Cage Match: D&D Next Player's Handbook

Let's check out the D&D Next Player's Handbook's art style and see what that tells us about the game. It isn't as oppressingly black and Noir as the other books in the series, but it still is relatively dark. This one bothers me the most of them all, we have our brave knight down there at lower right doing nothing, and a mage who has to face-jump a giant to get her spell in range. It's a beautiful cover, I'm just having trouble with it from an at the table perspective. I know, we want to be close to the action for the drama, and most RPG action covers fall into this "in your face" artwork style, and Pathfinder and many similar games are no different.

I know, for fun let's pit these covers against each other in a cage match.

The spell casting on the 5th Edition cover feels like a stupid move, sort of a jumping from the top ropes onto his boot thing. Brave and heroic? Possibly, but a kinda silly "I jump up and cast shocking grasp on the frost giant's face" sort of thing that is an invitation to a dungeon master stupid idea character smackdown. It's a last ditch move sort of feel, but one that leaves me cold - there's no way a spell that looks that weak and less awesome is going to work against that giant wall of oil paint. What is she casting, a light spell?

I'm going to have to give this round of the cover battle to Valeros on the Pathfinder cover. He's out in front, sword swinging hard, protecting his sorceress lady friend from the giant chicken-like red dragon there on the cover. Even Seoni's spell, while weak looking and non-awesome as well, is making an effect bigger than her head - it might do something. If you are fighting monsters like these, I rule the only spell that will have an effect is something that fills the other half of the cover with lightning bolts.

While speaking about doing nothing, the wallflower award in this battle goes to 5E's fighter, played by that guy who never speaks up and sits at the game playing with his phone.

Squint your eyes. One is still a cool fight with a dragon. The other is someone putting a light in a giant head's mouth. This round goes to the crew from Golarion for looking cool, holding their ground, use of negative space, and bringing the sex appeal. Even Pathfinder's fonts are sexy and cool, and don't make the mistake of putting a red font on an orange and brown background. Fonts and design go to Pathfinder in this round as well.

The monsters on these covers are equally powerful-looking, but I'm feeling that red dragon could run circles around 5E's frost giant. The frost giant is so large and has so many hit points he will never die to any of the dragon's attacks, of course, because he has something like 1,500 hit points and I'm not sitting here while you halflings wail out multiple 1d4+2 dagger attacks and I'll be rolling about fifty of those pyramid-shaped little bastards tonight. My verdict, the dragon chews on the frost giant's head for a couple hours, while the frost giant can never get a hold on the red dragon because it is covered by chicken grease. Draw.

The 4th Edition heroes enter the ring, pose, and spend half the fight missing their combat rolls. Who ever thought whiffing on your daily power would be so fun? At least our dragonborn fighter there looks like the Predator, and that gets us style points. Our female mage continues the "hot hand" trend of all three books, and I'm wondering if there is some rule saying female mages only left-handed cast. Still, her spell looks the weakest of the three, and I'm wondering if it isn't some sort of summon citrus spell.

There's no monster on the cover either, because we are still stuck in character generation with the guy who refuses to use Character Builder and wants to flip through the books. The 4E heroes spend the night wailing on the frost giant, use up all their healing surges, and the fight drags on for hours. Verdict? The fight ends and they are still wailing away and doing 5-foot shifts after everyone has left the arena. The guy who spun up his character by hand shows up the next day and calls the dungeon master asking where everyone is and if the game is happening today.

The Player's Handbook 3.5 Edition guys show up, and wait, no, there are no characters on the cover. Still, of them all this is very original and cool, and has that Greyhawk phonebook look to it. We need to disqualify 3rd Edition in this fight for not "bringing it" and also due to the fact that everybody who plays this has moved onto Pathfinder anyways. A cool cover still, but ineligible to participate in the cage match.

A mounted 2nd Edition jumps through the ring on his horse, and everyone wonders how many times mounted combat was really used in a dungeon game. He's revised, easy to reference, free from objectionable content, but the frost giant clotheslines him off his horse. While this doesn't faze our brave fighter, it does pop his ring-bound monster manual open and papers go flying everywhere. Of all the covers, this is the one the crowd roots for since it is the most heroic and family friendly, but he goes down in a mess of late-game rules expansions that unbalance the game. He does, finally, get that hardcover Monster Manual he was wishing for, and the crowd cheers as he falls to the mat unconscious with a smile on his face.

Elminster, still left-hand casting, shows up from a special AD&D cover, and promptly tries to wish everyone dead. Only the 5th Edition fighter fails, but nobody notices or cares. Pathfinder's dragon grabs Elminster's beard and flails the mage around the ring like a pinata. Everyone rejoices when Elminster's contingency spell auto-casts and sends him back to Shadowdale to go solve somebody else's adventure for them. The imps on the cover are splattered like mosquitoes by 5th Edition's frost giant. A ring-out for old Elms, and the original crew of AD&D shows up to save the day.

Hark, is that our band of 1st Edition AD&D heroes entering the ring? No, that's them sitting on the outside of the ring meticulously planning their entrance. The two guys on the statue, who are only good for climbing and picking pockets anyways, manage to pry the frost giant's right eye out. The two with the map spend the night searching the ring for traps, and the guy cleaning his sword - obviously a roleplayer because you don't need to clean swords in this version of the game - spends the match endlessly trying to hook up with Pathfinder's female iconic sorceress.

The victor? Pathfinder's player characters win this one on style alone. D&D Next makes a strong showing and comes in second, only for it's now one-eyed frost giant. Everywhere else, it's a draw, massive beat down, or disqualification.

Elminster later shows up and uses another wish spell to win the match.