Aitch Eye
First Post
This issue's preview focuses on combat, and quite a bit of this has come out already. It's written by Ed Stark, who warns that anything in the previews might be "slightly modified to completely revised" before the books come out -- though he doesn't expect a lot of that to happen.
PH: "Now, we have only four basic types of actions: free, standard, move, and full-round. The lists of what fits where have been cleaned up, and the presentation of each action type is clearer and more concise." Mostly they were trying to make the chapter "much more accessible."
Also, on the issue of them gearing it towards the use miniatures and battlemats: "This doesn't mean that you have to have minis to play D&D 3.5 --any more than you had to have them for 3E ...[snip]... If you've played all this time without ever using miniatures in your game, you can survive without them under 3.5. If you like minis, though, you'll like what we've done to the presentation of the D&D rules."
DMG: "At the time of this writing, we were working hard to come up with a collection of standardized battlegrid diagrams and templates that DMs and players could use to help run complex or unusual skirmishes in a game session. We noticed that 90% of all our spell effects, monster abilities, and other measurements fell into a small number of measurement categories. Well, we've done what we can to standardize these effects into a small number of categories with meaningful differences."
MM: There will be additional tools and advice for working out the CR of monsters. The round-by-round tactics for a Mind Flayer are given, both alone and with minions.
Stark also notes that "we don't focus our tactics information entirely on ways to more effectively beat your PCs to death with interesting monsters. That isn't the focus of the Dungeons & Dragons game, after all. The focus is on having fun. The revisions and additions to the Monster Manual aren't just about making the monsters more challenging or even more interesting, but about making them more fun to run, play, or defeat."
(I'll post a summary of the rest of the issue's contents later this evening)
PH: "Now, we have only four basic types of actions: free, standard, move, and full-round. The lists of what fits where have been cleaned up, and the presentation of each action type is clearer and more concise." Mostly they were trying to make the chapter "much more accessible."
Also, on the issue of them gearing it towards the use miniatures and battlemats: "This doesn't mean that you have to have minis to play D&D 3.5 --any more than you had to have them for 3E ...[snip]... If you've played all this time without ever using miniatures in your game, you can survive without them under 3.5. If you like minis, though, you'll like what we've done to the presentation of the D&D rules."
DMG: "At the time of this writing, we were working hard to come up with a collection of standardized battlegrid diagrams and templates that DMs and players could use to help run complex or unusual skirmishes in a game session. We noticed that 90% of all our spell effects, monster abilities, and other measurements fell into a small number of measurement categories. Well, we've done what we can to standardize these effects into a small number of categories with meaningful differences."
MM: There will be additional tools and advice for working out the CR of monsters. The round-by-round tactics for a Mind Flayer are given, both alone and with minions.
Stark also notes that "we don't focus our tactics information entirely on ways to more effectively beat your PCs to death with interesting monsters. That isn't the focus of the Dungeons & Dragons game, after all. The focus is on having fun. The revisions and additions to the Monster Manual aren't just about making the monsters more challenging or even more interesting, but about making them more fun to run, play, or defeat."
(I'll post a summary of the rest of the issue's contents later this evening)
