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There are a few official rulebooks I'm thinking of getting over the next month or so and would like to get your opinions ...
If you all could perhaps rank these books from best to worst and add any comments thoughts, I would really appreciate it!
Races of Stone
Races of Destiny
Races of the Wild
Cityscape
Stormwrack
Complete Adventurer
Weapons of Legacy
Thanks!
1. Stormwrack (3.5 out of 5), its a pretty solid book, lots of interesting information on nautical adventures, monsters, spells, and the like. Not my favorite of the terrain series, and of the "new PC" races, my favorite was an adaption of an old race, the Hadozee. Obviously this will vary on how much you want to use ship board or coastal adventures.
2. Cityscape (3.25 out of 5), again, a solid book, and good especially if you are at a loss for adventure ideas within a city. A few interesting hazards and other information, but even with the dressing of PrCs and spells and feats, it doesn't grab me as much as something about fantasy cities should, perhaps because I have read a lot about them in years past and in other editions. Still, not a bad book overall.
3. Complete Adventurer (3.25 out of 5) The only reason this is behind cityscape is that I'm thinking like a DM. Player wise, this book would come first, but a lot of that is dependant on how you feel about new base classes and PrCs and equipment. Personally, the scout is one of my favorite new base classes, and I like a lot of the information in the book, though its not as strong as some of the other "first round" Complete books.
4. Weapons of Legacy (3 out of 5) Cool idea, and it makes perfect sense to introduce, and it can be introduced without causeing any issues in an ongoing campaign, but on the other hand, I don't know that it really warrented a full book just on this concept alone.
5. Races of Stone (3 out of 5) I like a lot of the dwarven information, equipment, feats, and PrCs, and the Goliaths are my favorite PC race from these supplements, but there is way too much that is out of whack in this book with other dwarven lore. It doesn't match up with some information on dwarves in Forgotten Realms, DragonLance, or Greyhawk, and introduces a whole new dwarven pantheon that only has Moradin in common with previous ones.
4. Races of the Wild (2.5 out of 5) A lot of my comments about dwarves above can be applied to elves and halflings in this book. Plus the classes, feats, and spells just didn't feel as much like they were filling a gap as the dwarven equivilents did, and the elven AND halfling pantheon get massively (and in some cases, strangely) overhauled.
5. Races of Destiny (2 out of 5) Humans and half humans and humans with floating letters around their heads . . . ah nevermind . . .
Bear in mind, most of my comments and ratings are based largely on crunch factor. Fluff is nice, but ultimately crunch is what helps me most as a player and as a DM (unless it's Eberron).
Races of Stone: 4/5 - I personally found the feats and prestige classes in this book to be of immense use to me in playing my Duergar, especially when I took on a Duergar wizard as a cohort. It offers some excellent options for dwarves, including psionic options (I happen to like Psionics).
Races of Destiny: 3/5 - There was a lot to like about this book, but I felt the new races fell a bit flat. Illumians were the best of these, making multiclassing an interesting option aside from meeting prestige class requirements.
Races of the Wild: 1/5 - Considering I love elves and halflings, I find it a great disappointment that I've found no motivation whatsoever to buy this book. At all. In the least.
Complete Adventurer: 4/5 - I don't know what more I could ask of this book, aside from... Well, I guess while it has a lot of crunch to offer, I just haven't found a concept to really make use of it. If I could either build an interesting character using mostly this book, or found more use for it with a number of my concepts, I'd rate it higher. But I can't ignore that it /does/ have a lot to offer.
Weapons of Legacy: 2/5 - Meh. This book was almost a waste of money. I don't like the precedent this makes toward the old days of the 'screw the player' attitude. You give up a /lot/ to master a weapon of Legacy; skill points, HP, even AB or saves.. I just don't think the power these weapons give are worthwhile. Maybe if I ran an artifact centric campaign someday....
I don't own either of the other books, so I've no comment other than Cityscape doesn't appeal, and Stormwrack is low on my 'to buy' priority list.
I was popping around the web looking at reviews for Hordes of the Abyss and I've started to feel as if reading ratings was of extremely limited value. Reviews for almost every D&D book are all over the place. Certainly with Hoards of the Abyss it ranged from those who felt it was awful to those who considered it to be just about the best product that Wizards has put out in years. Now a review has some advantages over rating a book in that a review writer can say why they did or did not like a book but even here there seems to be no baseline. Hence everyone is establishing their own baseline based on personal criteria of what they want from a Wizards book.
Now personally I thought HotA was the cats pyjama's. However I'm a DM and I love demons. Furthermore I'm all full up on new crunch. I'm not buying any more crunch books. I have tons and its to much to ask the community to always carry the ball in terms of creating comprehensive spell and treasure tables. Some people of done excellent work in this regards but Wizards has not done nearly enough.
What this means in terms of a rating system is that I'll rate a crunch book with a low score - but if you had asked me to rate crunch books back when I was first buying up the initial batch of Complete books I would have been really happy with most of them as they where adding all sorts of good things to my game. So the ratings are not just subjective - their subjection stacked on a a subjective feel of when enough is enough.
