 2 and MM2, but why the Adventurer's Vault?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu May 14, 2009 8:11 am

Absentminded_Wizard wrote:That's odd. I can see the PHB 2 and MM2, but why the Adventurer's Vault?

Sell more books. It's an established fact that putting the words "Core Rulebook" on a book makes it sell more. I'm personally convinced that putting those words on more books adds a barrier to entry that reduces overall sales - but that research has not been done to my knowledge.

It has been demonstrated that putting the words "Core Rulebook" on Adventurer's Vault sells more copies of Adventurer's Vault. I personally believe that doing so reduces sales of PHB 2 and Keep on the Borderlands. But WotC hasn't done the research on that and is acting all see-no-evil about the possibility. But I seriously think it's a major contributor to their lackluster overall sales.

-Username17

Amra · Post by **Amra** » Thu May 14, 2009 12:04 pm

Yeah, but Wizards aren't exactly renowned for their robust and forward-looking approach to business models. Do you suppose for an instant that now they've issued 'cease and desists' to all their legit PDF distributors, their hard-copy sales will make up the lost revenue? I friggin' doubt it; it's practically begging for increased levels of piracy. And then look at the new $8-per-month DDI which fundamentally doesn't fucking work. And the Gleemax debacle. And the hideously restrictive GSL that attempts (and fails) to put the unlicensed-product genie back in the bottle.

I would tend to agree that expanding the "Core" of rulebooks is probably counter-productive in the medium term, as the rate of expansion of a consumer market tends to bear an inverse relationship to the cost of entry... but a screwup like that is absolutely par for the course.

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Thu May 14, 2009 12:22 pm

I don't even get why they rolled back any of the 3E changes they made.

Unification of rules? Rolled back.
Open Gaming Content? Rolled back.
Playtesting? Rolled back.

From what I have seen in my area, 3E was a huge success. The books sold by the truckload, were well received, thus the non-core books also sold well and due to the open content tons of other companies could publish addons, conversions and campaigns, again enriching the worth of everything 3E you already owned.

I can't see any money being made by scratching playtesting. I can't see any money being made by driving other publishers away from 4E, by complicating the ruleset (though this is offset by leaving two thirds of the game out in the cold I guess), by making the game more expensive to enter or by driving away their fan community. It is like someone is doing their best to run D&D into the ground. To me their decision-making process literally seems worse than a coin toss.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu May 14, 2009 12:36 pm

Don't worry. Dungeons and Dragons will ride again after Mattel/WotC runs it into the ground.

It's an icon at this point, big as Batman or Superman. Even if WotC goes down in flames D&D will always exist in some form.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Thu May 14, 2009 12:40 pm

Deevolution is a feature, not a bug.

Amra · Post by **Amra** » Thu May 14, 2009 12:48 pm

I honestly and sincerely believe that most of the drastic slash-and-burn that took place in 4E was due to a management diktat to make a product deliberately unlike 3E. Not because it was appropriate to do so from a game-design perspective, but because WotC higher-ups were feeling like the product was going too far outside their control with the plethora of third-party materials.

It all comes back to the old attitude TSR had to "protecting" D&D; they'd start a lawsuit that they hoped third parties wouldn't have the time, money or inclination to fight. Then they'd settle out of court before a judgement could be reached, because - and here's the kicker - intellectual property laws do not protect game mechanics, and a court ruling would have established that once and for all. This has led, historically, to a somewhat paranoid mindset developing in whoever holds the D&D license, like some sort of curse that goes with the brand.

3E was an aberration, in that someone with half a brain in their heads realised that the best way to get a bigger slice of the D&D pie was by turning it into a bigger pie, and establishing hundreds of new channels to market in the form of third-party developers. 4E, in my view, is an attempt to stop sharing the now-enlarged pie and keep it all to themselves.

It won't work though. They've created a brand-new pie and tried to pretend that the old pie doesn't exist, but so many people have so many slices of the old pie that sooner or later WotC will either have to revert to the old recipe, or sell the recipe on again before people realise that they can bake it for free. It's like the fucking Bottle Imp with a crust.

