>>97204491
>Is WOTC just stupid?
No, they're not stupid. They're a business. They need to sell books, every year. After 10 years, their books were selling very little, so they needed to make new books to make big sales again. This is Business 101. You and I would do the exact same thing in their position.

>>97204491
IDK what you're on about. 2024 is an improvement on 2014 in basically every single way, while also being backwards-compatible with 2014.

The only people I could see not wanting to switch over are wizards who are mad some of the stronger spells got nerfed in 2024.

>>97204491
Standard edition rollover issues, carry-over is ALWAYS partial. The bet is that the new core rulebooks get you the money to wait for enough new players to replace the old.

>>97204605
>You and I would do the exact same thing in their position.
No, I imagine a great many of us would go for supplements actually covering the gaping fucking holes in the content for a few years longer then have the revision bake in what was received well (and popular D&D Beyond homebrew covering more gaps) instead of HR's pet social causes.

>>97204491
>why do 5e people still play 5e
Because when you market a game to target the lowest common denominator and use sunken cost logic to milk the fanbase this effectively you will have as much success switching them over to the next game as your competitors did with their products over the last decade.

>>97204491
>Is WOTC just stupid?
No, they're also greedy and evil, and their parent company hasbro is also stupid greedy and evil

>>97204491
We're never going to know because they don't release the information, but apparently it was the strongest d&d launch ever. My LGS sold out of there first batch of phbs pretty quickly.

I think there isn't much conversation about it because, at the end of the day, it's still 5e. It changed some things, but it's still essentially the same game. We switched over because my one friend who runs games mainly runs 5e and he wanted to try it, and it's fine, but it wouldn't by my first choice for anything.
I didn't pay for a book, by the way. They sell that shit at Barnes and Noble, which means it's free.

>>97204605
>>97205023
That is the weird part. It's been a decade and it feels like they've come out with what, 5 major splatbooks? And then instead of just printing more spaltbooks, or bigger and better-quality ones, they just print a new PHB and try to get everyone to buy it again.
Not even a PHB with updated errata and some of the better splatbook content, but just a weird remake that barely does anything different, but does just enough different where nobody believes the whole 'backwards compatibility' angle.

The sheer glut of homebrew content for 5e should make it obvious how fucking easy it is to churn out more books, but instead they just split up the playerbase over what was basically nothing.

>>97204491
They wanted to get the money from releasing a new edition and forcing everyone to buy new books, but they were also too afraid to actually change anything. So it's just sort of there, not even able to justify itself as a balance fix.

>>97204936
>in basically every single way
Except backgrounds and races.

>>97204491
Plus side: Martials are actually good
Negative side: They still don't have shit to do besides autoswing, weapon masteries almost fixed this but they shouldn't be a limited selection they should just be a thing martials can always do depending on what kind of weapon they have, having to commit to a choice ahead of time in what masteries you can access means vex/nick dominate the scope

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>>97205588
>Plus side: Martials are actually good

No.

>>97204605
If they weren't retards, they'd sell products people wanted to buy instead of "gay dwarf bakery" and "Mexican Orcs" modules.

They aren't just retards; they're gay race-marxist diversity-retards.

That's not just normal retardation; that's a pathologically malicious disposition masquerading as a social conscience, and it takes a particular sort of cognitive dissonance to sustain, which is coincidentally, not conducive to entertaining or relating to normal people, or the things they like.

Burn and die WOTC.

>>97204491
It's just all around too small of a step for anyone to really get invested.
>Not different enough to interest new fans
>Too much the same to make old fans move over
>released way too late into 5e's lifespan after a decade of houserules, homebrew, third party, and community sourced fixes and advice have already circulate
>tried to fix some things that people have bitched about for a decade, but also tried to avoid changing too many things to pay lip-service to the idea of cross system compatability
>doubled down on faggy culture war shit that wouldn't win over new players, but would definitely make old ones second guess giving WotC any money
>central pillar gimmick was going to be the extremely elaborate VTT that would revolutionize the hobby... and they released it, no one could use it because it was broken and incomplete after years of dev time, and then they killed it two weeks later and fired almost everyone working on it.

It's a set of products for no one that lack a real reason to exist. Not meaningfully improved in any way that justifies you needing them. So much the same as the previous version that anyone still dedicated to playing won't be compelled to switch over, and it's not like they want to read new books that just tell them the same rules they kinda know already, but now a handful of things they've been doing for years are now slightly different.

so, yes, WotC is fucking retarded.

>>97204491
>WOTC just stupid?
It wasn't even the stupidest thing WotC did that year.

>>97205588
As someone playing a martial: not really. While I do get to do some big damage, my HP isn't great and monster to-hIt greatly outpaces AC pretty fucking quickly. I've already spent several fights now either out until someone can cram a potion in my throat, or at single digit HP spending my turn getting to a place where I won't immediately die and also cramming a potion down my throat.

Like, I don't give a fuck about the supposed lack of complexity of the fighter, I picked champion fighters because my last character was a spellcaster and I wanted something mechanically easy. The class is just dogshit at what it's supposed to be good at.

>>97206268
They've done actually shitty things, why do you feel the need to make up things to be angry about?

>>97205558
Backgrounds were drastically improved because your stats are tied to that (and Custom background is still usable thanks to backwards compatibility) rather than your Species.

Species were improved because now, you don't have to pick a specific option just to not suck shit with your character build.

They were both improved, because now your species is more about the flavor than mechanical necessity.

>>97206680
1% improvement is technically an improvement, but 1% better than 5e was before is hardly an improvement worth celebrating, let alone purchasing, let alone switching over for.

>>97206690
The classes are better overall.

Monk is infinitely superior to 2014 monk.

A bunch of broken spells ate shit and got nerfed (most if not all of the spells that didn't have saves now have saves)

Epic Boons being Feats you get at higher levels is great

CR actually makes fucking sense now

it is 100% an improvement. I cannot name a single thing in 2014 that is better than 2024.

>>97206680
>>97206690
Except even that ends up as a tradeoff, because while races had more features that were there purely as a way to add flavor, compared to species which tend to have fewer features, or just the ability to do some magical thing Proficiency Bonus times per long rest and that's about it.

>CR actually makes fucking sense now
Nothing about CR changed in any functional way. If you want to argue that anything actually changed, then it's purely changes for the worse, because all they really did was remove the existing guidelines surrounding CR without actually adjusting the underlying monster math at all.

But beyond that, did you really need to pay $50 for somebody to tell you to buff Monk and ban broken spells?

>>97206700
A 100% improvement would be a new game. Not just 5e with a handful of tweaks and minor adjustments, and a bunch of optional rules taken out of Tasha's.

>>97204491
It's just 5e but even more woke and normal people are done with that shit.

>>97207598
no, they changed important rules
and all the changes suck lmao

>>97205588
Martials on a fundamental level will never be good with the selection of spells DnD has, new editions only made it worse by making casters better at martials at literally everything at level 3+.

>>97205400
If memory serves the first year of 4th ed had more books than the entirety of 5th ed. 4th ed wasn't even particularly successful.

Is the monk at least good this time? in 5e they were stun machines and absolutely nothing more and useless the moment they run out of ki for stun

I wish I could translate my sports car fast monk able to jump several dozen meters high and long from old 3.5

>>97207809
Monk is only ever good for some cheesy multiclassing builds.

>>97207809
They nerfed stun in 5.5
They got some extras in exchange but still they're pretty bad

>>97206680
Backgrounds were better as flavor with some skills, the way they give you stats now is more limited as you see things wizards with a criminal background just because of the stats. Custom and Tasha's rule of everyone having the same stats is shit. Stats being tied to races were always the better way.

>>97207620
I find interesting that 1ed had martials being favored when it came to magical items, which solved the disparity with casters at mid-levels (when you have an intelligent sword+2, with x-ray vision and Fly, you are less bummed about the m-u being able to teleport once per day).
Why 5e decided to trash that is beyond me. Even 3.5e assumed it was your Fighter's duty to patch his flaws with magical items.

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>>97206268
can you tell me the name of the gay dwarf bakery and mexican orcs modules?

>>97205588
>>97206651
Other than the mandatory riders of weapon mastery, what really improved for martials?

>>97207951
5e was built based on one very bad game designer's idealized image of "powerful wizards and their fighter bodyguards" D&D built off of 3.X. 5e doesn't "rely on magic items" because it was trying to get away from the magical item "christmas tree" complained about in 3.X and 4e.

>>97207970
He is memeing on the Dwarf and Orc "species" arts in the PHB.

>>97207951
Its quite ridiculous honestly, a dragon blood sorcerer will focus on Dex / Con and Cha for their ability scores. Draconic ressilience grants unarmoured AC of 10 + Dex + Cha modifiers. Which can easily put them at 18 or even higher AC. Con means they get a decent amount of HP too. So with that they're already equal or outpacing fucking plate AC without any of the downside.

Due to their dex can hit decently with a good lot of melee weapons as well. They won't have to of course, because their infinite use cantrip spells can just do some ranged damage at a safe distance.

On top of all that they get a big old spell list where very spell is essentially just a feat in their own right and a solution to a plethora of problems. They can clear any obstacle a martial can, but better.

This is just one (sub)class example but I really dont know what the fuck they where thinking. Honestly its pissing me off just typing this out. Casters are now better on every metric. Running tougher or more encounters won't do anything either, since the martials will run out of hitpoints faster than casters will run out of resources. Anything that you could think of to nerf casters will just hit martials twice as hard.

