Has anyone else that plays D&D 4th edition tried the Adventure Tools?

They're still in pretty early beta and right now they only have the monster builder but so far it rocks!

No more searching through the monsters manual to find something that fits my groups level, now I can just find the monster I want and make it my groups level with the touch of a button.

Seriously, if you're running a 4th edition game this tool makes the D&D Insider price worth it alone.  This coupled with the character builder and you just don't need to buy books anymore.

With this tool I made a large zombie black dragon in minutes that my level 4 group could handle.

Also, what do you think the four remaining tools are?  I hope they are:

• NPC builder
• random treasure
• some sort of map tool
• some sort of adventure log

The only two downsides so far is that the interface is bad and it's a giant pain in the ass to install on Windows 7 (no problems installing it on XP).

I thought most of the fun in pen-and-paper RPGs came from the exercise you receive by lugging around 47 books that weigh approximately 283 lbs. (Mountain Dew, Red Vines, and obscene number of dice not included).

I use to love lugging around books but they come out with a new one like every 3 months now.  My 3/3.5 collection was getting massive and it was a chore to come to a game prepared.

And if it were the random book I didn't care about I would still love to lug around books, but they released 4th edition completely unfinished so they could release books every 3 months and it's bullshit.  4th Edition has been out, what, a little over a year and they're already on the 3rd players handbook!

If these books were $15-ish a pop, I might understand but they're still $40 a piece!

So because of that, I'm not buying any more D&D books, now I just give them money through D&D Insider which is a pretty nice deal.  I still keep my PHB and DMG on me, but that's about it.

I tried D&D when they released 3rd edition but it just didn't hold my interest. I haven't really role-played in almost ten years.

My favorite game was the original Star Wars, anyway. The rule system left everything up to the GM, which allowed for much hilarity. It also featured "Heroic rolls", which were almost impossible to do and left me with half a legion of dead Stormtroopers, one of my players wearing Boba Fett's armor, and a dead Bossk over a weekend. I never forgave my friend Jimmy for those three rolls. Lucky bastard, the son of a bitch virtually blew up Mos Eisley single-handed.

Yeah, but for every epic awesome moment players also have epic bad moments. 

And 4th Edition is actually really good.  They completely streamlined everything and just made everything really simple.  Usually such a simplifying of things would sound horrible but they actually did a pretty excellent job of it.

The thing I was most impressed with was that they actually made 1st level fun for all classes and gave you things to do.  Instead of just having attacks, every one has powers similar to a mages spell.  You have at-will, encounter, and daily powers along with your basic attack you almost never use.

It's just a really nice system.

I'm a big fan of simplification. The more they simplify things, the less time annoying players spend arguing with the GM over an obscure rule they found in the back of some class-specific handbook.

Then again, I was a tyrannical GM. My players knew to shut up when I would carefully ask them "Do you REALLY want to argue with me over this?" because they knew I'd take the time to royally fuck them later in the game if they continued to pursue that line of argument.

Mostly my games were just full of lulz though. Like the time they backed out of a deal with a Hutt and decided to defend themselves by purchasing thermal detonators from a pack of Jawas. Don't EVER buy thermal detonators from a Jawa. :)

Anyway, I'll have to check out 4th Edition. I think one of my friends bought the DMG and/or PHB.

THIS thread explains why you called me at 10pm on Monday night, rambling about how we need to start a D&D game again you drunk ass!

I give this thread a 9.3.

Since when are large zombie black dragons EL4?  O.o

Since about three weeks ago apparently.  :-p

I *love* 4th edition because I can have a low level group and still have them fight cool stuff.

When I'm planning my games, instead of looking through the monsters level and trying to find a creature the right level and build around that I can now just use the creature I want to use.

The other really cool thing is even 1st level characters are cool now and even a boring class like fighter has stuff to do besides run in a direction and swing.

Who plays Fighters though?  In 3.5 they were one of the most worthless classes in the game.  If you included every supplement for 3.5 in existence, the Fighter was still in the top 3 most worthless classes.  The moment Tome of Battle:  Book of the Nine Swords came out was the moment you replaced Fighter with Warblade (except for folks who just want the free feats).   D&D 4E is an extension of what Tome of Battle began with goofy races.