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Nov 16, 2012 -- 5:00PM, WhisperMagellan wrote:

well, yeah, some of those amazon sellers are very inflated and unrealistic.
Other books are much cheaper.
AV1 is out-of-print, and has been for several months (Yeah. I know. What was the thinking there?). That's why. go Ebay--I got mine (slightly used) for less than cover price. 

The thing with Amazon is all that stuff is 3rd party sellers. You have to just keep going back every day and looking. A book could be $89 one day and $12 the next day in better condition. 4e books are almost all technically 'out of print' at this point since they certainly aren't apparently planning on putting them out again, so some of the more popular ones or ones that had short print runs can have volatile prices. AV1 is the most extreme as it was printed in 2008 and I assume never reprinted at all. Being the first supplement (and a pretty important one) it probably sold fairly well.

I've seen some pretty big lots of 4e selling on ebay over the last few months (I guess the D&D Next announcement had an effect?). Sometimes you can buy an entire lot of books for less than the price of buying the books individually. Sure you'll end up with some extra books you don't need, but you can always give them away to friends. I got a lot of 3.5 books this way when 4e came out.

Nov 15, 2012 -- 4:27PM, Sanctuarykitten wrote:

Wotc will actually break into your home and destroy all your 4e books.

It's already happened to half the playtesters for 5e.

Actually while I know this was intended to be a joke, perhaps for the first time in RPG history, it's really not.  4E has gotten to the point where a lot of 4E players need and depend on the online tools (esp Char Builder) to actually play the game because the errata is so bloated and scattered, and the various class abilities and powers are scattered over dozens of "core" books and magazines.

So if when Wotc pulls the plug on 4E character support, they really will be (in effect) breaking into a large section of the 4E fanbase and destroying their 4e books.

-Polaris

Nov 20, 2012 -- 7:49PM, Matyr wrote:

Honestly I don't care what happens to the books but... if they mess with my DnD Insider account and replace the Charbuilder and Compendium with DnD Next crap I'm going to be a very sad panda.

This, a thousand times this.

Just like what others say, I fully expect WotC to pull the plug on the Online 4E Tools and when that comes I'm just leaving it all behind.

I'm actually in the process of putting together a Game that should be able to carry forward what we know today as 4E.
There's not much point though, in trying to capture EVERYTHING that has been published.
Some material is simply redundant and contributes to bloat. Others are simply so suboptimal offering the Option does not add value. 

My final "Compilation" will probably be something like this
- Basic Rules for Playing the Game
- 6-7 Core Classes 
- Selection of Generally Useful Feats. Reduction of Feat Tax. 
- Role-Specific Rules, for mixing / switching Roles around
- Selection of Generally Useful Items, fewer of them. 
- New Core Classes that have very different Mechanics from 4E. eg. Vancian Systems
- A Few Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies

Along with following, with an intention to maintain Balance in the Game
- Quickplay Options for Players New to the Game
- Guidelines for Creating more Classes and Powers
- Guidelines for Creating Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies
- Guidelines for Creating more Item Properties and balancing Evolving Items
- Guidelines for Creating Feats
- Guidelines for Encounter and Monster Generation 

I've been playtesting some Elements of these in my Campaign, using 4E encounters, and it works pretty well.
The Characters do not outperform 4E Characters either, but are relatively easier to Optimise because the Feat Selection is much more easier to work with and have more blanket boosts to Character performance.
Assuming the Party plays sensibly, Combat typically ends in about 5-7 rounds.