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I love and hate this book so much. The ideas are nice, but taking penalties to use the weapon/item are not attractive to me at all. I would rather the ritual to unlock the sword's secrets be really hard, than me having to deal with penalties.
Edit: I was talking about Weapons of Legacy
That's pretty much my whole problem with it too. It doesn't help that some of the rituals are pretty out there in respects to what they require to complete.
The whole premise just bugs me: "Hey guys, let's reward the player with a cool item and then punish them for wanting to unlock all of its properties."
Eeuargh. I made the mistake of buying Avalanche's "Endless Sands" book (their take on d20 Arabian Adventures). This is what I bring out to show people when I talk about craptastic OGL material from the early 2000s.
And to think of how close I came to getting that. Instead, I got an old copy of Al-Qadim: Arabian Adventures. I found a 3E conversion on the web that was so good, it convinced me to regard 3E as the D&D. And that conversion was just a quick throw-together! You'd think a professionally produced product should look better, not worse.
Indeed, not all books are worth buying, but nearly all books are worth reading (or flipping through at least). Even books I outright hate have at least one feat, spell, or new rule we find worth using at our table.
Now, a book without a single redeeming virtue, one that sucks through and through... hmm, not sure I've come across such thing or, if I have, I guess my mind supressed such memory to protect me.
Gee, my "recent posts" page says my post went through, but I don't see it on the board. I'm going to post it again...
Eeuargh. I made the mistake of buying Avalanche's "Endless Sands" book (their take on d20 Arabian Adventures). This is what I bring out to show people when I talk about craptastic OGL material from the early 2000s.
And to think of how close I came to getting that. Instead, I got an old copy of Al-Qadim: Arabian Adventures. I found a 3E conversion on the web that was so good, it convinced me to regard 3E as the D&D. And that conversion was just a quick throw-together! You'd think a professionally produced product should look better, not worse.
Hey, Tranquilis, are you getting enough feedback here? I hope you're not getting impatient waiting between responses.
I loved BOEF, mainly due to their outlook on sex and alignment and the overall effectiveness of prophylactics when it comes to both pregnancy AND avoiding STDs(VERY realistic!) but I found Nymphology lacking, even as a source of comedy. I avoid BO9S even to this day, but I loved the vast majority of Sword and Sorcery's stuff.
Could those of you who didn't like the bestiary of Krynn explain why? I haven't looked back at it for a while, but I used to use those creatures all the time and they were a ton of fun.
I was actually looking forward to picking up the revised beastiary and needed information as to how that was bad.
Spell Compendium - Nothing like releasing a "Core" looking book that includes the Orb spells, Wraithstrike, and Revivify.
Of course as a player it was a wet dream. :)
Races of Stone - Still waiting for dwarves done right.
Ptolus - No, wait a second, that's not crap, that's the exact opposite of crap! Why can't more books have ribbons?! (Prays for a SE PFRPG Core Rulebook w/ ribbons...)
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Could those of you who didn't like the bestiary of Krynn explain why? I haven't looked back at it for a while, but I used to use those creatures all the time and they were a ton of fun.
The few times I used it, I found the same problems that I have with most 3pp monster books, everything was either overpowered or underpowered for their CR. It was only slightly, not like the time a supposed CR 3 creature in what was supposed to be a throw away encounter wiped out a 7th level party, but it was just enough to be noticiable
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Nymphology has a damn-potent spell. Off the top of my head, it's "Summon Sexual Partner" and it's like 1st level. Can you imagine the havoc a spell like that would create!?
I always maximize that spell. Gets her to do... you know. More stuff.
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My problem with calling something crap, is that I have a couple of different definitions of crap.
On the one hand, there's crap where the rules might be totally solid, but the basic idea does nothing for me. (Weapons of Legacy, Book of Nine Swords)
On the other hand, there's crap where the rules are squiffy and I have to re-write stuff to make it a little more workable mechanically, but the ideas contained within are *freaking awesome.* (Some of the Scarred Lands stuff, who could imagine a setting that could make Paladins and Monks cool, and offer four to six *compelling* prestige class options for each?)
And then there's the stuff that fits both definition, which includes quite a few of the Mongoose books, where the execution was bad, and the 'big idea' seemed to be 'sell a book about class X, even if we don't have a single freaking cool idea about class X and the author mentions in his little note in the back that he didn't even *like* the class when he got the assignment...'
That's just a slap in the face, to read an uninspiring book about a class, with clunky mechanics, and then read the author's confession at the back that this was just a job and he doesn't even like the class. That's what I want to shell my hard-earned dollars out for, your uninspired makework drudgery.
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I love and hate this book so much. The ideas are nice, but taking penalties to use the weapon/item are not attractive to me at all. I would rather the ritual to unlock the sword's secrets be really hard, than me having to deal with penalties.
