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I suppose the closest thing to a power index I can imagine being even a little bit useful would be a list of what pages the categories of powers are on. ie
But even then, parsing through the index and turning to the page wouldn't be any faster, I don't think, than turning to the table of contents, going to the Cleric page, and flipping forward to the right level/type.
Just made my first 4E character from the book, and my biggest pain was finding the race and class feats from within the feats chapter. I'm glad the powers weren't similarly intermixed elsewhere.
There should have been some kind of indication of which feats a race can take in that races description, and maybe a description of which feats a class can take as well. That might have worked if powers were in a big power section as well because then you could have a table for each class showing feats and powers available.
The layout, editing and indexing of rpgs in general are usually pretty bad, (Dark Heresy I'm looking at you). In comparison the 4e phb is good in performing it's primary function as a rule book. In game play it functions just fine on the odd occasion I have to actually refer to it.
This being an opinion-based thread, and I having a strong opinion of my own, it's time to make public Marius's List of 4E Layout Nitpicks. There's a really good design here, it just needs loads of refinement. Had I but world enough, and time....
Ugly, huge fonts. This is the first time since 2E Player's Option that I've wanted to know what the fonts were so I could avoid using them. (I still have an unvarnished hate for University Roman, and though I can stand Frutiger, I would never, ever use it as body text.)
Inconsistent use of graphical header bars. They look nice, sure, but do they go over both columns? One column? When? What level(s) in the book's outline are they associated with, and why does that/do those levels get treated differently from time to time?
Inconsistent placement/cropping of images. In particular, the one-column/half-page vertical images: do they get to be full bleed or don't they? Do they get cropped out of the gutter or are they left pushing into the gutter?
No baseline grid. Lines of text don't line up horizontally between columns. This one is something I simply can't get over.
Overuse of gradient ramps. And speaking of gradients, what is with those sidebars? Ugh. (Ditto here what's already been said about the combat chapter. Painful, painful.)
Use of letterspace adjustment with left-aligned text. You can get away with it when the text is justified (I do it all over the place in the WOTBS books). It just looks silly when the text is left-aligned. It makes me feel as though a copyeditor needs to take another swipe at the paragraph.
Half an index. I base this on the feeling I have that, half the time I go looking for something in the index, it's not there.
[After reading Toben's comment below, adding:] White space, used badly. White space used well can help a page. The kind of white space found in the 4E books isn't that kind of white space.
While there are many things I like about 4e, I'm sorry to say that I truly dislike the layout of the core books. The large, white spaces on the pages simply fail Layout 101 in most of your basic publishing classes. But skipping that, look at the 3e PHB vs. the 4e PHB.
The 3e PHB has colored pages with faint lines on it, evoking the feel of an adventurer's journal. Much of the interior art is a "study" look or sketchy feel, further contributing to the look and feel of some kind of old tome or journal. Even the cover is meant to evoke this theme.
Simply put, the 3e PHB sells itself. And sells itself well.
The 4e PHB does not, IMO. Besides the cold, white pages, the art in the PHB is confusing to me. If you had never played D&D before - by looking at the artwork, what is the difference between a Paladin and a Ranger? The Paladin has a glowing blue sword while the Ranger has two glowing green swords. The Cleric has a glowing mace. So, the differentiation between the different classes through artwork is not done very well. In my opinion, the 3e PHB and even the Pathfinder book does this better.
The large text of the 4e PHB is easier to see, but with the white pages, the overall effect reminds me of a junior-high text book. That is not a snark, understand. Text books take their own layout very seriously and pay serious money for them. However, what sort of look and feel should you be going for in a D&D book?
Finally, the long, long lists of powers look like the charts in my old chemistry text book. Indeed, when I got the 4e PHB, I laid it out beside my old chemistry book and noted that many of the catalog of charts looks very similar. If you were walking by and looked down at both book, they would have appeared very similar.
I'm actually okay with the powers being listed with each class, but the many pages of text unbroken by pictures or graphics makes it dry. It might have cost a bit more, but more pictures throughout would have made a big difference. The 3e PHB saves all of the long blocks of text (the spells) for the end of the book, so the lack of graphics and pictures does not really stand out so much.
In terms of the ability to reference rules, however, we've found that we've had to reference the book very little. With your powers either written down on a card or on a sheet beside you, we often don't even have to look at our books.
While there are many things I like about 4e, I'm sorry to say that I truly dislike the layout of the core books. The large, white spaces on the pages simply fail Layout 101 in most of your basic publishing classes. But skipping that, look at the 3e PHB vs. the 4e PHB.
