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Dexter_Blacktyde wrote:

We'll have to sort things out a bit. We've been mostly talking about the symptoms here (about which, as I've stated before, I don't even care), and I admit, I allowed myself to get carried away discussing the symptoms although I just care about the principle. On the other hand, I've stated several times that I don't care that the bard wasn't introduced in the PHB. I just don't care. At all. Likewise I've expressly stated that the guys at WotC can do with their property whatever the heck they please. I just voiced my amazement at the willingness of so many people to take WotC's "We didn't have the time" excuse (come on, seriously!) at face value and to defend it, whereas they probably wouldn't accept this "We didn't have the time" nonsense from other companies. This isn't about the question whether the customers playing bards, druids, gnomes or what have you were entitled to get these options in the PHB, this isn't about the question if such an expectation was justified even though WotC carefully avoided promising them. It's about the refusal of some people to consider the possibility that the "time" excuse just might have been hogwash, as if no one at WotC could ever be so business-minded to deliberately exclude these options only to have something to promote PHB2 with - as if that was totally improbable, in contrast to the time issue.

DB

I'm perfectly willing that some of them probably were left out to make PHB2 more attractive to potential buyers. At the same time, they do have a deadline for when the books have to be done, ready to be sent to the printer, to meet the publication deadline at (GenCon?). Yet I (and I suspect you) have seen plenty of computer games that shipped either with less content than promised because it couldn't be done in time and got taken out, or with content that doesn't work properly because it was left in despite not being really ready. Given some of the existing flaws in 4e (the original skill challenge, how Stealth worked, wizards At-Wills) as it was published, I don't believe they should have included more material until it worked as they wanted it to.

On your question about layout, there's a simple test which can show you why layout has to be different in every language. Write a paragraph in English. Then write it in German, or another language you're familiar with. Compare how much space they take up. That's what you're dealing with in book layout.

I still disagree, though, for two reasons, the first being very subjective: I don't think the only purpose of a PHB is to deliver information, I think it's equally important to create atmosphere, so I don't think putting all rules a player might need some day into the book that has to lay the groundwork is the way to go.

While you do say this is a subjective reason, I do want to point out that WotC seems to have made a specific business decision to keep setting specific fluff largely out of the PHBs. Instead it's found in more DM centered books (the DMG covers a bit of the new default setting and portions of it are covered in things like the Manuel of the Planes and Open Grave) and in the Campaign Setting (and Player's Guide) books.

From my subjective viewpoint as a graphic designer (whose job is basically to decide how to lay things out within the confines of a client's parameters) 4E has done an excellent job of segregating the information into discreet elements and (the really hard part) keeping it that way. Information on Characters can be found in the PHB's with options for specific power sources in the Power Books, for additional items in the the Adventurer's Vaults, and for campaign specific options in the Player's Guide To X series). Information on settings for the DM can be found in the Campaign Setting books. Information on Monsters is found in the Monster Manuals.

Actually, my biggest complaint with WotC is that their Manual of the Planes, Open Grave, and Dragonomicon do not fit cleanly into their otherwise solid model, because they do include both monsters and player options. Given its layout the Manual of the Planes almost could have been split into a "Players Guide to Planescape" (all the player options) and "Planescape Campaign Setting" (the monsters and various secrets) but it wasn't and to me that's sloppy.

Likewise, the rituals from Open Grave and the Dragonomicon probably should have been moved elsewhere because then you could put both books the sub-head of the Monster Manuals (MM:Open Grave and MM: Dragonomicon) offering additional information on running encounters with the undead and dragons.

The second reason is that D&D is the rules background for different settings. In the past, some settings had tremendous difficulty rewriting the rules, because the importance and availability of magic items didn't harmonize with the setting. That's not going to get better.

Another thing I want to point out that was covered in the promo books is that the 4E team also made the design decision to NOT make 4E a generic campaign world. They don't go into great detail on the setting itself, but the game is built around certain key premises, one of which is that the players possessing a certain level of magic at a given level is calculated into the math for the game. If you deny the party magic items (at least the basics of weapon/implement, armor, and neck-slot item) then they will fall behind the monster attack bonuses and defenses.

That's not to say there aren't some easy work-arounds;

-Do away with all but the most basic forms of the weapons/implements, armor, and neck-slot items (i.e. magic X +1-6) and declare them masterwork quality items (rather than magical) that make them easier to wield or provide better defense.

-Do away with all magic items and give the PC's a +1 bonus to attack, damage, and all defenses at levels 3, 8, 13, 18, 23, and 28 with an additional +1 to AC at levels 11 and 21 if wearing light armor or +2 if wearing heavy armor.

-Do away with all magic items and add +1 to the effective level of all monsters at levels 3, 8, 13, 18, 23, and 28 for purposes of determining their level of difficulty (i.e. if the players have no magic items then a Rakashasa Warrior is more like a level 18 soldier than a level 15).

