I had already subscribed to the RPGNow sub before the EN sub was available. I mostly did the ENworld for the other stuff (which I'm fine with), but I was hoping the RPGNow releases would not get moved back to sync up with the EN sub progression. It sounds like RPGNow will stay as a separate...
Personally I felt the Bard was everything the Warlord wanted to be, but wasn't.
It promotes tactical placements and buffage in a manner that's fun.
The Warlord seems to sacrifice too much of it's own fun to help others. Plus their class features seem powerful, but limited (action point driven).
I'm sure you will have mixed replies, but I think it's INEVITABLE that ALL publishing moves in this direction. The problem is none of the available devices really fully meet my expectations. I say in 5 - 8 years it will be in the state the audio industry is now: largely digital distribution.
The spiked chain fighter tree (which is a multiclass tree) grants proficiency with spiked chain, but because it's a MC tree you're forgoing the ability to MC.
If you want to MC with spiked chain you take WP: Spiked Chain which does NOT grant it as a dual weapon, or a light blade.
(Un)Fortunately, this was changed in errata. Now only the secondary ends have offhand property, with exception to the double sword which has been nerfed.
If you have compendium access, check it out. Otherwise look in the rules updates on WotC.
Is there an item that provides Magic Missile as an encounter power? If so that's why it's only Encounter. Two sources providing same power but at different resources granularities defaults to the "higher resource cost".
Also Reaper's Touch may have been errata'd. Check compendium. The annual...
One of the devs in the char op section said that they've really formalized the update process at this point, and updates should be more frequent but wouldn't go so far as to say monthly.
After some re-reading, I think it's actually quite simple.
If an enemy is adjacent, it is considered a viable target, even if it's out of normal range. Basically all squares adjacent are threatened for the purposes of ranged and area attacks.