At some level it is a marketing ploy. Getting people to buy more materials. I can live with that really. Wizards is a company and they need to make money. If they can come up ways to make more money I will not fault them. I don't have to buy the product either. That is the benefit of a free market.
I am am concerned about power creep and too many changes from the books I already have. Will a D&D Essentials Cleric be really different than the one I have in my PHB? I don't know and neither it seems do others, but the initial posts I am reading seems to confirm that the cleric in either book will be roughly the same, give or take some flavor.
According the the blog Points of Light, I might not need to worry and in fact it looks like some of the changes being made to characters will provide more ways to differentiate the characters more than the same basic power template all characters have.
So, it almost sounds like that we are getting kits (from 2e) for D&D 4. Something I have always thought would work for the Heroic tier for a while.
Will I be buying all of the D&D4 Essentials line? Probably not. I will pick up the starter set (still don't know what the art on that one looks yet) because boxed sets are cool.
I may run 4th edition again but right now I don't see it in the future. They nerfed magic missile in the July update and I'm done with all the little changes to the rules.
ReplyDeleteI have Pathfinder and that is the system that I'm going forward with...I may buy the first essential product just out of curiosity but that will probably be it.
Right.
ReplyDeleteI see the "red box" as product I'll get, but not much more after that.
And I have no intention of stopping any Pathfinder game I have going on now either.
I have room on my shelves and gaming table for all sorts of things.
From what I'm aware of, it's a nice "get your feet wet" kind of thing but if the player sticks with it, won't it end up being them buying the same content again when they want the normal/full versions of the books. I play 4E and while I'm having a blast with it, I am curious about trying other systems should I start or play in another group. Pathfinder has caught my attention but a buddy has recently ordered 2E in hopes of starting a campaign, so I'll wait and see what he ends up doing.
ReplyDeleteJohnni: My and Rhonin84's group went from D&D4 to Pathfinder and we loved it!
ReplyDeleteThere is an awful lot to like about Pathfinder.
I got to say I'm pretty psyched about the line. 4th ed is an amazing system, but sometimes it feels a little bloated. I'd still take it over AD&D or third ed, but I'm a "basic" DM at heart. Unless their is something about essentials that my players or I object to I am pretty sure I'll convert.
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