Overall, I'm pleased that I bought this one, though it is far from perfect. Perhaps the Hit-or-Miss quality of the text, though, is derived not so much from poor conception or execution, but rather from the opposite; after all, this text attempts to collect some of the more interesting "house rules" variants out there, and by definition, different variants would seem to appeal to different gamer-geeks.
Cool Things:
--sections on "reducing level adjustments" (buying off LA with XP later on) and "bloodlines" (adding a touch of bizarre ancestry to a PC) are well thought out.
--in terms of class variants, some of the wizards are decent, but the paladin (i.e. of any alignment) really shines.
--the "character traits" (personal quirks added at generation, a la *Fallout*) and "character flaws" (taking penalties at generation to add bonus feats, a la White Wolf) are long overdue to this system; the "spelltouched feats" (adding event-specific magical abilities) are also fertile.
--the "defense bonus" variant (a level-contingent statistic like attack bonus), "armor as damage reduction" (self-explanatory?), and "damage conversion" (armor changes lethal damage to non-lethal) are all great; the "variable modifiers" variant (instead of BAB +4, say, one would instead add d8 to the standard d20 roll) is also smart.
--many of the magic variants are useful, such as "summon monster variants" (individualized or themed lists), "metamagic components" (such feats have costs in this case), "item familiars" (why not? there's tons of intelligent constructs otherwise), and "incantations" (complex magickes that can be cast by anyone).
--the final section, about campaigns, really delivers; here, we get rules for "contacts" (a la White Wolf), "Reputation" (yeah, like in *Baldur's Gate*), "Honor" (which would seem to be self-explanatory), "Taint" (evil corrupts, after all), and "sanity" (yes, that nearly perfect stat from *Call of Cthulhu*).
Holistically, the text displays the same sub-par attention to editing as other WotC releases, and the artwork varies considerably in quality (compare the "Paladin of Tyranny" on 53 to the gamer-geek group on 134, for instance). I tend to consider the rest of the text uninteresting for my purposes, though others will surely, and with good reason, find such items useful. And that diversity is precisely the value of the text overall. (It is fair to note in this connection that nothing is particularly badly done, though the "racial paragon classes" are a bit too ubermenschy for my political taste--the game already suffers from a tolkienesque proto-fascistic racialism as it stands; no need to make it even more arriere garde.) The text might be a bit pricey, however, if one ends up using merely one third of the rules contained herein. That said, I'd note that the rules for sanity alone justify the (reduced amazon.com) expense for me.
