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BaronIveagh wrote:Normally, being the sort of GM into TPK, I'd like 4e, but I don't. Anything that forces players into dedicated rolls (and yes, that was both derogatory and deliberate) rather than being a 'squad of ultimate badasses' I feel is a waste of time. I mean, seriously, 4e discards rule 0.5 of roleplaying: Have Fun. If the party wipes because I will it, that's one thing. If the party wipes because no one wants to play a cleric because you don't do anything other then spam group heals the entire time, that's another ball game.

But clerics in 4e don't do that... From my groups experience (and I recognize we're both throwing anecdotes at each other) 'Cleric' was the annoying class someone had to take in 3rd much more than 4th.

In 4th, everyone has some limited self-healing (Second Wind) and many classes have powers to augment this with more healing: The Warlord is a well-known example, as well as several "cleric-ish" class like the Rune Priest, Invoker (I think, I'm writing from memory), etc. At least in 4th, a lot of the Cleric powers are "Heal a friend AND do something neat" instead of just spamming cure whatever wounds.

This argument seems a bit weird as 3.0 (and 2nd, and 1st...) all have had issues where 'Hit Points' is a limited resource 'consumed' by adventuring. Clerics are a mobile source to replenish it as an alternative to consumable magic items (healing potions) or resting. This is unchanged at a high-level in 4th, although there is a bit more ping-ponging (taking damage and recovering being a bit more common). A group without someone that can replenish is going to have trouble in heavy combat... Much like 3rd and earlier.

Additionally, the "MMO Roles" aren't really 'new.' I heard variants of the term in RPGs in the 80s! I think 'Brick' or 'Meatsheild' was a bit more common than 'Tank' but the basic concept certainly existed. It's a simplification of a tactical need.

4e isn't perfect, but I do really like that it resolves a lot of issues that earlier editions kind of hand waved. A killer GM who really wanted to be nasty should ideally target the squishy support characters first, and there was little in core 3.0 to really stop this other than 'GMs not being annoying' or similar. Fighters would stand up front, but other than physically blocking a corridor, there's nothing to prevent attacks on the squishy wizard types in the back.

In addition the whole linear fighter/quadratic wizard thing. I like that 'add some spell lists' isn't the core of many advanced class as it was in 3rd.

No offense Balance, but if your clerics in 3rd edition where just spamming cure spells, your entire group was playing the game wrong

Back on the WOTC forums there were hundreds of threads showing the math on how healing COULD NOT keep up with the damage output from monsters, so it became a game of damage mitigation. When monsters could hit 2-3 times in a single turn and do 150-200 points of damage by mid to late teens, "Heal" with its 150 hp heal cap became hardly useful.

Healing became a mechanic you would do in a pinch if necessary in combat to keep somebody alive 1 more turn, but would likely die the next turn. Healing was more of an "out of combat" feature which let the party rest up and continue on with their day without having to spend the full 8 hours resting.

How combat typically played out was damage mitigation and battlefield control. Locking down opponents, debuffing, buffing, all became more important than "you get hit, they get hit" combat. It was more important to completely avoid that crushing 200 damage hit vs taking it than getting healed 150 points and still being -50. I had a character for 8 years (98 to 2006) and played with the same group of guys, I ended up getting him to level 46 before retiring him and found the game ended up becoming how it started - you found enemies (epic enemies...) that could kill you in 2-3 swings , just like 1st level and it was terrifying (but very very fun lol... like play dark souls on a table top).

Oh yeah, and my character was a cleric (evil) and I don't think i EVER memorized a healing spell

Cryage wrote:No offense Balance, but if your clerics in 3rd edition where just spamming cure spells, your entire group was playing the game wrong

We mostly stuck to lower-levels... 3rd broke down a bit for us as characters had too many options of arguable value (In a high-level campaign my ranger with a prestige class ahd two separate spell lists... Both if which were mostly useless as the 'real' spell casters had the utility spells covered and had real 'artillery.')

Cryage wrote:Oh yeah, and my character was a cleric (evil) and I don't think i EVER memorized a healing spell

In 3rd memorizing cure spells wasn't worth it due to the rule to allow them to dump memorized spells for cure spells anyway...

I'm not sure why you are posting all this as a response to something you never address either, the role of 4e in bringing more players into the hobby.

BaronIveagh wrote: All 3e did was split them in into feats and skills and give Skills a new resolution mechanic.

