DDI Compendium


4th Edition


I double checked but I don't think I've seen any posts on this so far.

The DDI Compendium is live folks ... see it here.

Seems pretty useful to me. Not sure what the limits are, but there is fluff text from the little I looked.

Thoughts? Opinions?


David Marks wrote:
Thoughts? Opinions?

Well, the art on the other aspects are muchly improved.

The DDIC is an article lookup, which isn't a bad idea (and, certainly, something many people clamoured for). Useful at the gaming table, but you gotta have your laptop for that. :)


vance wrote:

Well, the art on the other aspects are muchly improved.

The DDIC is an article lookup, which isn't a bad idea (and, certainly, something many people clamoured for). Useful at the gaming table, but you gotta have your laptop for that. :)

Aye, not too shabby. Note this is hasn't been announced yet so I'm not sure if its really ready for the masses. That said, check out the Rogue and Warlord write-ups. I give it 50/50 odds on either possessing some leftover design notes or perhaps teasers for the upcoming Martial Power book.

what do you think?


David Marks wrote:
what do you think?

Looks more 'raw' than 'previewy'... there's stuff missing, not filled out, etc. So it likely hasn't gotten it's final pass yet.


vance wrote:
David Marks wrote:
what do you think?

Looks more 'raw' than 'previewy'... there's stuff missing, not filled out, etc. So it likely hasn't gotten it's final pass yet.

Hehe, well it certainly hasn't gotten its final pass yet, simply because I'm sure they'd be announcing it if it was really ready. ;)

But is what's there going to be a preview? Or just some leftovers from development? I'm leaning to preview, but could be either (and technically, could be both, if some design floor scraps are rolled into future splats ...)

Cheers! :)


It looks good but I do not know what you mean about the warlord class. I would love to see a buy this application feature for offline use though.

Liberty's Edge

A table of contents might be nice. I typed in "blind" and even though it gave me numerous classes and powers with the word in the description, it didn't tell me what the condition means. I found that odd.


Pygon wrote:
A table of contents might be nice. I typed in "blind" and even though it gave me numerous classes and powers with the word in the description, it didn't tell me what the condition means. I found that odd.

It seems to be just the character generation rules, not the gameplay. At least so far.


Pygon wrote:
A table of contents might be nice. I typed in "blind" and even though it gave me numerous classes and powers with the word in the description, it didn't tell me what the condition means. I found that odd.

Maybe you should have used ’blinded’.


Pat o' the Ninth Power wrote:


It seems to be just the character generation rules, not the gameplay. At least so far.

Yeah I think the most useful thing would be the combat section of the PHB, definition of states, combat advantage etc. Hopefully this is just the first dataset.

That said if every feat/class/race from all books is going to be there in a condensed form that is going to be very useful, even if it is only a searchable database to prevent using it in place of a book.


Mormegil wrote:
Pygon wrote:
A table of contents might be nice. I typed in "blind" and even though it gave me numerous classes and powers with the word in the description, it didn't tell me what the condition means. I found that odd.
Maybe you should have used ’blinded’.

Alas, blinded doesn't give you a definition either. I noted the same thing about "marked" because when I got 4e I read Healing Strike and wondered what the heck marked meant if you weren't a fighter or paladin.

It took me a long to find it because it wasn't in the index either. I even looked in conditions and missed it. And alas, the compendium is no better. At least not yet. You can look up Healing Strike and wonder what marked means there too. Surely they will be putting hyperlinks in, right??

The thing about conditions, is there isn't even a tab that's appropriate for them.


David Marks wrote:

I double checked but I don't think I've seen any posts on this so far.

The DDI Compendium is live folks ... see it here.

Seems pretty useful to me. Not sure what the limits are, but there is fluff text from the little I looked.

Thoughts? Opinions?

Tabbed interface is ok. Where's the option for advanced search? I noticed the search filters out some boolean operators and ignores "stop" words. Do we get an option for saved searches in the full model?

I think passing database attributes/search parameters(http://ww2.wizards.com/dnd/insider/database.aspx?searchterm=fire %20wizard&tab=powers&stype=3&sstyle=2)
in the address bar is iffy, especially since these seem to be easily discoverable (At first glance).


At the moment, the only thing I can see that the Healing Strike mark does is remove other marks (since both the Fighter and Paladin marks are removed by other marks).


