- Hardcover: 191 pages
- Publisher: Wizards of the Coast (Mar 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0786931345
- ISBN-13: 978-0786931347
- Product Dimensions: 27.7 x 21.6 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 613,491 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
34 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing,
By Alex Fell (Rugby, Warwickshire, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Players Guide to Faerun (Forgotten Realms) (Hardcover)
This book is something of a mishmash. Although it is described as a"Players' Guide", there is a great deal of content which isn't really forplayers but DMs, and a lot of stuff which can only really be described a"filler". But there is a lot of worthwhile information too. So let's getdown to specifics.The first section of the book sets out a new scheme of regional feats forcharacters. Regional feats have been changed so that they arecommensurately more powerful (to encourage you to take them for yourcharacter) but also as a result they are restricted so that you can onlyever take one, and only at first level. It seems quite a lot of book fora listing of feats (mostly: there are some non-regional feats too) ofwhich your character can only take one. The regional listings have beenbuilt up too, with more detail for non-humans (a number of separateregions for, say, dwarves rather than a single, overarching "dwarf"region) and expanded to cover all of Faerun. This is probably good,although it does restrict DMs who might have wanted to put their own stuffin the gaps left in the old tables. The next section covers prestige classes - many seem barely changed, andthe new ones are not fantastic. For example, there is the Eye of Horus-Re(an undead-hating cleric-based class with links to the Sun domain) and theMorninglord of Lathander (an undead-hating cleric-based class with linksto the Sun domain) - no, I was was paying attention when I wrote that. Anumber (such as the Hathran or Incantrix) get a major rejig, butall-in-all this section is not compelling. The next section updates spells. There are optional feats linking clericsto certain deities so they can cast the deity-specific spells - in Magicof Faerun any cleric can cast those spells - which I like as it adds moreflavour. There are also a couple of new or updated domains and new spelldescriptions (to tidy up poor play-testing in previous editions - BallLightning, for example). Another section covers Faerunian cosmology. Interesting, but hardlyappropriate for a "Players' Guide" - this is the most obvious example offiller material. It should have been in Faiths & Pantheons, or aweb-enhancement. The next section "updates" the setting - i.e. it contains summaries(spoilers) for the current book series in the Realms, the Archwizards andthe War of the Spider Queen. It rather ruined my enjoyment of one of thebooks (Condemnation) as it set out the plot before I read it, so this wasslightly annoying. Pretty pointless too - it could have been far moreconcise. More filler? Finally, there's a section setting out material to use with the Book ofVile Darkness, Book of Exalted Deeds and Epic Level Handbook. Really forDMs, and not really that useful (and I have all the books inquestion). All in all, I found this a bit disappointing as it gave the impression ofbeing cobbled together for a quick buck. The presentation is also belowpar by the standards of Wizards, with a number of typos and errors in thecaptions for some of the illustrations. It's OK if you are a Realmscompletist, but not really very good value for money at all. There isenough good material for a slim-ish softback, but it has been padded outto fill up a hardback and it shows.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
2.9 out of 5 stars (20 customer reviews) 81 of 94 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Definitely not worth the price... nor the time to read.,
By Eurypides "Eurypides" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Players Guide to Faerun (Forgotten Realms) (Hardcover)
Sadly, Wizards of the Coast (or Hasbro, you decide) has become the bastion of corporate, "for-profit" literature at the expense of publishing quality and gaming innovation...The trend of the 3.5 revision, admittedly largely unecessary and done primarily to renew a revenue stream from gamers willing to be duped into buying it (by some of its own authors!), continues with this weak text. Short, with minimal additions and *many* only trivial revisions to 3.0 material, this book panders to the 'complete-ist' in many gamers, who will compulsively purchase any new material. The only useful items (I won't go so far as to say novel) include the Initiate section (2 1/2 pages), the compiled spell list (made your own already?) and the magical item section (7 pages). Out of 191 pages, I will be using these 20 some odd pages. Additionally, Wizards has failed to understand their own customers... Each new book excitedly proclaims how many new FEATS, PRESTIGE CLASSES and SPELLS that the book contains. At this point, with Dragon, d20 OGL products and WotC material, there are a mind-boggling number of each of these, with only minor and typically insignificant differences between many. While I like choices as much as the next RPG player, the novelty of splicing different class abilities together and calling them a prestige class has become tired. What we're looking for, if I may be so bold to speak for my fellow gamers, is new contextual material. The "Campaign Journal" section of this book was billed as 'Current Events', but rather than breaking new ground, or exposing new information, it merely regurgitates the plotlines of recent FR novels. So if you're one of the slavishly devoted purchasers of WotC products, a by-product of the previously quality material that the company *had* been putting out for years... Stop. You're encouraging them (with your hard-earned dollars) to publish respun garbage under the guise of NEW and IMPROVED. Let's band together and vote with our dollars. Support the d20 labels putting out quality literature for discerning gamers (Malhavoc Press), not the tripe that's rolling out of what seems to be the nadir of WotC products. 17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
It's nice having all this stuff in one small book but...,
By David Petersen - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Players Guide to Faerun (Forgotten Realms) (Hardcover)
I was really looking forward to this book for a long time. When I first got it in the mail, it was a bit of a disappointment. I guess this was because I was comparing this to other FR releases like The Silver Marches, The Unapproachable East, Underdark, Lords of Darkness, etc., books whose quality were top notch (for WotC books) and had a good amount of fluff (for my taste). I started liking the PGtF when I started planning for a new campaign because it lessened the time for character creation significantly because I didn't have to look through multiple books for feats and stuff. The 3.5 revisions weren't too bad overall. My only real gripe now is the fact that the book had tons of typos. I had not seen any in the earlier FR campaign supplements.
42 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
a sore disappointment, with little useful content.,
By B. Allen-Trick "Meatrace" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Players Guide to Faerun (Forgotten Realms) (Hardcover)
And I was so excited about this too. The Forgotten Realms books are generally pretty good, the FR campaign setting, monsters of faerun, magic of faerun, races of faerun, all solid books. And i had low expectations for this, all I wanted was a 3.5 update, with all the player race information as well as regional and racial feats and spells rolled up into one handy dandy place.I got none of this. They refused to reprint the write-ups for the PC races (WHY?!) so you still need the campaign setting book. They refused to reprint any spells from magic of faerun or the campaign setting. The prestige classes they did re-do they either changed virtually nothing, completely botched, or attached an arbitrary region-specific name to (shadow thief of amn? what the hell? what's wrong with guild thief? the regional feats are now only available at 1st level, and exactly who is eligible for what has been obscured beyond all recognition. to top it off, the ONLY reason i was super-psyched about this was the purported inclusion of the fire-knives assassin which was removed for space. SPACE? this book has little to nothing of worth in it. there are two things that are sort of interesting in this book: a section noting various psionic organizations. for a psy-freak like me its enough information to stoke my curiosity, but its still very little. and the other is the Yathrinshee prestige class. which by the way is very cool, and ridiculously overpowered. please people, dont waste your money. if you REALLY want one i'll sell you mine cheap. |
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