So what you are saying is that it was a different system done differently, which seems to go support the point that they didn't do it that way before. Not only that, but I already stated there were other systems but that 3e introduced them as we know them today. It wasn't a minor change like 4e distilling the skills down to broader catgories but keeping the same essential mechanics, it was a completely different approach.

BaronIveagh wrote: Hmm... let's see... currently on Amazon' top 10 Fantasy Gaming Best Sellers: Pathfinder (Corebook is 1 Bestiary 3 and Bestiary 1 at 2 and 4 respectively with Beginner box, advanced players guide and GM's screen taking up additional slots), D&D 4e (Redbox and PHB at 5 and 9, respectively) it gets worse if you go out to their top 20, with 10 positions occupied by Pathfinder and only 5 by D&D 4e. (Sadly, FFG only holds one)

Hmm... Corebook at #1, PHB is at #9...

We could save time if you would read the posts you pretend to be responding to. I have stated the problem with using Amazon as an indicator of overall sales as well as specifically stating that I believed that PF was selling better over the last few months, especially in light of the Essentials debacle.

With this announcement of 5e coming out I expect D&D book sales to drop even further.

BaronIveagh wrote: ICv2 reported the following at free rpg day 2011:

"This year Pathfinder surpassed D&D. We ran out of the Pathfinder module three quarters of the way through the day but still had a few of the D&D sourcebook at the end. While still strong, D&D is not selling nearly as well as Pathfinder and this reflected in our customers' choices in the free offering. Of those customers not taking both, D&D was the book they chose to forgo. Unlike what happened with the two previous edition changes of D&D, this time, customers are voting with their dollars (and Free RPG Day choices) for Pathfinder."

So, can't even GIVE IT AWAY.

This is still anecdotal evidence and doesn't really give a good overall picture. Free RPG day doesn't really generate a lot of new players as much as it caters to exiting players. I went to two separate stores that day and both of them were out of PF as well, but both store owners also told me that got a much smaller number of PF books than they did D&D books. It was something like 8 PF to 25 D&D. Having a few D&D left over wouldn't really be that much of a shock now would it? I know at one store they said the PF Society showed up early and grabbed all the free FreeRPG Day PF books. As for voting with their wallets, it again goes back to the stores as well as alternative revenue streams. Physical sales, some areas are more PF heavy and some are more 4e heavy. If you have a DDi subscription there isn't a huge need to own the books at all. Having the physical copy isn't as necessary as it used to be. This is again also not looking at the effects of piracy on the gaming landscape.

Balance wrote:But clerics in 4e don't do that... From my groups experience (and I recognize we're both throwing anecdotes at each other) 'Cleric' was the annoying class someone had to take in 3rd much more than 4th.

It really wasn't. Clerics and Druids were handy to provide some out of combat healing, but in combat everyone was far better off if they spent their time smashing things (and they were really good at it - there's a reason the term "Cleric-or-Druid-zilla" came into existence). The only exceptions were classes like Crusaders and Hellreavers who could smash things and heal people at the same time.

Ahtman wrote:
What is sad is I know that you know that trolling and disagreeing aren't the same thing, yet here you are getting all weak at the knees and losing your composure and doing just that. You don't like what I am saying so it must be trolling? Grow up.

No, my friend, you seem to be cherry picking to suit your desired feeling. I have had this discussion multiple times over multiple threads including this one and you keep harking back to one comment, that was deserved, and ignoring all context around it. You can pretend it is the only post made and ignore if you choose to. It doesn't make you look very good, but you can do that if you want.

Here is the complete sequence of interaction with DeathReaper prior to me chiming in (with your posts in bold for clarity).

Ahtman wrote:

DeathReaper wrote:

Ahtman wrote:

DeathReaper wrote:Feats are not like a "a pen & paper video game"

Like anything they took a little getting used to, but overall they were a good change.

now, 4th ed, that is "a pen & paper video game" Tanks, DPS, and Healers, its crazy.

I can't tell if this is satire or self delusion.

It is neither.

I have played D&D since 2nd ed, and 3rd ed did not seem like playing a video game in comparison to 2nd ed.

4th Does feel like playing a video game, since they have tank classes that can mark enemies, which debuffs the enemy if they do not attack the tank. they have a dedicated healer taht can not do much in the way of damage, they have strikers which are your DPS etc. 3rd did not have any of this, all characters could deal good damage, and no one was forced into any one role based on what class you were playing.

Well whoopty do, so have I. Started with the original Red Box and went from there. That is neither here nor there. So it is delusion, thank you for the prompt response.

