D&D 4th Edition Player's Handbook Now In PDF

The Player's Handbook for D&D 4th Edition can now be found in PDF format over on DnDClassics.com. The entry also includes an extensive summary of the history of the game, its goals and design philosophy, the controversy (which is colloquially known as The Edition Wars and is a particularly unpleasant side of our hobby), and more. The PDF is just $9.99. Released in 2008, the 4E PHB was written by Rob Heinsoo (who later took a lot of his approach over to Pelgrane Press' 13th Age), Andy Collins, and James Wyatt.

Find it here.

"The first of three core rulebooks for the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons® Roleplaying Game.

The Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game has defined the medieval fantasy genre and the tabletop RPG industry for more than 30 years. In the D&D game, players create characters that band together to explore dungeons, slay monsters, and find treasure. The 4th Edition D&D rules offer the best possible play experience by presenting exciting character options, an elegant and robust rules system, and handy storytelling tools for the Dungeon Master.

The Player's Handbook presents the official Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game rules as well as everything a player needs to create D&D characters worthy of song and legend: new character races, base classes, paragon paths, epic destinies, powers, more magic items, weapons, armor, and much more."

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[The Fighter-Cricket]

PHB errata would be really great! But honestly I don't think Wotc will put any ressources/time/money into a discontinued product. They have to put every cent they have into 5E. (All the cuts and outsourcing they do now is not a good sign either for any projects beside 5E.)

The lurking discontinuation of DDI is quite a bummer. I switched to a a very nice character sheet in excel for my party members and limit the sources for character creation. Its really not that hard or tedious to fill in the sheets etc. Especially if you have a bunch of official card stock power cards for the main classes lying around.

 

[RedSiegfried]

I own all the 4e books and I will STILL definitely cry when DDI ends someday. It's so handy to whip up characters online with all the options just a click away, create monster stat blocks at any level with the correct math and look up any game element I want from my smartphone.

Sure, there are other tools to do these things at varying levels of legality and quality, but I hope WoTC has heard the 4e community loud and clear when they say repeatedly that we would like to have an offline version of these tools someday when the service ends.

 

[oknazevad]

Cool that they're actually getting all the old PHBs out like they said, but honestly, the amount of errata this one needs makes its utility pretty low. Better to stick with the Essentials books (which had already been released over the past few weeks) as they already apply the most egregious of errata. Likewise with the monsters; the MM1 and MM2 use broken math that was reworked for MM3, so the Essentials Monster Vault is a better choice for the most classic monsters.

Heck, the last couple of times I played 4e, the DM went for an "Essentials books only, no online tools" game for a more old school vibe while still being 4e (and yes, he used the Essentials DM book). It was eminently playable and fun. I could see how the options would get limited after a while (such as on a long campaign), but as a core system it works great. While 4e may not be to everyone's taste in terms of the play style assumed by the devs (an assumption that really started with 3.5, as seen in the introduction of the PHB for that version), it's still a solid game, though a bit more rules heavy than I like.

 

[Ranes]

Nooooooooooooooooo!

Seriously. Not my cup of tea. At all. But glad it's out, because (a) D&D and (b) play what you like.

And once were done with this lot, 3.0? Please?