Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Kaldric Feb 12, 2009 20:29:28	I went and counted how many actual books were printed over the 8 years of 3rd Edition. I didn't include adventures, even if they were hardbound books of their own, which several were. I came up with a teensy bit more than 100. About 107, give or take 4 or 5, which were on the edge of being an adventure, or whatever. So, what do YOU think 4th edition is eventually going to have? Wild Guess: 8 phbs, 8 dmgs, 8 monster manuals, 16? monstertype-specific books like open grave/draconomicon, 8 power source books, 8? adventurer's vaults/item books, 16 alternate setting books, 16? location books like manual of the planes/shadowfell locations/feywild sites, 8 challenge-type or misc rules books like Dungeon Delve/Unearthed Arcana type stuff. That comes to 96 or so, which seems a good number. We'll likely also get a few disguised playtests of 5th edition near the end, if they follow their previous habits. This is just a wild guess at what we might end up with, after a cursory look at what we're getting in the first year and a half.
#2 Nautilus Feb 12, 2009 21:25:02	Though only 8 power source books would mean that the classes in later PHBs would be left unexpanded. Still, these guesses look fair enough. I'd look for the '5e preview' content in books like PHB6+.
#3 Kaldric Feb 12, 2009 22:25:53	Yeah. Doubling the number of Power Source books I've guessed at to 16 probably wouldn't be a bad idea. They said it's possible they're going to do more than one for each power source, but no word yet on whether there are going to be any more power sources beyond the ones mentioned so far.
#4 clem Feb 12, 2009 22:29:56	And at what point does the customer base reach option saturation? Oi.
#5 Kaldric Feb 12, 2009 22:50:55	I dunno. 100 bound books is about 1 per month, for 8 years. Their strategy now seems to be to take what used to end up in setting books (maybe 40 of the books of the 3rd edition's 100 were setting specific books, mostly Forgotten Realms), and mixing it in with the core. They'll have the setting specific books, but only 2 of them. So, all the players who don't like Oriental Adventures, for instance. Well, there's not going to be an Oriental Adventures book they can just not buy. All those archetypes will be mixed in with others. Maybe elemental. Maybe just more Martial types. Who knows? I don't think they'll reach option saturation too quickly, because not every campaign seems likely to include everything in each book. I know campaigns that don't include any tieflings or dragonborn, for instance. They'll be using druids, but no monks. And so on. They'll want the Pyromancer from the Elemental powersource, but they won't use the Sha'Ir. Or whatever. Plus, it's hard to reach option saturation if you're using the Character Builder. Having a database with something like 72 possible base classes, each with more than a hundred possible power options, and hundreds or thousands of feats is fine, as long as the database manages most of it for you. I shudder at the thought of trying to make a character in 2015 without a computer, with 8 PHBs, 8 setting books and something like 100 issues of dragon and 16 power source books to try to search through. Yowza.