The above is not adult disagreement but instead just pointless trolling. You simply chime in and accuse another poster of mental defect, then engage in an epenis standoff, and revert back to name calling. That's it. No point made... Nothing to clarify your feelings on the matter (like if you disagree with 3e being compared to video games, 4e compared to video games, both, or starting a sentance without a capital letter.. NOTHING!)... you simply just ignore the points made in the second post and reiterate your "u so crazy!!" theme. I'm not cherry picking anything but instead responding to the entirety of your "contribution" to that part of the thread prior to my focusing on it. Only after I commented did you actually present a counterpoint (an incorrect one with no basis in fact that you've since bactracked from but at least you tried). Take your own advice and grow up. The ignorant cyberbully routine may be par for the course in your usual hangout of the offtopic forum but not out in wider Dakka.

Ahtman wrote:
Saying you have been on the internet for a long time so you must know everything on a subject is a new argument. Not a very good one, but new. I'm not new to these interwebs either and I remember the schism caused by the release of 3rd edition. It wasn't as polarizing as when 4e but it still happened. If you either glossed over the arguments or ignored them doesn't mean they didn't happen, and considering you seem to have done that in this very thread it wouldn't suprise me at all that you had done the same in the past. The internet wasn't as populated at that time either so it wasn't a very good measure of much of anything. The arguments were there though.

There is a difference between people not liking 3rd edition when it came out (what you're NOW arguing) and not liking 3rd edition when it came out because it felt like a video game (which you earlier claimed). Plenty of the former existed (although not to the extent of 4e) in people who were invested in 2nd edition and had legitimate gripes about the magnitude of the changes but I've never heard of someone claiming the latter until this thread. Multiple times in this thread you've objected to other people's points and clamored for evidence to prove it (and then whined about the ONLY evidence around being anecdotal or not long term despite having nothing to contradict it) so I asked you to hold yourself to the same standard. Of course, you've since moved the goal posts now that you've found the position untenable (and clarified it from being "delusional" to not think of 3e as a video game style RPG to now just calling the edition not as "polarizing" as 4e).




Automatically Appended Next Post:

AlexHolker wrote:

Balance wrote:But clerics in 4e don't do that... From my groups experience (and I recognize we're both throwing anecdotes at each other) 'Cleric' was the annoying class someone had to take in 3rd much more than 4th.

It really wasn't. Clerics and Druids were handy to provide some out of combat healing, but in combat everyone was far better off if they spent their time smashing things (and they were really good at it - there's a reason the term "Cleric-or-Druid-zilla" came into existence). The only exceptions were classes like Crusaders and Hellreavers who could smash things and heal people at the same time.

I didn't have that particular experience as a cleric and actually found the class very enjoyable to play. The cleric (IIRC from some early 4e design notes on wotc's site and comments by 3e developers years after they were let go) was actually purposely built more powerfully than the other classes to make up for the fact that you spent your own actions healing others instead of directly contributing to the fight. You had part of the ranged area devastation of a mage and a heft portion of the combat ability of a fighter depending on which domains you picked and spells prayed for. If anything, I'd say my old cleric was the 2nd most powerful character I ever ran especially after adding in all the later splat books like complete divine 1&2.

What i think about this: 4th was great, presented a ruleset for combat and killing action, that worked with ease and balance. The real problem with it was the total lack of fluff, wich made the game looks like a MMORPG, and dont worked very well to intruduce new players into the real RPG...

I hope 5th come with a great mechanic, but put some effort on the fluff, this is all...

Ahtman wrote:
This is still anecdotal evidence and doesn't really give a good overall picture. Free RPG day doesn't really generate a lot of new players as much as it caters to exiting players. I went to two separate stores that day and both of them were out of PF as well, but both store owners also told me that got a much smaller number of PF books than they did D&D books. It was something like 8 PF to 25 D&D. Having a few D&D left over wouldn't really be that much of a shock now would it? I know at one store they said the PF Society showed up early and grabbed all the free FreeRPG Day PF books. As for voting with their wallets, it again goes back to the stores as well as alternative revenue streams. Physical sales, some areas are more PF heavy and some are more 4e heavy. If you have a DDi subscription there isn't a huge need to own the books at all. Having the physical copy isn't as necessary as it used to be. This is again also not looking at the effects of piracy on the gaming landscape.

