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4 years ago ::
Oct 09, 2009 - 7:55AM
#11
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Date Joined:
Aug 13, 2007
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So... would it be preferable for them to release the crunch first?, if you truly hate the new format just treat next friday as its release. you are gonig to get it all this month. WotC isnt stealing anything from you.
 Never Point a loaded party at a plot you are not willing to shoot. Arcane Rhetoric. My Blog.
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4 years ago ::
Oct 09, 2009 - 8:02AM
#12
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I'm going to add my voice to this, and I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way, that the Vistani Heritage feat should have been included in this article. I have no use for fluff articles, I create my own fluff, I need mechanics. What would have been better is to break each part of the culture into 'chunks'. For example, they could have taken out all the information on religion and magic and included the heritage feats in this article, then put the religion and magic and all the feats that deal with divine and arcane classes in that article (this article says they favour divine and arcane classes, since vistani can be any race I'm sure they must have feats that support those classes or else how can the vistani really favour them?)
I'm not sure why Dragon Magazine is so full of holes these days. First, the non-existent rules for ki focuses and multiclassing in the Assassin article, and now this.
What's weird is that the multiclass feat for the Assassin was put in the Character Builder, but never in the actual article. (You can apply shrouds twice per encounter, but they only last until the end of your next turn.) Also, rules for straight +# ki focuses are in the Character Builder. So the rules existed, but they never actually got put in the article. My substription expires at the end of the month - if it wasn't for the Character Builder, I probably wouldn't continue subscribing.
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4 years ago ::
Oct 09, 2009 - 8:13AM
#13
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Date Joined:
Oct 24, 2001
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Sheesh. With D&D fans like these, Jack Chick never needed to release his Dark Dungeons track. We'll immolate on our own. Without Satanic magic and evil pacts.
Here are the PHB essentia, in my opinion: - Three Basic Rules (p 11)
- Power Types and Usage (p 54)
- Skills (p178-179)
- Feats (p 192)
- Rest and Recovery (p 263)
- All of Chapter 9 [Combat] (p 264-295)
A player needs to read the sections for building his or her character -- race, class, powers, feats, equipment, etc. But those are PC-specific. The above list is for everyone, regardless of the race or class or build or concept they are playing.
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4 years ago ::
Oct 09, 2009 - 8:31AM
#14
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Date Joined:
Sep 20, 2004
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Sorry, I don't agree with any of the posters here (except maybe the last one). I read this article, and the first thing I thought to myself was "wow, this is one of the BEST Dungeon articles I have read to date..." Wizards, fantastic! I give a huge thumbs up to the Vistani article.
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4 years ago ::
Oct 09, 2009 - 8:32AM
#15
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Date Joined:
Jan 24, 2004
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Normally not one to criticize WOTC, but I read the whole article and had several minutes of WTF as I looked over and over for any feats or anything that would quantify what I had read. was it a mistake?
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4 years ago ::
Oct 09, 2009 - 8:38AM
#16
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Date Joined:
Aug 30, 2009
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I don't think anything is wrong with fluff. I like fluff. I'm a giant story nerd and I do tend to actually read all the flavor text, and I'll generally use pieces of it (although I write a lot of my own, so I rarely use all of it). I even think this would be an acceptable article if it had the heritage feat in it. (Although I suspect that several posters upthread are right in that Wizards is not actually writing several smaller articles but rather writing the same articles as before and then chopping them up and calling each piece a full article.) I don't even have a problem with articles that are almost entirely fluff. But in this case, they introduced an element that does require some crunch (a race), and in the introductory article they didn't include any of the things necessary to actually use that element in a game. This wouldn't even have been bad as the second or third article in the series, following the article that contains the crunch. As it is, they published an article full of information that WE CAN'T USE in our games yet. This article is effectively blank until we get the heritage feat at the very least. I'm not objecting to the article itself, but rather the decision to make it the first article in the series. The mechanical tools needed to play a Vistani needed to be in the first article about playing Vistani.
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4 years ago ::
Oct 09, 2009 - 8:52AM
#17
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Date Joined:
Mar 28, 2008
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I have to agree with most posters here. In Chris Youngs editorial, and Bill's Ampersand, the reason given for the shorter articles was to increase variety in content while keeping quantity about the same (or increased, given that some material was migrating to Dungeon). "The major reason, however, is that we know bigger articles often mean that a given issue doesn't have something for every player. " Splitting up the Vistani article like this does not accomplish the goal - more variety. It makes it annoying to read, and for less charitable readers, smacks of duplicity. This is their first month of the new approach, so I'll take that into consideration. Perhaps the Vistani article had been in the works well before the new editorial direction, and this was their solution. In future months once they clear out their backlog of longer articles perhaps we won't have this problem? The quality of the actual article though was fine, no complaints about the author, Chris Sims, work. Whoever is putting together the content calendar needs to rethink their approach.
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4 years ago ::
Oct 09, 2009 - 9:08AM
#18
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Date Joined:
Sep 22, 2006
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As someone who had never heard of the Vistani before, I was very confused and had no idea what this article was talking about. Eventually I managed to get that it was at least a bloodline feat chain and not a brand new race, and then scoured the article for the actual feat. No dice. I came here to point out that it was missing, and only then discovered that it was intentional and the actual mechanics aren't out yet. Yeah, don't do this again.
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4 years ago ::
Oct 09, 2009 - 9:38AM
#19
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Date Joined:
Apr 23, 2005
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I have to agree with most posters here.
In Chris Youngs editorial, and Bill's Ampersand, the reason given for the shorter articles was to increase variety in content while keeping quantity about the same (or increased, given that some material was migrating to Dungeon).
"The major reason, however, is that we know bigger articles often mean that a given issue doesn't have something for every player. "
Splitting up the Vistani article like this does not accomplish the goal - more variety. It makes it annoying to read, and for less charitable readers, smacks of duplicity.
This is their first month of the new approach, so I'll take that into consideration. Perhaps the Vistani article had been in the works well before the new editorial direction, and this was their solution. In future months once they clear out their backlog of longer articles perhaps we won't have this problem?
The quality of the actual article though was fine, no complaints about the author, Chris Sims, work. Whoever is putting together the content calendar needs to rethink their approach.
The new format starts next month, and I thought it was pretty clear from the ToC and Calendar that there would be three articles. At most, I think you can criticize WotC for not appending a "Part I" to the PDF article title, and in any case, I don't see the big deal unless you had your heart on playing a Vistani this weekend.
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4 years ago ::
Oct 09, 2009 - 9:42AM
#20
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Normally not one to criticize WOTC, but I read the whole article and had several minutes of WTF as I looked over and over for any feats or anything that would quantify what I had read.
As someone who had never heard of the Vistani before, I was very confused and had no idea what this article was talking about. Eventually I managed to get that it was at least a bloodline feat chain and not a brand new race, and then scoured the article for the actual feat. No dice. I came here to point out that it was missing, and only then discovered that it was intentional and the actual mechanics aren't out yet.
Yeah, don't do this again.
I'm in the same boat with these two guys and it feels like the boat is sinking. Please lets not do this again.
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