Edit: I was talking about Weapons of Legacy
I agree with this completely.
I love Tome of Battle.The Fast Forward stuff had some good fluff but overall the crunch was :meh:.
The Legend and lairs stuff had good fluff and crunch.
I loved the Swords and Sorcery books, great fluff. The crunch was 65/35 good/bad.
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Ultimate Prestige Classes.
Complete Mage/Scoundrel/Champion were lackluster.
Tome of Magic was about useless. Loved the flavor of the Shadowcaster, but damn was the class weak. And forget the Truenamer.
I rather enjoyed the Races of Renown series, but it did have some off things. Two Weapon Fighting and Uncanny Dodge at first level? A players dream.
Spell Compendium - Nothing like releasing a "Core" looking book that includes the Orb spellsPeople think...the orb spells...are overpowered?
This is deeply baffling to me.
They dont like them because they bypass SR, and make the golem magic immunity useless, but they come into play so invariably that having the spell is usually a wasted slot. As a caster I want a spell that affects many people, and forcing me to take a spell that only affects one creature is more than enough of a tax, especially if its not a n SoS or SoD.
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Wow I like this thread. Great for warning novices before purchase !
There are many WotC books that disappointed me. Magic of Incarnum and Weapons of Legacy were big WTF moments, Books of Vile/Exalted were just silly, Tome of Magic was 1/3 useful, I could go on.
But the creme de la creme for me is:
CITYSCAPE !
This *could* have been so great. A book about urban adventures, with rules for housing and running a business, ready-to-use locales, an extensive writeup on legal and economic systems, extensive "magic shop" rules for spicing up item purchase and creation, sample districts full of premade hooks and NPCs ...
... and instead we get a book written by Captain Obvious (oh, sorry, Ari "4e is great !" Marmell) full of tantalizing passages such as "the interesting thing about the noble quarter is that the nobility live there !", useless rules (guilds and houses rules are so crap that Wotc must have actually noticed that and fixed the problem with PHB2 affiliation rules), silly monsters and some random statblocks. AAARGH. I love urban campaigns, and I am so let down by this books. Luckily between DMG2, PHB2 and Ultimate Toolbox most of my problems are gone, but still I wish for one big honkin' urban book. Pathfinder: Urban Sourcebook, anyone ?
They dont like them because they bypass SR, and make the golem magic immunity useless, but they come into play so invariably that having the spell is usually a wasted slot. As a caster I want a spell that affects many people, and forcing me to take a spell that only affects one creature is more than enough of a tax, especially if its not a n SoS or SoD.
Is that one of those weird community things that everyone is assumed to be on the same page about? Because against 99% of enemies, the orb spells are tame even by core standards.
Also, Bands of Steel is in the same book if you really hate Golems that much.
There is some thread called is the Spell Compendium acceptable for Pathfinder play. That is not the exact name of the title, but its close. I was quiet surprised to find that people were so against orb spells. Many have houseruled them to be evocation, and they have to bypass SR. I dont want to derail the thread so I will try to find post.
30 seconds later --> click me
Edit: I dont think its 90%, but its a higher number than I thought it would be
Kingdoms of Kalamar did nothing for me.
Good lord, the modules that accompany that setting are bland. I never bothered to pick up the setting as a result. How on earth did they sell so much?
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Hmm, any of the Mongoose Complete X books I read made me cry.
Complete Psionic. Only good thing that came out of that was Dreamscarred Press.
Cityscape is disappointing. Ari's other work precludes Ari bashing.
The Scarred Lands stuff is fluff excellent. My late friend wanted to play a 13 year old Hollowfaust necromancer. Looking like an evil Laura Ingles. Crunch does vary. Secrets of the Asaathi is excellent, the prestige classes in the playes guides are a bit over the top, but the fluff, again, is awesome.
R&R I suffered growing pains as did the original CC. CC Rev and CC3 are both good. Strange Lands suffers from incompleteness, but I recommend it.
Heroes of Battle was a 'meh' book for me. I was hoping for a mass combat system, but the actual contents of the book, victory points, ranks etc, left me hollow.
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Nymphology has a damn-potent spell. Off the top of my head, it's "Summon Sexual Partner" and it's like 1st level. Can you imagine the havoc a spell like that would create!?I always maximize that spell. Gets her to do... you know. More stuff.
Never Widen it, though. That was a bad experience. And if you Empower it, you end up doing what she wants.