>>97204491
>5.0e
>5.5e
>4.8lmnop
I'm a player not a DM. I don't even know what any of this means. Can I roll an insight check or something?

>>97208237
>durr why is magic stronger dan hitting wit swrod?
It is how it should be.

>>97208153
I'd wager that part of the move away from magic items and doing shit like capping all attributes at 20 was also motivated by the bounded accuracy design philosophy. If players could break the power curve or make themselves stronger than intended, then all the poorly done CR math falls apart, and the game would cease to work as retards like Mearls insisted it should. They'd have to recalculate everything and rewrite the encounter building guidelines and suggest that players obtain certain kinds of magic items by a certain level... and all it really tells you is that everyone working for WotC is fucking retarded and don't know what to with their own game.

>>97206268
>race-marxist
Anon, it's time to touch grass.

>>97207951
>>97208237
The other odd thing is that 5e does feature magic items that have "requires attunement by X class", but pretty much every one of those is the requirement for being a spellcasters. There's a couple Paladin ones, but it's not like as a Fighter or a Barbarian you'll find a magic sword that nobody else in the party is even capable of using.

>>97208580
In practice the CR math already falls apart really quickly as soon as the spellcasters try to apply themselves. The only times I've seen martial characters really contribute is when they get their hands on a Flametongue or a similar magic weapon that does an extra 2d6 or so damage, because then they actually start to outpace a blaster mage.

>>97208580
I don't even think it's that necessarily, because as it stands the math doesn't really work for fighters. I think they're afraid to have a player benefit that depends on the game master to give it out. They tried the magic item budget by level thing with 4e and people hated it, but they threw the baby out with the bath water and now fighters get nothing. My current character would be even more useless if he didn't have magic armor and weapons.

>>97208580
>I'd wager that part of the move away from magic items and doing shit like capping all attributes at 20 was also motivated by the bounded accuracy design philosophy.

Nah, it was completely built off the designers misunderstandings about how earlier editions functioned. Pre-3e D&D had in effect bounded accuracy with "normal" ACs staying between the equivalent of AC 10 and AC 20 with exceptional ACs going as high as the equivalent of AC 30/31. PC accuracy also more or less had bounds to it starting with a normal 5% chance of hitting the AC 20 equivalent that gradually grew to a 100% chance for Warriors, 65% chance for Clerics and other Gishs, a 50% chance for Rogues and a 35% chance for Casters over the course of 20 levels. Naturally exceptional stats could increase these chances by +5% for non-warriors and up to +15% for Warriors with magical gear granting between a +5% and a +25% increase.

>game would cease to work as retards like Mearls insisted it should.

And you named the bad game designer I was referring to.

Mearls more or less continued the mistakes that 3e/4e made by tuning things around 50% hit rates rather than letting martial/warrior hit rates grow towards 100%. Exceptional stat bonuses were also treated as the norm while also being made larger. The way things are tuned a Strength of 20 isn't a +25% bonus to hit, it is at best a +10% bonus or at worst a +0% chance to hit.

>>97206680
Downgrade

>>97208886
Warriors also had multiple attacks, including sometimes slamming multiple of them into people doing AoO worthy shit around them, and decently more HP percentage wise.

In 5e you'd need to do something like:
Warriors get HD per level, +1 attack per level, 1 extra attack per 5 levels and add half their level to trained skill checks.

Rogue gets HD per 2 levels, +1 attack per 2 levels, damage multiplier for sneak attacks and add their full level to skill checks

Casters get HD per 5 levels, +1 attack per 4 levels, half level to skill checks and magic.

>>97207620
I usually here it being post-4ths that the gap becomes insurmountable by slot-efficiency of non-spell solutions, and this is theoretically simple to solve by making skills maintain a similar dynamic of lagging in momentary power for attrition insensitivity. But that'd require actually having robust skills allowed to do spectacular things, which requires either a LOT of hard lockouts or out-scaling the die to support soft lockouts to keep low-level skill-focused characters from doing high-level skill things off a high roll.

>>97207951
The issue with that is that it's an awkward proto-gamist emergent function dependent on no-diegetic-reason-given hard lockouts of weapon types and random loot distribution, making it extremely easy to fail to function from innocuous houserules for the sake of immersion or simple chance.

By modern TTRPG design convention, you "need" something like Trailblazer's Base Magic Bonus giving non-casters spell slots to fuel things that'd be a tradeoff for Wizards or riffing off Magic of Incarnum so Martials can directly use more or further scale magic items.

>>97208153
>5e was built based on one very bad game designer's idealized image of "powerful wizards and their fighter bodyguards" D&D built off of 3.X.
No, that goes pretty much all the way back as the high-level dynamic, a crucial difference being that combat casting used to be VERY hard to get away with without a meat-shield.

>>97208532
Than "Normal Dude" hitting with sword, sure, and some surplus for the resource constraints is fine, but some classes being bluntly out-moded is just bad game design. If you're going to give the Fighter a 1st-20th level progression at the same cost as a Wizard's, they OUGHT to be a valuable contributor all the way along this, even if comparatively limited in scope.

>>97209980
>No, that goes pretty much all the way back as the high-level dynamic, a crucial difference being that combat casting used to be VERY hard to get away with without a meat-shield.

High-level Warriors were still killing machines in earlier editions and casters want to ignore that truth. In 1e, a 10th level non-specialist Fighter with non-magical equipment and a longsword would deal roughly an 1/8 of an average red dragon's hp on their own each round. Give them 18/00 Strength (or Gauntlets of Ogre Power) and they will deal nearly a quarter the average red dragon's hp in a round. With a +1 longsword, they can deal more than 1/3rd. With weapon specialization more than 1/2.

2e massively buffed Dragon's increasing their HD and AC by incredible amounts, but warrior's still maintained similar levels of effectiveness against other 10 HD opponents. 3e further inflated monster HP by giving everything not a construct or undead a Con bonus while limiting the rate non-caster damage output increased with the diminishing returns of iterative attacks.

>>97207788
Those were raw content splats full of player options, part of WotC's pivot to market more to players, less to DMs.

>>97205400
I don't think anyone at WotC has any grand ideas for content to make; they just mine the old settings for memberberries at best.

>>97205588
>Plus side: Martials are actually good
To my knowledge, almost every martial class was heavily nerfed, which I didn't even think was possible, but somehow wotc delivers.

>>97206680
The good thing about backgrounds was the small bits of flavor that made your character unique, and putting them right on top of your character sheet.
2024 backgrounds removed all that flavor and push you towards 2 to 5 backgrounds per class that buff your most important attributes.

>>97204936
Not really, the changes are negligible min-maxing horseshit that doesn't have any real baring on actual games

>>97204491
I would say three reasons.
First off, most system especially ones with major problems in the core can't last forever. Often over the years, people find them and break the game or they add things that break the game in source books. So they have to get to a point of a reset and start anew. When often the people who spent 100s of dollars in the old gen books will often prefer to stay in that edition for a while or just keep with it. (You have plenty of people who stay one 3.5 over 4e. Hell Pathfinder got big for being basically being 3.5 when enough changes.)

Second WOTC kind of went full on woke and to change everything to be PC they had to get rid of classic stuff like half-elves. Making orcs a good race over just fucking orcs, and removing every straight white male character from the arts and books for a gay trans poc. Then say it was always like that. (If you don't believe me.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlkonaTXHzA

Lastly from what I seen and heard. I haven't heard too much good coming from 5.5/DND ONE/DND 24/25 /Whatever they want to call what people have been calling WOKE D&D. They didn't fix much of the issues of 5e. You have worthless classes like the ranger cause they can't be bother to playtest outside of 4 classes, they changed races into a what random different feature and body part do you have. (Horns, ears, tail, etc) and made background give you most of your stats and all. Which many people didn't really like as much.

One more thing
Hasbro doesn't really care about DND and only wanted WOTC for MTG. They just end up getting DND as part of it and when Critical Role blew up and normies and theater kids started checking out DND they basically did whatever they thought would get the "modern audience" happy about it. Then surprise surprise, they didn't and they're paying the price though unlike smaller companies where it can cripple or kill their company off when they fuck up like this. Hasbro is big enough to take the lost

>>97205588
>Plus side: Martials are actually good
One word: Ranger

>>97204491
Because it was rushed to get out the door to line up with the anniversary. They didn't really have any substantial changes they were willing to commit to, they just needed a new release to line up with 50 years. So they shat something out that applied a few band-aids, overpromised fixes while breaking parts that had been functional, and overall fell short of the average homebrew pack most people were already using.

>>97204605
>You and I would do the exact same thing in their position.
No.
I wouldn't. You might be fag enough to keep trying to milk people for bullshit but not I.
I would try to make something new.
If 5e was good, they should have left it alone and started working their settings.
If 5e was no good, they should move on to 6th and try again with lessons learned from the last 5+ tries.

Fact is, they are creatively bankrupt and so lost as to what to do that WotC keeps trying to limit what other people create with D&D as an inspiration.