Here we go again... you discount the ONLY evidence we have as anecdotal yet present nothing to support your own view other than PFS people picking up free books (which only proves the success of Pathfinder and doesn't support 4e being a success in any way, shape, or form). If 4e was truly a success, we wouldn't have had 4.5/essentials two years later with the complete discontinuation of further 4e specific support. If 4.5/essentials was a success, we wouldn't have the announcement of 5e playtesting less than two years later either. In the end, success for gamers is that they're having fun and plenty of people have fun with 4e. Success for a company is sheer number of sales and in that regard 4e is certainly not a success since it accomplished what no other edition prior did... losing 1st place in RPG sales and perceived popularity to another related game. It may not have bombed and probably is profitable but it's certainly not a success when you drop to #2 in the only indicators available for the first time in 30 years. The fact that the new edition announcement is pretty much phrased as a mea culpa and acknowledges the fragmentation of the fanbase (albeit couched in 1st-4th edition terms) should be enough to convince all but the most thick skulled readers that 4e was not all that WOTC was hoping it would be.

Also, why bring up piracy? Do you think that pathfinder books somehow get pirated less often than WOTC ones? If anything, piracy would affect Paizo more since they don't have a DDI interface bringing in monthly subscriptions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

The Dwarf Wolf wrote:What i think about this: 4th was great, presented a ruleset for combat and killing action, that worked with ease and balance. The real problem with it was the total lack of fluff, wich made the game looks like a MMORPG, and dont worked very well to intruduce new players into the real RPG...

I hope 5th come with a great mechanic, but put some effort on the fluff, this is all...

I think the biggest issue for me personally would be whether or not they keep the CCGish "power" mechanic for all the classes in 5th edition. One of my biggest gripes about the system was that all the characters felt like they played the same with the almost exact amount of complexity as a result of focus on interclass balance. I also always felt like I should be tapping my cards sideways after using a power which made me feel like I was playing a CCG and not an RPG. While I haven't played since prior to the introduction of the collectible effect/power cards WOTC has made, their existence just reinforces my dislike for the whole mechanic.

I'm just gonna leave these here, if it's okay with everyone





Also, Aeofel lives.

Ahtman wrote:I'm not sure why you are posting all this as a response to something you never address either, the role of 4e in bringing more players into the hobby.

The games themselves have little to nothing to do with 'bringing in new players'. It's the groups that they game with. A game that's both well made and fun will keep a group playing it. One that is not will either be ignored or given up on in favor of some other game in short order. Games that deliver on what a gaming group desires in it's games will outsell those that do not.

Ahtman wrote:
So what you are saying is that it was a different system done differently, which seems to go support the point that they didn't do it that way before. Not only that, but I already stated there were other systems but that 3e introduced them as we know them today. It wasn't a minor change like 4e distilling the skills down to broader categories but keeping the same essential mechanics, it was a completely different approach.

No, I'm saying it was the same system, split into two different categories based on use. 'Skills' went back to the older version from OA where the player 'trained ranks' while 'Feats' stayed closer to many of the ones found in AD&D's 'Players Option'. All it did was combine the previous editions, add one or two minor tweaks, and tie it to the d20 like everything else in 3e. They way you seem to be trying to portray it makes it sound like it suddenly became GURPS, when no such thing happened.

Ahtman wrote:
We could save time if you would read the posts you pretend to be responding to.

Ahtman wrote:
To add to Kalamadea's comments I'd bet dollars to donuts that 4e brought more people into the hobby than PF. PF kept the hobby base but 4e grew it, especially with female players. Going to a lot of conventions I met so many people that got into the hobby through 4e, and many of them from backgrounds that were not normal to hobby gaming. It was a great gateway drug into the hobby.

Achem: that is what I was responding to. And, tooling back through this thread, perhaps I missed it, but I did not notice you disprove Amazon's nor ICv2's Q1-2 2011 reports that said basically the same thing, but with enough numbers that people wold ignore the post as a wall of text.

Ahtman wrote:
If you have a DDi subscription there isn't a huge need to own the books at all. Having the physical copy isn't as necessary as it used to be.

Yes, because I love you hear WotC executives karaoke to Dire Straits 'Money for Nothing'. Let me put it this way: Books last thousands of years, if properly maintained. The information from DDI will be lucky to last 15 years. This doesn't even begin to head down the Orwellian nightmare that is likely coming for the internet.

Coffee STILL 35 cents.


Edit:

A Town Called Malus wrote:

Spoiler:

I've been to all of those but the mouse skulls one. Mine had dice shaped like little chunks of barbed wire.

I'm looking forward to 5th edition. I certainly hope they learn the lessons of 3.x and 4th -- interesting choices are good, and streamlined rules are good.

