Café de Nuit

Jester of the FoS wrote:They're giving elves the woodsy, rangery folk role and giving the mysterious arcane folk role to a new race. To avoid the annoying contradiction of elves being the ancient mystical people of great power and wisdom who live in tree huts like Ewoks.

Not to mention a race that's supposedly both superhumanly in tune with Nature, and so chock full of supernatural fluffiness they don't age, sweat or (probably) use the chamber pot....

Basically, 4E "elves" are like Elfquest elves minus sending, beings of the Feywild who've gone native and become a part of the world. "Eladrin" are like Feywild tourists: they're just visiting the mortal realm, they haven't adapted to it.

Jester of the FoS wrote:If they have: paladin, fighter, warlord, cleric, warlock, rogue, and wizard, then they have 7 classes and 2 of every archetype except controller. Add an extra controller class and *bam*, that's 8. Which means holding back the extra leader and striker classes (bard and ranger) for the next book.

The ranger is definitely in the PHB1. Too much concept art showing that class has been released for them to drop it now, and there are podcast and staff-blog mentions of 4E rangers' having "killed the scout and took his stuff".

So the Striker will indeed have three classes, the Controller only one, if the warlock's evolved into a Striker during the design process.

I agree with the rangery look of Elves and the mysterious magical folk being a different race.

Rotipher of the FoS wrote:The ranger is definitely in the PHB1. Too much concept art showing that class has been released for them to drop it now, and there are podcast and staff-blog mentions of 4E rangers' having "killed the scout and took his stuff".

So the Striker will indeed have three classes, the Controller only one, if the warlock's evolved into a Striker during the design process.

Warlock has always been a striker class.

As for the "killed the scout and took his stuff", that was used for every character. I'm sure they said the same thing about fighters killing barbarians and monks.
Heck, they're changing things quickly. Even the preview books we have coming are going to be wrong. There going to include races/classes that don't make it in and not mention classes/races that do.
I wouldn't be surprised if ranger wasn't as cool as some other classes and they opted to take him out at the last second.

'Spellsword'?

Can't they get a thesaurus or something? If you have to have a whole class dedicated to being a warrior/mage, you could at least give it a name that doesn't suck.

Personally, I'm hoping for 12 classes in the initial PHB, with the following:

DEFENDERS
MARTIAL: Fighter
DIVINE: Paladin
ARCANE: Swordmage

LEADERS
MARTIAL: Warlord
DIVINE: Cleric
ARCANE: Bard

STRIKERS
MARTIAL: Rogue
DIVINE: Ranger
ARCANE: Warlock

CONTROLLERS
MARTIAL: ? (No idea. Maybe the Monk? Or an Alchemist/Artificer class?)
DIVINE: Druid
ARCANE: Wizard

Yeah, they said eight classes at one point, but they've been hedging on the number of classes since then. Seeing as how the page count for the PHB has increased since they said eight classes, then clearly things have changed. So we may see more then 8 classes. Personally, I expect to see the Druid appear, at least, seeing as how there's only one Controller so far. Not to mention that with the changes to the Elves, they can't very well leave out what'll be the signature class for that race. Tieflings will be getting Warlocks, so Elves should get Druids.

The amount of speculation on this board is quite interesting, moreso because it's so sophisticated.

I wonder if WotC's stock prices are changing relative to its announcements? This sounds like hefty stuff that a reasonable shareholder might well consider to be important input under the TSC Industries, Inc. test.

Ah, no, wait. Silly me. It's still all speculative. In that case we apply SEC v. Basic's test instead: whether it's a really big change, and then whether it's actually probable.

I wonder if WotC's stock prices are changing relative to its announcements? This sounds like hefty stuff that a reasonable shareholder might well consider to be important input under the TSC Industries, Inc. test.

WotC is a part of Hasbro, and I very much doubt that any Hasbro shareholder is paying any attention at all to WotC's announcements, or that they're having the slightest affect on Hasbro's stock prices.

That's probably fair. My local hobby store owner said that Hasbro loses money on the DnD product line (though it is hoping to recoup more with the release of the Mini collectibles and card games through WotC).

They probably lose money on some books but gain it on the regular sale of the core books.
Hasbro currently owns:
* Kenner (the big one including Star Wars, G.I.Joe and Transformers)
* Milton Bradley
* Parker Brothers
* Playskool
* Tiger Electronics
* Tonka
* Wizards of the Coast

WotC is a small, small drop in one hell of a bucket.

Man, I'd kill for a Transformers RPG. Literally, I'd kill for one. If Hasbro pointed me towards the board of directors of, say, Mattel, I'd wipe them all out if the reward was a Transformers RPG.

Lord Soth wrote: WotC is a part of Hasbro, and I very much doubt that any Hasbro shareholder is paying any attention at all to WotC's announcements, or that they're having the slightest affect on Hasbro's stock prices.

I take that back. Now that I actually think about it, I believe you're very likely wrong on both counts. However, that's not germane to the point that I was trying to make.

HuManBing wrote:

Lord Soth wrote:WotC is a part of Hasbro, and I very much doubt that any Hasbro shareholder is paying any attention at all to WotC's announcements, or that they're having the slightest affect on Hasbro's stock prices.

I take that back. Now that I actually think about it, I believe you're very likely wrong on both counts. However, that's not germane to the point that I was trying to make.

You really think that Hasbro shareholders are paying attention to things like the Design & Development: Wizards & Wizards Implements or Elves articles and basing their decision on whether to sell their stock on that? Even though WOTC is just the barest fraction of the entity which is Hasbro, and not big enough to really have any bearing on Hasbro's bottom line? Even though most shareholders likely wouldn't even be able to make heads or tails of them (How many shareholders would even know what an Eladrin is)?

The only possible way for WOTC to adversely Hasbro is for a Warren Buffet type who owns a whole lot of Hasbro shares who's also a D&D fan to sell his shares in Hasbro simply because of 4E. And that's predicated on four assumptions. 1) That such a person even exists, 2) That this megabillionaire/D&D player owns a sizeable number of Hasbro shares, 3) That our megabillionaire/D&D player doesn't like the changes in 4E, which isn't a given (I know that if I were basing my stock purchases on Design & Development articles, I'd be buying, not selling), and 4) That our megabillionaire/D&D player is dumb enough to let whatever WOTC is doing to factor into his decision of whether to buy or sell Hasbro stock, seeing as how WOTC doesn't really have an appreciable effect on Hasbro's bottom line. Seriously, that's like saying Time-Warner's stock is gonna tank cause Countdown to Final Crisis is a horrid, horrid comic. DC Comics isn't big enough to even be considered a boil on the rump of Time-Warner. And WOTC has about as much effect on its parent company as DC has, which is to say, nothing.

You know, Lord Soth, there's technically a D20 Transformers game out; it's called Mechamorphosis, by the third-party company Fantasy Flight Games, and it's part of their Horizons quintology, which are basically 'mini-settings' that require you to use the D&D Player & DM books in order to fill out the rules. The fluff is different, by neccessity, but it's not too bad- and quite easily reworked, fluffwise, into Transformers. The game itself isn't too bad, though like a lot of 3rd part stuff there are some editing errors. Still, it might be worth taking a look.

With Soth on this. At a time when the company has a HUGE movie out acting as a 120minute toy comercial, 4E is probably unnoticed.