4th ED Questions

[Neonchameleon]

1) Read Planes of Law, Planes of Chaos, and Planes of Opposition, heck, just read pre-4th Ed D&D lore.

Belived it or not I have The Planewalker's Handbook on my bookshelf. And more pre-4e books than 4e books. I know much of the pre-4e lore (not all of it of course - with the splat bloat TSR put out that dwarfs anything WotC have ever done ther is no way to do so). And I still prefer the 4e cosmology for anything except a pre-Faction War Planescape game.

And the MM1 has plenty of lore in it. I can make a convincing case that it provides me with more lore per monster than the 2E Monstrous Manual It's just written dryly and with relevant details in play and evocative details and a lot of subtle psychology rather than with %Liar chances and ecology.

 

[S'mon]

Okay, I'll be blunt: Why are people in the 4E forum complaining about how much 4E sucks?

If you want a lot of fluff and backstory, both Monster Vault products are far better than the first Monster Manual.

MV is a lot better than MM (so is MV:TTNV), but still does not have a text description of the monsters, the kind I could paraphrase. And no WoTC product describes what any of the monster powers look like in-world, beyond their title. Some are fairly obvious (arc lightning), others I have no idea what is supposed to be happening in-world.