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Post by Iron Bonny Shades on Oct 6, 2003 9:01:20 GMT -5
When it comes to suppliments, my two favorites where the complete thieves and bards handbook. However, most had at least one good idea or two.
Fighter: Not really impressed by any, but kinda liked the gladiator.
Thieves: Bounty Hunter, thief swashbuckler, and the troubleshooter. Other then one or two, this is one of my favorites and one of the best written of the complete book.
Clerics: meh. Didn't like the kits in here at all.
Wizards: nothing particularly catching for me.
Bards: Now this is a book that rocks. Loved the blade, Herald, jester, jongler, Meistersinger, riddlemaster, dwarvern chanter, elven minsteral, gnome professor (even if should be a core class on its own), and halfling whistler.
Why they didn't update this information in song and silience is beyond me.
Dwarves: Battle rager and sharpshooter, natch. Also liked the pest controller.
Elves: Spellfilcher, bladsinger and the collector.
Gnomes and halflings: Imagemaker, vanisher and buffon for gnomes. cartographer and urchin for halfling.
Ranger: Greenwood ranger. I wonder if there is a prestiege class that does something similar. Also liked the Feralan, and giantkiller.
Druids: really Liked the different varients of druids (especially the underdruid). Plus really enjoyed the hivemaster, shapeshifter, lost one, and totemic druid. The avenger, while okay, would make a great prestiege kit in 3rd edition.
Barberians: Not a real fan of this book, but I like the flamespeaker.
wizards and rogues: Nimbral Wizards. Never could find fighter and priests though.
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What about you guys?
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Post by EK - Shadow of Death on Oct 6, 2003 9:44:07 GMT -5
Bard - Somehow, all the kits seem like sideshows at a circus or carnival. They're cool, but its not the best book
Druid - Didn't like kits, but the info on the order was great. The Shadow Circle rocks.
Dwarves - Good book. Good coverage on dwarven society, though a bit more detail would be appreciated. Didn't like the dwarven cleric kits, though
Elves - Excellent book. Gives a lot of insight into the elven mindset. Kits rock too.
Fighter - This rocked, but most of the weapons and rules were repeated in Combat & Tactics (with more detail) so it wasn't the best. I like the kits a lot though.
Gnomes and Halflings - This book was great. You never knew that there was so much about the little folk that you didn't know. I liked the set up of the book, which was like a continuously told story.
Necromancer - This ROCKED. It had a lot of info, a lot of detail, and examples to back it all up. Made the idiot necromancer into something to fear.
Ninja - The lord of all complete books. Ninjas were given bad reps ever since Ninja Turtles came out (The Foot?) and Oriental Adventures didn't help the image. This had all the weapon stats, abilities, and the kits! Great book. Definetely worth the price (if you use ninja, that is)
Paladin - This used to be my favorite (since paladins were my fav), but this doesn't have much information regarding non-stereotypical paladins. There's little room for leeway (esp. with samurai paladins, etc.) These things can't exist. It has a LOT of detail though. A must for anyone with a paladin in their campaign.
Priest - Meh. I could've gone without it. The spells were interesting, but they weren't worth the time taken to read the book.
Ranger - Cool book. I love rangers. A lot of variation. I love the stalker.
Thief - This is essentially the same as the ninja book except broader. It touched on a lot of different ways of using thieves in the campaign, with a lot of combinations, etc. but didn't expand the role of the thief as a campaign tool, or as a class very much. Good book, overall.
Wizards - This was cool. I didn't like the spells section (there are too many as it is - keep them in one place) but the kits were nice, and the detailed info on magical practices, events etc. were nice. This book lacks a bit, but more than makes up in some areas.
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Post by Loki3 on Oct 6, 2003 9:56:26 GMT -5
Actually I find them all great reference material. I dont play 2E but I LOVE and CONSUME anything AD&D / D&D / RPG for use in my little bag -o- holding........
Ok its a big bag, but ya know what I mean..........
But as far as a favorate........
Complete Thieves.....................................
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Omote
Peasant
FPQ Extraordinarius!
Posts: 60
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Post by Omote on Oct 7, 2003 9:23:56 GMT -5
Definatly liked the COMPLETE BOOK OF THIEVES and COMPLETE BOOK OF ELVES, best.
The guide to humaoinds was pretty good too!
.......................Omote
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Post by Borrowed Thyme on Nov 4, 2003 4:40:15 GMT -5
I loved the Complete Bards' handbook, especially the reputation things.
The fighters handbook was okay. The priests one wasn't very good, filled up with sample priesthoods.
