Complete Scoundrel (Dungeons & Dragons) [Hardcover]

Admittedly, Complete Scoundrel is a title that I've been anticipating for a couple of months now. Complete Mage was a superb follow up to the Complete Arcane (and for someone who does not care for arcanists, this was hard for me to admit). Perhaps my dillema with this book was that I was looking at this to be a sort of follow-up to Complete Adventurer. Sadly, it is not.

One of the things I have enjoyed about the releases since the Player's Handbook II was the alternative class features, but Complete Scoundrel entirely lacks this selling point. Instead we have the "Making a Scoundrel" section which offers class, prestige class, feat, and skill trick suggestions for different types of personalities. While this is a nice touch, most of the feat suggestions are from the other Complete manuals.

Most of the feats are directly set to the expected classes: Rogue, Bard, Swashbuckler, Scout, and Ninja. Several of the Ambush feats are recycled directly from Dragon Magazine #344. Despite the discussion that any class can display scoundrel-like tendencies, not any class can use these feats. To make up for that, we have the "Luck Feats," which provide an in-game way to do what many players may try to get away with at the table anyway: reroll a result you don't like.

The skill tricks are, as described in the book, like mini-feats that have limited uses per day. Each skill trick requires 2 skill points to learn, which is exceptionally nice if you have a character that's gaining 8, 6, or even 4 + Int modifier skill points on a level up. But again, your 2 + Int mod characters will probably want to spend those 2 or 3 precious skill points trying to permanently increase their chances of success on their more important class skills, rather than gaining a couple of 1/day special actions that most often require a successful skill check anyway. Flashy, yes, but universally available, no.

The Prestige Classes and the Organizations are perhaps the most interesting sections. The Combat Trapsmith has been long-awaited, and the Gray Guard - a paladin who has been granted the freedom to pursue justice by any means necessary - is a superb concept. The Master of Masks is like a theatrical version of the Tattooed Monk from Complete Warrior. Even the psions have access to a new personalized prestige class that meshes well with the Shadowmind from Complete Adventurer.

Very little love is shown for new items and spells. Perhaps we're still reveling from the Spell Compendium and awaiting the Magic Item Compendium.

All in all, it is my belief that a lot of this release felt like an extended section of the Class Acts from Dragon Magazine. Perhaps it was the high expectation I had after being impressed by Complete Mage. Perhaps I'm still wondering why we require at least 5 pages of every manual to describe the changes to polymorph and to define the swift and immediate action, especially if we're constantly being referenced to feats and prestige classes previously published. Complete Scoundrel seemed to define a scoundrel with an immensely broad definition in its introduction (imagine if Complete Divine claimed that any character who ever questioned the existence of a god was a "divine" character), but failed to live up to all parts of its definition.

Bottom line: Collectors should pick this one up. Anyone who wants to add a few flashy maneuvers for their diplomats or their rogues should pick this one up. If you don't already have Complete Adventurer, don't pick it up. If you occassionally let your players have a pity-reroll from time to time, don't pick it up.

When I buy a book called Complete Scoundrel, I expect a tome filled with things to make your Rogue, or Bard, a better criminal or thug. When I opened the cover of the book, I was impressed by how little this book resembled my expectations. One of the first rules of character-making that I learned, was not to mirror a character on Iconic TV, Movie or literary people. Instead, I learned to borrow element of those characters as guidelines. The very first chapter of this book is dedicated to listing almost every mythic scoundrel from Conan to Han Solo! I was hoping to find different ways to make a successful scoundrel character, and there were a few hints and suggestions, for 11 pages out of a total of 157. The book gets worse from there. The next 47 pages are dedicated to Prestige classes. It is an indication of fuzzy thinking, and a drive to publish more material, without giving adequate thought to the quality of the content. Scoundrels are made at the beginning, not in the middle. To think that the writers of this book believe that prestige classes are more important than the basics of character-building is outragious. While some of the prestige classes were indeed interesting, most of them were targetted on warrior or melee characters. The feats and skill tricks section, another 33 pages, seems to dedicate a huge amount of space to Luck related feats. I understand that luck must play a part of every rogues career, but for a player class to revolve around re-rolling bad dice throws is ludicrous! How does being lucky make one a scoundrel! Honestly, the only section of this book I found truly helpful, was the Equipment chapter. When I take this book as a whole, I have to say it was obviously rushed into production, before anyone gave thought to what should be between the covers. I found better ideas for making a scoundrel in Complete Adventurer, than I did in this obviously inferior work. It has been growing more obvious that WotC has lost sight of game play in favor of publishing an ever more confusing array of source books. I've been playing D&D, as a player and a DM, since the days of Gary Gygax, and I've seen a lot of changes in the game over the years. WotC is making the same mistake that TSR made in Second edition. Too many rules and source books, and not enough emphasis on role playing. Enough preaching, and I wish you happy gaming!

I ordered this book because I play a rogue and was hoping to get access to new feats, enhance my skills, maybe get a new prestige class worth aiming for with my rogue. The Complete Adventurer really whet my appetite for a rogue-based "complete" book, since it provides so much of value for new feats, weapons, and prestige classes. Unfortunately, the Complete Scoundrel is nowhere near as useful as any other "Complete" book.

Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of new material. The catch is that all of it requires that you design your campaign with that new material. And THAT means that any existing game can not simply plug these new prestige classes, skills, or feats in. There are some new spells that can be used, and there are some new ways of hiding blades and some new alchemy items that might be easily used, but about 95% of this book ends up being useless in an existing game. If you want to DM and have a fairly wild world, this is a good book for you and your players. If you are a player, talk to your DM first before buying this book. If you don't, the Complete Scoundrel might be collecting dust on your bookshelf just like my copy does.