To me the list is a large one. Alot of S&S stuff, BO9S is on that list as is most of the completes, {mage I loth you} weapons of legacy was pure crap, and most of the later 3.5 books really
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Also there was a line that I can't remember the title of, but it dealt with Egyption and Mayan settings and such and generally featured almost bare chested women on the cover. I was generally disappointed with those as well. I never bought any but I did flip through a few and I was appaled by the historical inacuracies in what were billed as sourcebooks for historical role-playing.
That will be Avalanche Press. They did a lot of these "source" books with shaply, half naked women on th cover.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Never Widen it, though. That was a bad experience. And if you Empower it, you end up doing what she wants.Nymphology has a damn-potent spell. Off the top of my head, it's "Summon Sexual Partner" and it's like 1st level. Can you imagine the havoc a spell like that would create!?I always maximize that spell. Gets her to do... you know. More stuff.
Doesn't that make it 'summon spouce' instead?
I like Hero.
Try saying you like 4e. Go ahead. Just try it. :)
Which Edition?
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Weapons of Legacy was another good idea done wrong. I sighed at the requirements to use the items. Give up HP and other things? For minor weapon enhancements? Please.
I think the Nordic book a friend of mine had was from Avalance Press. I found the Magician class amusing, since it was basically a wizard that could spontaneously cast any spell from his spellbook. Said spellbook was actually his staff, which he had to have to cast anything. Plus he got the ability to summon it at will after 7 or 8th level. Kinda wish I had seen how that character turned out in higher levels, if I hadn't accidentally offed him.
Doesn't that make it 'summon spouce' instead?Never Widen it, though. That was a bad experience. And if you Empower it, you end up doing what she wants.Nymphology has a damn-potent spell. Off the top of my head, it's "Summon Sexual Partner" and it's like 1st level. Can you imagine the havoc a spell like that would create!?I always maximize that spell. Gets her to do... you know. More stuff.
No, that is the Extended version.
Could those of you who didn't like the bestiary of Krynn explain why? I haven't looked back at it for a while, but I used to use those creatures all the time and they were a ton of fun.The few times I used it, I found the same problems that I have with most 3pp monster books, everything was either overpowered or underpowered for their CR. It was only slightly, not like the time a supposed CR 3 creature in what was supposed to be a throw away encounter wiped out a 7th level party, but it was just enough to be noticiable
I risking a flame here, because I'm sure many will strongly disagree with me... but I thought that the CRs on the monsters of the core 3.X Monster Manual were also horribly inaccurate. The Medium-size and Large dragons were FAR deadlier than their CRs would imply. And the same goes for the Large and larger monsters with Improved Grab. Their Grapple scores were absurdly high, even with a -20 penalty. Whomever the monster decides to grapple might as well just give up!
Really, that level-7 fallen paladin / level-6 blackguard I created was NOWHERE NEAR as deadly as a CR 9 dragon.
And yet, the small dragons, who are practically helpless, are given a very high level adjustment. (Yeah, I know, effective character level is not the same as CR, blah, blah, blah. We all know that the two are closely related, all BS aside.)
I consider the inaccuracy of CRs to be one of my biggest problems with 3.X. And a friend of mine considers CRs in general to be even less accurate than I do.
Heroes of Battle was a 'meh' book for me. I was hoping for a mass combat system, but the actual contents of the book, victory points, ranks etc, left me hollow.
I thought WotC made it quite clear that the book was NOT a mass combat system.
I'm surprized that no one brought up Races of the Dragon and Dragon Magic. Tried them in my game and they broke everything right of the bat.
Hated them in the end.
I liked bits and pieces of each of them, but I agree that Races of the Dragon was wildly inconsistent in places.
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I consider the inaccuracy of CRs to be one of my biggest problems with 3.X. And a friend of mine considers CRs in general to be even less accurate than I do.
Actually, I think very few people will disagree with you. CR is a nebulous thing that doesn't really work on anything. People have gone so far to coin the [Awesome] subtype, which means the creature should be counted as 2-4 levels higher than its CR says. Outsiders and Dragons are the main cantidates. Hell, I think the designers outright said they put dragons a few levels low to make sure they were properly represented as deadly opponents.
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I'm surprized that no one brought up Races of the Dragon and Dragon Magic. Tried them in my game and they broke everything right of the bat.
Hated them in the end.
I hated Dragonborn, but that was because it always seemed like the most obnoctous players in my group were drawn to them. I finally banned them from my game outright. However, I did find a lot of useful things like feats in there. The kobold fluff was excellent as well.
Never Widen it, though. That was a bad experience. And if you Empower it, you end up doing what she wants.Nymphology has a damn-potent spell. Off the top of my head, it's "Summon Sexual Partner" and it's like 1st level. Can you imagine the havoc a spell like that would create!?I always maximize that spell. Gets her to do... you know. More stuff.
LOL! Exceedingly good points, Aubrey!