I think the biggest lesson is that, despite their braying, most people don't really care too much about inter-class balance as long as they can do interesting or flavorful things. Many of the skills and feats in 3.x were absolute pants, while a handful were must-takes for any hard-core campaign -- but in the end, who cared? As long as your group was all on the same page, you could all have been playing elven unarmed fighters who filled every feat slot with Toughness and still have a fun, challenging game.

What I like a lot about 4th/essentials was its cleaner ruleset. D+D as a whole is a mess, ruleswise, but many of the worst offenders were cleared up in 4th. The number of rule-now-and-look-it-up-later cases have been far fewer in my essentials campaign than they were in either my 3.x or Iron Kingdoms campaigns.

Another reason I like the (relative) simplicity -- my wife could get on board. 3.x was a little too intimidating for her.

Mewens wrote:Another reason I like the (relative) simplicity -- my wife could get on board. 3.x was a little too intimidating for her.

QFT !!

While 4th may not be the BEST ruleset, I found it to be the EASIEST ruleset* to get my wife and some non-RPG-playing friends into the game. ( *Along with the D&D Boardgames.)

Yes, the game has evolved and I can understand arguements from both sides of the "Edition Fence". But I found that, if I wanted to play with the people I chose to play with, I needed to evolve and not stick so adamantly to my vision of the game. I'd rather play a different version with friends rather than stick to an older version that no one I knew was playing. (And, No, that's not me avoiding a new social setting, it's simply me making a choice to maintain and play with people already in my life when that life steals what little time I have to spend with them).

To each his own ...

Looks like they're planning on releasing some modular type of ruleset. If they can get that to actually work well with a semblance of balance, that would be great. I'm just hoping that the extra modules take away stuff from the general ruleset to offset any of the modules' benefits.

"......this sounds so crazy that you probably won't believe it right now—we're designing the game so that not every player has to choose from the same set of options. Again, imagine a game where one player has a simple character sheet that has just a few things noted on it, and the player next to him has all sorts of skills, feats, and special abilities. And yet they can still play the game together and everything remains relatively balanced. Your 1E-loving friend can play in your 3E-style game and not have to deal with all the options he or she doesn't want or need. Or vice versa. It's all up to you to decide."

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120116

I really hope 5th ed will be more fair to Monstrous Race PCs than either 4e or Pathfinder. I hated that.

Mr Hyena wrote:I really hope 5th ed will be more fair to Monstrous Race PCs than either 4e or Pathfinder. I hated that.

I dunno what your experience was like, but I loved the Minotaur Fighter I played. Dealt tremendous damage (executioner's axe specialist), had great debuff effects (marking, caused prone effect on successful bull rush), and worked great in a 3-player game alongside a rogue and a monk - both "strikers".

Despite our group having no healers, we were all capable of self healing and the DM enabled consumables to be readily available in the large city we adventured in. Our first 4e group had a cleric and a warlord (my character) and had no lack of healing ability, all free actions that were useable IN ADDITION TO any combat or support actions we'd take. My wife played the cleric and initally thought she'd have to stay in the back healing until realizing almost all her powers were close combat enabled - she'd hit something with her mace and heal a nearby ally or increase AC.

While 4e did assign roles for characters to play, it by no means introduce this concept! 1st edition was played essentially the same way, but by the time 4e was introduced the concepts of tank, healer, DPS, and AOE had been further established in MMO/video games.

The friends I play with look at the upcoming 5th edition with some hope, some trepidation, and some cynicism. We've got some great ideas (we think anyway) to present to WOTC, but without knowing what kind of ruleset they plan to use, it makes it difficult to determine how to incorporate those concepts.

Mr Hyena wrote:I really hope 5th ed will be more fair to Monstrous Race PCs than either 4e or Pathfinder. I hated that.

Indeed. That was the best thing about 3e/3.5 was how easy it was to take nearly any monster (within reason) from the monster manual and use it as a PC or turn it into an NPC and level it up. My favorite supplement book of all time was Savage Species. It was never updated to 3.5 but worked with some small conversions. It broke down certain powerful monsters essentially into racial classes so that you could start at level 1 and play an Astral Deva if you wanted or a bugbear or a centaur etc. ECL sucked in 3.5, especially for a caster, but it was fun as hell playing these off the wall characters even if they often weren't as powerful as the standard race/classes. They made up for it in flavor, and the occasional fun ability.

