Rules Compendium... Waste

[Techonce]

I was at Borders at lunch and flipped through the Rules Compendium, possible thinking of bying it.

Heck having all of the rules in 1 spot would be great, especially if they included many of the articles on the WotC website, and maybe a few new items.

After flipping through it I realized I already had a book with all of that information in it called the PHB. I didn't see anything new, not even any of the junk from the website.

The spell compendium and magic item compendium are nice and they are handy to have, but this new one is not worth the gas to get to the bookstore.

WotC has regurgitated info before and repackaged it, but at least then they were nice enough to add at least something new. Grumble...

[Reel On, Love]

I was at Borders at lunch and flipped through the Rules Compendium, possible thinking of bying it.

Heck having all of the rules in 1 spot would be great, especially if they included many of the articles on the WotC website, and maybe a few new items.

After flipping through it I realized I already had a book with all of that information in it called the PHB. I didn't see anything new, not even any of the junk from the website.

The spell compendium and magic item compendium are nice and they are handy to have, but this new one is not worth the gas to get to the bookstore.

WotC has regurgitated info before and repackaged it, but at least then they were nice enough to add at least something new. Grumble...

I don't think you flipped through very carefully. There's a lot of stuff that isn't in the PHB or DMG, and a lot more stuff with minor changes and clarifications (precision damage, for example).

[Techonce]

I don't think you flipped through very carefully. There's a lot of stuff that isn't in the PHB or DMG, and a lot more stuff with minor changes and clarifications (precision damage, for example).

I guess I didn't then... I started at the beginning and didn't see much new. I checked to see if they included some of the new idea in the Rules of the Game articles on grappling and it wasn't there. I spot hit several other sections and it was almost word for word out of the PHB. (they had one of them there and I cross referenced)

Since you seem a bit more knowledgable, what else is in there. I might be pushed over into buying it...

[Reel On, Love]

I guess I didn't then... I started at the beginning and didn't see much new. I checked to see if they included some of the new idea in the Rules of the Game articles on grappling and it wasn't there. I spot hit several other sections and it was almost word for word out of the PHB. (they had one of them there and I cross referenced)

Since you seem a bit more knowledgable, what else is in there. I might be pushed over into buying it...

Hey, buying it is your decision--it's certainly not a book for everyone; generally, it's a DM book (given that you only really want one per table, and the DM's gonna be the one looking stuff up). Off the top of my head, energy types have been clarified a little, antimagic fields too (and they now do -not- block line of effect), I already mentioned precision damage...
I also think it's vastly easier to find rules whose pages you haven't memorized in the Rules Compendium, what with the alphabetical order.

If it's not the kind of thing you'd get a lot of use out of, don't buy it. You can give it a more thorough lookover next time you're at the bookstore; that should tell you more than I can.

A book that gathers rules, a bunch of which are from the PHB, will be similar to the PHB to some extent, though, obviously.