... So there ARE workarounds, but the core math of the game isn't built around a magic poor world... and while some worlds were built around that concept in the past, I doubt you're going to see those worlds brought back by WotC during 4E's lifespan, or if they are, expect them to be reworked enough so that the core math can still work (Dark Sun for example is unlikely to see daylight in any official capacity by WotC unless the massive restrictions on arcane... and only arcane... casters are reworked in some manner, because gimping the wizard doesn't make the setting fun for the wizard).

I'm by no means a graphic designer, but does what you're saying here go for the whole world or just for America? I'm genuinely interested, because my impression has always been that there was a discernable difference in layout between American and European releases.

There are always going to be culture-specific influences on graphic design layout, that's unavoidable. Some of the difference is linguistics. As another poster pointed out, try writing the same thing in English, German, and Japanese and you're going to get sentences of differing length, which means you either need to grow or shrink the font to keep the page count the same or you need to add or remove pages to deal with it. I don't even want to think about how you'd have to translate the material into a language where lines of text run vertically rather than horizontally (traditional Chinese for example).

Another part is just cultural norms. If the traditional novel layout in one country uses 12 point font and indented first lines of paragraphs, while in another the tradition is 13 point font and a blank line between each paragraph, the the second layout is going to take up a lot more space. To the reader in the first country a book from the second is going to look like they bloated the material to expand the page count. To the reader in the second country a book from the first is going to look like a wall of text.

That's why I've been pretty surprised by and impressed with the amount of content the 3e core books offered.

The interesting thing is that 4E PHB actually packs more raw crunch into it's page count than the 3E PHB does into its. There are actually more powers in the 4E PHB than there are spells in the 3E PHB. There are more feats as well. There are magic items. And this was done with an identical page count.

The difference is that the 4E fireball spell takes up only nine lines of text while the 3E equivalent takes up 43 lines of text. It spends line after line telling us that the explosion creates a low roar and creates almost no pressure, that it damages unattended objects, that you point your finger and determine the range (distance and height) at which the fireball is to burst, that a glowing pea-sized bead streaks from the pointing digit and gives a spiel on intervening barriers, and that it can melt some metals, and finally that the material component is a tiny ball of bat guano and sulfer.

By way of comparison... the 4E version says "A globe of orange flame coalesces in your hand. You hurl it at your enemies and it explodes on impact." then gives everything you need to know about the mechanics in six lines of text.

If you look at the 3e and 4e PHBs laid out next to each other, they're different like night and day, and going by the number of characters alone, 3e takes 4e out to the shed and beats it with a shovel.

There's a rule of writing which feel should be brought up in this regard, "Don't spend a paragraph when a sentence will do." The point is that a good evocative sentence will capture the reader's imagination more than a paragraph of specific details. 4E's description of the fireball tells the reader everything they need to know to get an image of what the fireball spell is supposed to look like in their head. Additional detail like the fact it can melt soft metals or has no pressure wave is NOT going to add to that and so is largely just detail for detail's sake. It's seen as wasted space by most editors.

Which is why the 4E PHB can get 8-10 powers per page while the 3.5 PHB only managed about 5-7 spells per page.

So would you say 3e's layout is a faux pas, from a graphic designer's point of view?

Looking at the 3.5 PHB, I'd say I need to answer in two parts. The front half of the book that deals with races, classes, skills, feats, and the combat rules is well laid out. It's a little wordy in places and the font could probably stand to be a point or two larger, but it's got enough artwork and other graphic elements to break the monotony of the dense text so it's a perfectly acceptable layout. I'd probably give it an A- because of the too small font, but it's otherwise great.

But the spell section? Is abysmal. Over 120 pages of even denser font (the font is the same size, but they decreased the leading, or space between characters, noticably in the spell section) in three text wall columns with a grand total of six illustrations (two of which are small, in-column pieces that do little to break the monotony of the presentation). That's one graphical element every 20 pages, which is pretty much a failing grade even for technical journals, but in a product meant to appeal to a broad segment of the english speaking market is just pure unadulterated FAIL (if there's a grade below F- it would likely be there). To meet every minimum standard I've ever had to deal with the magic section would need about ten-times as much space devoted to artwork and the arwork needs to be significant enough that it breaks up the page in some way to draw interest.

A general rule of thumb I've actually picked up over the years is that the denser the text the more graphical elements you need to break it up. People (the majority of English-speakers anyway) generally only read dense blocks of text like the spell section presents because they HAVE to, not because they want to. It may, in part, explain some of the intimidation factor I've found with new players wanting to play spell-casters (it's anecdotal, but pretty much every new player I've encountered passes on spell-casters for something "simpler" like a fighter or rogue or similar non-caster and can't help but think the layout of 3E's spell section might be a big part of that).

