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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6358462" data-attributes="member: 42582">Those are good sources to run a campaign from, on the player side. You have a good range of classes, powers and feats.There are a lot of items in AV. Some are good. Some are a bit crappy. But you'll get by. If you find AV2 or Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium somewhere cheap, they both tend to have better items.You are a bit light-on for monsters, though the MM monsters will work OK at low levels. Once you get to around 7th/8th level you'll find that there damage is a bit low - MM is built on an expected damage output of 7.5 +half monster level on a hit, whereas later on this was upgraded to 8 + level. Upper heroic tier is where you start to notice the difference, and feel the need for the higher damage to put pressure on the players and their PCs.The single best monster book, as others have said, is Monster Vault.There is quite a lot of errata for the PHB, and some for the other books you list. A lot of it is non-essential, especially at lower levels and if your players aren't pushing the system very hard. But it does, overall, improve play. I've had a look on the WotC website, but since their recent reorganisation I can't find it. If you email me at my username dot yahoo dot com, I can send you the errata PDF.The main book that you don't have that I would recommend if you can find it is the Rules Compendium. This came out with the Essentials line. It is basically a restatement of the core rules from the PHB and DMG (but no classes, races, items etc - just the action resolution rules and encounter building guidelines), tightened up and with the relevant errata incorporated.If you can't find the RC, the biggest piece of errata that (for some bizarre reason) is not incorporated in the official errata document is the change to the DC-by-level table. The one in the DMG is no good - the DCs tend to be too hard. The one in the Errata PDF is no good either - the DCs tend to be too low.Here is the proper chart (the layout isn't beautiful, but the numbers, in order, are Level, Easy DC, Moderate DC, Hard DC):[code]1 8 12 19        16 16 22 31 2 9 13 20        17 16 23 31 3 9 13 21        18 17 23 32 4 10 14 21        19 17 24 33 5 10 15 22        20 18 25 34 6 11 15 23        21 19 26 35 7 11 16 23        22 20 27 36 8 12 16 24        23 20 27 37 9 12 17 25        24 21 28 37 10 13 18 26        25 21 29 38 11 13 19 27        26 22 29 39 12 14 20 28        27 22 30 39 13 14 20 29        28 23 30 40 14 15 21 29        29 23 31 41 15 15 22 30        30 24 32 42[/code]See my comments above. I played with the original MM from 1st to 6th level with no problems at all. It's at levels above that that the wonky damage maths starts to show itself.Essentials is 5 books: the RC and MV, mentioned above; the DM Kit, which is basically a reprint of the DMG with a few bits from the DMG2 thrown in, and basically forgettable except for the adventure it contains; and two player books (Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms/Fallen Lands). The players books contain new classes and feats; all fine options, but you're equally fine without them.The single best thing you can do as a 4e GM is, when your players declare some wacky action for their PCs, go along with it and use the rules to help you. In 4e the rules really are your friend.For instance, in one of my early games the paladin wanted to say a prayer to help against a wight he was fighting. I had him make a Medium Religion check as a minor action - on a success he gets combat advantage for the round, on a failure he takes 1d10 psychic damage as the evil nature of the wight blocks his attempt to make contact with his deity.Use the DC charts, and the damage-by-level charts, the keywords of powers, the skill descriptions, and the action economy of the game, to handle this sort of stuff, and you almost can't go wrong. It's a very forgiving system in that sense.(<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?299440-Exploration-scenarios-my-experiment-last-Sunday" target="_blank">Here</a>'s a link to a write-up of a session I ran (the PCs were around 9th level or so) that gives more examples of how to handle this sort of improvisation.)</blockquote>

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