One of the things that really annoyed me about the fan response to 4e was whining that "the books look like reference manuals and aren't a pleasure to read." 4e is hand-down the absolute winner among D&D editions for organization and layout, because when I am referencing a book in a game, I want it to be a reference manual. But WotC needs to also cater to the crowd that has no friends and can't play D&D, so all they can do is read the books, I guess.
For the PHB the lay out of individual sections is superb. Inclusion of material in chapters is never perfect but really good.
Where the PHB for 4e falls over is the ORDER of the chapters once you get past classes. Skills are separated from combat and adventuring by feats and equipment. Rituals are shoved in the back. PHB2 & 3 also have some order problems, but much, much less pronounced.
The other sort of problem is that 90% of 4e is laid out so very nicely and accessibly, that when things are NOT it really stands out. 4e has a lexicon of keywords and very specific terms but the glossary of them isn't sort of buried in the class introduction.
The lexicon also has a problem with words that are sometimes used in the specific Mechanical sense, and sometimes in a flavor text, and its very clear they were shoehorned by using the words other editions used.
On a marginally related note, how do y'all feel about homebrew systems?
I know a lot of people say "The best system for you is the one you build yourself" but I hardly hear any talk on the subject outside of that.
Most of the conversations I see online circulate around the industry & what's going on with official products.
I'll see some people pop up & go "I'm making a game, go look at my kickstarter" but almost nothing else on the topic.
Yet when I talk to people one on one, most are excited to jump in and dev their own game if not multiple.
So why does the topic of it just whither on the vine in public spaces?
Homebrewing is making something hyper-focused for a specific table. A lot of homebrew would be utterly broken away from the table it is developed for.
Some groups, you can give them the magic Light Sword that will slice through any material and they'll use it to bypass DR on golems as it was intended.
Other groups will think outside the box and use it start cutting open doors.
Other groups will instead focus on breaking the game and ask "how long would it take to use this to drill into the underdark?".
folklore solved that by having certain encounters be "skirmishes" where you don't bust out the map and minis, you just roll towards an enemies skirmish stats till either everyone is dead or flees.
maybe wotc & co want to save time and bet on a DM's common sense, like not rolling dice for everything.
also liked the 4e art, but maybe that's just me...
The problem with "Skirmishes" is how tanky 4e characters are if you give them 5 minutes to catch their breath.
In one campaign, the party had to cross a dangerous area regularly. So I reduced the complexity to "Roll Nature/Streetwise/Dungeoneering, pull some things off the RET, and then have them roll and just peel off healing surges" and someone in the party could sacrifice a daily to just auto-win a random encounter. The issue was dinging them for healing surges wasn't a great deterrent because one long rest and they were back to full. So it was mostly just pointless and slightly frustrating for players.
The only real solution there is up the urgency and make it so they can't take a long rest, but that tends to just make everyone feel rushed and frazzled and stresses the players in the bad way, not the fun way.
And I also like 4e's art. I felt it sat in the perfect zone of being descriptive and interesting without being overly detailed.
www.dragonturtlegames.com