I hope it isn't bad form to make this kind of post...
I'm cleaning out my bookshelf to make room for more Pathfinder stuff, and I have a few D&D 3.5 hardcovers that I don't think I'm going to use any more.
Complete Warrior
Complete Divine
Planar Handbook
Book of Exalted Deeds
Expedition to Castle Ravenloft
They're all in very good condition. The only marring is that they all have a bookplate with my name on the inside front cover.
PM me if you're interested!
A good small collection, I've never seen the expedition to castle ravenloft for 3.5.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I've never seen the expedition to castle ravenloft for 3.5.
You're not missing much IMO...
It does have a few good points however (such as the maps for example)...
But it should have been a much better product (but then, isn't that always the case with a remake of something that is already considered a "classic").
One of the bigger issues was that there was no "concluding the adventure" section (it was just missing, with no errata that I am aware of).
Even though it has its faults, Expedition to Castle Ravenloft is still one of my favorite 3.5e books.
A few of those faults are:
1.) No Concluding the Adventure section
2.) Madame Eva the fortune teller (well-known Ravenloft Vistani NPC) is an annis hag.
3.) Vistani that travel with Madame Eva are a mix of humans and halflings when Vistani is usually a human ethnicity.
4.) Rather than being a straight-up dungeon delve into Castle Ravenloft, the book has a number of basically unrelated quests in the countryside along other horror themes. (demon-worshiping witches, werewolves, zombies)
5.) Book uses the much-maligned "delve" format where the encounters are at the end of the chapter rather than included in the main body of the text. (I ran Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave with the delve format and it was fine by me.)
6.) Lightbringer cleric alternate class included is overpowered. Lightbringer cleric can deal damage to undead with its Turn Undead ability, but does 1d6 damage per level, so roughly twice as much as a Pathfinder cleric.
That's all I can think of off the top of my head.
Things I did like:
1.) The Vampire sidebar at the beginning. It's the only place in 3.x where I saw details of how to actually stake a vampire.
2.) The multiple story-arcs of the adventure. There are four or five different main plots that can be run using the same adventure and the book includes handouts for whichever plot you want to run.
3.) Guidelines for running it as a one-shot, mini-campaign, or extended foray in Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, or d20 Modern.
4.) In the delve encounter format, the individual encounters reprint environmental considerations like lighting effects, terrain variables, and DCs for objects in the encounter that I might otherwise have to look up.
5.) As a fan of the D&D vampire monster, and a relatively inexperienced DM, the book provided me with decent guidelines for how to build/run a vampire story without the narrative becoming too monotone.
6.) Floorplans for Castle Ravenloft and a room-by-room breakdown, as well as maps of the countryside around the castle.
To stake, I imagine you would need a mallet and a prone vamp, or a really fine grapple and shiv check.
To stake, I imagine you would need a mallet and a prone vamp, or a really fine grapple and shiv check.
Eh. My take would be. . .Staking is a Coup de Grace. Keeps it nice, simple, and uses existing rules in a fashion that makes sense.
Vamps go to gas though at 0, but of course if you caught them sleeping, coup that ass.
Yep. Undead are technically immune to coup de grace, so the book says "staking a vampire functions similarly to a coupe de grace," to paraphrase. Yeah, basically you have to catch the vampire in his coffin to stake him, which functions identically to coup de grace, except it works against a vampire.