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Ah, interesting, I hadn't that target demographic in mind when ranting about not including 3rd level options. If you're right the product seems well designed. Certainly enough by way of providing material for a couple of sessions to let lapsed gamers with kids see if they like the game; and if...

I think there are only 4 classes in the box anyway. Each gets 1 encounter power at level 3. Most classes have a choice of 4, which take up a quarter page in the PHB 1 (just checked out the Wizard class entry). So we're talking about a single page en toto. Let's say another page for equipment...

Level 1-2 with leveling up only once is pathethic. There's no polite way of saying this. It also doesn't make sense if you juxtapose it with the free H1 module and the subscription free variant of the Character Builder both of which go up to level 3 for good reason. My initial hopes that this...

I agree and predict that the marketing for 5E will be pitched differently. Frankly, nothing short of a Dragonborn trailer "Grrr! I'm a monster now!" will do. Preferably the dragonborn gets roasted in the video by a fairy, but I guess that's hoping for too much.

Well, that's excellent! I was going to suggest to transition newcomers from a more familiar i.e. boardgamey product (like the, now sadly defunct, D&D Miniatures) into a fully fledged RPG, but "Wednesday Night D&D Encounters" is certainly a much better way to draw them in. I'd certainly put up...

Quite! It's also a problem with modules published for 4E specifically, e.g. Demonqueen's Enclave where we even know that the cartographer got the dimensions wrong and ended up drawing maps with too confined spaces. My quick solution to that problem is to pretend that the squares in the original...

I certainly haven't made the effort to update every detail in the original quote (from 2003, and linked to) to bring it up to 2009. Doesn't change the fact that by Paizo's own admission the change from 3.5 to PFRPG is on the same scale as from 3.0 to 3.5. If the situation of 2003, then, is...

I'm still mad at Paizo for this: 'No, we aren't going to reprint the 3.5 SRD and only create new stuff when it's needed to make it a complete system (e.g. provide "alternative" charts for stat point buy and XP progression). Here's what we're doing instead:

I think Kamikaze Midget is onto something. The background information on monsters in the MMs is really singularly geared to how the monsters behave once they are engaged in combat (or immediately prior to their being thus engaged). It's only when you look up 4E monster background material...

To the OP: I think you're under a misapprehension. What makes a great DM always already includes social skills. The DM is the one to accomodate the varying personalities and play styles around the table and see that they can all have their place. He's the social fulcrum of it all, and must be...

I agree entirely with you - but here's something else to consider. While I find I can absorb a 4E statblock fairly quickly (where a new 3.5 creature really often took time to "get"), the difficulty is in absorbing the in's and out's of monster synergies you get in encounters for published...

Kudos to WotC for focusing on what's most important to the hobby: growing it. Sure, I'd appreciate a Feywild/Shadowfell supplement sooner than later, and am mildly disappointed that Martial Power 2 isn't followed up by equally timely Power 2s for the arcane and divine power sources this year...

What you describe here is utterly true at my 3.5 table. So I got 1-2 guys who've been gaming 3rd since 2000, and then I've got 5 guys who only got introduced to 3E by me last year. Let's call them 3E veterans and 3E newbs (although neither label is appropriate). A "veteran" had joined our...

Totally agree with the assessment, with e.g. the Paladin class's reworking in Divine Power being a pretty much inarguable case in point. I'd also mention Arcane Power making the wizard more of a controller as a clear indication that the initial design was found lacking. But personally I haven't...

RC and Player's Essentials are tagged at 320 and 350 pages and are paperbacks. Haven't seen WotC do a paperback for the D&D game at that magnitude since they released the 3.5 PHB in softcover for the Player's Kit. If you recall, the first 4E softcover "book" ever will be the Dark Sun Bestiary.*...

Scribble's post is very useful when comparing 4E to 3.5. And even though I prefer 3.5 over Pathfinder, it must be said that Pathfinder's Bestiary contains dragon stat blocks usable "out of the book": +++++++++++ Adult Blue Dragon CR 13 XP 25,600 LE Huge dragon (earth) Init +4...

Emphasis added. I appreciate the difference in opinion, but the bolded bits seem to indicate we could be talking past each other, at least in part. See, nowadays I wouldn't want to DM a 3E or 4E game without heavily dishing out circumstantial bonuses on the fly every round - meaning, I make...

Absolutely agreed. The [W] thing was disastrous. The acronym (if you can call it that) first appears on page 57 of the PHB without being explained; there's a forward pointer to page 269 by way of quick-reference. If you look up page 269 you won't find it. You will only find it later, on page...

BryonD answered this well ("Mechanics should should be about capabilities and leave behavior to the players.") but I'd like to spell it out for everyone: a lot of the great things in 4E stat blocks is simply information that got shifted from accompanying background text into the stat block...

Indeed.