>>97212671
>I haven't heard too much good coming from 5.5/DND ONE/DND 24/25 /Whatever they want to call
There's a single guy on /tg/ who will show up in any thread mentioning 2024 5e to tell everyone that it is a MASSIVE COMPLETE TOTAL IMPROVEMENT over the previous edition. He's in this thread, in fact. He's probably the same guy who has been sperging for over a decade whenever someone say 5e sucks.

been a part of 3 groups since 2024 dropped, each time something like this has happened

>we play 2014
>build obsessed player brings in 2024 class
>"Oh no... anyway lets play"
>curbs the rest of the party
>DM designs challenges for 2024 character
>rest of party does fuck all

rinse and fucking repeat

>>97212671
Kill yourself, spic.

>>97204936
The new artwork is much worse I guess

>>97205588
>Plus side: Martials are actually good
They're still a shadow of what they were.

>>97213387
I'd say you need a non-retarded DM, but that would imply there are any running 5e.

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>>97213387
>allowing a character from a different version of the ruleset
I knew 5efag were mentally handicapped but this goes beyond the pale.

>>97204491
Everything went to shit without Gygax.

>>97216897
Easy to see how it happens. One, they keep stating that the rules are backwards compatible. Two, if you are just surface level searching for resources, pretty much everything you find nowadays without digging is going to be for 2024. If you don't know any better, then you're not going to know to specify which version. And judging by how that post is worded, the groups he is referring to are not people who know each other well enough to talk about it. So when players show up to the session with characters from all over the place, they just shrug and play on without trying to sort it out because it would be awkward

>>97216940
I get how it could happen but i was lamenting about a more broad "why?". I lived in the 3.0/3.5e/pf1e shift era (so without the same widespread internet resources about the game as today, comparatively speaking), in that case the system differences are even less than 5e-5.5e but even then it was apparent (with all the people i knew who run the game) that you could cursory introduce different versions content as long as it wasn't system optimized and even then with a modicum of review and only from the DM side. Allowing a player to use a 3.0e build in a 3.5e game was considered inconceivable, the bonus stacking difference alone was glaring like the fucking sun. The absolute lack of system (baseline) knowledge 5efags have is terrifying.

>>97213382
Yeah, but one person dickriding a system on /TG/ doesn't mean everyone likes it. Hell, the only thing I need to point out and did is sales for ONE DND. As well as many people who are still bothering to make 3rd party content for DND tend to stick with 5e over 5.5/ONE.
>>97213674
....... Found the woke DND dickrider. Why don't you go back to Bluesky and bitch and moan over there. No one cares about your shit system

>>97216940
>elderly poster

>>97204491
The problem is that, after ten years, everyone had figured out and adopted various homebrew fixes for 5e’s shortcomings. And, given how much WotC pushed the community and homebrew as the strengths of the system, people felt like they were doing what they were supposed to.

Then, when 5.5 released, it neither incorporated the most popular homebrew fixes nor remained compatible with them. With a decentralized approach to homebrew, there were always going to be some people that preferred their fixes to WotC’s patch job, but their failure to address the most-commonly homebrewer issues resulted in NOBODY preferring the official update. Their subsequent releases focusing more on updating older splat material to 5.5 also hasn’t helped, since it doesn’t provide anything truly new to tempt people to adopt the new rules.

Add the OGL debacle and the number of people who cared enough to cancel their D&D Beyond subscriptions in protest. You gotta assume at least some of those people stuck to their guns enough to stick with the older rules on principle alone.

>>97216970
>Yeah, but one person dickriding a system on /TG/ doesn't mean everyone likes it
The point was that there is only one guy who claims it's good and he also seems to be extremely mentally ill anyways, so that says less about D&D and more about that one guy being retarded

>>97213356
The world of business goes
>Sleep on the IP
WHY AREN'T YOU DOING MORE THINGS WITH X IP!?
>Don't sleep in the IP
WHY ARE YOU OVERUSING IP INSTEAD OF DOING SOMETHING NEW!!

What so far I find as the best path is doing, well, similar stuff (like Dark Souls to Elden Ring which the same thing basically) but it can also flop (like Pathfinder to Startfinder)

>>97217494
That's true. Especially since D&D isn't some small kickstarter system like ACKS, DC20, Broken Empire, Without Number, etc that might have only a few 1000s of people playing it now. This is the biggest system out and if their new one is shat on by most people, doesn't matter what the one person dickriding says. It's are the sling books and PDFs like their last edition

Literally, '24 plays like '14, but is clearer and feels more sane. Players like it because they got more options that honestly allow for more zaniness. Every week it feels like they want to play with some aspect of the new options that is broken as fuck.
> The party of jerks are Circle casting
> Calling them circlejerks just made them want to do it more
> World now has some permanent spell effect
> Some of those are players
> DM's were there all along, but now they have some mechanics to explain how they were constructed

I play mostly homebrew stuff with the weekly group, and it's always been a creative negotiation to create custom magic items. The trouble of change aren't anything new or made worse with the update of the rules.

Only things I can imagine people are butthurt about are business practices and pricing, I guess.

> Arrg it's 2025-26, eye-patches are back

TLDR: Idk, I still don't see how anything supposedly got worse

>>97208237
Your dm is bad. Sorcerer runs out of hitpoints faster than the fighter, and recovers less of them.

>>97217950
>Circle casting
If you allow that in your game, you've proven yourself to be enough of a retard that your opinion can be easily discarded.

>>97217967
>using an officially published 5.5E rule qualifies you as a retard
sounds like the whole thing is just a shit system then

>>97217967
The players have created teleportation circles between planes of existence and regularly create traps with glyphs. programming with magic mouth. it's a crew of bored engineers
circle casting is just them holding hands in a new way. being scared of new rules just yells that the cartilage in your knees collapsed due to age or obesity

>>97217967
>im afraid of new things
Old people out please

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-Half-elves are one of the most popular races, removing them seems like a major violation of D&D tradition. I don't know if half-orcs had the same problem, most people I know just played half-orcs like orcs anyway, but that might also apply.
-5e players tend to have a lot of supplements, and it's unclear what is and isn't compliant with 2024 edition. I call this the "Wii U problem"; if you don't make it clear whether something is an upgrade or a sequel, you end up alienating people who want either of those.
-It changed multi-target spellcasting, magic users were used to and many liked the base 5e multi-targeting rules and changing them would force them to get used to slower and more risky combat.
-WOTC generally having a bad 2020's with their licensing controversies and overpricing of official game material. 2024 was just a bad year for WOTC to attempt something as big as 5.5e was going to be.
-The combat was slower, 5e players tend to love roleplaying and storytelling so when you slow combat to a crawl, it can get to the point that their ritual degrades into rolling to attack things for two hours.
Before this reply looks like typical /v/ whining about a thing I don't like, there is evidence that 2024 is failing. Of the 19 million characters made on D&D Beyond in the first half of 2025, only 3 million used 5.5e rules, 5e is still vastly more popular and preferred. If you're a 5e player, remember to save your files and books, they're going to be more useful in the coming years.

>>97204491
The lack of implementing good homebrew and how the game still suffers from serious issues. Not to mention hasbro and WOTC has been going agianst actually having fan or free conrent made for the game at every turn which pisses people off. This is before you get into how bland and boring the settings, content, and modules have gotten over time. The artwork is exceptionally bad now and feels more like drama club or therapy shit rather than fun adventures.
>>97206268
Pretty much this. The style has been watered down to basically be real world with orcs but that is really boring and preachy rather than interesting.

>Is WotC just stupid?
Yes in that it willingly took in sociopolitical activists and left them in charge of direction, but no in that Hasbro has their hand so far up WotC's ass that it's forced to release slop at breakneck pace.

>>97217998
>>97218057
>take the most notoriously unbalanced part of the game
>add rules that allow you to circumvent the restrictions that it did have in ways that break verisimilitude and logic
>"NO YOU HAVE TO ALLOW ME TO SHIT ALL OVER EVERYTHING, THE ONLY REASON YOU WOULDN'T OPEN YOUR MOUTH TO SWALLOW MY DIARRHEA IS IF YOU'RE OLD AND AFRAID OF CHANGE"
Old isn't necessarily good. New isn't necessarily bad. But that doesn't mean that new is automatically good. If one of the arguments advanced earlier in the thread is that 5.5 is better because it (marginally) closes the gap between martials and casters, circle magic blasts it so wide open that the divide is even worse than it was before.

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>>97204605
How come they didn't go the 3e/4e route and print a bunch of actual, usable supplemental work and not just lightly touched campaign settings and weak adventures? I remember things like Book of Vile Darkness/Exalted Deeds, the Complete X series, several Monster Manuals with very cool art and monsters for every flavor of campaign, Tome of Magic/Battle, Psionics, etc. And that's not even counting things like Dragonlance, Eberron, FR. They had more classes, more spells, more feats, it is so much material. 5e is sparse by comparison

>>97218198
Because it’s easier to have a 3rd party company do that and host their book on their website site so they get a cut ?

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>>97206660
It is you who sits on a throne of lies

>>97218372
>there are fantastical people in the fantasy game

>>97204605
> everyone would do a mini update
> with the same name just to confuse people
> instead of a new edition/new product/something people actually want
There is clearly something else behind the scenes because this was a bad decision for your reasoning. I heard that they wanted leverage against D&D Beyond to force them to sell for cheap, and they got this leverage by planning to release a new version with a different license, which would have threatened to kill their website.

>>97205160
You’re incoherent.

>>97218397
>the fantastical people are modern west coastal urbanites with cosplay props
>adventures consist exclusively in SoL about mundane modern west coast urbanite scenarios
So fantastical.

