Who is thinking that WOTC would be out of their minds not to do anything to build the brand to the current gaming generation? If they are turning away this kind of business that isn't a good business model.
@AHF WOTC never builds its brand going backwards. They wouldn't want to promote a version of DnD that they don't sell anymore. So unless you're suggesting that they make an 'old school' game with 4e or Next it's pretty unlikely. Pathfinder is more likely, but not by much, and with the same reasoning.
@AHF WOTC never builds its brand going backwards. They wouldn't want to promote a version of DnD that they don't sell anymore. So unless you're suggesting that they make an 'old school' game with 4e or Next it's pretty unlikely. Pathfinder is more likely, but not by much, and with the same reasoning.
I guess I just don't buy into hiding a declining brand.
After all, aren't they doing exactly this with the BG3 project? Is it a bad idea? I don't think so.
AHF They are positing that if there is a BG3, it is going to be done in D&D Next, in other words 5e (they are calling it NEXT presumably because they don't want people to think it's that old, because you know, that's just unfun. ::Blows Raspberry.::
Yup, kilroy and LadyRhian have summed it up. AHF, D&D has been a victim of lawsuit warfare for ages; and more importantly, a victim of trying to push the newest thing when half of the fans don't want the newest thing. Bloody moronic.
Then again, why do fans hate the newer editions so much? Sure, in any kind of fanbase, there's always those die-hard fans that love vintage and oldschool stuff and all ... (that's why even today, amplifiers and guitars designed in the 50's and 60's are produced) ... but in the end, the newer editions have a reason to exist: They removed stuff that was annoying as hell about D&D, they removed stuff nobody used, made the system more logical with less exceptions and even implemented new tactical opportunities.
Just think about the addition of attacks of opportunity, feats and freedom of multiclassing with +level adjustments. I think all in all, the newer additions are more fun than the previous. They allow for much more tweaking and different builds within the same class. Could you create a dex-based fighter in 2ed? You could, but it sucked balls. In 3ed and above, it even makes sense for fighters to actually have INT.
I don't see why people hate the newer editions so much. I'd love to see BG3 use the 5ed, just because I'm curious to see what is new and how D&D evolved in those 10 years.
Then again, why do fans hate the newer editions so much? Sure, in any kind of fanbase, there's always those die-hard fans that love vintage and oldschool stuff and all ... (that's why even today, amplifiers and guitars designed in the 50's and 60's are produced) ... but in the end, the newer editions have a reason to exist: They removed stuff that was annoying as hell about D&D, they removed stuff nobody used, made the system more logical with less exceptions and even implemented new tactical opportunities.
Just think about the addition of attacks of opportunity, feats and freedom of multiclassing with +level adjustments. I think all in all, the newer additions are more fun than the previous. They allow for much more tweaking and different builds within the same class. Could you create a dex-based fighter in 2ed? You could, but it sucked balls. In 3ed and above, it even makes sense for fighters to actually have INT.
I don't see why people hate the newer editions so much. I'd love to see BG3 use the 5ed, just because I'm curious to see what is new and how D&D evolved in those 10 years.
They turned it into a wargame. 4e made battlemats and minis pretty much mandatory - as it was designed to. It focused on combat as the main element (and combat can often last for an entire session in 4e - it's ridiculous), to the detriment of everything else. I mean, could you imagine playing something like the Roleplaying Challenge in 4e, where combat is handled entirely without maps? It's essentially impossible. It's possible to play mapless with Pathfinder too, that's what my group does. In addition, they completely removed certain "iconic" features of D&D that had been in there since the start, such as Vancian magic and the alignment system. Classes became homogenised and don't feel particularly unique. The needless screwing up of the lore (the hell is an Eladrin) didn't help either. They should have concentrated on fixing things that were actually broken rather than arbitrarily changing the system into something that doesn't feel like D&D any more.
AHF They are positing that if there is a BG3, it is going to be done in D&D Next, in other words 5e (they are calling it NEXT presumably because they don't want people to think it's that old, because you know, that's just unfun. ::Blows Raspberry.::
@LadyRhian That was my point. They are taking the then current edition of D&D and putting it in an old school style game with BG3. They should be doing "old school" games with the current rule set rather than seeing games come out with some unassociated rules set made up to imitate older versions of D&D without infringing on the intellectual property. When a person wants to do an old school game, help them make the D&D Next or whatever edition is out work for them and get the name out to younger gamers.