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The Planar Handbook has to be well up there for me. It may as well been called "Play a Nephalen or a Doomknight" for pages and pages. The only time it's been used has been for Nephalen in all of my games. I tried out the touchstones, and no one ever had enough ranks in Knowledge (The Planes) to ever use them.
Elder Evils book: Honestly, I was very, very disappointed. I really was hoping for a little bit more from this. While the examples were cool, I was hoping for at least one Lovecraftian horror. And the continuation of the Age of Worms just didn't do it for me.
Tome of Magic was about useless. Loved the flavor of the Shadowcaster, but damn was the class weak. And forget the Truenamer.
I'm told the Binder actually works quite well, but I was so disillusioned with the book after reading Shadowcaster and Truenamer that I never bothered looking at it.
They dont like them because they bypass SR, and make the golem magic immunity useless, but they come into play so invariably that having the spell is usually a wasted slot. As a caster I want a spell that affects many people, and forcing me to take a spell that only affects one creature is more than enough of a tax, especially if its not a n SoS or SoD.
Eh. They're a good base for piling on metamagics. If you can pull 'em off spontaneously, they're nice, and the kicker debuffs can make them legitimately useful.
Complete Psionic. Only good thing that came out of that was Dreamscarred Press.
Don't forget Cranial Deluge. I can't believe it took them so long to make, "Your head asplode," a power. Even if it actually isn't a very good power.
I risking a flame here, because I'm sure many will strongly disagree with me... but I thought that the CRs on the monsters of the core 3.X Monster Manual were also horribly inaccurate. The Medium-size and Large dragons were FAR deadlier than their CRs would imply. And the same goes for the Large and larger monsters with Improved Grab. Their Grapple scores were absurdly high, even with a -20 penalty. Whomever the monster decides to grapple might as well just give up!
Actually, the dragons were under-CR'd deliberately. They were supposed to be big and scary and the most dangerous beings in their playground, so their CRs were deliberately deflated to make them more dangerous.
I hated Dragonborn, but that was because it always seemed like the most obnoctous players in my group were drawn to them. I finally banned them from my game outright.
For a while, I had a player trying to figure out how to get a Dragonborn (which requires a good alignment) who has vile feats from BoVD (which requires an evil alignment) in order to make a Dragonborn dwarf with Willing Deformity (Obese) in order to get +6 Con, -4 Dex, -2 Cha. Yeah, that got shot down. Particularly the part where the player was gonna try cranking his Jump skill so that he could jump ten feet up and use his girth to make himself a falling object for, like twenty die of falling object damage.
Actually, I think very few people will disagree with you. CR is a nebulous thing that doesn't really work on anything. People have gone so far to coin the [Awesome] subtype, which means the creature should be counted as 2-4 levels higher than its CR says. Outsiders and Dragons are the main cantidates. Hell, I think the designers outright said they put dragons a few levels low to make sure they were properly represented as deadly opponents.I consider the inaccuracy of CRs to be one of my biggest problems with 3.X. And a friend of mine considers CRs in general to be even less accurate than I do.
Dang! Are you serious?!? That completely destroys the meaning of CRs! I have to give the PCs less XP than they deserve because of flavor?!?
For long time now, I've been compensating for unfairly low CRs by awarding the PCs great treasures, especially powerful magic items. It sounds like I had the right idea.
Still, I remember, a long time ago, some thread discussing the merits of 3.5, and several people mentioned the accuracy of CRs as one of its strong points.
EDIT: I coulld have responded to Viletta Vadim as well, but I started typing a reply before I saw that post.
Kingdoms of Kalamar did nothing for me.Good lord, the modules that accompany that setting are bland. I never bothered to pick up the setting as a result. How on earth did they sell so much?
I would very much like to know which modules you found bland. Really. I was thinking of getting some and want to know which titles to avoid.
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Tome of Magic was about useless. Loved the flavor of the Shadowcaster, but damn was the class weak. And forget the Truenamer.I'm told the Binder actually works quite well, but I was so disillusioned with the book after reading Shadowcaster and Truenamer that I never bothered looking at it.
One of my biggest power games once bragged tha he rolled up a character that was a binder and a pixie. However, because of the binder's abilities she was carrying around a large sized great axe, and using it effectively. That was when I banned ToM from my table.
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Oh heck, I forgot one more book: Races of Destiny. Now, the whole "Races" series were so-so, but RoD was a real stinker.
Which is funny, because that was one of my favorite books. I was playing half-orc character in Living Greyhawk and bought the book specifically so I could have better insight into the race.
Some of the comments here really make me grateful for Hero. New Feats/Powers/Races all use the same core rules, so there are fewer surprises.
Of course, do not ask me about Extra-Dimensional Movement.