>>97218372
That isn't a "Mexican Orc module" or a "Gay Dwarf Baker module."

>>97218650
Name 5 published adventures that are
>mundane modern west coast urbanite scenarios

>>97218663
I'm not the anon you're arguing with, i was only rebuking that specific post i replied to. Imo the other anon is making a mess confusing the produced artstyle with the actual content.

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>>97204605

>>97218682
I'm not arguing with anyone, but if I see a retard, I'm gonna call them a retard.

>>97205023
>No, I imagine a great many of us would go for supplements actually covering the gaping fucking holes in the content
They did, that's how they got the failure that was 3.5e.
Are you the type of retard that has to put their hand on a hot stove three times before you figure out that it's hot? No? Then you would do what WOTC did.

>>97219566
Wasn't 3.5 incredibly popular and successful?

>>97219584
The core book was, though it was the least successful edition to date at the time it was released. The rest of it was not and got it canned.

>>97219675
No, I'm pretty sure there were a huge number of fairly popular suppliments, vidya, and whatnot.
I think you're full of shit.

>>97204491
WotC legit is stupid, but they had to make 5.5 because 5.0 had been around for a long time without any revision. The issue is that only a few things about 5.5 are better, and one of them, sadly, is power level versus monsters- which they achieved by power creep.

When the last game of 5.X is over, if there were a running tally in the sky, something like 80% of all 5.X games ever played will be 5.0- not only because D&D fifth edition is well past its total peak, but because a lot of players will always stick with 5.0, or at best bring in a few things they want from 5.5. And of course, they are already laying the top level plans for 6th edition- who can be their celebrities that they claim have a hand in it, is there at least one actual good designer who ISN'T a white man they can hire (the legit might hire Kelsey as the only lesbian who can serve as a lead), or whether they will just hire a burger king kids crew or have that mannish Asian lady serve as someone to hype. Or, they may simply lend all of 6e out to some foreign company so that they can skip the explanations about whey they couldn't get a negress to create it.

>>97205375
This is bullshit- they got rid of their actual publishing license and ran way fewer than ever. It was reported as "the fastest selling" but that doesn't mean total sales and they didn't even release what the hell any of that means.
They made almost none of these books compared to before. It's hot liquid shit.

>>97219683
>This is bullshit-
You're missing the point, which is there isn't any way to know, and it's a pointless metric to contemplate. Any "evidence" we have on how well or poorly 5.24 is doing is anecdotal at best.

>>97219678
Nope, 3.5e was a failure.

>>97219796
WotC has all the numbers, and they'd be pushing a stronger angle if one were available. If I say they suck, then they suck- because if they didn't, WotC would have released something to the contrary.

>>97219796
Assemble enough anecdotes and you have datapoints. Like how I keep coming across different sites and major retailers that have been offering Buy one, get one 50% off deals on D&D 2024 books for the last few months. Might just be a seasonal deal. Might be that they over-ordered and need to liquidate some stock ASAP, or could just be a nice deal. We genuinely don't know and all we can do is hypothesize why the "fastest selling product" or whatever WotC bullshitted about it, is already on discount at major retailers.

Every version after 4th has just been progressively less good.

>>97219566
>They did, that's how they got the failure that was 3.5e.
Firstly 3.5e did not have "gaping holes" like 5e such as the absolutely horrendous gaps in any environmental interaction to cover overland travel or dungeon delving with any clear DM guidance, secondly it sure seems to be doing better for post-support userbase retention than AD&D and 4e because of that support readily fueling decades of grinding at minutia.

>>97219947
Lol

>>97219953
>ive not read the rules ever

>>97219953
>Firstly 3.5e did not have "gaping holes" like 5e
Except in the sales figures :(

>>97219953
Both of those still have pretty big communities. They actually had to kill the online support for 4th edition because they were competing with themselves too hard. Basically every time an edition rolls over, probably about 30% stays behind because they liked something about it. It's normal

>>97219968
>>ive not read the rules ever
Page count for a DC on climbing a wall or crossing a river, please. Oh wait, "rulings not rules" nuked the worldsim, taking almost all preset difficulty classes with them.

>>97219971
>Except in the sales figures :(
You're welcome to cite them.

>>97219976
>Both of those still have pretty big communities.
AD&D's situation is weird because of the OSR movement gnawing at how it and even-older versions differ from WotC D&D in basically every way causing it to fragment horribly, while I have consistently struggled to find any routine 4e activity to perform my usual osmosis entry to a TTRPG community. Which is weird because I first dug into them on GiantITP during 4e's lifecycle.

Sure, I COULD just read the books cover-to-cover, but when I try to do that I get lost in really messily cross-checking options for random brainworms for hours.

>>97220025
4e's got like 5 megadiscords bruh. Google is your friend

>>97220025
>You're welcome to cite them.
sure, 4th edition LOL

>>97219584
Not to the degree you think. WotC thought RPGs were dying by 2005 and both 3.0 and 3.5 had very large sales cliffs for their splatbooks. 3.5 came out over a year ahead of schedule because the sales plummeted that badly, it was an edition that existed for financial reasons.

>>97220165
Waiting on that citation chudfuck.

>>97220175
Ben Riggs and Mike Mearls.

>>97220194
Also, Monte Cook.

>>97220194
>Still no citation
As expected.

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>>97220201
https://www.enworld.org/threads/ben-riggs-splatbook-sales-for-3rd-over-2001.701580/
https://youtu.be/aeQOVk-FDPI?t=260
https://web.archive.org/web/20040623125754/http://www.montecook.com/arch_review26.html

>>97220339
None of this corroborates what you said.

>>97220025
Page 29

>>97220379
I'm sorry that you can't read.

>>97220531
I'm sorry that you proved yourself wrong.

>>97220194
>Ben Riggs
Ben Riggs is a faggot who unironically worships Gary Gygax and cried like a bitch to reddit when it looked like WotC's retarded decisions were going to impact the popularity of D&D, who then laughed in his face and called him a retard.

>>97220339
>>97220531
NTA but let's see what you've got here
>enworld
I'm seeing the sales for a handful of splatbooks... Not even all of them. Just a single year and all of the books listed are 3rd edition, not even 3.5, and several are modules, not splats.
>Questing Beast interviewing Mearls
These are not sales figures and he has more to say about 4e than 3.5, so I'm not sure why you thought this was relevant
>monte cook's blog
This is an overview/review of the changes from 3e to 3.5 with a couple paragraphs about sales, but not about sales figures. This is even specifically noted as him skimming over a review copy before release, so he's got no actual insight into 3.5 and its splat sales because they haven't happened at the time of him writing that blog post.

You seem kinda retarded, bud. Did you check any of these links, or did you just have them saved because you thought they supported your argument? Or worse, did you just google "D&D sales figures"?

>>97220039
>discord
Nah

>>97220054
Not a number, and pointedly absent beyond release window.

>>97220440
Physical copies of 5e (not .5/24) DMG and PHB have been checked, nothing to do with skills.

>>97220658
Fact: 3.5e was thrown out for 4e because it was unpopular.

>>97220672
I think you might just be confused from sucking all those dicks

I accept your concession.

Man, you're seething a lot today.
Must be all those cocks.

You lose.

>>97219566
> I believe the other game failed
> Therefore the game that is failing right now must be the model for what all non-idiots should do.
You are one of the dumbest posters on this board.

>>97219675
That is a lie. It was a roaring success compared the 2e and the 4e that attempted to replace it.

I even saw you seething like this in another thread, it's been hours you're at this my man

>>97219675
Nobody ever remembers dragon magazine. That's the real death

>>97220054
> Asked to cite 3.5's sales figures
> Just say "4th edition LOL"
You might as well get up on the roof and shout, "I'm retarded!"

>>97220672
No, it was thrown out for 4e because its remaining supplement-worthy design space was in low-sales margins after four years of utterly fucking relentless churn and Hasbro was threatening to chop up the IP for merchandise and board games if it didn't become "A Big Thing" again.

>>97220750
It's made complicated by the nature of it as a revision with significant attention to compatibility rather than a "proper" edition turnover and the OGL making an enormous amount of the market share be non-WotC product versus early AD&D being hyper-focused on re-consolidation and 4e leveraging quite a bit more market penetration routes with almost-hit plans for more (...which has repeated quite exactly with 5e's streaming fuel and its own revision also attempting VTT breakthroughs)

>>97220769
...No, Dragon is regularly referenced anywhere character-building is talked about because they had A LOT of random bullshit in there. It's Dungeon that got buried, for all I adore the spell progression mechanic of Holocaust Warrior and Blackweave Warlock.

>>97220745
>Therefore the game that is failing right now
>5e
Hahahahahahahahahaha
Oh wow I wish I was as delusional as you.

>>97220773
4th edition existing objectively proves that 3.5e failed.
Cry about it.

>>97220820
>No, it was thrown out for 4e because its remaining supplement-worthy design space was in low-sales margins after four years
...So because it was unpopular, got it lol. Learn to swallow your pride and admit that I'm right, you'd feel better.
>Hasbro was threatening to chop up the IP for merchandise and board games if it didn't become "A Big Thing" again.
This though is obviously made up, because 4e flopped too and it didn't happen.

>>97204491
Eh. Looking at 5.5 I see some stuff that I like, and some stuff that I dislike, so it's kind of a wash.
My 5e group sticks to 5e simply because it's the system they already know and it serves them just fine. I'd gladly play either, honestly.