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Post by Kerap on Nov 6, 2003 20:40:18 GMT -5
I found myself loving and hating some of the books at the same time. A wealth of information good and bad. For instance, I enjoyed the Paladin book, but totally disagreed with their comment about paladin's not marrying and having children. What "church" would NOT want their greatest warriors to have offspring? Anyhow, let's not get into a discussion about THAT. My point was how I really liked and disliked the same book.  |
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Post by Draxy on Nov 7, 2003 8:36:19 GMT -5
Hi Kerap,
I think you may have misread that part on Paladin's and marriage. It says that "...some religions forbid marriage outright, demanding that celibacy be included as part of their Paladin's ethos..."
That is something that has historical precedent and makes sense for SOME churches. The Paladin is treated in the same way as a Priest in the Catholic Church... nor are they the only church that denies marriage to their monks, priests and in some extreme cases, even their adherents. Religions are often flaky in what they demand.
It says that most Paladins do not marry because: "It's difficult to raise a family with so many demands on their already meagre resources; how can a Paladin choose between tithing and feeding their hungry child?"
That's more the point.
Draxy
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Post by Iron Bonny Shades on Nov 10, 2003 1:29:29 GMT -5
but I was under the impression that the main reason that most churches required their priests to be celebiate was an order of the crown to keep their lands from breaking into unmanagable plots?
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Post by Draxy on Nov 10, 2003 6:11:44 GMT -5
Historicly, for Priests, yes, that was true. For our fictional Paladin's however, the quote was taken directly from the Complete Paladin's Handbook as that was the reference material in question.
Draxy
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Post by Jorghnassen on Nov 10, 2003 20:25:40 GMT -5
I apparently am one of the few fans of the priest handbook. It's not about the kits (all sucky unless you're into fighting monks), it's about making your own deities and their priests.
I like the wizard's handbook with the in depth look at the specialists, and it has a couple of good kits, mainly the Witch kit.
The ranger handbook has some good stuff too, the different followers depending on the main terrain and lots of good kits.
I don't own any of the other books, but I have looked through some of them. The thief handbook looks interesting enough and the bard and paladin handbook appear to have some good kits. The fighter handbook never really seemed that interesting. On the other hand, the Necromancer handbook has some really neat spells and kits, finally giving more life to this very interesting but unfortunately limited class.
My interpretation of the demihuman races seems to clash with TSR's view, so I never liked any of the complete books of elves, dwarves or gnomes and halflings (I particularly hate the tinker gnomes....).
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Post by Draxy on Nov 11, 2003 3:18:57 GMT -5
For the most part the thing that I thought that they could have easily left out of all the "Complete" series books WAS the kits. I just was never impressed by most of them, although there were some I liked.
I'll go with Jorghnassen on this one though, I thought that the Priest Handbooks handling of designing the divergent faiths was perhaps the most valuable tool to come out of the series as a whole. It wasn't about more "kewl powers", but about the rationale for church A believing such and such and church B having a completely different set of beliefs on the same subject because of the divergencies in the mind sets.
I often use the Forgotten Realms setting when I'm running AD&D because it means less background work that I have to do... but this one book gave me FAR more work in that regard, but allowed me to almost recreate the setting to get away from the worst power abuses of it simply by redesigning the various faiths along the
"CPriestHB" lines.
It also got me, as soon as the Spells and Magic book came out, to completely redfine the way we use magic in our version of the Realms (detailed in a seperate and LONG article I've already posted here) and the only one negative comment I've gotten about the new way things run is:
"Wow, the gods that El (Elminster) kicked the cr.p out of before would probably eat him for lunch now."
Which was exactly what I wanted of course.
The point of all this is that of the entire series, the Complete Priests Handbook was the single one that gave me the greatest springboard for ideas and new concepts... which is what the book was primarily aimed at.
Draxy
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Post by Hussar on Nov 12, 2003 1:44:34 GMT -5
I loved the paladins handbook. I played a votary paladin for quite a while and had SO much fun with him. Really, I thought that the CPaladinHB did present a number of non-stereotypical paladins. The Votary being probably the first and foremost. Ranger's and Druid's books would come up as a tie for second IMHO. Both had a wealth of info for the player and the DM. Draxy, I'm sorry, but I hated the Complete Priests. Since when were priests overpowered? The whole book gibbled specialty priests to the point where they were worse off than a 1e illusionist.  Although, FR went too far the other way with the Faiths and Avatars and created Uber-monstrosities that I wouldn't let anywhere near my campaigns. I found the Complete Priests to be a complete waste of time. |
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Post by Jorghnassen on Nov 12, 2003 19:39:22 GMT -5
I will admit that speciality priests are somewhat underpowered in the priest handbook, but it's nothing that can't be fixed by giving access to another spell sphere or two, or another granted power.
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