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That was one of the issues with 3.5's splat explosion. A lot of new material that all got no/minimal support past the book it was released in.
I highly doubt that was any "issue" at all - at least, not a material one.
In fact, it was probably a benefit - TSR-then-WotC learned fairly quickly that forcing people to own other books to make use of a new book was fantastically stupid.
In fact - the only way Paizo is getting away with this right now is because the majority of their rules are free, on the internet. Without that, you'd see things very differently from what they are right now.
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I'm already kinda sorry I had the audacity to continue 4e talk in an unrelated thread so I'm not going to nibble at the rest of your post but: wut? Why wouldn't you full attack with your rogue?
Because full attacking rogues wind up dead.
Yup.
5e has everything you need to play online for free as well. It just doesn't have all the options from the Player's Handbook. But what they do have is sufficient to play the game with.
That's such a vastly different scale that it feels weird to compare them.
It's like comparing the little taste-tests you get from the mall (so-called) "Chinese" food places v. pay-what-you-want (including free) access to an all-you-can-eat buffet. (Speaking of, I really need to go to our Chinese buffet place. That is delicious.)
EDIT: Don't get me wrong. It's really nice. But the thing is, you can't have a great meal without spending money. On the other hand, you can, it's just cool to throw your cash at them.
My group was willing to try 5E, but then they pulled the plug on digital products and my GM ragequit.
I really want 5E to succeed. A lot. It's a great system.
I just really would prefer their rules-access policies to shift.
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Meh, I care not what happens to DnD, as long as pathfinder remains strong and vibrant:-) I'm fully in their clutches, nothing WotC can do to change that now :-)
I'm not.Are you still talking about 4th edition?Because full attacking rogues wind up dead.And this probably sums up one of the biggest issues they have. Stand around trying to full attack and risk getting splattered or dodge in and out making single attacks and basically be irrelevant after level 6.
Old Rogue, sure; New Rogue maybe not so much.
Get a few months of play with the Unchained Rogue and its Debilitating Injuries in before b$$~+ing about the Rogue vs other d8 HD critters.
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That was one of the issues with 3.5's splat explosion. A lot of new material that all got no/minimal support past the book it was released in.I highly doubt that was any "issue" at all - at least, not a material one.
In fact, it was probably a benefit - TSR-then-WotC learned fairly quickly that forcing people to own other books to make use of a new book was fantastically stupid.
On the other hand, it left a lot of the new subsystems/classes feeling rather short on options compared to their core counterparts. For example, one of the things that made CoDzilla so powerful in 3.5 was that every new splatbook added a couple dozen more spells to their spells known list. Meanwhile, the Psionic/Wu Jen/Tome of Magic/whatever non-core casters got maybe a handful of new spells at best. Same applies for alternate class features, racial substitution bonus levels, feat support, etc.
My group was willing to try 5E, but then they pulled the plug on digital products and my GM ragequit.
Fwiw, they don't seem to have "pulled the plug". It appears that their relationship with the software developer broke down in some way.
For some reason they're averse to PDFs of the core books (my guess is that it's part of their whole "be friendly to FLGS" strategy) but they continue to produce other, free PDF expansions and/or supplements.
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Hello all! I'm back from PaizoCon 2200 out of New Seattle, and boy do I have lots of stuff to tell you about Pathfinder Sixth Edition!. *checks his watch*. Oops, traveled back way too far was only stopping for some chips... just forget everything I just said.
Honestly, if after 185 years there's only been SIX Editions of a game and it's STILL going on, that's pretty damn impressive.
That's basically a new Edition every 32 years.
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Possibly not so much any more. Only one so far, bu I'd expect the other editions to get theirs - and maybe even the C and M parts of BECM.My group was willing to try 5E, but then they pulled the plug on digital products and my GM ragequit.Fwiw, they don't seem to have "pulled the plug". It appears that their relationship with the software developer broke down in some way.
For some reason they're averse to PDFs of the core books (my guess is that it's part of their whole "be friendly to FLGS" strategy) but they continue to produce other, free PDF expansions and/or supplements.