> And more than a few of them have moved to 3.5
Have they now?
I started playing 3.5e some 4 years ago and have been having a blast and a half, but I was already familiar with the mechanics from playing a fuckton of the videogames.
I imagine the vast majority of people playing 5e wouldn't want to play 3.5e and the few that would wouldn't really be able to convince their friends to move over, so I really doubt it.
I think that if I had to choose a game to replace 5e, I'd just go with Shadow of the Demon Lord (sans the scat). Would work really well for my 5e group.

>>97220614
I am once again sorry that you can't read.

>>97220658
2024 was the reference, I don’t want to look it up on the 2014 but it’s there as well. You’re just shit at looking at books !!

>>97220864
It's not made up.

>>97220937
Nah.

>>97220918
So why is it you do this retarded song and dance every day? Just baiting replies, pretending to be retarded, and then going
>I win
over and over? Genuinely curious. It's one of the most dedicated schizoid gimmicks I've seen someone pull off on 4chan.

>>97220943
I'm not baiting or being retarded. I am telling you, full on, that you can't read or connect information with other information.

https://youtu.be/bGFHTAe-wnc?t=471

>>97220959
You are not substantiating anything, and instead of saying anything remotely approaching a point, you are just spamming these low effort retarded, faux-smug replies. It's either b8, spoofing activity, an extremely elaborate gimmick, or you are genuinely fucking retarded. None of any of those possible explanations look good for you and none of them do anything to back up your baseless claims about the sales and performance of the various editions of D&D. If anything they only show you have extremely bad taste in youtube channels.

>>97220970
Kek that anon destroyed you, seethe.

>>97204605
No, I would just publish modules. You know, that thing that made TSR the largest game company in the world at the time before they stole all the money and crashed the company?

>>97220980
>No, I would just publish modules.
So... What they already do. Ok good to know you would do exactly what WOTC would.

>>97220970
>baseless
>I said that 3.5 was motivated by financial need rather than by design need -- in short, to make money rather than because the game really needed an update. I said that I had this information from a reliable source.
>That source was me. I was there.
>See, I'm going to let you in on a little secret, which might make you mad: 3.5 was planned from the beginning.
>Even before 3.0 went to the printer, the business team overseeing D&D was talking about 3.5. Not surprisingly, most of the designers -- particularly the actual 3.0 team (Jonathan Tweet, Skip Williams, and I) thought this was a poor idea. Also not surprisingly, our concerns were not enough to affect the plan. The idea, they assured us, was to make a revised edition that was nothing but a cleanup of any errata that might have been found after the book's release, a clarification of issues that seemed to confuse large numbers of players, and, most likely, all new art. It was slated to come out in 2004 or 2005, to give a boost to sales at a point where -- judging historically from the sales trends of previous editions -- they probably would be slumping a bit. It wasn't to replace everyone's books, and it wouldn't raise any compatibility or conversion issues.
If you combine that with the neverending sales slump after 2000 you have support for what I said in plain sight.

>>97221003
Can you actually read the things you're quoting? Because that directly says they planned 3.5 to boost sales at the expected point when the products naturally slump over time. Not that the game was doing badly. This happens with damned near every product of this kind. The initial release is big, but over time they reach a saturation point with their target demos, sales taper off, and then they work on a way to reinvigorate consumer interest with something new.

>If you combine that with the neverending sales slump after 2000 you have support for what I said in plain sight.
What sales figures are you even referencing, because so far nothing you've posted shows that? You're taking speculation from Cook years in advance. He's saying it was a marketing tactic to ensure that they'd be able to keep selling books. That's the "financial need" being referenced. They're a company that needs to make money and they did that with an half-step edition update, timed to match the inevitable and expected slowdown in sales years down the line.

Are you actually illiterate?

>>97220995
Seethe lmao TSR was pumping out massive amounts of product, Hasbro is having their non-binary twitter trannies spam actual gay romance fanart on X and only releasing three books a year.

>>97220860
If you believe the existence of a new edition proves that the old edition has failed, then it follows that the existence of 5.5e means that not only has 5e has failed, but that every single edition prior to that has failed. Your same stupidity, by the way, can be used to claim that all cars or products that have updated models must have done so because old models have failed.

>>97220858
5e was a great success, but is failing right now. Your wish for being as delusional is wasted. You should have wished to be as literate as me instead. That way, you would have been on your way to being slightly less of a retard.

>>97221028
Yes, I can, but you lack the ability to connect that information with other information so you're fumbling around blind. 3.5 came out a year or two in advance of when it was planned to release. Why do you think that happened?

>>97221048
Your connecting of information is making shit up without evidence and extrapolating random bits of 20 year old blog posts to mean things they aren't saying.

>>97221061
Why did 3.5, an edition change meant to correct a sales slump, come out a year or two ahead of when it was planned?

>>97220995
> Anon says he would continue one thing instead of diverting resources to something else (a .5 edition)
> You say that because the company did the thing he wanted to continue, then he wants to do exactly the same thing the company which is diverting resources is doing right now.
Once again you demonstrate your illiteracy. Your parents must have special themselves to produce something as special as you.

>>97220884
>Shadow of the Demon Lord (sans the scat).
That's called Shadow of the Weird Wizard.

>>97221062
You are making use of the fallacy of shifting the burden of proof. The other anon failing or refusing to answer your question does not mean your interpretation of events is correct.

If you believe that the reason 3.5 was released was because for some idea that you believe then it is your responsibility to support your point, you uneducated dimwit.

>>97221062
To be clear, you believe that Cook knew the exact date that 3.5 was supposed to launch and then, because you assume 3.0 sold so poorly, that 3.5 was launched "early" in response, despite none of this being concrete and most of this being Cook talking out his ass about the business end of the company that made decisions without his input, and also with none of this being backed by Cook knowing concrete sales figures about either edition. Is that correct?

And if we follow this conversation up the thread a bit...
>WotC thought RPGs were dying by 2005 and both 3.0 and 3.5 had very large sales cliffs for their splatbooks.
This is not substantiated. The only data you've shown is for 3.0 which had a shorter lifespan compared to 3.5 anyways, and thus fewer splatbooks and modules to support it.

Up even further, we have the claims
>They did, that's how they got the failure that was 3.5e
>though it was the least successful edition to date at the time it was released.
Which is also not backed up at all. You've really only got this Monte Cook blogpost that insists 3.5 was due out at a certain time and then came out earlier for reasons that aren't clear either way, but aren't backed by sales numbers anyways... And your basis for this is painfully obviously just reading the AI summary from googling "D&D 3.5 sales figures" which cites Ben Riggs and that En world thread that doesn't actually have very much hard data to support those claims, while the google summary is seemingly pulling numbers out of its digital ass, because WotC never released any hard sales figures. Read down enough under all of its unsourced claims about 1st, 2nd, and 5th ed selling millions, and you see
>Why Figures Are Vague
>Confidential Data: Exact, consolidated sales figures from Wizards of the Coast (WotC) are rarely made public.

>>97221039
>Seethe lmao TSR was pumping out massive amounts of product
Sorry, can you remind me what happened to TSR?

>>97221041
>If you believe the existence of a new edition proves that the old edition has failed
When the company decides "Yeah this thing fucking sucks, throw it out and replace it entirely" it means its failed, yeah. That hard for you to fathom, retard?
>it follows that the existence of 5.5e
There is no "5.5e", there are just constant erratas and updates to 5e. You can play One D&D with anything made for 5e seamlessly.
>5e was a great success, but is failing right now.
Source? inb4 you repeat yourself because you have none

not really the main point of this thread but is there a good online repository to download all the current 5e materials for free? like a nicely collected mega? I don't wanna pay for this shit

>>97221132
>"Yeah this thing fucking sucks, throw it out and replace it entirely"
You've failed to prove that was the case at all. 3.5 had such a strong presence that it permanently changed the way people design RPGs (not necessarily for the better) and birthed multiple successful competitors whose primary sales pitch was that their game was built on the OGL or that it was like 3.5 in some way. The shift away from 3.5 caused years of drama and eventually killed 4e, and the reverence for 3.5 led WotC to jump back to it, sand off any sharp edges, and repackage the bulk of its content as D&D 5e.

And as someone who worked in a book store that carried every new 3.5 book when it came out, those things always sold on release day, but were a long-term problem that they overcorrected for with 5e, because splat-bloat eventually led to loyal customers who wanted to keep buying books, but didn't because they couldn't afford another book every few months.

>>97221115
>To be clear, you believe that Cook knew the exact date that 3.5 was supposed to launch
To a degree, and based on earlier editions' sales trends, yes.
>This is not substantiated.
Mike Mearls literally said this.
>because you assume 3.0 sold so poorly,
No. 3.0 had a great first year and dropped like a stone. It sold much more than 3.5 did.
>Up even further, we have the claims
That is not me.

>>97221166
So in that order
You don't know shit and you're making something up again.
Mearls doesn't know shit and he could be blowing completely baseless smoke up your ass, largely because he was doing promotional rounds for his new game
And you don't have sales figures for 3.0 that back up this supposed drop, nor it's supposed greater than 3.5 sales.
May as well be you because it's all the same arguments that amount to
>sales figures that I don't have say that things I can't prove happened, but trust me bro, I googled it.

>>97221165
>You've failed to prove that was the case at all
Does 4e exist?
Yes?
Then that was the case. Cope.