As nice as it is in 4e just having a monster that you can turn to that page and launch at the players instead of having to build NPC monsters with class levels, but I often missed the freedom that gave you to have cool players and villains. Making them "elite" was never quite the same, and you really had to fudge things a lot ot turn them into PC races, or just use a human and say it's something else.

Kalamadea wrote:

Mr Hyena wrote:I really hope 5th ed will be more fair to Monstrous Race PCs than either 4e or Pathfinder. I hated that.

Indeed. That was the best thing about 3e/3.5 was how easy it was to take nearly any monster (within reason) from the monster manual and use it as a PC or turn it into an NPC and level it up. My favorite supplement book of all time was Savage Species. It was never updated to 3.5 but worked with some small conversions. It broke down certain powerful monsters essentially into racial classes so that you could start at level 1 and play an Astral Deva if you wanted or a bugbear or a centaur etc. ECL sucked in 3.5, especially for a caster, but it was fun as hell playing these off the wall characters even if they often weren't as powerful as the standard race/classes. They made up for it in flavor, and the occasional fun ability

Savage Species was updated to 3.5 if you had E-Tools. Code Monkeys updated it before WotC told them to go to Hell and, according to some sources, sent them a computer virus to make sure.

BaronIveagh wrote:Savage Species was updated to 3.5 if you had E-Tools. Code Monkeys updated it before WotC told them to go to Hell and, according to some sources, sent them a computer virus to make sure.

I may completely disagree with WOTC policies as they cancelled all 4 lines of products over 2 years that I used to spend $2000/year on... but I'm not ready to put the tinfoil hat on just yet with this one. If they were really tech savvy enough to engineer a virus and distribute it specifically to one company, they wouldn't have screwed up so royally with DDI and continue to ignore the PDF marketplace.

Oh boy, this is what I get for holding out on buying any 4e books until recently.

I liked 4th. Was very easy to run with it's online tools, and very easy to learn and play. Was super easy to get people not use to Traditional games into it.

Was a great PnPRPG "gateway drug".


I hope that's something 5th ed can still do. I like the fact it was realy simple and straight foreword, so as a DM I could concentrate more on the story then worrying about the combat.

I dunno what your experience was like, but I loved the Minotaur Fighter I played.

In 4e they pretty much told those who use Gnolls as PCs 'Go feth yourself!'. I havent really used a Minotaur so I don't know how they got on.

So I'll probably be staying with 3.5e until I hear word on monstrous species.

When it comes out ill see if I can find a group thats using it locally (lot of 3.5 players around here from the sign on sheets I can see) and decide if I want to invest into DnD again or not.

Mr Hyena wrote:

I dunno what your experience was like, but I loved the Minotaur Fighter I played.

In 4e they pretty much told those who use Gnolls as PCs 'Go feth yourself!'. I havent really used a Minotaur so I don't know how they got on.

So I'll probably be staying with 3.5e until I hear word on monstrous species.

They also said in many online articles that if there's something you like and want to include in a game to go ahead and include it, making up the rules yourself or replacing the names of one thing with another so long as they're reasonably similar.

Admittedly, I never played a gnoll in 3.5 or any other monstrous race as I preferred the traditional player character races. My minotaur was a fluke - I found an old Magic card and really liked the idea I got for a character after reading the flavor text for the Hurloon Minotaur.

I have to admit that the online tools for 4e was a significant selling point for me, or rather the initial client they used rather than the completely browser-driven junk that they switched to.

The more and more I think about it and hear things, 5e is turning in to the "Mr. Potatohead" of RPGs.

As someone who still plays 1E, hearing about Gnoll and Minotaur characters, and then hearing WoTC say that in 5E we can all play the edition we like... at the same time. Together?

I have to admit, I cannot wait to see how they pull this off!

Alpharius wrote:As someone who still plays 1E, hearing about Gnoll and Minotaur characters, and then hearing WoTC say that in 5E we can all play the edition we like... at the same time. Together?

I have to admit, I cannot wait to see how they pull this off!

I think Penny Arcade said it artfully in their comic a few days ago.

warboss wrote:
I may completely disagree with WOTC policies as they cancelled all 4 lines of products over 2 years that I used to spend $2000/year on... but I'm not ready to put the tinfoil hat on just yet with this one. If they were really tech savvy enough to engineer a virus and distribute it specifically to one company, they wouldn't have screwed up so royally with DDI and continue to ignore the PDF marketplace.

It wasn't that they made one at all, it's that they deliberately emailed one that already existed to Code Monkeys. It's not that hard, particularly if the target has no reason to suspect they're opening a virus.