PHB Book Layout - Good or No so Good

[Jhaelen]

All in all the layout is adequate, I guess. It really is better for finding stuff than books in previous editions.

Getting past the 'wall of powers' was difficult when I first read the book from cover to cover (which I always do). In more recent books it's become easier for me to read them since I'm now acquainted with the format.

I don't think the layout is attractive, though. At least the art improved in PHB2...

 

[nightwyrm]

You guys read through all the powers when you first read through the PHB? Wow, I just skip them. I'd read through the first 10 lvs of powers if I was interested in that class but really...do people read through all the spells in older edition too?

If anything, I like the layout of the powers (by level) far better than the alphabetical layout of 3.5 spells. Coming from 2nd ed, it was annoying to not have all the full description of spells of the same level at one place when I'm levelling up and choosing spells.

I guess an index of all the powers would be useful, but really, how often does the DM not remember what classes his players were.

 

[malraux]

Interesting point.

The problem with the PHB, any PHB, is that it's meant to be many things in one. It has to be part instruction manual, part reference book, part world guide, as well as part entertainment.

The best ones, through the history of RPGs strike a good balance between these things.

But it's one of the reason that making any PHB, for any system is fairly difficult, IMO.

Perhaps the PHB could be better at being a good PHB, which would involve a balance of all of those things. But if the point was to be best at helping the game as a whole, rather than on its own terms, then the trade offs are different. If the PHB is slightly less entertaining to read, but increases playability of the game at the table, then I'd say that's a worthwhile tradeoff.

 

[billd91]

I'd say the layout is the best thing about the 4e PH, better than all of its predecessors for my money. I was able to pretty much master where everything was that I would need to look up in the 4e version far faster than any previous version. None beat it for clarity or readability for reference purposes.

It could have been improved with some of the comments made above - more and better indexing, more play examples, moving magic items to the DMG - but overall it's far and away the best PH for looking stuff up quickly at the game table.

 

[billd91]

Perhaps the PHB could be better at being a good PHB, which would involve a balance of all of those things. But if the point was to be best at helping the game as a whole, rather than on its own terms, then the trade offs are different. If the PHB is slightly less entertaining to read, but increases playability of the game at the table, then I'd say that's a worthwhile tradeoff.

Some might argue you could achieve a measure of both - more evocative style with examples of play, tone and mood setting passages - but at the cost of increasing the bulk and expense.

IF a trade-off is necessary between utility and entertainment, going with utility for a game rulebook is the correct choice.

 

[billd91]

And again for 3), neither an alphabetical listing of all powers nor even a list of powers sorted by class and type (but without rules) will help you choose a class. You need to see the full text of the powers to decide if you want them or not.

Think of playing in a con game with pre-gens where the powers or feats are listed by just their name but not explained in full detail. Or perhaps someone asks "What does <power X> do again?"

It's not about building a character as much as it is about understanding a character without having a trail of breadcrumbs detailing exactly how he was built.

 

[Toben the Many]

Perhaps the PHB could be better at being a good PHB, which would involve a balance of all of those things. But if the point was to be best at helping the game as a whole, rather than on its own terms, then the trade offs are different. If the PHB is slightly less entertaining to read, but increases playability of the game at the table, then I'd say that's a worthwhile tradeoff.

What I was referring to is not just being an entertaining read, but also evoking mood and excitement through its very production value.

I could really go off on a tangent here, but if you look a something like the Harry Potter books in there U.S. edition, those books have an extremely evocative production value. The texture of their covers. The feel of their pages. The font. All of that makes you want to pick up a Harry Potter book from the shelf, even if you've never heard of HP and look at the book.

In terms of that kind of production value, I think that the 3e and even the 2e PHBs have more of the "pick me up off of the shelf" appeal than the 4e PHB does.

I don't think that you have to sacrifice production value for ease of use, either. None of the things I pointed out would have made finding information in the book or on the page harder.

But ultimately, it may not really matter. D&D is almost exclusively a word-of-mouth hobby. If someone's going to play D&D, they're going to play D&D, whether the book is pretty or not.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

The book has bad fonts, bad use of white space, few art, almost no examples of play, and little to no fluff. As someone else mentioned, the pictures become really problematic on the classes section. Ok, the priest is a guy holding a mace. So priests are...people who hold up maces? Next class is fighter, and he...well, he also has a mace. But he's got a shield too. Is that what seperates the two classes? After that is paladin, who is a night elf (DON'T GIVE ME THAT, EVEN HIS DAMN HAIRCUT IS FROM WoW, THE EXACT DAMN HAIRCUT) with a two handed sword. We skip ahead to the warlock and - well dammit all, it's a person holding a mace. Wait, there's a scary head in the background! The worst is the warlord picture because it's the fighter picture only with a dwarf. There is NO DIFFERENCE between the warlord picture and fighter picture save race. I feel the need to point out that almost none of the paragon classes have a picture. What makes all this even worse is the huge absence of fluff. The paragon classes have one paragraph each. Even the classes themselves typically only have two or three rather short paragraphs defining them. It's all mechanics.

So it's a reference book.

But there's no power index, the previously mentioned problems with fonts and white space, and very rarely is there something to break up the WALLS OF TEXT that occur in the powers section. In previous D&D books, every few pages in the spells section, there'd be a picture illustrating one of the spells going off. The 4e PHB lacks this, with each version of the wall typically having a single picture, and it makes the walls even...wallsier. The format also hurts here, as the paragon classes are absorbed into the wall - they have no picture and only one small paragraph before going right back into more powers. The feats are badly organized; again, compare it to 3.5 books. Typically on the first full page of feats, you have the list of all the feats, and they're divided into subsections - general feats, metamagic, racial feats, etc. 4e gives you two full pages of feats before the list, and the list isn't divided; rather, each tier has it's own section. However, each section has it's own list, instead of putting them in the first list and merely giving it a division. It's needlessly confusing. Lastly, no glossary means you can't just flip to the front or back of the book and quickly get the information you need.

So it's a reference book...but it's bad at being a reference book.

All around fail, in my opinion.

 

[Gort]

Well, it's certainly a lot better to have a PHB you barely need to look at (I think magic items and character generation is all we use ours for) than every spellcaster needing to have a copy of the PHB open on their lap for the entirety of the game.

In reference to the thread title, when did the word "bad" become a bad word?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Well, it's certainly a lot better to have a PHB you barely need to look at (I think magic items and character generation is all we use ours for) than every spellcaster needing to have a copy of the PHB open on their lap for the entirety of the game.

In reference to the thread title, when did the word "bad" become a bad word?

Maybe B.A.D.D has acquired a trademark for it?