>>97221179
>Resorting to pretending to be retarded
concession accepted, I guess.

>>97221177
I sincerely doubt Mike Mearls is lying about something that other, unrelated peoples' statements can back up. Ryan Dancey also backs up that 3.0 had a great first year and then that 3.5 was jumpstarted due to unsatisfactory sales. Monte Cook can also back up that one of D&D's best years was 2000.

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>>97221179
>1st edition lasts for about 6 years (while having 3 different versions released every couple of years)
>2nd edition lasts for about 6 years (also with some competing versions)
>2nd edition revised lasts for about 5 years
>3rd edition lasts 3 years and releases about a dozen splat books and various adventures
>3.5 edition lasts 5 years getting over 50 splats, OGL based spin-offs/imitators/heartbreakers, adventures, campaign settings, and new content the entire time ((You) consider this an abject failure for some retarded reason)
>4th edition last 2 years before essentials comes out, but has a few straggler releases in 2011 (this is the only edition Mearls really worked on by the way)
>4th edition essentials has pretty much all of its books released in one year and gets nothing else for the remaining years that 4e was the "active" edition
>5th edition lasts a staggering 10 years

>>97221230
Except Mearls didn't work on 3.5 and wouldn't know anything about it or its sales figured in any way he could actually back up, while everyone else who did or could has no reason to speak up about him saying some vague shit about a 20 year old game from a company none of them work for anymore. And that's not even getting into how few of them would actually have documentation to back anything up, even if they wanted to.

>>97221241
Mike Mearls worked at WotC during 3.5. Do you think these people are all completely segregated from each other?

>>97221250
As a time writer contributing to the Magic Item Compendium and practically nothing else that would imply he has some deep, exacting insider insight into the performance of a previous product line.

>>97221234
??? mearls was the main guy behind 5e wtf are you talking about

>>97221261
Mearls was the project lead, while guys like Jeremy Crawford (who was also a project lead), Perkins and Wyatt actually designed the game and wrote the PhB, DMG, and MM. Mearls has drastically overstated his own game design abilities.

>>97221234
Thanks for backing me up. It shows how 3rd just could not hack it (Not that 4th was any better lmao), and 5th edition is STILL crushing it.

>>97221359
3rd was more fun though

>>97221364
Most people don't think so. You're welcome to enjoy whatever you want to enjoy though.

>>97221359
When you look at the books that were released for 3e and then realize that most of them were tweaked and repackaged to sell as 3.5 splats that sold again anyways, it looks more like an 8 year lifespan for the edition than not. Really just seems like it was an issue of marketing, and the fresh 3.5 core books refined the presentation style of 3e and sold well enough to encourage WotC to pump out books.

Whatever you think happened clearly isn't how things played out. We can't deny that 5e sold well. No one with a brain would say so. But your narrative about 3rd and 3.5 being some disaster edition that brought dishonor upon WotC and forced them to scramble and change plans is just kinda fucking stupid, bro.

>>97221387
Nah It's a 3 year lifespan for 3rd, 5 year for 3.5. A pair of really bad editions that nearly caused the entire IP to drop, even despite the fact that it was still dominating the hobby (To the eternal seethe of nogames).

>>97221394
It really didn't and no matter how much you want to believe that's true.

>>97221435
>It really didn't
It really did and no matter how much you deny it, it's fact.

>>97219947
*since

>>97221447
You had all the time in the world to prove it and you couldn't produce a single shred of evidence besides vague vibes and retarded tummyfeel.

>>97221461
>You had all the time in the world to prove it
And I did.
Cope and die mad about it.

>>97221472
And somehow every point you failed to make was easily disputed and proven to be based on skimming the google AI summary for "D&D 3.5 sales figures"

>>97221482
Your points: Debunked.
My points: Unassailably true and backed up by factual evidence.
Simple as it is, you're just mad you lost the argument.

>>97221490
You didn't even know that Mike Mearls didn't work on 3.5, buddy.

>>97221503
>Every anon on /tg/ is the same
Lmao so mad you can't even tell posters apart, no wonder you lost.

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>>97207970
Give it time. Substance follows style. If the art of modern D&D is soft and gay, then the adventures will eventually become as such.

>>97221359
You believe it says that because you are a dumbass who assumes that getting a new version means you've failed, and that being the most current version means you've succeeded. If or when a new version comes out, would you then assume that 5e failed? You shouldn't. You should realize how braindead your way of thinking is instead.

>>97221472
>>97221490
>>97221624
No you didn't. You brought in barely relevant things that you did not bother understanding, then proclaimed yourself some sort of winner. Seemingly, you are incapable of deriving conclusions from information. You merely reach for tangentially related things that might, if you don't think, support a conclusion you've pulled out of your ass.

>>97221660
>You believe it says that
Not believe, know.
>who assumes that getting a new version
They're editions, not versions, retarded /v/ tourist.
>If
LOL
Even you know this is the last stop.

>>97221674
Yep I did, stay mad.

>>97206700
>Monk is infinitely superior to 2014 monk.
yes but no, is like saying PF monk is infinitely superior to 3.5 monk. 5.5 monk is superior to 5 monk in the vaccum.But every class got a boost, so 5.5 monk compared to the rest of 5.5 classes is in the same situation as 5 monk compared to 5 classes

>>97221731
>Even you know this is the last stop.
If it really is the last stop, then that means it killed the franchise and is the greatest failure of them all, retard.

>>97222150
>If a game is played forever and dominates its industry forever, THAT GAME FAILED!!!!!
Least retarded 5e hater

>>97217962
The class with a base AC equal to or higher than plate, with a diverse portfolio of range attacks, defensive spells and mobility is going to run out of HP faster than someone that can only do damage if they're facing an enemy, has lower AC, has little to no extra defensive options and has at most 20 - 30% more hp at level 3/4/5?

The argument isn't that the DM can try to take down the sorcerer first, the argument can and will outperform martials on every conceivable metric. The only way a caster is going to run out of resources first is if a DM consistently goes out of their way to target the caster, proving my point that they are mechanically superior.

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>>97221731
>They're editions, not versions
A new edition is a new version of a book in this context, illiterate-kun.
>>97222176
Only a dimwit like yourself would assume that a product could dominate forever. Products that are successful will inevitably lead to new versions until they are no longer successful, as most people won't buy the same old books they already have, and sales for splats tend to be smaller than sales for a new edition. If a product kills a franchise then it has absolutely failed, retard.

>>97222210
>A new edition is a new version
No, a new edition is a new edition, /v/irgin.
>Only a dimwit like yourself would assume that a product could dominate forever
A dimwit like you would short apple LMAO

>>97221141
Not that I know of, but The Trove has almost all of 5.0 in it, and I think it might have the core rules for 5.5. You'll only find torrents, but if you search The Trove Updated reddit on google you should find the October update.

There's a need for a "this is all of 5.0" torrent, now that 5.0 is complete. The Trove is much bigger than a 5.X fan needs, after all.

>>97221394
This is ultimately a weird claim and it is a strange one to marry as hard as you've been doing. 3.0 and 3.5 were both pretty successful, and none of the quotes in this thread dispute that, but there's another important detail; Pathfinder. When D&D launched 4ed, Pathfinder made its entire brand and company on continuing 3.5 with Pathfinder 1. This represented a pretty real fracture in the community, with some sticking with 3.X, some moving to Pathfinder, and some moving to 4e. While 4e was hoping to get some new players (and I'm sure it did, just not as many as it wanted), Pathfinder was both quite successful and entirely carved out of just a FRACTION of 3.5 players. If 3.5 wasn't a success, Paizo wouldn't have put all their eggs in the "modify 3.5 slightly and then release stuff for that" basket, because you definitely wouldn't want to go chasing a fraction of a failed edition.

3.X was a big edition, and Pathfinder was happy to grab any of its continuation.

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>>97206268
You really triggered the mexicorc defense squad here, well done. They are big mad that shit like pic related gets called out for being the shit that it is.

>>97222257
>This is ultimately a weird claim
Starting off with a common and retarded ESLism, nice.
>3.0 and 3.5 were both pretty successful
Overall? Absolutely not. On release? Yeah duh, core always sells well. Then whether the edition can stick around depends entirely on whether it's actually capable of player retention.
>but there's another important detail; Pathfinder
According to Paizo themselves, Pathfinder has always been irrelevant and has never actually been capable of competing with D&D. Therefore it is also irrelevant here, and especially irrelevant in a conversation of which edition of D&D is the most successful.
By the way, PF2e sells many times better than 1st edition ever did.

>>97220864
>...So because it was unpopular, got it lol.
There's rather important differences between "the game withered to unpopularity" and "the writers ran out of passable ideas to sell". Remember, this is the edition that saw "Dragon Magic" because people seemed to like supplements with dragons and magic in the title.

>This though is obviously made up, because 4e flopped too and it didn't happen.
It only supposedly fell below Pathfinder sales at the tail end of the soft-changeover of Essentials (which notably included the bold-faced lie that "standard" 4e products would continue) after what I recall to be a multi-year content draught. It did not "flop", it just did not claim its own death-grip chunk of the market after support ended like 3.X did and 5e seems to be.

