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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4929635" data-attributes="member: 2067">Yep. I'm 100% not disagreeing with you there. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Which is why I think it's a wash -- you can't effectively make a "But you need supplement X to do archetype Y well!" case against any version of D&D, because EVERY version of D&D has that problem. This I disagree with, but I'm willing to bet that experiences here are much more subjective than elsewhere. Because D&D has always been team-based, "small in the pants" was relative to the amount of spotlight time a given player of a given class was...er...given by the DM, such as by choosing enemies that targeted specific saves or whatever. My 3e games never had any issues with the fighters and other melee classes feeling like they could kick butt (example memorable 3e character: a frenzied berserker gnome who fell at terminal velocity into lava and WOULD NOT DIE), but I totally believe others did, and am on board with beefing up martial options regardless of my disagreement with that experience. Still, again, it's basically a wash. You can't really successfully argue "3e needed a lot of supplements!" and then turn around and say "4e doesn't need a lot of supplements!", nor can you really successfully argue the reverse. You could argue that both needed too many supplements, but that's a whole different bag of issues to deal with. Ah, your issue was with the word "need"? Okay, let's clarify a little.4e has greater implied need of supplements than 3e did, because part of 3e's philosophy was that everything supported three core rulebooks, while 4e's philosophy is that almost everything *is* a core rulebook, with "core" carrying the implication that you need it to play a fully-functional game. While you can play 4e without the PHBII, the game assumes you have the PHBII, and without the PHBII, your value in 4e overall decreases ("Primal Power" holds no appeal for you without primal characters, ferex), while 3e never assumed that you would use any particular supplement, but you could if you wanted to (well, with a minor exception in some later products, but certainly much more rarely). Technically, you don't need more than the three basic books in any edition, but 4e certainly places much more emphasis on people owning future books than 3e did.Still, same conclusion: it's a wash, because both have a functional need for supplements (that is, in order to play a more fully realized range of archetypes, you need more supplements to do so). The DDI is an edge in this, though I think we can call the DDI more or less "edition neutral," since it's an organizational tool, not a true inherent feature of 4e itself.</blockquote>

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