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Also, look for the defensive utility powers, particularly if you're dragon. But Avatars of Chaos works for everyone and ought to keep you safe for most of the fight, for example.

Thanks for being persistent about looking into this.

Alternative three: WotC doesn't update the copyright page reliably. This has the pleasing characteristic of not requiring us to assume that a representative of a publicly traded company was lying to ICV2. On the other hand, it would mean that someone at WotC is fairly sloppy about publishing...

Huh. The thing is, it really doesn't look like it's bigger than the 3.0 -> 3.5 shift to me. I wonder if the mists of time haven't softened the edges of that one a bit? Here's a reminder. The collected 4e errata to date are 115 pages long. Steven Cooper's summary of 3.0 to 3.5 changes is 192...

That would have terrible optics, but would indeed be telling. I'd look for something more subtle, like a lot of PHB1s in Half-Price Books -- same effect, but less front and center. ... oh, god. WotC is gonna do the $5 PHB thing at Gencon again and everyone's going to freak out cause they've...

Somehow worse than when someone with a PHB3 Runepriest wants to get into a new game with a DM that doesn't have PHB3 or DDI, huh?

No, I don't. 3.5 removed skills, changed spell lists, and drastically modified class features. Essentials adds new options. Here's the important thing, which I will bold out of mild frustration. You don't need to change anything about your current character if you're playing in a game run by a...

I guess it'd be a new edition in the sense that Call of Cthulhu has had more than one edition. But really, that's not what people mean when they're talking about 4.5.

What if it's the same rules in a different book? I mean, that's my understanding of the Rules Compendium.

Timely rumor, given that the usual suspects have been flogging the idea that WotC never ever did a second print run of the core books. This is a nice angle on that one, certainly seems plausible enough on the face of it, and doesn't have a shred of evidence behind it. The article doesn't even...

Stunning does not change the underlying chance for a PC to hit. Neither does immobilizing. Neither does forcing the PC to provide combat advantage. There are monsters who give PCs penalties to hit, but they are few and far between. I think you're 100% correct about simpler/cleaner game design...

But those are part of the system, particularly leader bonuses. You also didn't include controller bonuses. Or rather, controller penalties -- a good controller ought to be knocking monsters prone, moving monsters into flank, or just generally providing defense penalties. It's also the case that...

As of December 2009, 74% of adults in the US used the Internet. Sadly, Pew doesn't break down the numbers for D&D players.

I think the PHB will be a fairly unattractive purchase for most of the reasons you lay out -- but I think DDI will continue to be a very attractive purchase, and I think that'll prevent the older class builds and classes from vanishing.

Easy to add favorites, but how do I find them again once I've marked them?

The catalog is now up here. Not a lot of changes to what we already know, although the Gamma World Famine in Fargo book isn't listed. It does add the Gamma World booster power card packs. There are 120 new cards in random packs of 8 cards each. The reason I was wondering, btw, is because...

Worse than "What bard are you playing -- prescient, cunning, or valor?" I do ask that question when I'm playing with a bard, because it'll affect my tactics a bit. That said, old-school names would have been cooler.

Are you going to be at Gencon?

No. 3.5 class writeups were explicitly designed to replace 3e classes. Essentials class writeups are explicitly designed to live alongside the existing classes. Regardless of unsupported claims regarding how many people used 3.5 as a supplement, the intent on WotC's part was very different.

But that's a very different question. If you're saying that you think some of the ideas in Essentials might wind up being part of 5.0, I'll agree with you. Doesn't make it any less compatible with 4.0. And, again, that's a huge difference between this and the 3.0 -> 3.5 transition, which wound...