>>97221132
>When the company decides "Yeah this thing fucking sucks, throw it out and replace it entirely" it means its failed, yeah.
"We can't keep selling this" does not mean "this thing fucking sucks". It just means that people are not continuing to buy it, which allows for market saturation effects to be a perfectly valid explanation. Like the market research turning up that none of the writers' ideas for new supplements would be standout hits compared to all the much more reasonable ideas they already did.

>There is no "5.5e", there are just constant erratas and updates to 5e.
A specific point was made advertising a big block of core rulebook revisions that include significant alterations to the core classes, complete with playtesting documents.

>>97221359
A splatbook almost every month for five years is not a failure, and exhausts design space quickly. Are you simply incapable of grasping the idea that selling after something successful can require replacing the successful thing?

>>97222226
>No, a new edition is a new edition
A new edition is a new edition, yes, but a new edition is also a new version of a previous book. It's not one or the other. Learn what the word "version" means, you smoothbrained esl.
>A dimwit like you would short apple LMAO
You are a dimwit based on what you have done in this very thread. You're trying to cope by imagining something that hasn't happened and laughing at this. The one upside to your crippling stupidity and autism is that you can't see how you've embarrassed yourself.

>>97205375
That's so weird. They've barely advertised it and it was a smashing success?(according to your message at least)
I've only learned about them trying to replace 5e a few days ago despite being constantly surrounded by D&D from every direction.
>>97204936
I'm the wizards every time I can, I'd actually be happy to see the spells nerfed across the board.
I'll have to see what they did to them.
>>97206680
>Species were improved because now, you don't have to pick a specific option just to not suck shit with your character build.
Oh, you're one of these people. I was legitimately curious what you were about to say but you've started talking about optimizing in a game. Let alone that it's a human-directed game. Let alone it's a role-playing game. You're still trying to play the meta despite all of that.

>>97221394
Compared to "actually bankrupted the company" end-of-cycle AD&D 2e, no it did not. The oft-touted claim that PF1e outsold the tail end content draught of 4e supports that they were successful because that's a third-party revision of the system outselling the next edition.

>>97222176
And if the reason 6e doesn't happen is MtG money drying up leading to Hasbro going bankrupt and nobody bothers using the D&D IP leaving the market to be taken over by off-brands?

>>97222189
>The argument isn't that the DM can try to take down the sorcerer first, the argument can and will outperform martials on every conceivable metric.
No, there's definitely still an attritional encounter schedule where slot-free low-target DPR being competitive allows more encounters safely defeated per rest-cycle with a mix of casters for permissions, healing, and random utilities and martials as combat-monkeys. The problem is that this is an obnoxiously fiddly balancing point that has fuck-all DM advice for it and can very easily get bricked by a LOT of shit.

>>97222292
>Then whether the edition can stick around depends entirely on whether it's actually capable of player retention.
...Player retention is an ENEMY of sales in the TTRPG space, because it stops you from selling replacements to the functions driving it. That is the point that people have been trying to bludgeon into your head, "success" as a popular-among-users game and as a revenue stream are not only not the same thing but in many cases optimizing for them directly contradicts.

Like all the horrible crap padding the near-monthly splatbooks of 3.X nobody ever talks about, or the fucking Rules Compendium.

>>97218198
I don't think the 5e audience realizes you can make your own adventures, they just play though Curse of Strahd over and over.

>>97222929
I don’t think that ttrpg players at all realize that

>>97222292
>ESLism

OH, sorry, I forget you're a fucking retard. My bad. I guess my posts are for the non-retards in the thread.

>According to Paizo themselves, Pathfinder has always been irrelevant and has never actually been capable of competing with D&D.

No one is going to provide a source for this; if someone does it will be proved to have been stretched mightily.

Obviously Pathfinder is smaller than D&D; that's not relevant. My point is, if D&D 3.5 was a failure at the END of its lifecycle, it would be braindead to base most of your company around getting scraps of a non-existent playerbase. Which means that 3.5, even at the end of its life, was still understood in the industry to be a big opportunity with WotC making 4e.

>By the way, PF2e sells many times better than 1st edition ever did.

This is an exaggeration and the original source avoided giving a number (if something is "many times more" then it is at least thrice as many, because only doubling something is merely one times more).
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/xsgynk/its_impossible_to_say_how_important_this/

PF2e sales come after TTRPGs having a culture moment, the pandemic and pop culture greatly increasing the market, and being a top ranked competitor to 5e.

>>97218198
3.5 was subsidized by MtG, 4e had to compete with on it's own terms and 5e was downgraded when WotC learned you can't outsell cardboard crack, leading to a much diminished publication pipeline.

>>97221132
>There is no "5.5e"
This is something only 5.5 supremacists say. "Oh man, there isn't even a 5.0 any more, buh buh wotch PATCHED it your game doesn't even exist!"

No thanks. The revised books are 5.5. They are a new edition, and if used, they replace older things. If you use them, you are playing 5.5. If you draw the line before them, you're playing 5.0.

>there are just constant erratas and updates to 5e.

Not even WotC is stupid enough to claim that their edition is 'errata'. They have huge pages of differences between them, things they renamed, functionality changed, conditions reworked.

>You can play One D&D with anything made for 5e seamlessly.

One D&D- always a maximally retarded name- doesn't exist. It was the codename for the playtest of 5.5.

And it isn't compatible, and way more tables are still running 5.0 than anyone was predicting before 5.5 came out. It hasn't done anything close to the level of replacement that 3.5 did for 3.0.

>>97222257
What you're overlooking is that success for Paizo and success for WotC are two different things. Paizo did not have the same overhead as WotC, so what WotC considered failing is not what Paizo would.

>>97204605
>business is selling rulebooks and sourcebooks
>royally fuck it up and kill your game for a quick buck
seems stupid to me anon

>>97223246
And what you're overlooking is that by no metric anyone has been able to produce, was 3.5 a failure.

>>97223312
Long term sales. Design turns too many people off. 3.5 was not capable of holding itself up without MtG money backing it up. That's why we got 4E. The fact that it repeated itself word for word in Pathfinder, with late release experimental material prior to PF2 resembling that game far more than it did PF1 and then a total break from PF1, is proof enough.

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>>97223270
Nta but it's not stupidity but misdirection and maliciousness. 5e was making bank in his own merits... if it wasn't a product of a subsidiary company of a bigass corpo. In that context your product doesn't have to make enough money to sustain itself and make also a cut of it as profit, it has to GROW INDEFINITELY. The inane buzzwords vomited by corpodrones (like "supercharging the brand" and similar shit) translated in human readable language roughly mean "we're going to try and jump over the sharks with this bullshit, if we fail we can still make a fuckload of money by selling the sharks leftovers as chum for fishing", so basically the product success is a bonus that allows for more daring bullshits, it's not expected to necessarily work but to allow for extracting as much profit as possible even from failure.

>>97222929
I blame microplastics in people's balls and brains, my ex-DM was whining about gay puertorrican orcs and I told him "you know you can make up your own stuff right? Even if you're following a module you can tweak whatever you want, nothing is set in stone" and I saw his mind being blown in real time

>>97223452
I don't know about the actual extent of this gay shit in terms of actual game content (because i don't run 5e slop to begin with) but even if it is only illustrations i would personally find at least mildly annoying to encounter that shit every time i open the goddamn book i paid good money for, enough to make a throwaway joke/whine with my friends.
>inb4 paid? Arrr!
Well in that case i would simply extract the bare text (if useful) and delete the file while calling it a piece of shit.

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>>97223568
Yeah the push to sanitize certain races or make the game "friendlier" is annoying but it's all avoidable in the end. I can create a world where orcs are savage niggers (like liberals say they are) and no one can stop me

>>97220672
So logically 5e being a failure in your eyes is only a matter of time

>D&D
>5e
I'll just wait to see and buy 6e if the material worth it

>>97223350
4rry delulu reaching levels never before thought possible.

>>97221234
>doesn't mention how 4e created an entir online ecosystem still not matched today and a hugely profitable subscription model with constent content dropping literally every month
Brother 4e made more money than anything before it and every other rpg on the market during almost the entirety of its run.
The idea that it was unsuccessful and had to go is fucking fanfiction. They had to stop servicing it because it was taking away from 5e. Why do people do this? There's plenty to criticize about 4e, why lie about it's actual success?

>>97219566
3.5 was fantastic, faggot. My table will never touch 4th or 5th no matter how much you shill it.

>>97223909
3.x is objectively the worst edition in how its rules don't actually work. I played it and then PF1 for years, but it's a bad game that does everything it can to make the experience worse.

>>97223835
4E would not exist if 3.5 could have kept itself alive.

>>97223909
>fantastic
>the edition with the most failed attempts to address its fundamental issues
You don't know how to play D&D. You sit at the table and vibe with your friends, but you may as well be roleplaying candyland.

>>97222226
nigga talkin /biz/ on /tg/ lmao

>>97223904
What alternate timeline are you from?

>>97223909
they have the same design ethos though

>>97224412
4e's sub model was hilariously successful and you'd know if you weren't getting made up infographics from PFG

>>97224489
4e's online tools and plans for a VTT and further products fell apart because of a murder-suicide.

>>97224529
lol, you have zero info on anything that happened post release. 4e's sub model included tons of magazine style micro supplements being released all the time, feeding into the most robust character builder at the time. The online tools also served as a much better resource than the old SRDs, including easily printable monster cards that auto-calculated and scaled to level, which were also easily customizable. Every new book also fed directly into this model and so you have this vast repository of things to easily reference and create if you were subbed Like, people loved the crazy convenience of the system and it was a hell of a deal for the average guy. You don't have to like the game, but fucking know what you're talking about.

