Quote from: Sommerjon;538679Random guy 281 got started in D&D with Oriental Adventures, does that mean ninja is a base class?  Or samurai?  Or shukenja?  

Does that mean he can bitch and whine that his 'base classes' should be in the Player's Handbook and not some optional book, sure seems 'logical' to him.

Oriental Adventures is a setting and yes he should be smart enough to figure out that those aren't base classes. It's like saying Dragonlance is base Dnd and all the classes/races therein also. Bullshit.

Quote from: Sommerjon;538680Bard is a base class?  Really?  Where is that written in the Dungeons and Dragonsnomicom?  Chapter and verse please.

Yes it's a base class right in 1e. (in the back). From 2e it was base in the front. 4e...fuck 4e.

Quote from: Sommerjon;538679Random guy 281 got started in D&D with Oriental Adventures, does that mean ninja is a base class?  Or samurai?  Or shukenja?  

Does that mean he can bitch and whine that his 'base classes' should be in the Player's Handbook and not some optional book, sure seems 'logical' to him.

Nope but peoplewho starte on the 1e, 2e or 3e phbs are probably going to expect classes from those books to appear in core. The bard has been around for a while. I think barbarian proved popular enough in 3e that it was a foolish move to slide it out of the initial phb.

Bottom line is customers have a right to complain if they are unhappy about the selection of classes in the PHB. If designers are going to go out of their way to spread expected or loved classesover several phbs, andgo out of their way to make the core races and classs noticeably different from previous editions, they can't gripe that the customers have no right to whine. With 4e we saw many such blunders. They failed to deliver what the general audience wanted and people complained. They (and4e fans) can list off all tye reasons they want that these design decisions should have been embraced; doen't change the fact that people didn't embrace them.

Quote from: Sommerjon;538680Bard is a base class?  Really?  Where is that written in the Dungeons and Dragonsnomicom?  Chapter and verse please.

Doesn't matter if it is a base class, people expected to see it in the 4e phb 1. They wanted it.

Quote from: Sommerjon;538681What's wrong with Brendan having a book I don't have?
What's wrong with the group sitting around and hashing out what they want or don't want in the game?  Where is it written that because it's ina book, it has to be available?

Nothing is wrong with it. But that dynamic still arises. As a gm, i find it annoying (especially in a game like D&D) when i dont have the same books as my players for character creation. It limits your ability to provide a complete andchallenging experience. Through 3e i felt compelled to buy all those splat books just to keep up. You also havethe issue of people buying the books and expecting to be able to use the options in them at the table. In my opinion, it creates glut.

There is also the issue that they spread the content strategically, so if i want bard and barbarian as options (and i do) i have to buy the other books. At least in 4e this was a problem. It is also why i only bought the phb and dmg.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;538622I find knowing more about my npcs motives helps me react accordingly to PC behavior. As a GM I certainly have shortcomings, but unintentinal railroading isn't one of them. I always want combat stats regardless because I never know how the PCs are going to act towards a given NPC (plus I have a good sheet of stock stats for things like soldiers and bandits).

One can always over prepare, but there is a basic level of prep I expect from myself and from any GM...it is more than 45 minutes.

You do realize you are harping on '45 minutes' that is about one session, not a 30 session campaign.

I also am green when it comes to these things reuse, recycle, re-purpose.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;538684Nope but peoplewho starte on the 1e, 2e or 3e phbs are probably going to expect classes from those books to appear in core. The bard has been around for a while. I think barbarian proved popular enough in 3e that it was a foolish move to slide it out of the initial phb.

And yet even the 'core' from these editions(1,2,3) were different.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;538684Bottom line is customers have a right to complain if they are unhappy about the selection of classes in the PHB. If designers are going to go out of their way to spread expected or loved classesover several phbs, andgo out of their way to make the core races and classs noticeably different from previous editions, they can't gripe that the customers have no right to whine. With 4e we saw many such blunders. They failed to deliver what the general audience wanted and people complained. They (and4e fans) can list off all tye reasons they want that these design decisions should have been embraced; doen't change the fact that people didn't embrace them.

Oh idk, last time I said there was 72,670 people on the DDI up from 72,524, now it is 72,837 so in 11 days they've gained 313 people or 28.5 people a day.  Prety good for a system you all think 'failed'

Quote from: Sommerjon;538687You do realize you are harping on '45 minutes' that is about one session, not a 30 session campaign.

