I'm too lazy to do a detailed analysis on the content in ever single issue of Dragon to date, but this month at least feel like a brand new low. We have one week left in the month and so far we have gotten 2 themes and 5 magic items for player options(ignoring the Essentials shift of Magic Items to DM resources becasue it would then be just two themes) during these 24 days. I know that there are still articles left which hopefully will have some crunch in them, but this is just ridiculous.
For comparison, I chose a random article from a random early-ish issue of Dragon. The article(Channel Divinity: The Raven Queen from 380) had 23 powers, 1 paragon path, 20 feats, and 1 epic destiny. A single article has 38 more player items then this month of Dragon has had so far. This has gone far beyond unacceptable to simply utterly ridiculous.
Yes I know that they have had a budget decrease or something by their overlords. Yes I know some people had issues with too much crunch. Yes I am sure some of the player options in the Channel Divinity article aren't that great. That does not excuse them putting out almost nothing, especially when the articles just aren't as interesting or useful as the ones that came before(yes I know entirely subjective).
Heck just for laughs let's pull up a random issue from the late run of print Dragon(which I was not a fan of). Random issue is 334. It has 4 special substances, 7 siege engins/ammunitions, 4 magic items, 5 alchemic brews, 9 goods, 13 more magic items, 6 spells, 3 feats, 4 more feats, 5 more items, another feat, 3 monk fighting styles, 5 alternate rogue abilities, and another feat.
Dragon simply needs more player crunch than we are getting right now. You are diminishing the value of Dragon to players by keeping the count so low. I guarantee you I will not renew my subscription when it runs out if there is no increase in the crunch.
While you guys keep giving them your money, nothing is going to change.
And yet you guys still have little red boxes under your names. WotC has figured out they can keep 90% of their customers even while delivering only 20% of what they had been.
While you guys keep giving them your money, nothing is going to change.
Yeah I renewed with a yearly subscribition before the Essentials bomb hit. That's the extent of details regarding my subscription I'm willing to go into. It will die off soon enough I'm sure.
A single article has 38 more player items then this month of Dragon has had so far.
While I mostly agree with the point you're making, I think implying that a single power represents a quantum of crunch directly comparable to an entire theme is disingenuous. By the logic your comparison implies, an article containing ten mostly useless powers would represent twice as much crunch as an article containing five full and totally kick-ass themes, which is pretty obviously not true. If you're counting individual powers in older issues as discrete quanta of crunch, then you need to also count each power and power-equivalent feature of things like themes and paragon paths as discrete quanta to make your comparisons valid.
In what way? A Paragon Path is a single element. You cannot choose to take, say, solely the 12th level utility power from it. If you take that PP, you take ALL of the PP. Counting the powers and features of that PP as seperate is silly and claiming something that is fundamentally not true.
The same thing applies to a Theme. It is a package deal. You do not have to take all the optional powers, but in order to do so you must take that theme.
Individual powers may be taken by anyone who can do so - People of that class, people who have multiclassed into that class, if it's an at-will half-elves, etc. If there are five powers in an article you may take any single one of them you like without having to take the others, or if they are of different levels for the same class you can take all of them. If an article has five Paragon Paths, four of the five are completely useless to you if you take one of them. Naturally there is more written in 5 PPs than in 5 powers. This does not mean there is more actual content for one to take. I can't have two PPs, or five, or any number but one. I can have multiple powers.
Say an article provides a L1 daily, a L3 Encounter, a L6 utility, a L7 Encounter and a L9 Daily, all for Paladins, with some sort of theme, we'll say teleportation. I have a Paladin, and I want that to be a theme on him, and I like all of those powers. Well hey, I can take all of them.
Say an article provides five PPs for Paladins. Even if I think every single one of them is awesome... Only one can be relevant for my character. The other four aren't useful to me even if I really love that one's L11 action point feature and that other one's L20 daily. This one I'm taking has the best blend of Stuff for me.
And yes, I can use those PPs on other characters, but I am unlikely to have multiple Paragon-tier Paladins. Most powers we've had in Dragon are Heroic tier, and I'm more likely to have multiple H-Tier Paladins, whom I can take one or more of those powers on. So in the long run for most players, batches of single powers are actually more 'real' content than batches of PPs.
Thus. PPs and Themes should definitely be counted as only one item.