>>97224577
D&D insider was a decent idea and it was the blueprint for D&D Beyond, more or less, but "hilariously successful" in terms of money making is not remotely true.

This /biz/ routine you keep doing just leads me to ask one thing of you: Post hands.

>>97224605
NTA but DDI could be tracked on the lowball by the D&D Insider group in WotC's community. This was a lowball because you also had to have a community account registered to it (not necessary). In 2013 at one point it had grown to a 81k userbase, with a monthly sub of minimum 10 bucks. Calculate that over a year and you have over 9 million, and 2013 was a slow year because literally no new books came out. I don't know what to tell you except that's crazy revenue on an off year, totally unseen in the industry before that.

I still remember when the content of 3.0/3.5 Players Handbook was split in 3 books for 4e lol

>>97223904
Is there anything creative or thematic from 4e that stuck around? Any big video games, any memorable villains? Famous adventures?

Compare Pathfinder, which got two actual CRPGs made off of its IP, and its Iconic adventurers are, well, pretty iconic.

>>97225048
and now they publish a DMG with no real advice beyond "buy a module"

>>97225073
Feywild

>>97225073
Ignoring the best D&D comic book ever made, huh/? I see you being a little bitch but I won't press you on it.
Basically everything Fey, everything Shadow, Warlock's new coat of paint.
>>97225048
It's really easy to fit in more classes when many can fit on a single page.

>>97205023
>I imagine a great many of us would go for supplements

This would be a poor decision and is incidentally the decision WotC went with. Even a company with decades of history and sales data to judge their future decisions still utterly fumble everything, so I don't blame you for being just as ignorant as they were.

>>97225115
>Ignoring the best D&D comic book ever made
irrelevant and a low bar besides the fact

>>97225128
The question was if something creative was made, and that was a great comic book in general. But I get it, it wasn't a real question, it was just an act of console war faggotry.

>>97224819
>81k userbase, with a monthly sub of minimum 10 bucks. Calculate that over a year and you have over 9 million
Only if all of them stay subbed and the majority of users never do.

>>97225161
The 81k did have people drop off, but it also had people come back in to replace them. The number was easy to track because it was a public number and, again, that would have been the lowest estimate as that's only the people who also had a Community account to be counted. It didn't really dip until after the 2 year hiatus between editions when they specifically stopped letting people subscribe to the 4e Insider.

>>97225139
Actually an honest question, I didn't know about the comic book and forgot most of the modern Warlock came from 4e; I still remember the original 3.5 class.

>>97225161
>Only if all of them stay subbed and the majority of users never do.
Part of why D&D Beyond was so successful is that so many users *did* stay subbed despite not actively using the product.

>>97225118
"that actually fill the gaping fucking holes" is a rather essential qualifier. Base 5e has a sucking void of skill DC guidance making the Rogue a complete crapshoot.

>>97225161
>>97225194
Also enough people were still subscribed to specific 4e product that in 2017 it was still grossing like a million.

>>97225195
Fair enough then. Modern Warlock is pretty much all 4e.

>>97225194
>>97225212
If I ask you to back up these numbers, are you going to link me to a video where Mike Mearls says something vague again?

>>97225223
https://www.enworld.org/threads/how-many-people-subscribe-to-d-d-stuff.308250/page-14#post-6101299
People were tracking DDI numbers live because you could. It was a number anyone could see because they made the community for it and it pruned inactive subs. Why are you being a stupid nigger?

>>97225234
>Why are you being a stupid nigger?
Because of the way this thread already went through this shit with retards making baseless claims and then, when disproven and called out for skim reading the google results, acting like huge obnoxious faggots.

This is more substantial than previous claims, and having 70-80k active subs 5 years into 4e's lifespan is definitely nothing to sneeze at. Massive for the time, for sure. Probably even bigger at launch.

>>97225223
See
>>97225234
WoTC community user Subscription counts were public and automatically audited. Subscription cost was public. This wouldn't have even been everyone, so the numbers shown are less than the true total. Pathfinder never outsold 4e. It's time to stop posting

>>97225280
Personally I'm tired of the fiction of it not being financially gangbusters. It absolutely was. WotC just asked for something crazy out of what was, and still is, very niche.

>>97225281
>Pathfinder never outsold 4e
Never claimed it did. There are other anons in this thread.
>It's time to stop posting
Take your own advice, retard.

>>97225336
>Personally I'm tired of the fiction of it not being financially gangbusters.
Without the full picture, it's hard for anyone to know for sure, and anyone who claims they can full know otherwise is being dishonest, at best, and acting like a desperate faggot at worst. It did well for a time, but WotC themselves, for whatever internal reasons, chose not to stick with it for very long, did not reinvest in it, and hastily distanced themselves from 4e afterwords. They even wait 8 years into 5e's lifespan to outright buy D&D Beyond, instead of launching a similar service to Insider.

Make of that what you will.

>>97222770
>There's rather important differences
Cope.
>It only supposedly fell
Oh so now pathfinder was wildly successful but also 4e totally didn't fail and thus two contradictory realities both work with your double-think. Please, you've lost that argument with all your stupid hypocrisies.

>>97222770
>This thing sells no units, that means its a total success!
>This thing has outsold every other edition for 11 years straight, IT FAILED!!!
Smartest 3aboo.

>>97222770
>A splatbook almost every month for five years is not a failure
"We burned all our money trying to sell splats that nobody was buying, that means we're killing it!"
Your edition failed. Cry about it.

>>97225422
why did you just reply three times?

>>97222799
>A new edition is a new edition, yes, but a new edition is also a new version of a previous book
Wrong again.
>You are a dimwit
ur stinky poopie pant lol
This is the level of argument you're on because you can't even leverage a halfway passable insult.

>Compared to "actually bankrupted the company" end-of-cycle AD&D 2e, no it did not.
According to you 3e's failures cost so much money WOTC was going to shitcan the entire IP, which not even 2e did. So yes infact it did.

>And if the reason 6e doesn't happen is MtG money
I forgot that D&D and MTG are linked at the hip... Oh no they aren't and you're just grasping at straws? wowwww!

>>97222820
>...Player retention is an ENEMY of sales in the TTRPG space
Spoken like a true nogames.
>N-no we WANT our players to move on to an entirely different brand after 2 months, p-please don't keep playing the game and buying new material for it :(
You can sell so many modules and adventures and setting books when people... Stop playing the game and move to something else. I am vry smrt.

>>97223141
>OH, sorry, I forget you're a fucking retard
Kek seething ESL.

>No one is going to provide a source for this
Except for Chris Sims and Owen Stephens, who worked for Paizo.

>Obviously Pathfinder is smaller than D&D; that's not relevant.
Yes it is. It's a fraction of D&D's size lol, that makes it utterly irrelevant and totally against your point. Especially considering PF1e, the 3.5 copy, was absolutely mogged by 2nd edition.

>if D&D 3.5 was a failure at the END of its lifecycle, it would be braindead to base most of your company around getting scraps of a non-existent playerbase
True, and 3.5 was a failure because it had zero staying power.

>This is an exaggeration
>Here's a direct quote from Paizo saying it sells many times more than 1e btw
LMAOOOOO you're just delusional and denying reality. Sad!

>PF2e sales come after TTRPGs having a culture moment
2e sold well before the pandemic was in full swing, and 3.5e was so shit it never really created a culture on anywhere but niche forums. Glad we've also established that lol

>>97225209
>essential qualifier
You may think this to be true but,unfortunately for the discerning GM, it isn't.

>>97225399
I think you're the one making leading statements. I can tell you that Mearls torpedoed the line with incredibly unpopular decisions with his "essentials" books that went against a lot of what the community praised about the game, and even though it continued to meet sales, goodwill was down. Despite goodwill being down with the company, WoTC had to stop people continuing to buy 4e content and subscribing to 4e online tools. "Make of that what you will"

>>97223178
>This is something only 5.5 supremacists say
No it's something everyone with a brain says. It is not 5.5e in any way, shape, or form, people just call it that because nobody else wants to say "ONEDND" or whatever dumb rename wotc wants to use to signal that they're never moving on from the ultimate cash cow edition.

>Not even WotC is stupid enough to claim that their edition is 'errata'.
Except for when they do.
Now go on and tell me how that doesn't count :^)

>It was the codename for the playtest
"One DnD was Wizards' first official name for the updated 2024 version of Dungeons and Dragons 5e"
Woops looks like you were wrong again. Cope.

>>97223736
Sure doesn't seem to be. 11 years is longer than any other edition, and nobody else has the game design skills or brand recognition to oust it.

>>97223909
>was
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Thank god we have filter games to keep the crummy boomers away from actually decent tables.

>>97225527
Cope, it is being replaced as we speak after all.

>>97225569
Post the 6th edition documents and I'll believe you. Oh but you won't because you're just mad and had to make things up lol

>>97225536
see nobody actually buys that you believe stuff like this
trolling is a art and niggas nowadays just be showing their whole hands baka

>>97225605
If you believed I were trolling you wouldn't reply. You do because you're butthurt and want to believe nobody can actually disagree with you.

>>97204491
when was the last time DnDogshit didn't drop the ball?

>>97225625
>If you believed I were trolling you wouldn't reply
Interesting cope, but wrong.

Kek mad.