That said, I am personally with @Quarz and would like to see them farming out prior editions of D&D too and let their fan base partake as they choose. Recognizing that they aren't currently of that mind, I would be pushing D&D Next on old school, new school, any kind of platform. Get people invested with it and familiar with it.
I just downloaded one of the play-tests they have available for D&D Next and realized I have no idea what's going on there. O.O None.
...
Now on the plus side... my sorceress apparently takes on the traits of her Draconic heritage when she's exhausted her willpower. Great... I become chatty (Brass Dragon) mid combat. :P
They removed stuff that was annoying as hell about D&D, they removed stuff nobody used, made the system more logical with less exceptions and even implemented new tactical opportunities.
I love how incredibly unspecific you are with all your "examples."
Could you create a dex-based fighter in 2ed? You could, but it sucked balls. In 3ed and above, it even makes sense for fighters to actually have INT.
Sorry what? Dex-based fighters are awesome, even in 2e. I'll take Shar-Teel, Kivan, or Montaron over Minsc, Ajantis, Jaheira, Yeslick any day thanks.
Sure my point there is a bit moot because Shar-Teel and Kivan happen to also have good strength. But seriously, I would run a Fighter with an 18 or 19 Dex and mediocre Strength and Constitution any day. Load them with arrows and watch them do work. Enough said.
I don't see why people hate the newer editions so much. I'd love to see BG3 use the 5ed, just because I'm curious to see what is new and how D&D evolved in those 10 years.
Clearly you don't, so stop trying to argue with us then if you can't even relate to us even one bit. I respect that you like the newer editions, even if I despise them. You don't see me trying to tell you your edition sucks just because I don't understand your feelings.
the only beef i had with newer editions is that rules got soooooo looooose that things were getting out of control big time, though i've never played PnP 2nd edition, i relate bg's 2nd edition to PnP 3rd edition and its just ridiculous, because there are all these people who have 3rd edition "builds" where they have a bagillion attacks per round do a bagillion damage each hit, and its like, um the hardest enemy in the game has 700 or so HP why is all that damage necessary? and then people would complain that you just arent making your monsters hard enough, so lets recap on this, the tarrasque for example in 3rd edition was supposed to be a legendary monster of lore 840 HP or so the terror of the land, and here comes these people and their whack ass -perhaps even "illegal" builds- doing 1000 damage a hit and virtually cant miss because they have 19 prestige classes in them that gives them all this garbage and now the mighty tarrasque is nothing more than a misquito compared to this build, i think one of the things is DMs allowing people to prestige class into crap that doesnt make convential sense just so the player can have the satisfaction of doing ridiculous damage is just dumb, like having classes from the oriental handbook mix with classes from say a book that is set in a completely different realm/setting, it would be like me here in north america in real life saying that i want to be a doctor/lawyer/rocket scientist/samurai/europeon archiologist, and saying ah its all good they train that all here in north america, hell they have it all at the college here in this small ass town, and stuff like that is what annoyed me in 3rd edition, i remember we stopped playing dnd because at level 10 we could EASILY take on epic monsters for how stupid powerful our groups were getting because of all this class/feat mixing nonsense, and it took our DM one hour to make a monster well it took us maybe 5 miesly rounds to kill it, and thats what i loved about bg's 2nd edition, HP was greatly scaled down, your damge from SoA to ToB wasnt significantly higher ( say if your average damage in SoA was 20 per hit, it would proablly be about 25 in ToB) and everything is way more calmed down, because lets face it, a level 40 ToB character vs any level 40 3rd edition character, say goodbye to the level 40 ToB character, espeically if this level 40 dnd character had all that whack prestige class/ over powered feats, the level 40 3rd edition character says, okay i win, i dont need to roll anything because im just that cool, so passed all the jarjon here i guess what im trying to say is, 2nd edition felt way more balanced and under control because of tight restrictions and rules, and the newer editions got looser and looser and crap just starting going hey wire, and hey, if people like games where doing ridiculous amounts of damage at low levels gives them their proverbial stiffy, then i say fly at 'er, but i prefer my games where at level 40, my normal 5 dart magic missile can still be a force to be rekoned with
They removed stuff that was annoying as hell about D&D, they removed stuff nobody used, made the system more logical with less exceptions and even implemented new tactical opportunities.
