WotC has not yet announced when 4e will be released. It may be a major revision, or it may just be a slight retooling.

And, FWIW, you're wasting your time trying to get a "complete" 3e or 3.5e set. It's not that the books aren't worthwhile, it's that they aren't designed to all work together.

I'm aware they don't all work together... Even if they did, it would be retarded to run a single game with all of them. In a characers normal non-epic life, they only accumulate 6 or 7 feats (or five thousand for a human fighter), and if you have _every_ book available, there's well over 1000 to choose from.

What I prefer to do is run a book-specific campaign where I list out which books are available on a campaign by campaign basis. Or if I am running a campaign that's not say, Frostburn based, but want to include a frostburn encounter, I gank the appropriate stuff from that book (monsters, mainly - some of the traps were nifty, and since the book was now handy, the environmental hazards).

You're right though, a lot of them don't go well together.

I like the standard (in my group) "all the core books, plus the [four] Completes." Or more Completes, as the case may be. People tend to only focus on the books that affect them anyway, so you won't have the party wizard using the Complete Warrior, unless they're a really special wizard or what have you. If people want specific things, they can ask for them (e.g. something out of the Draconomicon, Libris Mortis, or Exalted Deeds, in my case).

And for the record, 1 level of fighter and .. I think 5 levels of wizard, then you get some wild nifty prestige class I heard about today - it's either psion related or out of the DMG, but I was doing other stuff while he was talking about it and his character will never qualify anyways.

But yeah, 1 level of fighter and a few wizard levels, you get a roudy prestige class.

Spellsword maybe? That's from Complete Warrior, I think. (Hence the "really special wizard" clause.) ;-)

Mmm...full plate *and* Meteor Swarm...

This doesn't really make sense. If the books are worthwhile, then it's worth trying to get a complete set - even if you don't use every book in a single uber-campaign.

If the books are worthwhile, then it's worth trying to get a complete set...

The core books are ~$90, and give you the base set to play a game, and get some 2,000 hours of enjoyment out of (avg 4 hours per week for 10 years).

Each additional book is ~$40. ($130). The first book or two will have a qualitative addition to a game, adding in something that was either ignored or not very well explored. There are, roughly speaking, 20 or so 3.5 books you could pick up (skipping the classic slim adventures here; they're not usually part of a "set.")

If you were to buy all of those, that'd be a $800 additional expense. Not counting wear. Not counting a "loaner" book or two. For that cash payment, you could get something that would be much more useful to running a cool good D&D game -- like an LCD projector, or a laptop. Or commissioned portraits of your player's favorite characters.

Of course, it's unrealistic to compare total cost against something else of total cost; few of us buy all our gaming books at once. Thus, we'd need to examine the per-book expense and gain -- and after the fourth or fifth book, the gain simply drops off.

Your core books are fundamental; you can't really run a game without at least having read them enough to be familiar with the. The first or second supplement is interesting and often worthwhile. However, the more books you get, the less valuable they are. Non-core books are more expensive, less playtested, and more restrained in scope. Each additional book also gives you another disconnected adjustment to consider when you make your game.

This was true in 1st edition. This was true in both eras of 2nd edition. And this is true in both eras of 3rd edition as well. what is worthwhile on its own, to inspire and suggest possibilities, is not worthwhile when surrounded by peers, which as a whole do more to diminish the game than enhance it.

I see your point, and I won't argue it.

But for the record, I pay on average 20$ a book. Soemtimes 23, sometimes 17... amazon.com, seriously.

Is it worth getting all the core books if you have the SRD, though? I mean initially. You'd buy them all eventually if you were rich, of course.

I dunno bout you, but PDFs are not as wieldy as books to me. This doubles when I'm at a table bumping elbows with four other people, trying to make room for a laptop.

And really, if you get into things, you'll find the core books for less than $90. I think I got mine for $35-40. I actually have a shelf full of 3.5 books, including all the terrain books and all the Races books, and I don't believe I've spent more than $200 total.

As I understand it, part of the "retooling" will involve removing the OGL.

OGL was great, and boomed the industry, but it also flooded it with so much crap that it ended up diluting the industry in the end.

There has been no official information about 4e. EVERYTHING about it is just speculation.

Don't worry/hope/anything about 4e. It won't be out for AT LEAST a couple of years (if ever), and you can always keep playing older editions if you want.

4e threads are generally pointless, except as suggestions for decent house rules under the heading "this is what I want for 4e."

I'm willing to bet warlock becomes core

Warlocks are the best thing ever. :-D

Why? They've never had a PC class with an evil alignment requirement before.

The warlock doesn't have an evil alignment requirement.

And who's to say that a new game edition can't possibly change the flavor of anything?

AFAIK, currently the class says it gets its power from a pact with a powerful demon or some such thing. If that doesn't require an evil alignment, it's just silly.

But yeah, no reason they couldn't just change the flavor of anything they feel like.

Any Evil or Any Chaotic.

The aligment requirement is Any Chaotic or Evil. So my Chaotic Good Warlock is perfectly legal. And there is already an official PrC for Warlocks that start getting their powers from Cestial rather than Demonic beings (at least I think that's the flavor. I know it's designed for holy warlocks).

Technically that PrC is for evil warlocks who repented, but I think that's stupid. (And it's not part of the mechanical prereqs, so okay.)

Basically, the alignment mechanics for warlocks aren't broken--the flavor text is.

I've got a chaotic good warlock who gets her powers from her fey ancestry. Perfectly reasonable (and follows the RAW, too). No houseruling here!

I do agree that the way they wrote the class is a little wonky, though. They knew they were allowing CG warlocks, they should have worked in a little elbow room about that "pact with evil" thingy.

Exactly, that's all I'm saying. Compare the descriptions for Warlock and Thaumaturgist, and you see a huge difference in two classes that deal with extraplanar entities.

I don't like the class itself, but that's just a personal preference. I don't much like psionics either, but I wouldn't denounce all psionics everywhere.

Hey, I'm all for it, as long as I can be a playtester! :)