While I mostly agree with the point you're making, I think implying that a single power represents a quantum of crunch directly comparable to an entire theme is disingenuous. By the logic your comparison implies, an article containing ten mostly useless powers would represent twice as much crunch as an article containing five full and totally kick-ass themes, which is pretty obviously not true. If you're counting individual powers in older issues as discrete quanta of crunch, then you need to also count each power and power-equivalent feature of things like themes and paragon paths as discrete quanta to make your comparisons valid.
Fine w/e I'll count the optional theme powers as seperate items because they aren't bundled with the theme. Individual parts of themes don't get their own count though because I didn't count PP or ED aspects seperatly. So that makes the count 5 magic items, 2 themes, and 6 theme powers. Thusly it has 32 less mechanical options than a single article. Which is clearly the breaking the point between accepable and not. >.>
Oh and where the hell is the one article with an unce of potential to it? We are in the last week and Weapon and Implement Expertise still isn't up.
I was extremely disappointed by the loss of compilations and would have dropped my subscription then; if I didn't feel a need to keep access as the DM of my gaming group (and the only one to still have a subscription).
Then they made it even more difficult to download the articles as a group by making all the links in the Issue Table of Contents pages links to other pages instead of links to each article. Now I can't just right-click each article from the ToC and download it; I have to click the link, go to the page, THEN right-click the download button to download the article. Twice as much work! Why can't there be a zip file with all the articles for each issue at the end of the month? Or better yet, give us back the compilations!
And why is there a Dragonmirth link in the August ToC? No cartoons were published.
Eh I reupped after the released all of those themes and value was looking better. SInce then, it's gone back down to almost nothing. I almost feel like it's deliberate, these surges of content followed by months with almost none.
There was a burst of content for a while because they cancelled both the themes book, and the class compendium, and instead brought this into DDI.
At this point im mostly just paying for the map and art galleries since I find them extremely useful for maptool.
Daniel.
this has been the worst month in a while
Maybe it is just me, but it doesn't seem any worse than last month. The only difference really is that this month we don't have false hope about it getting better.
the playtest for new implement feats (which I know aren't legal yet, but I still view that as crunch as at least my DMs will let me use them)
Playtest is legal in LFR, you just have to use all of the changes or none.
Daniel.
Last month we had some themes, the racial utilities, the playtest for new implement feats (which I know aren't legal yet, but I still view that as crunch as at least my DMs will let me use them) and the items. That's a pretty solid month to me. Sure, it's not as much as they used to have, but it's still decent. This month though, we have some powers for artificers, and a few backgrounds. That's it. That's pretty light, but I'm not going to say the sky is falling because of one light month. The magazines have been much better since the content drought of that lasted for most of last year.
I'm going to have to disagree. October 2008(issue 368) was a great issue. October 2009(issue 380) was a solid issue. At this point I would even say that October 2010(issue 392) was passable. Last month falls completely short and this month is going to fall just as short, as has every issue for something like half a year. This isn't a one off problem, this is a complete failure of the editors to make sure there is an acceptable level of fluff in the magazines.
Feel free to skip the small rant below...
I am still looking for things for the PHB3 races, PHB3 non-psionic classes, feats for the essentials line, and feats for the Heroes of Shadow (except for the revenant) It seems that it is more about support of some classes more than others. I would try out the runepriest, but the lack of options for it make it less and less appealing, and same for the seeker. The essentials line removes the usefulness of most of the class specific feats, and has so far provided nothing truly useful in their place. Then there are the new races, that seem to have no true support at all
What I enjoyed most about 4th edition were the options, even for fighters, and to make race count. The moves have been towards removing (or at least limiting additions to) these it seems, with the essentials having the only real difference for the races is their racial bonuses (or penalties) and their racial powers. I prefer feats to these "racial utilities" although they are interesting, they are more based on race than class.
End of (not so small) rant.
I just hope that they fix this before they switch to 5.0, (which will need to be a vast improvement over 4.0 for me to upgrade, although I will probably get the first 3 to see what it is like)
I remember proposing these to my group back when PHB2 came out, and the even the old-school D&D player in my group was like "I need a +2 in some random skill to express the fact my guy is X?".
It really doesn't help express something mechanicly in the end, beyond maybe opening up a skill, though restricted skills for classes a bit funny anyway. If your class doesn't have the stats for a skill, its going to fail at it anyway.