The 3e PHB has colored pages with faint lines on it, evoking the feel of an adventurer's journal. Much of the interior art is a "study" look or sketchy feel, further contributing to the look and feel of some kind of old tome or journal. Even the cover is meant to evoke this theme.
It is visually nice, but is unreadable in places. I really hope the first page of every chapter didn't include anything important because I could not read them. I'll admit it is nice to look at, but it isn't good at its primary purpose, being a book to read.
__________________ All we want to do is eat your brains
We’re not unreasonable; I mean, no one’s gonna eat your eyes
All we want to do is eat your brains
We’re at an impasse here; maybe we should compromise:
If you open up the doors
We’ll all come inside and eat your brains
It is visually nice, but is unreadable in places. I really hope the first page of every chapter didn't include anything important because I could not read them. I'll admit it is nice to look at, but it isn't good at its primary purpose, being a book to read.
Interesting point.
The problem with the PHB, any PHB, is that it's meant to be many things in one. It has to be part instruction manual, part reference book, part world guide, as well as part entertainment.
The best ones, through the history of RPGs strike a good balance between these things.
But it's one of the reason that making any PHB, for any system is fairly difficult, IMO.
[/i]] White space, used badly. White space used well can help a page. The kind of white space found in the 4E books isn't that kind of white space.[/list]
Another interesting point.
The Star Wars SAGA books use white space well. Why shouldn't the D&D books be able to do this?
Look at it this way. I can imagine three main reasons you need to look up a power in the book.
1) You already have the power, and want to see what it does.
2) You are deciding which power to take next.
3) You are making a character and trying to choose a class.
4) You are a DM and want to look at how a particular power works when designing an encounter, NPC, monster, or trap, but you don't remember what level or even what class it came from.
__________________ "If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
-- Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell to Arms" Burning Empires:Boldaq Keep on the Shadowfell
All in all the layout is adequate, I guess. It really is better for finding stuff than books in previous editions.
Getting past the 'wall of powers' was difficult when I first read the book from cover to cover (which I always do). In more recent books it's become easier for me to read them since I'm now acquainted with the format.
I don't think the layout is attractive, though. At least the art improved in PHB2...
You guys read through all the powers when you first read through the PHB? Wow, I just skip them. I'd read through the first 10 lvs of powers if I was interested in that class but really...do people read through all the spells in older edition too?
If anything, I like the layout of the powers (by level) far better than the alphabetical layout of 3.5 spells. Coming from 2nd ed, it was annoying to not have all the full description of spells of the same level at one place when I'm levelling up and choosing spells.
I guess an index of all the powers would be useful, but really, how often does the DM not remember what classes his players were.
Last edited by nightwyrm; 18th July 2009 at 03:11 AM..
The problem with the PHB, any PHB, is that it's meant to be many things in one. It has to be part instruction manual, part reference book, part world guide, as well as part entertainment.
The best ones, through the history of RPGs strike a good balance between these things.
But it's one of the reason that making any PHB, for any system is fairly difficult, IMO.
Perhaps the PHB could be better at being a good PHB, which would involve a balance of all of those things. But if the point was to be best at helping the game as a whole, rather than on its own terms, then the trade offs are different. If the PHB is slightly less entertaining to read, but increases playability of the game at the table, then I'd say that's a worthwhile tradeoff.
__________________ All we want to do is eat your brains
We’re not unreasonable; I mean, no one’s gonna eat your eyes
All we want to do is eat your brains
We’re at an impasse here; maybe we should compromise:
If you open up the doors
We’ll all come inside and eat your brains
I'd say the layout is the best thing about the 4e PH, better than all of its predecessors for my money. I was able to pretty much master where everything was that I would need to look up in the 4e version far faster than any previous version. None beat it for clarity or readability for reference purposes.
It could have been improved with some of the comments made above - more and better indexing, more play examples, moving magic items to the DMG - but overall it's far and away the best PH for looking stuff up quickly at the game table.
__________________ Bill D
"There's a fine line between a superpower and a chronic medical condition."
- Doctor Impossible
Perhaps the PHB could be better at being a good PHB, which would involve a balance of all of those things. But if the point was to be best at helping the game as a whole, rather than on its own terms, then the trade offs are different. If the PHB is slightly less entertaining to read, but increases playability of the game at the table, then I'd say that's a worthwhile tradeoff.
Some might argue you could achieve a measure of both - more evocative style with examples of play, tone and mood setting passages - but at the cost of increasing the bulk and expense.
IF a trade-off is necessary between utility and entertainment, going with utility for a game rulebook is the correct choice.
