Do you think core rule books shrinkage is a good thing ?

[ioun_stone]

Well, truly its always been that all one REALLY needs to play is a PHB, DMG and MM. In any edition. The various other books put out in every edition have always been intended to be optional. Its geeks like me that just have to have every book that comes out. 4E will change some things, leave others the same, and rely fairly heavily on the DDI, I'm sure. In the end, however, all a group really NEEDS is a PHB, DMG and MM. Oh, and a good imagination.

 

[KingCrab]

Did the combat rules section take up too much space in the 3.x PHBs? I don't think so. The books have a lot of room devoted to spells, feats, classes, skills, etc. I think a smaller PHB probably means less options.

If anything I think they should go the other direction and fit as many classes and races as they can into the first book.

 

[GreatLemur]

I'm strongly hoping the magic system is streamlined enough that the new PHB isn't so completely dominated by a giant catalog of spells. I really don't need to see separate listings for what's basically the same spell with different magnitudes, targets, or energy types. I'd much rather they borrow from the 3.x psionics system, when it comes to stuff like that.

Well, truly its always been that all one REALLY needs to play is a PHB, DMG and MM. In any edition. The various other books put out in every edition have always been intended to be optional. Its geeks like me that just have to have every book that comes out. 4E will change some things, leave others the same, and rely fairly heavily on the DDI, I'm sure. In the end, however, all a group really NEEDS is a PHB, DMG and MM. Oh, and a good imagination.

Well, seriously, you could very easily play with the PHB alone. I think you can get more mileage out of building antagonists out of the standard PC races and classes than using monsters, and nothing in the DMG is really necessary if you feel okay with ditching (or just winging) magic items and stuff like the encounter level and XP rules.

 

[DaveMage]

It allows them to expand their revised 4th edition rules to 320 when the time comes.

 

[Baby Samurai]

Well, I'd rather have core rule book shrinkage than the other kind…

 

[Kanegrundar]

I hope that it means that the rules are getting trimmed down and streamlined. As to whether that's the case or not, I guess I won't know until May.

 

[PaSquall]

The best IMO :
PHB : 96 pages (spells included)
DMG : 96 pages (magic items included)
MM : as much as they want (at least 200 different monsters)
I don't need hundreds of pages of rules.

 

[cildarith]

They ought to cut out the 800 pages and keep 160; not the other way around...

 

[Irda Ranger]

The best and easiest way to do this would be to boil the spells and magic items down to a few easy templates and tools. The whole Evocation school is just one spell, over and over, with minor tweaks. I'd rather have one spell (Blow Stuff Up), with advanced caster levels unlocking variables for range, area of effect, damage type, delay, etc.

Give me some templates, and then provide examples on how to use the templates to build old favorite like Fireball and such. They can always sell a Spell Compendium later showing lots of new ways to re-combine them.

You could so something similar with Magic Items.

 

[TerraDave]

And they have promised a magazine style format with more diagrams and stuff. So a lot less text.

Could mean much better writing and super streamlined rules (this is a good thing)
Could mean a big cut in content you get back in other suplements (this is a bad thing)

SW SAGA, which is tiny for an all in one book, seems to point at both.