I also am green when it comes to these things reuse, recycle, re-purpose.

Yes, i just don't consider that the optimal amount of time to prepare for a session. If it works for you and your group that is great. But for me it just sn't sufficient.

Quote from: Marleycat;538683Yes it's a base class right in 1e. (in the back). From 2e it was base in the front. 4e...fuck 4e.

Paladin isn't a core class. 1e.... fuck 1e

Assassin is a core class.  2e...fuck 2e

Thief-acrobat is a core class.  3e..fuck3e

Quote from: Sommerjon;538689And yet even the 'core' from these editions(1,2,3) were different.

Yes. No argument there. But peoples expectations were built on the memories of what these editions shared and what was popular. People want what they want. Desginers can whine when people get upset and say they are being unreasonable. But if they had bothered to ask, i think they would have seen that people were pretty much hoping to see the class optins from the 3e phb in the 4e phb.

QuoteOh idk, last time I said there was 72,670 people on the DDI up from 72,524, now it is 72,837 so in 11 days they've gained 313 people or 28.5 people a day.  Prety good for a system you all think 'failed'

Fankly I would have expected to see a lot more people sign up for ddi given that hundreds of thousands of people supposedly play D&D. Doubly so now that most people are using it instead of the books.

But I wont argue there are people who like4e. What is clear is they lost about half of the D&D base they had going into 4e to stuff like pathfinder. They fired most of the big names associated with 4e and have started a new edition (with the stated purpose of bringing back those pathfinder fans). It is pretty clear to me that it didn't do as well as they expected. It is also clear pathfinder is presenting some serious competition...something we haven't seen since WW in the 90s.

Quote from: Sommerjon;538692Assassin is a core class.  2e...fuck 2e

A lot of people did just that. Getting rid of the assassin was a major blunder for 2e in my opinion. I had lots of players who wanted that and the monk in 2e so we converted the classes over.

Again you can whine about this all you want, but if they don't know how to put classes in the core book people want they are going to run into problems again.

Quote from: Sommerjon;538689Oh idk, last time I said there was 72,670 people on the DDI up from 72,524, now it is 72,837 so in 11 days they've gained 313 people or 28.5 people a day.  Prety good for a system you all think 'failed'

4e did not fail as a system. It simply failed to capture enough of the D&D audience to produce the amount of income the corporate bean counters expected from the product.

To be fair, I'm not sure it would have produced enough income to be successful from the corporate bean counter point of view even if 90% of the people who played 3.x embraced 4e and purchased one of everything produced.

Worse, it captured such a small share of the D&D player base that a game produced by a competitor could outsell D&D at times in the only markets the public could see and compare. That type of brand weakness is seen as a huge failure by corporate bean counters as it not only hurts the bottom line now but it weakens the brand in the eyes of the public making it harder to sell tie-ins, future product, etc.

Quote from: Sommerjon;538692Paladin isn't a core class. 1e.... fuck 1e

Assassin is a core class.  2e...fuck 2e

Thief-acrobat is a core class.  3e..fuck3e

Assassin was core in 1e Paladin was for several editions. What's your point? They already said and class that appeared in a respective corebook will be base that includes 4e. Corebook not suppliment.

Quote from: RandallS;538696Worse, it captured such a small share of the D&D player base that a game produced by a competitor could outsell D&D at times in the only markets the public could see and compare. That type of brand weakness is seen as a huge failure by corporate bean counters as it not only hurts the bottom line now but it weakens the brand in the eyes of the public making it harder to sell tie-ins, future product, etc.

Yes, I have been watching 4E posters on places like Enworld with interest as they struggle to come up with byzantine arguments for why 4E was nothing less than the most successful edition ever and that 5E is entirely on schedule (lots of these posters were arguing 5E wasn't in the works and would be years off---I even won a bet with one of them which was recently conceded by PM). I think at this stage it is just obvious that 4E had issues winning everyone over. I do recognize there is a solid base of players who really like it, but it has remained a source of bitter division since its release.

I don't think the multiple core book approach of 4th really worked.

In hindsight, it have been better if they had gone the route of Mongoose's Power classes, where you could just buy a booklet containing the class information you needed. So something like the 'Complete book of Bards' would be just that, compleate.

Where as what 4th actually ended up doing was asking people who want to play a Bard to also buy rules for the avenger, barbarian, druid, invoker, shaman, sorcerer and warden. And if you just want the bard, that ends up looking like spending a lot of money on wasted paper.