4E book organization

[mhacdebhandia]

That's particularly so when in addition two races were added that I could care less about.

Yeah, man. Those elves and halflings are just a waste of space!

 

[Shadeydm]

The decision to have 3 striker classes but only 1 controller class is a real headscratcher to me. The 30 something pages of magic items would have been much better spent on another example of a controller class. For that matter did we really need the warlock (striker #3) instead of a 2nd controller class? I suspect the inclusion of the warlock might have been driven by the desire to ratchet up the cool by including the tiefling...

 

[Destil]

The players handbook needed at least 30 more pages.

Never mind the druid and bard... we need more than 4 epic destinies and some paragon paths not tied to a class...

 

[RangerWickett]

Replace the tiefling with the plane-touched and give them two or three possible racial abilities based on whether they're naughty or nice. Get rid of eladrin and put in gnomes. That teleporting power? Yeah, give it to gnomes. Fey people who disappear in one spot and reappear some place else? How the hell is that not gnomish?

Take out the ranger, and give the rogue a few more ranged attack powers. Handle two-weapon fighting via feats, not powers. Use the space from ranger to put in different abilities based on your religion for clerics and paladins, illusion powers for wizards, and more paragon paths and epic destinies for everybody. Create the thaumaturge class (or perhaps theurge), which would be a divine controller, and give him summoning powers and the ability to create undead.

Honestly, I don't think I like the classes in 4e. I do really really like the monsters, though, which is why I'll play it.

 

[Steel_Wind]

How critical do you think it is to have magic items in the PHB (done for the first time in D&D in 4E)?

Then I looked at the DMG. For the same price as the PHB, it's almost 100 pages shorter at 228 pages. If the magic items section (~28 pages of the PHB) had been moved to the DMG like it was in 1E-3E, that would have freed up room for two more classes in the PHB!

Well - the PHB is a pretty big book now. And a great value too.

That said, I rather thought the 4E DMG was pretty much a waste of money. It's pretty much all fluff and I seriously doubt if I will use much of anything in there. Experience Rewards I guess and a few odd movement rules.

Other than that, I do not foresee the DMG being opened during a game session - or between one either.

The three traditional core books of previous editions have essentially been reduced to two traditional core books, imo.

I'm not sure that this is necessarily a BAD idea. It's a great PHB.

It just happens to make for a poor DMG.

 

[Henry]

Here's the ironic part: 4E encourages the paradigm of DMs tailoring items more toward the players, and discouraging players from selling magic items to buy other ones.

Now, why did we need them in the PHB, again?

 

[Klaus]

Well - the PHB is a pretty big book now. And a great value too.

That said, I rather thought the 4E DMG was pretty much a waste of money. It's pretty much all fluff and I seriously doubt if I will use much of anything in there. Experience Rewards I guess and a few odd movement rules.

Other than that, I do not foresee the DMG being opened during a game session - or between one either.

The three traditional core books of previous editions have essentially been reduced to two traditional core books, imo.

I'm not sure that this is necessarily a BAD idea. It's a great PHB.

It just happens to make for a poor DMG.

Wow, YMMV indeed. I think the DMG is the most useful book, even for those who will stay at 3.x. If you use the UA rules for flat XP, you can use the encounter building section. You can certainly use the skill challenge bit, and there are lots of good DM advice. If you add a "flying up costs twice as much", the flying rules can replace the 3.x ones easily enough.

 

[Relique du Madde]

Wow, YMMV indeed. I think the DMG is the most useful book, even for those who will stay at 3.x. If you use the UA rules for flat XP, you can use the encounter building section. You can certainly use the skill challenge bit, and there are lots of good DM advice. If you add a "flying up costs twice as much", the flying rules can replace the 3.x ones easily enough.

What I think is funny is how out of all the 4e books, the DMG is the most system neutral of them. WoTC could easily take out the 4e mechanics from the DMG then combine it with the fluff sections from the previous DMGs and make a great OGL product.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

Hmm... here I was thinking how well-organized the books are. Or at least the PH. Well indexed, clean layout. I've been using it for a week, before I finished reading it and I haven't had a problem with it as a reference book.

DMG? The DMG has always been a waste of a book. 2 or 3 rules, magic items, and frankly, filler.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Hmm... here I was thinking how well-organized the books are. Or at least the PH. Well indexed, clean layout. I've been using it for a week, before I finished reading it and I haven't had a problem with it as a reference book.

DMG? The DMG has always been a waste of a book. 2 or 3 rules, magic items, and frankly, filler.

I'm guessing you didn't DM 1st edition? (or 2nd Ed , for that matter). Or if you have, the passage of time has clouded your recollection significantly...

You couldn't even run a game of AD&D 1st ed without using the tables in the DMG (though if extracted to a DMs screen, you could do so). Ditto for 2nd ed. (That's where the to hit and save tables were, where the encounter tables were and all the magic items, loot rules, combat rules, etc.)

3rd edition? Yes, you could get by without paying much attention to it other than for XP calculation and magic items. Still - it was a moderately useful book that you would look at during the course of a session - and you certainly would do so from time to time between sessions.

4E DMG? No. The 4E DMG could be safely put on the shelf and essentially never opened. I don't expect that an experienced DM would miss it much - or that the DMs players would be likely to detect its non-use at the table. That's the difference with the organization of this edition of D&D.

I'm not saying that'a bad thing. It might even be a good one.