And I now declare this metaphor officially exhausted.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu May 14, 2009 1:18 pm

I can't see any money being made by driving other publishers away from 4E

I actually can see this one. See, there comes a point of "book saturation" where game stores feel that they have enough books supporting a system and don't order any more. White Wolf is hitting this wall hard - game stores literally don't order copies of every book they print. Did you know that there are four bloodline books for nWoD? Do you know what the latest Mage book (Summoners) was even about? Did you even know that it had printed before I named it? The fact is that before I looked it up for this piece of hyperbole, I didn't know the answers to those questions either, because I've never seen those books. Not because they are flying off the shelves, but because they are never stocked in the first place in many places.

d20 hit that wall. There was so much produced for it that it did not all get shelf space. And if you're WotC, that smells like trouble, or at least it should. While WotC does not (or at least should not) care whether some book about Vikings by Avalanche is pushing a Green Ronin Piracy book out of product orders (or vice versa), they should be concerned if an order for Sword and Sorcery Ravenloft was keeping a copy of Elder Evils off the shelves - and WotC seriously hit that point by the end of 3.5's run. They had literally run into the end of their credibility where their low-end products were actually competing with high end products from other companies.

With WotC attempting a higher product volume schedule internally it's pretty obvious that they are attempting to squeeze in on the low-end market that was until recently dominated by outsiders on the d20 license. So that choice makes sense to me.

Although... I think it's a mistake. I think that WotC never should have tried to compete in the niche market that has books like Slayers Guide to Hobgoblins or Celtic Age. I think that a large number of books in that marginal part of the pond are simply going to sink, and that when they do so they irrevocably tarnish the reputation of the publisher with retailers and distributors. In short, that market belongs to the fly-by-nights because those are the operations that can afford to just fold if they get two flops in a row. Trying to publish major books when you're doing that shit is counterproductive, because if "The Restless Shore" doesn't do well it will actually reflect in pre-orders for the Eberron Player's Guide next month even though those books live in a different eco niche.

They wanted a piece of the bullshit market because it's profitable. But they shouldn't have put their logo on it because it's going to end up with them sitting on a bunch of unordered product like TSR did with Mazteca. What they should have done is reign in the 4e license, make it something you pay for (although not much, this is a market that can't afford large licensing deals), and then created a grindhouse subsidiary to crank out the adventures and treatises on lizardfolk and whatever else is marginal and risky that they wanted to make in-house. Hell, make two or three grindhouse subsidiaries with different staff so that you can cut one loose if it underperforms.

Their current strategy creates a lot of bad blood, but more importantly it takes the negative consequences of a riskier market and pays it forward to Dungeons and Dragons flagship material. It's just very unsophisticated, and it's rather obviously harmful in the medium and long run.

To me their decision-making process literally seems worse than a coin toss.

Agreed. Basically I see them acting on pieces of information that look like they were the first sentence or two of a market report with no care or attention to the contents of the rest of the material. "We've reached market saturation of d20 material? Let's revoke all the licenses and bring everything in house!" It's like something that a teenager would come up with.

-Username17

Amra · Post by **Amra** » Thu May 14, 2009 2:05 pm

But that all goes hand-in-hand with their low-quality output, lack of testing and complete failure to maintain internal consistency with their own damn sources. They'd hever have ended up with their products competing with 3rd-party sourcebooks if the products had sold themselves with an obviously-superior set of production values.

So yes, I agree, their products were running into each other and the analogy with Mazteca is apt. But the solution of trying to bring the whole pie back in-house is short-sighted and doomed to failure. I wonder how well sales of Kingdoms of Kalamar 4E are going?

Not that I'd consider such publications to be a direct threat to the "core" 4E market - not yet, at any rate - but you do on the face of it seem to get a lot more for your money...

The Gaming Den

Even Wotc can't fail all the time.

Even Wotc can't fail all the time.

Re: Even Wotc can't fail all the time.