DDI and Essentials

[Lichemaster]

I need a few questions answered before I pick up a few items.

1. Is the Monster Vault Essential worth picking up? (I already own MM 1-3 and have all the Pathfinder Pawns and many DnD minis)
Is the book better then the current MM 1?

2. D&D Insider.
Can I make all the cards and save them to my computer?
Basically can I buy a 3 month membership and save every power and magic item to my home computer to print out at a later date?

 

[Kinak]

As a caveat, I'm not a huge 4e dude. I'm pretty sure I can field both of these, though.

1) I don't think you could find anyone who would say MV and it's sequel were worse than MM1 and 2. MM3 has the updated math, which the Monster Vault line continues, the monster designs are better, and there's a lot of flavor information.

About the only weakness is that they end up with less monsters, but you already have the MMs, so you're set there too.

You might not need the tokens, though. I'd suggest picking it up in PDF, but I don't believe WotC's selling it yet.

2) I don't believe there's any way to do that directly through the program. You could probably get some sort of Print to PDF program or take screen caps, but it'd be labor-intensive.

There are also a lot of monsters added in side products that might be worth having in one place.

Even without any of that, three months is probably worth it for the issues of Dungeon and Dragon, which are intended for download. You'll be able to get the whole 4e run in one go, which is convenient.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[CM]

The Monster Vault is a superb product, probably one of the best produced for 4e. Everything about it is better than the MM1.

I'll second the suggestion to give DDI a shot, at least for the magazines. The Compendium is essential for me, as well. I stopped bringing books to sessions about 5 years ago now. I'd recommend using it with Power2ool for building and organizing creatures.

I have been looking for ways to mirror the compendium in case WotC changes its mind on continuing to support it, but don't have a solution yet. In the meantime I'm happy to continue my subscription. Worst-case scenario, I still have all the books.

 

[TerraDave]

MV is great. Both flavor and crunch better then MM1 and 2 (and less niche then 3).

Not sure on your second question. I do know, as a DM, having access to the compendium, adventure tools (aka monster builder), and, sometimes, charecter builder has been super handy.

 

[Chaltab]

Both the Adventure Tools and the Character Builder sheets can easily be saved to your computer with a print-function like PDF Creator or Foxit--note that some programs like this come bundled with unwanted programs and/or spyware so make sure you're getting it clean.

 

[Lichemaster]

I will be getting a DDI membership for Next but wanted to know if I could pillage all the power cards and magic items in card form before Next just in case they pull support for 4th?

To bad I really wanted to get as many cards for 4th incase it did go.

Also I purchased all the tokens set already, used but like new.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

The meaning of "cards" is a bit unclear here.

The Power Cards like they were available as separate products are not available in DDI as such. DDI incorporates these cards in the Character Builder where they become part of each character sheet, complete with all the variables calculated for you character's equipment. But there is no function like "generate a PDF file containing all power cards".

If you want to save each power's description (and what else in on a power card?), you could use the Compendium to call up each power's corrected rules text and copy&paste it to whatever software you prefer. But with literally thousands of powers this would be quite a chore.

 

[Uller]

Monster Vault was a very good product. I started 4e with the Red Box and essentials books.

Once I subscribed to DDI, I pretty much stopped buying or using hard copy books except for flavor/fluff related books (I did buy the Threats of Nentir Vale book which was also a great product). I no longer play 4e and have let my DDI subscription lapse. Once Next is released and they resume Dragon/Dungeon i will probably resubscribe (I'll purchase the core books and pdf's of any adventures)

I never felt a need to print _everything_ from DDI (not really sure you could even if you tried), but when I wanted a digital copy of some of my customized monsters I used cutepdf:

http://www.cutepdf.com/

 

[delericho]

1. Is the Monster Vault Essential worth picking up? (I already own MM 1-3 and have all the Pathfinder Pawns and many DnD minis)
Is the book better then the current MM 1?

As others have said, yes. The "monster math" changed between the publication of MM2 and MM3, and makes a big difference to the way the game plays. The "Monster Vault" updates a lot of older monsters with this new math.

Of course, if you have a DDI subscription you don't need it, since the new math is available there...

2. D&D Insider.
Can I make all the cards and save them to my computer?
Basically can I buy a 3 month membership and save every power and magic item to my home computer to print out at a later date?

Sort of. If you generate a character, you can save it to file, print the character sheet to PDF, or whatever.

But there isn't any means made available to simply dump out all that data automatically. And although there are workarounds, the EULA for DDI has a clause under which you agree not to use any unauthorised means to copy the data. (Of course, who actually reads EULAs?)

 

[cavalier973]

I need a few questions answered before I pick up a few items.

1. Is the Monster Vault Essential worth picking up? (I already own MM 1-3 and have all the Pathfinder Pawns and many DnD minis)
Is the book better then the current MM 1?

2. D&D Insider.
Can I make all the cards and save them to my computer?
Basically can I buy a 3 month membership and save every power and magic item to my home computer to print out at a later date?

If you want a bunch of tokens, and the adventure that's included with the Monster Vault, then I would get it. If you just want the manual itself, then I'd suggest checking out second-hand bookstores; I've seen copies of just the manual there.

To save every power and magic item would be labor-intensive, but what you might do, is create a "houseruled" character for each class, and give him every power for that class, then save the character as a PDF. The Power Cards would be at the end of the character sheet, and you could print-copy-cut-paste the particular powers that you want. You could add magic items onto him, too, or create a separate character that only has the magic items. If you print from the online Compendium, then you'll get all the information, but it wouldn't be in the "Power Card" format.