I was popping around the web looking at reviews for Hordes of the Abyss and I've started to feel as if reading ratings was of extremely limited value.
Agreed. Since the things you look for in a good product are not necessarily the things I look for in a good product, you giving it 4 out of 5 means nothing by itself. (Note: I'm using 'you' in the general rather than specific sense.)
Reviews for almost every D&D book are all over the place. Certainly with Hoards of the Abyss it ranged from those who felt it was awful to those who considered it to be just about the best product that Wizards has put out in years.
Case in point. Some people hated the very notion that Demon Lords should have CRs in the low 20's, and slated the book as a whole as a result. Others looked at the wonderful flavour text in the book, and scored it very highly indeed. Depending on which side of the argument you were on, you would either find this book to be gold or dross, with virtually no middle ground.
Now a review has some advantages over rating a book in that a review writer can say why they did or did not like a book but even here there seems to be no baseline. Hence everyone is establishing their own baseline based on personal criteria of what they want from a Wizards book.
The trick I learned with film reviews was to find a reviewer or two with whom I mostly agreed, then ignore all reviews except the ones those few people wrote. If they liked a given film, chances are I would too, and if they didn't then I probably wouldn't either.
While I agree with Delericho in principle, even the "trust people who seem to share your general viewpoint" strategy is not foolproof. I bought the DMG II on the advice of someone on these boards whose opinions I respect and had agreed with in the past almost completely. In this case I was disappointed. While I wouldn't rate the book as useless and there were a few nuggets, for the most part it has had no impact on my campaign or game play and pretty much just takes up space on my shelf. Certainly not worth the cover price.
Still, while reviews are completely subjective I still believe they have value. The trick is to pick out (if possible) the evidence that supports why this person thinks a product is so wonderful or so terrible. On these boards opinions are almost always in the extreme with very little middle ground. It's a gamble either way but at least you go into a purchase with some hint to why others thought this was cool (or not).
OUT OF 5
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Races of Stone = 5
Races of Destiny = 2
Races of the Wild = 3
Cityscape = 1
Stormwrack = 3
Complete Adventurer = 5
Weapons of Legacy = 3
Races of Destiny was a lot of boring rhetoric, and it would have received a 1 had it not been for the fact that I heavily use the new PrC, feats, spells, and powers in that book.
Cityscape was horrible, it deserves a 1. Total lack of, well, everything. Don't waste your time unless you really need the handful of feats, spells, and monsters. The rest of the text is crap.
I believe the better two of the ones you listed are the Complete Adventurer and Races of Stone. These two books are very heavily refrenced in my gaming group. Cityscape I can't comment on, considering I don't have it yet. Same with Stormwrack, even though I have looked through it and plan on buying it to help with my pirate campaign. Races of the wild is good but it lacks a lot of umph.
I'm much more interested in fluff than cruch normally, so that'll bias my answers, and give different ones than the above, which are more cruch heavy.
Races of Stone: Haven't had the opportunity to crack this one open yet.
Races of Destiny: Ultimately, how can one write a book about humans? It's way to general, and does a disservice to the race. Elves and Half-orcs traditionally are defined as a reaction to their cultures, not as cultures in and of themselves. The use of an "assumed setting" gets burdensome, as the book has to rely on terms such as "generally" and "except" overly heavily. The human subraces were for the most part flat (underground humans! Aquatic humans!), and some of the prestige classes were just strange. 1/5
Races of the Wild
I'll differ from the rest in saying I really enjoyed this book. A strong, clear culture emerges for all three races in the first three chapters. A rehauling of the pantheons is of course present in this book too, which is a shame. I found myself much more inspired to create elven and halfling characters and communities than before I read this book. The cruch chapters fell a bit flat, with no prestige class i really wanted to play as a character. 4/5
Cityscape
Haven't completed this one yet, so this is a bit of a sketchy overlook so far. The previous environment series boasted everything one needed to run an encounter, arc, or campaign in that setting. Cityscape has a difficult challenge in that cities are infinitely complex entities. The book tries to cover many different types of cities (slaver, capitol, elven, dwarven, planar), and many differnt types of districts, and doesn't have enough pages left to cover them in detail. It also lack in the monster category compared to the previous environment series books, having only a scant few monsters, and a few villains as well. However, from my view, the villains are quite well done.
3/5
Stormwrack: This book faces the challenge similar to that of cityscape, for a book about aquatic encounters include three distinct types, underwater, above water (sailing and whatnot), and land near water, (beaches, lakes, rivers, bogs, swamps, ect). The book discusses realistic and memorable challenges facing sea travel, and has an interesting system of relative abstraction for sea battle. This system could be very useful, but the demand for profession (sailor) and knowledge (geography), put it a bit out of the hands of the PCs who rarely take those skills, unless the campaign is aquatic themed (which isn't all to uncommon, what with pirates and all).