__________________ Bill D
"There's a fine line between a superpower and a chronic medical condition."
- Doctor Impossible
And again for 3), neither an alphabetical listing of all powers nor even a list of powers sorted by class and type (but without rules) will help you choose a class. You need to see the full text of the powers to decide if you want them or not.
Think of playing in a con game with pre-gens where the powers or feats are listed by just their name but not explained in full detail. Or perhaps someone asks "What does <power X> do again?"
It's not about building a character as much as it is about understanding a character without having a trail of breadcrumbs detailing exactly how he was built.
__________________ Bill D
"There's a fine line between a superpower and a chronic medical condition."
- Doctor Impossible
Perhaps the PHB could be better at being a good PHB, which would involve a balance of all of those things. But if the point was to be best at helping the game as a whole, rather than on its own terms, then the trade offs are different. If the PHB is slightly less entertaining to read, but increases playability of the game at the table, then I'd say that's a worthwhile tradeoff.
What I was referring to is not just being an entertaining read, but also evoking mood and excitement through its very production value.
I could really go off on a tangent here, but if you look a something like the Harry Potter books in there U.S. edition, those books have an extremely evocative production value. The texture of their covers. The feel of their pages. The font. All of that makes you want to pick up a Harry Potter book from the shelf, even if you've never heard of HP and look at the book.
In terms of that kind of production value, I think that the 3e and even the 2e PHBs have more of the "pick me up off of the shelf" appeal than the 4e PHB does.
I don't think that you have to sacrifice production value for ease of use, either. None of the things I pointed out would have made finding information in the book or on the page harder.
But ultimately, it may not really matter. D&D is almost exclusively a word-of-mouth hobby. If someone's going to play D&D, they're going to play D&D, whether the book is pretty or not.
The book has bad fonts, bad use of white space, few art, almost no examples of play, and little to no fluff. As someone else mentioned, the pictures become really problematic on the classes section. Ok, the priest is a guy holding a mace. So priests are...people who hold up maces? Next class is fighter, and he...well, he also has a mace. But he's got a shield too. Is that what seperates the two classes? After that is paladin, who is a night elf (DON'T GIVE ME THAT, EVEN HIS DAMN HAIRCUT IS FROM WoW, THE EXACT DAMN HAIRCUT) with a two handed sword. We skip ahead to the warlock and - well dammit all, it's a person holding a mace. Wait, there's a scary head in the background! The worst is the warlord picture because it's the fighter picture only with a dwarf. There is NO DIFFERENCE between the warlord picture and fighter picture save race. I feel the need to point out that almost none of the paragon classes have a picture. What makes all this even worse is the huge absence of fluff. The paragon classes have one paragraph each. Even the classes themselves typically only have two or three rather short paragraphs defining them. It's all mechanics.
So it's a reference book.
But there's no power index, the previously mentioned problems with fonts and white space, and very rarely is there something to break up the WALLS OF TEXT that occur in the powers section. In previous D&D books, every few pages in the spells section, there'd be a picture illustrating one of the spells going off. The 4e PHB lacks this, with each version of the wall typically having a single picture, and it makes the walls even...wallsier. The format also hurts here, as the paragon classes are absorbed into the wall - they have no picture and only one small paragraph before going right back into more powers. The feats are badly organized; again, compare it to 3.5 books. Typically on the first full page of feats, you have the list of all the feats, and they're divided into subsections - general feats, metamagic, racial feats, etc. 4e gives you two full pages of feats before the list, and the list isn't divided; rather, each tier has it's own section. However, each section has it's own list, instead of putting them in the first list and merely giving it a division. It's needlessly confusing. Lastly, no glossary means you can't just flip to the front or back of the book and quickly get the information you need.
So it's a reference book...but it's bad at being a reference book.
All around fail, in my opinion.
__________________ Psionics are too sci-fi, not like the traditional method of spell casting that has existed only in D&D, involves research, laboratory work, and formulas, and was cribbed directly from a series of science fiction novels. I mean, come on, calling forth the power to alter the world from your own center of will? That's not magical in the slightest! Not at all like my wizard's spell "Telepathy!"
Well, it's certainly a lot better to have a PHB you barely need to look at (I think magic items and character generation is all we use ours for) than every spellcaster needing to have a copy of the PHB open on their lap for the entirety of the game.
In reference to the thread title, when did the word "bad" become a bad word?
Well, it's certainly a lot better to have a PHB you barely need to look at (I think magic items and character generation is all we use ours for) than every spellcaster needing to have a copy of the PHB open on their lap for the entirety of the game.
In reference to the thread title, when did the word "bad" become a bad word?
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