I love how incredibly unspecific you are with all your "examples."
Could you create a dex-based fighter in 2ed? You could, but it sucked balls. In 3ed and above, it even makes sense for fighters to actually have INT.
Sorry what? Dex-based fighters are awesome, even in 2e. I'll take Shar-Teel, Kivan, or Montaron over Minsc, Ajantis, Jaheira, Yeslick any day thanks.
Sure my point there is a bit moot because Shar-Teel and Kivan happen to also have good strength. But seriously, I would run a Fighter with an 18 or 19 Dex and mediocre Strength and Constitution any day. Load them with arrows and watch them do work. Enough said.
I don't see why people hate the newer editions so much. I'd love to see BG3 use the 5ed, just because I'm curious to see what is new and how D&D evolved in those 10 years.
Clearly you don't, so stop trying to argue with us then if you can't even relate to us even one bit. I respect that you like the newer editions, even if I despise them. You don't see me trying to tell you your edition sucks just because I don't understand your feelings.
You want to know what I disliked about 2ED?
Alright then:
1) 2e works good in lower levels, but doesn't scale well in higher levels (like > level 10). Reason for that is that the THAC0 of characters rises every x level, but at some point in the game the AC of characters does not compete with that anymore. While THAC0 is a leveling stat, AC is not, thus, creating a larger gap between THAC0 and AC the more the game progresses.
2) Mages getting ridicolously overpowered once they reach like the 5th or 6th spell circle (actually, as soon as they have access to stone skin, but stone skin alone doesn't kill). You might argue that this is because magic is special and supposed to be strong (from a roleplay view of things), but from a gamer's perspective this is just terrible balancing.
3) Critical strikes are almost useless, due to the fact that every helmet protects you from critical strikes.
4) Backstabbing, depending on the situation is either ridicolously overpowered (instantkilling mages) or useless (immunities). Other than that, backstabbing requires potions of invisibility or other magical stuff to be used in combat, making the class a poor excuse of a ranged character 90% of the battle.
5) WIS, INT and CHA are highly situational stats which clearly make almost no sense to have for classes that don't have them as main attributes
6) DEX gives a natural AC even when you got a plate mail equipped... this doesn't make sense to me. Also, this leads to the requirement of every melee class requiring DEX in order to work properly in high levels (due to the AC not keeping up with THAC0 at some point). Also, this disrupts the opportunity to create alternate melee builds such as light armored fighters. Where's the point in wearing leather armor (maybe for roleplaying purposes) for a fighter if it is ALWAYS better to wear a plate mail?
7) Multiclasses. Yes, I won't make much friends here, but multiclasses in 2ed are definitely NOT balanced. Multiclasses are almost always better than core classes due to the exponential EXP table. When multiclassing, you are usually just 1 level behind the true class, as usually the next step in the EXP table requires doubled xp. Yes, I have access to the next spell circle one level before the multiclass - but is this really that important? I don't think so. Also, while I like the roleplay aspect of Dual-classing, in terms of gameplay, this is a pretty stupid concept. You are basicly crippled until you reach the point the old class becomes active again - at a point of the game where almost all of your other characters or players have higher levels you start out again as a level 1 with a THAC0 of 20? Seriously, wtf?
Now lets compare this to 3ED rules: 1) Not fixed. But at least you can select feats that increase your AC or dump more points into DEX as you level up
2) The wide selection of feats and abilities for fighters and thieves make those classes able to compete with high level spellcasters. Thieves with their additional saving throw flavour are killing machines against mages that focused on damage too much.
3) There is a huge selection of feats to improve your criticals. It even allows for highly specialized crit-machines with an expanded critrange down to 17-20 or more. Criticals can also come with different benefits like extra attacks, procs, etc to support such builds.