Though it's nice they're doing that and maybe it'll lead to more acceptance of pdfs, it's a long way from selling pdfs of a book from 2 editions and 10 years ago to pdf support of their current game.
Though honestly, "be friendly to FLGS" is by far the best interpretation I've heard. I'd be far happier if they actually claimed that as the reason, which I don't think they've done.
I always figured it was because they were afraid that putting out PDFs would make it easier for online piracy. Not that people have ever had any problems with just uploading scans of the books: in the last 3.5 game I played in I think I was the only one who actually owned physical copies of all the books I was using.
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That was my understanding.
They have explicitly stated this is the case.
It's mind-boggling stupid to think it actually makes it any harder. The lesson the music companies eventually learned - Make the product available in the format the people want at a reasonable price and you'll make far more money than you lose in piracy. Don't do so and people will pirate it just to have the format they want.
WotC is obtuse when it comes to digital distribution. It's sad, but eventually they'll adapt or die, and I've go plenty to play in the meantime.
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Possibly not so much any more. Only one so far, bu I'd expect the other editions to get theirs - and maybe even the C and M parts of BECM.My group was willing to try 5E, but then they pulled the plug on digital products and my GM ragequit.Fwiw, they don't seem to have "pulled the plug". It appears that their relationship with the software developer broke down in some way.
For some reason they're averse to PDFs of the core books (my guess is that it's part of their whole "be friendly to FLGS" strategy) but they continue to produce other, free PDF expansions and/or supplements.
Actually, several. The Rules Cyclopedia is there, as are both sets of Moldvay B/X, the Basic set from Mentzer BECMI, and now the 3.5 PHB.
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...and now the 3.5 PHB.
On one hand, that's good, and I'm glad for anyone who wants to buy that book in PDF.
On the other hand, now they're only two editions back from the current, so...yay? At this rate we can expect the 5E PHB in PDF sometime after 7E comes out.
Like I said: Obtuse.
That was my understanding.They have explicitly stated this is the case.
Really? Do you happen to remember where?
The "we don't want piracy" argument didn't make sense to me, given they put out more material in PDF only form during 4E than in print form. Even now, they're producing new PDFs - they just seem to have this distinction between print products and digital.
If they were scared of pirates, wouldn't they avoid digital altogether?
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Really? Do you happen to remember where?That was my understanding.They have explicitly stated this is the case.
Well, Gleemax is gone, my attempt to link to the ENWorld statement failed, and when I tried to link to the press release from the Paizo thread at the time, I was told wizards.com was down. :P
Here is a re-posting in the Paizo thread from the ENWorld statement, however.
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Really? Do you happen to remember where?That was my understanding.They have explicitly stated this is the case.
Well, Gleemax is gone, my attempt to link to the ENWorld statement failed, and when I tried to link to the press release from the Paizo thread at the time, I was told wizards.com was down. :P
Here is a re-posting in the Paizo thread from the ENWorld statement, however.
Thanks, Joanna. I forgot you are essentially a backup copy of the entire forum. Should have just sent you a pm.
In that case, I'm extremely puzzled that they stopped selling PDFs of books through third parties "to prevent piracy", whilst still selling PDFs directly.
I wonder if that means they've done some kind of calculation about "shelf life" or similar - make PDFs available after a period of time, in the hope that lost sales to piracy is covered by increased sales to actual customers.
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I do like that WOTC has reprinted the 1st, 2nd, and 3.5 Ed Core and "Core-Plus" books (like Unearthed Arcana for 1st Ed, and the Magic Item Compendium and Spell Compendium for 3.5), and seems like they're not interested in creating Supplement books for 5th Edition, instead making their Adventures books very system-neutral, so as to allow them to be used with any of the previous editions (and cash in on the sales of at least 1st, 2nd, and 5th Ed Core books).