The book goes on for a few too many pages with technical stats of boats (which in most campaigns move at the speed of plot anyways). 4/5
Complete Adventurer Of the four first complete books, I'd rate this third. While complete warrior presented many differing ways of making combat oriented characters, and complete arcane had some innovative ways of tinkering with the magic system, complete adventurer was stuck trying to make the skills system more interesting. WHile the spellthief was interesting, a cursory glance of any adventure reveals that the spellthief won't get to steal much, save from his companions. The ninja does a good job of making a ninjaish rogue, but i'd argue that the rogue class made a fine ninja untouched. The scout was the high point of the book, with an innovative new character to fill teh position of rogue, but with different gameplay and feel. Ultimately, the book fails in that it seems to run out of ideas for skilled prestiges classes and feats, and isntead tries to haphazardly make them to encourage bizarre multiclass combinations. 3/5
Weapons of Legacy: haven't read this one, don't plan to.
Races of Stone
Races of Destiny
Races of the Wild
Cityscape
Stormwrack
Complete Adventurer
Weapons of LegacyThanks!
The only one of these I have is Races of Destiny, and based on that I will never buy another 'Races' book. If I could rate it less than 1 I would. Too much space is devoted to describing what humans are and to play them. This might useful if I were some other species, but 40 years of life experience made this section superfluous. I was hoping for some extra crunch to beef up half-elves, but that was disappointing as well. The new race, the Illumians were just humans with letters floating around their heads for some reason - not a very inspiring race.
I found this book profoundly disappointing and a complete waste of money.
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OUT OF 5
-----------Races of Destiny = 2
Races of Destiny was a lot of boring rhetoric, and it would have received a 1 had it not been for the fact that I heavily use the new PrC, feats, spells, and powers in that book.
I was curious to know where you were coming from with this comment. I'm not trying to pan you or anything, but it seems to me that if I got heavy use a lot of rules in a rule book I would probably at least give it a pass mark. I presume the rest of the book must have been really terrible if you could use a lot of the stuff in it but still rate it so poorly.
Not trying to defend the book or anything - I havent read it (or any of the "Races" or "Complete" books) and probably won't. Just wondering if you could clarify what was bad about it, and what you could use? If I read that review, and I was considering buying the book, I would be left a bit confused: useful new rules/crunch vs. 2 out of 5 rating.
The trick I learned with film reviews was to find a reviewer or two with whom I mostly agreed, then ignore all reviews except the ones those few people wrote. If they liked a given film, chances are I would too, and if they didn't then I probably wouldn't either.
Thing about movie reviews is that there is usually some kind of a data base so you can go back and see if the reviewer liked older movies you liked or not. Furthermore a movie is much less expensive and people who like movies tend to see a fair number of them. Essentially the sample gets large enough that you can really start to figure out whether a critic has tastes that run really along the lines of the kind of thing you like. With D&D books the sample really is not nearly high enough and the price of being wrong is notably higher.
Certainly one might as well take the advice of some one they usually agree with - I mean its better then buying completely blind but ultimately its of limited value. Especially since we have something of a community going on, which means one can be blinded by the fact that they like and really respect a poster, but with D&D books some one you like and really respect might have a substantially different view of a book then you do.
If you all could perhaps rank these books from best to worst and add any comments thoughts, I would really appreciate it!
Races of Stone
Races of Destiny
Races of the Wild
Cityscape
Stormwrack
Complete Adventurer
Weapons of Legacy
Races of Stone - I found this one to be a bit boring. I don't see a lot of dwarf PCs in my game as a DM, and as a player, I've never had the interest to play one. I just can't take them seriously; they end up being walking cliches (in my gaming experiences, anyway), so a book that devotes one-third of its material to the race didn't appeal to me. I didn't like the goliaths for much of the same reason - they don't seem like something I'd ever use DM- or player-wise. The monsters seem a bit overpowered, and overall, I was bored with the material.
Races of Destiny - This one, I liked a lot, however. I seem to be in the minority when it comes to the players in my group, but I REALLY like the illumians, and some of the human-specific feats have made their way to a finding a near-permanent place in my games. I like that this book helps in making humans a bit more special without having to resort to things like Regional Feats ala Forgotten Realms.
Races of the Wild - This is my favorite of the three original Races of... books. I'm eager to play a raptoran in SOMETHING, and the elf material is inspiring. My only complaint about this book is the somehow repitlian artistic rendition of the cooshee.
Cityscape - I was excited about this book, but I've flipped through it at the game shop more than once, and it just seems like something I'd never use. It feels like WotC was desperate to come up with something that players or DMs might be able to use with the Ptolus setting.
Stormwrack - Of the first three environmental series books, this is my second favorite (Frostburn being the best of the batch). I've been able to use elements from this book as both a player and DM, and find they work quite well. The writing is solid and top notch. (I reviewed this book here - http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/11/11618.phtml - and, yes, I know there's a typo with one of the authors' names - it's Richard Baker, not Richard Barker.) I really enjoy this book (and not just for the flying, okay gliding, monkeys!)
Complete Adventurer - Truthfully, I don't use this book much. I think it's great that there's a ninja core class, but I alreadyhad that when it was printed in Dragon magazine months before. I think it's great there's a scout core class, but there have a handful of classes called "scout" in a number of non-WotC products prior to this publication. I was a bit bored.
Weapons of Legacy - Didn't find it useful at all, and don't own the book any more.
Thanks!
You're welcome!