Li Shenron
Legend
Quantity of the content is important, and fairly easy to define. The PHB alone should have enough material to cover all the iconic character concepts and to generate a large array of different characters within each class. Ideally IMO it should allow at least couple of years of regular (e.g. 1/week) gaming without getting the feeling that you're running short of character options.
I think 3e fell slightly short of that, most notably there weren't enough feats in the core for enough variations on non-martial characters, so that players who didn't want to boost combat often just didn't know which feats to pick. The first wave of 3.0 splatbooks took care of that with plenty of feats, but in retrospective if the 3.0 PHB had had ~10 extra pages of feats and ~2 extra pages of clerical domains it would have been perfect.
Now the stakes are high on number of subclasses, that's going to make a fair amount of difference. I'd say that with 4-5 subclasses each class and double that many (8-10) for Clerics and Wizards would be a safe number. But my feeling is that the designers think subclasses are the new prestige classes, i.e. what allowed them to sell hundreds of splatbooks in 3e, and will be conservative with their number in the PHB (2-3 each class) exactly so that players will need to buy more supplements. There is also a problem with feats, even worse than in the 3.0 PHB since feats are bigger and thus it's harder to design lots of them, but the point is that at the moment if you don't want combat feats or multiclassing feats, your choice is really very limited.
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Quality of content is the other side of the problem...
I am ok with spending up to 200e to start playing a new edition, but then I expect the following:
(1) errata-free books: I'd rather spend 70e for such a PHB than saving money but having errors
(2) not see a revision of the edition for at least 5 years
(3) high-profile, inspiring artwork that doesn't indulge in violence or sexism
(4) smooth writing for God's sake... write the game rules for normal people, not for wanna-be scientists (i.e. avoid jargon or rules that have to be deciphered and cross-referenced all the time to be understood) but neither for retarted (i.e. don't take half a page to describe what you can describe understandably in one sentence)
With regard to point (3), the 3e core books were fine. I'd like to see artwork that would satisfy ENWorld's "Eric's Granma" rules. It doesn't have to follow victorian standards of pruderie, but at least be sensible and family-oriented. And it doesn't have to be A LOT of art. Rather save some space and money by putting less or smaller pictures, than putting bad pictures.
I think 3e fell slightly short of that, most notably there weren't enough feats in the core for enough variations on non-martial characters, so that players who didn't want to boost combat often just didn't know which feats to pick. The first wave of 3.0 splatbooks took care of that with plenty of feats, but in retrospective if the 3.0 PHB had had ~10 extra pages of feats and ~2 extra pages of clerical domains it would have been perfect.
Now the stakes are high on number of subclasses, that's going to make a fair amount of difference. I'd say that with 4-5 subclasses each class and double that many (8-10) for Clerics and Wizards would be a safe number. But my feeling is that the designers think subclasses are the new prestige classes, i.e. what allowed them to sell hundreds of splatbooks in 3e, and will be conservative with their number in the PHB (2-3 each class) exactly so that players will need to buy more supplements. There is also a problem with feats, even worse than in the 3.0 PHB since feats are bigger and thus it's harder to design lots of them, but the point is that at the moment if you don't want combat feats or multiclassing feats, your choice is really very limited.
---
Quality of content is the other side of the problem...
I am ok with spending up to 200e to start playing a new edition, but then I expect the following:
(1) errata-free books: I'd rather spend 70e for such a PHB than saving money but having errors
(2) not see a revision of the edition for at least 5 years
(3) high-profile, inspiring artwork that doesn't indulge in violence or sexism
(4) smooth writing for God's sake... write the game rules for normal people, not for wanna-be scientists (i.e. avoid jargon or rules that have to be deciphered and cross-referenced all the time to be understood) but neither for retarted (i.e. don't take half a page to describe what you can describe understandably in one sentence)
With regard to point (3), the 3e core books were fine. I'd like to see artwork that would satisfy ENWorld's "Eric's Granma" rules. It doesn't have to follow victorian standards of pruderie, but at least be sensible and family-oriented. And it doesn't have to be A LOT of art. Rather save some space and money by putting less or smaller pictures, than putting bad pictures.