By now, they probably have realized they're not going to win the Edition Wars by simply putting out a new Edition (since you STILL have plenty of hold-outs from 1st and 2nd Edition, to say nothing of Pathfinder), and they're not going to be able to compete with Paizo, Dreamscarred, Rogue Genius, Frog God, et all for materials expanding on a single core system (they're also not going to beat Paizo's PRD, which has WAY more Open Content than the d20 SRD ever did).
So rather than fighting it, just making stuff that can be used by any of the Edition Armies, including their biggest competitor, is probably the best course of action to keep the name and franchise alive.
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That was my understanding.They have explicitly stated this is the case.
Really? Do you happen to remember where?
Here, for one. Though admittedly, this is second hand, because the first hand account formerly right here has recently gone missing. Yes, I kept that second link around just for the occasion when people asked; frankly it was so bizarre I'm surprised they kept it there as long as they did.
The "we don't want piracy" argument didn't make sense to me, given they put out more material in PDF only form during 4E than in print form. Even now, they're producing new PDFs - they just seem to have this distinction between print products and digital.
If they were scared of pirates, wouldn't they avoid digital altogether?
I gave up on them being rational a while ago.
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In that case, I'm extremely puzzled that they stopped selling PDFs of books through third parties "to prevent piracy", whilst still selling PDFs directly.
I wonder if that means they've done some kind of calculation about "shelf life" or similar - make PDFs available after a period of time, in the hope that lost sales to piracy is covered by increased sales to actual customers.
They don't sell the actual core rules. As observed up thread, they only recently started selling the 3.5 PHB, so at this rate we can expect a PDF of the 5E PHB around 2026 (twelve years after the print release).
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They don't sell the actual core rules.
D&D Basic Set: Player's Manual (BECMI)
D&D Basic Set: DM's Rulebook (BECMI)
I can understand not wanting to do either of the following:
1. Cut into dead tree sales by selling PDFs immediately. D&D's primary point of sale is brick-and-mortar game stores, not a webstore like Paizo. It's more important for them to keep those game stores happy. One of the things that probably doesn't make those games stores happy is people not bothering to buy the dead tree editions of a game in favor of PDFs.
2. Flooding the market with hundreds of titles. Let's face it, there are still hundreds, if not thousands, of D&D products yet to be offered through OneBookShelf as PDFs. But even if all of them were ready (doubtful, even the older titles seem to be being rescanned to improve the quality of the PDFs), you don't want to offer so many titles all at once that customers give up trying to find what they do want among the flood of titles they don't want.
In short, while I would love for PDFs of all the titles that I want in PDF to be made available in short order, I'm not so entitled that I declare the company to be hostile just because they release a Forgotten Realms product instead of something from Greyhawk.
I also sincerely doubt that it will be 12 years before we see PDFs of the 5E core rulebooks.
2. Flooding the market with hundreds of titles. Let's face it, there are still hundreds, if not thousands, of D&D products yet to be offered through OneBookShelf as PDFs. But even if all of them were ready (doubtful, even the older titles seem to be being rescanned to improve the quality of the PDFs), you don't want to offer so many titles all at once that customers give up trying to find what they do want among the flood of titles they don't want.
Additionally, there's also the collector's market.
It's not very big, mind you - NOTHING compared to the collectors for MTG - but it's still there.
A 1st Printing of the 1st Edition Monster Manual can legitimately cost something pretty nice.
The same is true for old Red Boxes.
I'd imagine the same goes for some things like Tomb of Horrors, etc.
To collectors, some of those old and rare books and modules could be worth a pretty penny. Releasing them as PDFs COULD kill their value a bit (though books are different than cards, and the quality of both the copy and it's printing play more into it than simply rarity).
In short, while I would love for PDFs of all the titles that I want in PDF to be made available in short order, I'm not so entitled that I declare the company to be hostile just because they release a Forgotten Realms product instead of something from Greyhawk.
I do think it's a bit of a dick move on their part to focus solely on Forgotten Realms.
Dragonlance and Ravenloft are two of the most-popular and beloved settings out there, but were given basically no love in 4E (and very little compared to Forgotten Realms in 3.5).