4) Attacks of opportunity allow for backstabbing. Backstabbing itself nerfed to only give a +1d6 per backstab modifier so that the ridicolous one-hit killing is gone, but all in all the thief is much more useful in combat than in 2ed just because it can make use of backstab without being stealthed all the time
5) All stats are useful now for every class. Some more, some less, but all in all the situation has improved. INT-fighters? Defence Mode! DEX-Fighters? Dual-wielding feats! Heck, there's even a feat that changes the attack modifier for ranged weapons from DEX to WIS if you like it. Also, due to the skill system, INT is useful for every class now as it allows access to more skills.
6) Max dex modifiers. Light-armored melee classes are finally possible. Also, there are feats that allow for dex-fighters to actually make sense and deal damage without also having high STR.
7) Multiclasses ... oh well, I gotta say that this is still not balanced well, but at least the overall situation improved. Also, there are much less restrictions on multiclassing, which is a good thing in my oppinion. I can now literally multiclass the way I want and don't need to know about thousands of pre-requisites anymore. Also, leveling in the second class now always puts me one more level behind in my main class so that my progression in the main class is much more limited than in 2ED.
I don't want to say that everything about 3ED and later is good. Prestige classes for example. Never liked it. But all in all, 3ED improved some stuff that 2ED was lacking - which is flexibility and versatility. I am much less restricted in what I can do in 3ED than in 2ED. Which is good. After all, D&D is about roleplaying, not powergaming. I want to play the class I designed in my mind. And if I create a light armored high dexterity, high int fighter, I want to play it that way without having to fear being totally useless in high levels due to not being able to hit anything.
If BG3 is made in 4th edition, D&D next, or whatever and that edition is at least as terrible as 3rd edition in IWD2 than I will absolutely never buy that game. I love BG and I really want there to be a BG3, but there are limits to what I am willing to put up with. I made the mistake of buying IWD2 because at the time I didn't realize how bad it was. I will not make that mistake a second time. I hope the game developers don't either.
Same here, Delvarian... I enjoyed being able to customize feats and definitely enjoyed the lifting of the ridiculous class/race restrictions and all that jazz.
Comments
I need to Facebook that one!
After all, aren't they doing exactly this with the BG3 project? Is it a bad idea? I don't think so.
They removed stuff that was annoying as hell about D&D, they removed stuff nobody used, made the system more logical with less exceptions and even implemented new tactical opportunities.
Just think about the addition of attacks of opportunity, feats and freedom of multiclassing with +level adjustments. I think all in all, the newer additions are more fun than the previous. They allow for much more tweaking and different builds within the same class. Could you create a dex-based fighter in 2ed? You could, but it sucked balls. In 3ed and above, it even makes sense for fighters to actually have INT.
I don't see why people hate the newer editions so much. I'd love to see BG3 use the 5ed, just because I'm curious to see what is new and how D&D evolved in those 10 years.
That said, I am personally with @Quarz and would like to see them farming out prior editions of D&D too and let their fan base partake as they choose. Recognizing that they aren't currently of that mind, I would be pushing D&D Next on old school, new school, any kind of platform. Get people invested with it and familiar with it.
...
Now on the plus side... my sorceress apparently takes on the traits of her Draconic heritage when she's exhausted her willpower. Great... I become chatty (Brass Dragon) mid combat. :P
Sure my point there is a bit moot because Shar-Teel and Kivan happen to also have good strength. But seriously, I would run a Fighter with an 18 or 19 Dex and mediocre Strength and Constitution any day. Load them with arrows and watch them do work. Enough said. Clearly you don't, so stop trying to argue with us then if you can't even relate to us even one bit. I respect that you like the newer editions, even if I despise them. You don't see me trying to tell you your edition sucks just because I don't understand your feelings.
Like or dislike 4th ed? Express yourself with a MEME, like i did way back on page 7.
Alright then:
1) 2e works good in lower levels, but doesn't scale well in higher levels (like > level 10). Reason for that is that the THAC0 of characters rises every x level, but at some point in the game the AC of characters does not compete with that anymore. While THAC0 is a leveling stat, AC is not, thus, creating a larger gap between THAC0 and AC the more the game progresses.