Overall I'd give the 3.5 PHB a solid C grade from a graphic design standpoint. It's passable, but the superior layout of it's front half (A-) is dragged down by the abysmal spell section that comprises the back half (F).

By contrast, I'd give the 4E PHB an A- grade in terms of graphic design. It's well laid out and illustrated, but I'd mark it down a bit because I don't particularly like how they switch fonts between power descriptions/rule points and the rest of the text. I understand WHY they thought it might be a good idea, but I don't think it worked well enough in actual execution to be worth the disharmony between the two font styles.

Because if it is, then I don't belong to the target demographic since I love getting as much bang as possible for my buck.

I don't imagine you are and the fact is you can't market to everyone. What the 4E team decided was to market to broadest possible market possible for their product (which is what any business should be doing... their primary responsibility is to their share-holders, the people who have invested money into the company to allow it to operate) and to try and expand the reach of their product (expand their niche).

That said, bang for the buck is relative too. As I pointed out above, the 4E PHB actually has MORE powers/spells and feats, plus magic items, in the same page count as the 3.5 PHB, so if your criteria was just number of powers/feats, then 4E wins over 3.5. For some, bang for the buck is going to be a cohesive rule system. For others its going to be an richly detailed and immersive world (you seem to fall into this category) that includes such details as what material components you need to cast a specific spell. Others would view it as how many different settings can we actually simulate with this rule set.

If this thought is so revolutionarily evil as you're making it out to be right now, then I'm wondering why in 30 years there hasn't been at least a single protester's march on the streets demanding the inclusion in the PHB.

To quote a musical... "The Papa. The Papa. TRADITION!!!"
Prior editions of the game had magic items in DMG because that's where they'd always been. Because originally the DM was the sole arbiter of their distribution and because, certain monsters with their "must be this tall to fight" resistance to non-magical weapons aside, it was entirely possible to be an effective member of the party without magic items.

3E changed the equation though by making crafting magic items a part of the core mechanics of the game. Take the right feat, get enough gold, and pay the xp, and you can make any magic item you want. The moment the 3E team made that decision they SHOULD have moved the magic item section to the PHB, because it's now a resource used and created by player characters. While magic items may be found as part of adventuring, they're no better than what a character could craft for themselves and so are not a mysterious and wonderous item, they're just a resource that's no different than a level one fighter scavenging a suit of full-plate or a masterwork sword off a fallen foe.

That they didn't move them was because of tradition. What this led to was lots of players referencing the DMG and other theoretically DM-only material just to be able to use abilities the PHB gave them. This led to a large number of optional DM rules (prestige classes, leadership, and improved familiars) becoming the presumed default for many games (there's a player in my area I know who's model of play was to not just play a summoner wizard, but to also abuse the leadership rules to utterly dominate the game... because the DM had to figure out how to deal with the horde of followers coming along everwhere).

If the players are supposed to be using something, especially if it's a big system like magic items, it needs to go into a book all the players are expected to use and have access to, not into a resource that only the GM is expected to use and have access to.

Maybe. I'm not very comfortable with that, though -- I liked the mystery in magic.

That's what artifacts are for. As detailed in the 4E DMG, artifacts are your only allowed in at the DM's whim items with hidden powers that fit perfectly the type of thing you want. In 4E artifacts don't HAVE to be unique nor super-powerful either, though giving them specific names even if it's just "The Sword of Saint Bathomier" certainly lends them a better mystique.

In a general sense it's also hard to have mystery in magic in D&D because out of 18 PC current classes only four do not use magical power in some way. The other 14 use either arcane, divine, or primal magic on a regular basis.

Likewise, general purpose magic items are far less powerful than their 3E equivalents. Indeed, they are generally weaker or more limited than actual PC powers. What's so incredible about a belt that, once per encounter, gives you a +2 bonus to save vs. poison when compared to the ability to hurl balls of fire at your foes at will? That wand of magic missile mastery may be nice, but without the ability to actually hurl bolts of magic force from your fingertips to begin with, it's really not all that impressive.

Maybe it would help to think of 4E magic items as the equivalent of 3E potions and scrolls; comparitively minor pieces of magic that provide a buff to the capabilities of the players. Meanwhile the real 3E magic items would be consider more akin to artifacts in 4E; powerful magic items that bestow major abilities which a character would not otherwise have.

Not to mention that if this is true, it means that magic items are now part of the character optimization process more than they were in 3E (in which the 'Big Six' were pretty much what most people looked after, and perhaps a few odd items).

I've never heard the term 'Big Six' applied to items in 3E, but for 4E you really only NEED to keep three items up to snuff... your weapon/implement, your armor, and your neck slot item. Everything else is gravy; it will provide some bonuses or a minor power, but the bulk of your effectiveness is going to be determined by those three items.