Dark Sun was also left to die, despite being fun as hell for masochists. There ARE people who legitimately enjoy I Wanna Be The Guy, after all.
Even Ebberon was really fun, for effectively being the closest thing D&D would ever come to creating a JRPG setting.
And then there's poor Planescape and Spelljammer - Spelljammer alone was so b&%#@%& crazy and off-the-wall that it was a blast to play (it was as unbalanced and rules-snarly as anything in 1st and 2nd ed and THEN SOME, but the setting was just... "fantasy kitchen sink" doesn't do it justice)
Oddly enough, Golarion is just a hop, skip, jump, and one flying-&-planeswalking ship away from BEING Spelljammer when all is said and done, really.
Yes, how dare I expect the RPG industry norm of timely PDF releases. How very entitled of me. :P
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They don't sell the actual core rules.D&D Basic Set: Player's Manual (BECMI)
D&D Basic Set: DM's Rulebook (BECMI)
I can understand not wanting to do either of the following:
1. Cut into dead tree sales by selling PDFs immediately. D&D's primary point of sale is brick-and-mortar game stores, not a webstore like Paizo. It's more important for them to keep those game stores happy. One of the things that probably doesn't make those games stores happy is people not bothering to buy the dead tree editions of a game in favor of PDFs.
2. Flooding the market with hundreds of titles. Let's face it, there are still hundreds, if not thousands, of D&D products yet to be offered through OneBookShelf as PDFs. But even if all of them were ready (doubtful, even the older titles seem to be being rescanned to improve the quality of the PDFs), you don't want to offer so many titles all at once that customers give up trying to find what they do want among the flood of titles they don't want.
In short, while I would love for PDFs of all the titles that I want in PDF to be made available in short order, I'm not so entitled that I declare the company to be hostile just because they release a Forgotten Realms product instead of something from Greyhawk.
I also sincerely doubt that it will be 12 years before we see PDFs of the 5E core rulebooks.
Paizo couldn't survive without the sale of hardcover books. They have said it themselves numerous times. It's not just WOTC (who rely on hardcover book sales), however Paizo is very 'digital' friendly.
WOTC has a different business model compared to Paizo, for starters it is owned by Hasbro, a toy company with different goals and intentions than a former magazine publisher whose staff comprise of a lot of old school gamers and designers (Paizo).
The D&D brand is important to Hasbro, not necessarily the role playing game.
p.s I find the term 'dead tree' offensive. I love books, sure pdfs are much more portable and at times convenient, yet they don't show the respect to the great artists (Wayne Reynolds, Eva Widermann) that make the world of Golarion come alive. Their artworks need to be seen as a printed version.
Anyone who appreciates art; has been to an art gallery or a museum knows exactly what I'm talking about.
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Paizo couldn't survive without the sale of hardcover books. They have said it themselves numerous times. It's not just WOTC (who rely on hardcover book sales), however Paizo is very 'digital' friendly.
Any links to statements on this? The last time I read anything about the topic, Paizo's primary source of income were monthly subscription lines, with Adventure Paths being the biggest of them. Hardcovers are an icing on the cake in their case, as opposed to WotC, who (at least during the 4e era) based their model around having 1-2 hardcovers out every month.
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p.s I find the term 'dead tree' offensive. I love books, sure pdfs are much more portable and at times convenient, yet they don't show the respect to the great artists (Wayne Reynolds, Eva Widermann) that make the world of Golarion come alive. Their artworks need to be seen as a printed version.
Anyone who appreciates art; has been to an art gallery or a museum knows exactly what I'm talking about.
As someone who visits museums often, I'm not quite with you on this Morz. Museum quality art is a long way from the artwork printed books. You are not looking at Reynolds' actual handcrafted pieces, you are looking at a copy of them. There is no difference from the printed page or the digital copy; except in your head.
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Paizo couldn't survive without the sale of hardcover books. They have said it themselves numerous times. It's not just WOTC (who rely on hardcover book sales), however Paizo is very 'digital' friendly.Any links to statements on this? The last time I read anything about the topic, Paizo's primary source of income were monthly subscription lines, with Adventure Paths being the biggest of them. Hardcovers are an icing on the cake in their case, as opposed to WotC, who (at least during the 4e era ) based their model around having 1-2 hardcovers out every month.