Honestly, this is a nifty tool, but I'm not impressed. The main reason is, this tool should have been out the gate on launch release. We should be taking a look at the character creator right now (not the visualizer, the actual creator/generator).

This compendium is useful, it'll replace my Hypertext SRD link on my computer for quick rules references during the game. And, might prove useful during character creation when a ton of books come out.

But, I'm sorely unimpressed with a, "Eh. Good, but not really anything worth subscribing for... Let's see the money shot."

Sovereign Court

I checked this out a few days ago when it went live. I love compendiums, searchable databases, online support systems... but because this seems to only include 4e - it seems useful to only those intending to play 4e.

For those staying the course with 3.5, we will have this someday soon. This will happen for 3.5, so I'm also (one again) unimpressed with this "too little too late" attempt by wotc.


Pax Veritas wrote:

I checked this out a few days ago when it went live. I love compendiums, searchable databases, online support systems... but because this seems to only include 4e - it seems useful to only those intending to play 4e.

For those staying the course with 3.5, we will have this someday soon. This will happen for 3.5, so I'm also (one again) unimpressed with this "too little too late" attempt by wotc.

Pax - should check out the Hypertext SRD. It is searchable, completely hyperlinked and very good. It doesn't contain the non-OGL content, but it's very useful for looking up spells and whatnot mid-game.


Pax Veritas wrote:
For those staying the course with 3.5, we will have this someday soon. This will happen for 3.5, so I'm also (one again) unimpressed with this "too little too late" attempt by wotc.
P1NBACK wrote:
...should check out the Hypertext SRD...

Phenomenal resource. I'll be shocked if WotC equals it.

For what it's worth, I don't think the 4e compendium is "too little too late" -- it's just late. WotC continues to provide promises rather than products.

They're also setting expectations pretty high, so high they might not be able to live up to them. And even if they do, they'll have to overcome many subscribers' disappointment over months of missed deadlines.

Two more cents :)

Sovereign Court

great if you are creating a character without the actual character creator, not much good for anything else, are you able to subscribe to just this? I can then maybe see it's usefulness, I could also see it's usefulness if it gets more fleshed out, i.e. all the rules, not just character creation ones. but for now, complete fail


lastknightleft wrote:
great if you are creating a character without the actual character creator, not much good for anything else, are you able to subscribe to just this? I can then maybe see it's usefulness, I could also see it's usefulness if it gets more fleshed out, i.e. all the rules, not just character creation ones. but for now, complete fail

I'm fairly certain I've seen mention of them allowing a ala carte pricing scheme, but with pretty much all of the DDI being so late, I'm sure whatever plans they have for pricing will change in the end.

Cheers! :)


David Marks wrote:
I'm fairly certain I've seen mention of them allowing a ala carte pricing scheme, but with pretty much all of the DDI being so late, I'm sure whatever plans they have for pricing will change in the end.

I'm fairly (but not completely) certain that the mentions of a la carte pricing by Wizards folks have been of the variety, "We won't be doing that." At least, the DDI FAQ as of a week or so ago said that.


To be fair, since there's been no news announcement on this aspect of the DDI, and it LOOKS incomplete, it's pretty safe to say that it is. While you can complain that it's extremely late (six months and counting), I couldn't review this as if it were a 'ready for prime time' product.


vance wrote:

To be fair, since there's been no news announcement on this aspect of the DDI, and it LOOKS incomplete, it's pretty safe to say that it is. While you can complain that it's extremely late (six months and counting), I couldn't review this as if it were a 'ready for prime time' product.

Actually, there is an announcement on the DnD homepage.

They plan to bring more features, including a "Browse All" similar to the HyperText SRD homepage I would think.


Pat o' the Ninth Power wrote:


I'm fairly (but not completely) certain that the mentions of a la carte pricing by Wizards folks have been of the variety, "We won't be doing that." At least, the DDI FAQ as of a week or so ago said that.

To be honest, they've been all over the place with this. I've seen both positions stated, several times. The most recent position I saw was ala carte pricing, but like I said, that very well may change.

Vance,

I believe there is a news item up for this now, but they more or less admit it is still pretty early beta/late alpha. If you check it out, they give a run down of what they want to do with it/where they plan on taking it. I'll try to rustle up a link for you guys later if no one beats me to it (stupid work, demanding time! :P)

Cheers! :)


They announced it was up for testing as a preview.. but not that it was released, which is a pretty big difference. :)

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