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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ourchair" data-source="post: 5333335" data-attributes="member: 85362">Before you think about whether the rules are up to date are not, and try to ensure that everything in your startup kit is errata-maxed, I think you should consider the potential satisfaction you get from the system. You can get away with playing 4th Edition without errata, so long as everyone at the table is having fun, and the DM is reasonable and capable of resolving problematic points in mechanics.For example: While there's a significant amount of errata that makes major changes to powers -- Magic Missile, et al -- a larger chunk of errata is really just nitpicking adjustments like rewriting the phraseology of the Stealth rules so that people stop exploiting the wording so they can perform cheese maneuvers. Simply put, the errata is unnecessary if a DM can say, "NO. I don't care how you read the wording, you cannot perform your cheese maneuver since the rule was obviously not intended that way."Regardless most of the moving parts that are addressed by errata lie in powers and race and class features that are up dated in the character builder. Not that you should feel required to have a DDI subscription, but if you pay for a few months subscription, the broken bits are mostly taken care of for you until the next major set of revisions which frankly, tend to only occur when big changes happen in new supplements. I think it's really unnecessary for you to invest in all of these books at once. I completely agree with you. I prefer to learn from a book, even if I run a game using mostly digital tools and pieces of prefab content. I think you should mix it up then. Get a combination of books while using those materials.My recommendation? Think in terms of needs.LEARN HOW TO DESIGN: Dungeon Master's Guide 1/Dungeon Master's Kit.LEARN HOW TO PLAY: Player's Handbook 1/Heroes of the Fallen Lands.BUILD ANY CHARACTER, REVISED W/ ERRATA: Character Builder (DDI)USE ANY MONSTER, W/ NEW STAT BLOCK: Adventure Tools (DDI)I think it's not so necessary to have complete books. 4E is based on a premise of simple baseline rules, broken by multiple exceptions (as given by character abilities). In that sense, the later supplements merely add on complexity and options.The additional DMG2 adds mechanical options -- as well as more 'fluffy' storytelling techniques -- that can help build a better game, but aren't really crucial if you're a pretty creative person yourself. The additional PHBs don't really address anything critical to play EXCEPT for the mechanics unique to the classes (i.e. How to use psionics, et al). All the basic rules are in the first PHBThe Monster Manuals have some fluff that helps you make contextual sense of the monsters in the Adventure Tools, but aren't really necessary if you're just a creative person who will make your own monsters or take existing ones and 'reimagine' by renaming their powers and changing their descriptions.I've never EVER played World of Warcraft, but it's like World of Warcraft in the sense that the characters are designed to work as a team and have clear cut roles in how to do that and combat is a highly tactical affair (and sometimes, a time-consuming one if you don't take measures to avoid it)That's pretty much where the similarities end, as far as I'm concerned. 4th Edition can seem very videogamey if you take the books at "page value" by throwing your players into one combat after another, and reducing all non-combat situations into a series of lifeless skill checks.But if you're creative and have a flair for taking these components and making them into a narrative string that is exciting ("We chased the bad guys on a moving train, but then it crashed! And then we had to fight! But then the enemy surrendered, so we had to interrogate him! But it turns out he was a good guy, so we had to investigate and find out who the real traitor was!") then it's nothing like World of Warcraft.As for customization: there's a lot of that in 4th Edition. You can make a broad range of characters, so long as your players can find creative ways to justify the gamey things they choose, like creating rich backgrounds for why they've built an Elven Swordmage/Artificer or taken a story angle as to why they've inherited the Mark of Warding. You might miss being able to take skills like "Ride" or "Craft" but those are things a DM handwaves by communicating with his players about what they want their characters to be, rather than requiring them to invest character-building resources in them at the expense of more meaningful tasks like uh, role-playing.</blockquote>

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