1. Fixed that for you.
2. That strategy is probably great for Paizo. It's poison for brick-and-mortar gaming stores.
Paizo couldn't survive without the sale of hardcover books. They have said it themselves numerous times. It's not just WOTC (who rely on hardcover book sales), however Paizo is very 'digital' friendly.Any links to statements on this? The last time I read anything about the topic, Paizo's primary source of income were monthly subscription lines, with Adventure Paths being the biggest of them. Hardcovers are an icing on the cake in their case, as opposed to WotC, who (at least during the 4e era) based their model around having 1-2 hardcovers out every month.
Edit: Hardcover and softcover books. I will have to look for a link, definitely been mentioned though a few times.
Paizo couldn't survive without the sale of hardcover books. They have said it themselves numerous times. It's not just WOTC (who rely on hardcover book sales), however Paizo is very 'digital' friendly.Any links to statements on this? The last time I read anything about the topic, Paizo's primary source of income were monthly subscription lines, with Adventure Paths being the biggest of them. Hardcovers are an icing on the cake in their case, as opposed to WotC, who (at least during the 4e era) based their model around having 1-2 hardcovers out every month.
I think he means "physical books" rather than "hardcover", since the number of actual hardcover books printed by Paizo is barely over 20.
WOTC also had a habit of releasing hardcovers just about every month during the 3.5 era, potentially more, though they printed very few actual modules or adventures, which was a complete turnaround from the TSR days.
2. That strategy is probably great for Paizo. It's poison for brick-and-mortar gaming stores.
I dunno about you, but Barnes & Noble gets my money for books, and my FLGS still gets money from me buying minis and dice.
As someone who visits museums often, I'm not quite with you on this Morz. Museum quality art is a long way from the artwork printed books. You are not looking at Reynolds' actual handcrafted pieces, you are looking at a copy of them. There is no difference from the printed page or the digital copy; except in your head.p.s I find the term 'dead tree' offensive. I love books, sure pdfs are much more portable and at times convenient, yet they don't show the respect to the great artists (Wayne Reynolds, Eva Widermann) that make the world of Golarion come alive. Their artworks need to be seen as a printed version.
Anyone who appreciates art; has been to an art gallery or a museum knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Yes, I agree there is a big difference between seeing an original artwork and seeing a simulacrum, a printed copy of the original.
There is a noticeable difference with what you see on a computer display and viewing a printed copy. Digital archiving and museum grade custom printing (I have used a Roland D'Vinci 12 Colour printer, you should see what that can do) is one of my real-life areas of expertise and it's definitely not just in my head.
They don't sell the actual core rules.In that case, I'm extremely puzzled that they stopped selling PDFs of books through third parties "to prevent piracy", whilst still selling PDFs directly.
I wonder if that means they've done some kind of calculation about "shelf life" or similar - make PDFs available after a period of time, in the hope that lost sales to piracy is covered by increased sales to actual customers.
Yeah, I understand.
Part of my puzzlement (presuming the piracy argument to be the primary motivation) is why piracy of the core rules is such a bad thing when piracy of the expansion content isnt.
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Paizo couldn't survive without the sale of hardcover books. They have said it themselves numerous times. It's not just WOTC (who rely on hardcover book sales), however Paizo is very 'digital' friendly.Any links to statements on this? The last time I read anything about the topic, Paizo's primary source of income were monthly subscription lines, with Adventure Paths being the biggest of them. Hardcovers are an icing on the cake in their case, as opposed to WotC, who (at least during the 4e era) based their model around having 1-2 hardcovers out every month.
Hardcopy was obviously intended, rather than hardcover (so perhaps you dont need a citation). Nonetheless, in this post, Vic states that sales of print products are more than half their total business and that, despite the proportion of digital only products necessarily increasing over time, that is unlikely to change in the near future.