2) Mages getting ridicolously overpowered once they reach like the 5th or 6th spell circle (actually, as soon as they have access to stone skin, but stone skin alone doesn't kill). You might argue that this is because magic is special and supposed to be strong (from a roleplay view of things), but from a gamer's perspective this is just terrible balancing.
3) Critical strikes are almost useless, due to the fact that every helmet protects you from critical strikes.
4) Backstabbing, depending on the situation is either ridicolously overpowered (instantkilling mages) or useless (immunities). Other than that, backstabbing requires potions of invisibility or other magical stuff to be used in combat, making the class a poor excuse of a ranged character 90% of the battle.
5) WIS, INT and CHA are highly situational stats which clearly make almost no sense to have for classes that don't have them as main attributes
6) DEX gives a natural AC even when you got a plate mail equipped... this doesn't make sense to me. Also, this leads to the requirement of every melee class requiring DEX in order to work properly in high levels (due to the AC not keeping up with THAC0 at some point). Also, this disrupts the opportunity to create alternate melee builds such as light armored fighters. Where's the point in wearing leather armor (maybe for roleplaying purposes) for a fighter if it is ALWAYS better to wear a plate mail?
7) Multiclasses. Yes, I won't make much friends here, but multiclasses in 2ed are definitely NOT balanced. Multiclasses are almost always better than core classes due to the exponential EXP table. When multiclassing, you are usually just 1 level behind the true class, as usually the next step in the EXP table requires doubled xp. Yes, I have access to the next spell circle one level before the multiclass - but is this really that important? I don't think so. Also, while I like the roleplay aspect of Dual-classing, in terms of gameplay, this is a pretty stupid concept. You are basicly crippled until you reach the point the old class becomes active again - at a point of the game where almost all of your other characters or players have higher levels you start out again as a level 1 with a THAC0 of 20? Seriously, wtf?
Now lets compare this to 3ED rules:
1) Not fixed. But at least you can select feats that increase your AC or dump more points into DEX as you level up
2) The wide selection of feats and abilities for fighters and thieves make those classes able to compete with high level spellcasters. Thieves with their additional saving throw flavour are killing machines against mages that focused on damage too much.
3) There is a huge selection of feats to improve your criticals. It even allows for highly specialized crit-machines with an expanded critrange down to 17-20 or more. Criticals can also come with different benefits like extra attacks, procs, etc to support such builds.
4) Attacks of opportunity allow for backstabbing. Backstabbing itself nerfed to only give a +1d6 per backstab modifier so that the ridicolous one-hit killing is gone, but all in all the thief is much more useful in combat than in 2ed just because it can make use of backstab without being stealthed all the time
5) All stats are useful now for every class. Some more, some less, but all in all the situation has improved. INT-fighters? Defence Mode! DEX-Fighters? Dual-wielding feats! Heck, there's even a feat that changes the attack modifier for ranged weapons from DEX to WIS if you like it. Also, due to the skill system, INT is useful for every class now as it allows access to more skills.
6) Max dex modifiers. Light-armored melee classes are finally possible. Also, there are feats that allow for dex-fighters to actually make sense and deal damage without also having high STR.
7) Multiclasses ... oh well, I gotta say that this is still not balanced well, but at least the overall situation improved. Also, there are much less restrictions on multiclassing, which is a good thing in my oppinion. I can now literally multiclass the way I want and don't need to know about thousands of pre-requisites anymore. Also, leveling in the second class now always puts me one more level behind in my main class so that my progression in the main class is much more limited than in 2ED.
I don't want to say that everything about 3ED and later is good. Prestige classes for example. Never liked it. But all in all, 3ED improved some stuff that 2ED was lacking - which is flexibility and versatility. I am much less restricted in what I can do in 3ED than in 2ED. Which is good. After all, D&D is about roleplaying, not powergaming. I want to play the class I designed in my mind. And if I create a light armored high dexterity, high int fighter, I want to play it that way without having to fear being totally useless in high levels due to not being able to hit anything.
No offence towards anyone intended.
Just going through my head.