MY REVIEW OF THE DMG:
General: This book is comprised of tables and rules, quite compact. Solid, but not an easy read.
Yes it's modular.
I have to admit that unlike the majority that loved it... it was a let down for me. Not what I expected. Not saying it's a bad book or bad DMG. Far from it! But... the price was steep for what would for me be mostly a treasure and magic item index. The rest I need more or less to make myself based on the info in the book. I already reverse-engineered the monster mechanics and updated my algorithm that calculates XP.
I really don't expect to use the DMG often.
For me it was a waste of money. I could actually do without buying it, just by borrowing it from a friend and reading it once*. More or less? It gave me the "teaser" vibe. It had a feeling of "We plan to do this with planes and this with downtime. Expect the accessories"
*Treasure tables aside. Can't memorize those. But aside of coins I have to omit the majority of the magic items from the tables anyway.
It's not a bad book, it's just an expensive book considering that I'll rarely use it except to roll for treasure and it feels too... thin. I expected more bang for my buck than a "consider adding horror by choosing DCs and effects as appropriate" and "It takes 20 days, 500gp in materials and you have to know the recipe to make an uncommon item. Adjust as you like"
More precise:
In some cases, the book gives just a few, not enough in my opinion, examples and moves to different mechanics.
Diseases is such an example; just 3 diseases? We could use 5.
Fear and horror are other examples that could use more space. "Set the DC and then choose an effect from the madness tables" is what we get for horror.
Meh. 3-4 lines of examples would go a long way here. Something like "Your mother suddenly turns to werewolf during dinner and tries to kill you has a DC of ??? "
Traps could also use some expansion.
The madness tables let me "meh". I need to make my own madness tables.
Monster creation: While I appreciate and
downright applaud the often mentioned "these are guidelines, you need to playtest", they don't give enough info to go around.
OK, resistance to slashing and piercing and bludgeoning at CR 2 is indeed effectively x2 hp. What about resistance to fire? Yes I know it depends on my group. But I could use a "generally adjust by x0.25 for every party member you expect to have problems" or something
Also some of the modifiers are kinda weird. A monster with save bonus on intelligence, charisma and strength is NOT as resistant as a monster with bonuses on wisdom, dex and con.
There's little help to account for spells too. OK for damage. What about hold person spells?
The running a business downtime activity was poorly and hastily done IMO. Everything seems to make the same profit if you roll above 40. Generally, downtime activities are too generic without information on how to alter for circumstances. You have to do the work yourself based on thin guidelines.
There's absolutely no guide how much money you earn from your lands; just a couple of notes on how much it costs and how cool it is to give it to players so they could collect taxes (no mention how much taxes).
Mapping from chapter 1:
Province scale, I don't like the urbanization; a town for just 8-12 villages and hamlets? More like a town for every 25-30 villages. And that still would be a population of just 8000-10000 people.
A hex in province scale is about 0.87 sq miles. With a historical density (without the use of magic) of 50-100 people/square mile those people should fill 15x10 hexes, not a map page.
The suggested "25-30 miles from the home base" gives something like 60x50 miles or a population density of 3/sq mile which is extremely low for medieval settings. Even the Baltic states at the early medieval age had bigger population density
Pet peeve: Artillery is laughably fast to load. 2 actions to load a mangonel? 1 action to load a cannon?
