What's the best and worst D&D book you own from any edition?

Olaf the Stout

Hero

• Nov 12, 2013

• #21

I'm surprised that the Epic Level Handbook is the worst book for so many people. I thought I would be alone in that being people's worst books, especially given how many horrible 3rd party books were released during the 3.0E era (looking at you Fast Forward Entertainment!). Thankfully I was wise enough at the time to not actually buy any of those books.

Greg K said:

Best Book? It depends.
Rules: Unearthed Arcana
Class (2e): Complete Thief's Handbook

Click to expand...

Yeah, Unearthed Arcana would be up there for me as well. I quite liked how they pulled back the curtain on some of the rules and explained why they worked they way they did.

Complete Thief's Handbook was the first ever splatbook I bought for D&D and, with my first ever D&D character being a thief, I remember it quite fondly. The kits were good fun.

Olgar Shiverstone said:

Best: Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog. 2E-era but really setting and edition independent; it's just a really fun flavorful book.

Click to expand...

I own the PDF of this and agree wholeheartedly about it being a very fun and flavourful book. Definitely one of my favourites. The 3.5E Magic Item Compendium is it's crunchier that I also love. It has added a lot of diversity to my 3.5E game, but I also love also the descriptions and illustrations of the items in the book.

 

log in or register to remove this ad

Hussar

Legend

• Nov 12, 2013

• #22

Let's see. Best books. The Foul Locales: Urban Blight book from Mystic Eye Games is a fantastic book and one of the best setting (generic) books I've used. It saw constant use in a lot of campaigns.

Worst: 3e DMG. Hands down. Poorly organized, dry and pretty much pointless for actually trying to learn how to DM.

 

Olaf the Stout

Hero

• Nov 12, 2013

• #23

Hussar said:

Worst: 3e DMG. Hands down. Poorly organized, dry and pretty much pointless for actually trying to learn how to DM.

Click to expand...

I don't know that I completely agree with you about the 3E DMG being horrible, but at least they made a lot of improvements in DMG II. The 3.5E DMG II is probably one of the better books in my collection.

 

J

Jhaelen

First Post

• Nov 12, 2013

• #24

Best: Hammerfast - 4e adventure locale; a deceptively thin booklet that is full of awesome with probably hundreds of adventure hooks.
Worst: Complete Psionic - 3e supplement to the Expanded Psionics Handbook; a shoddy collection of tidbits, ranging from uninspired, over useless, to utter crap that really caused me to lose faith in Bruce R. Cordell. It even included errata to nerf perfectly reasonable powers in senseless ways. How this "thing" managed to get printed will always remain a mystery to me. It was a slap in the face for every fan of psionics in D&D.

 

Bedrockgames

Legend

• Nov 12, 2013

• #25

I thought the 3E DMG was one of the best.

 

Ahnehnois

First Post

• Nov 12, 2013

• #26

I don't know. As DM Guides go, I think the 3e DMG is pretty good, albeit with a lot of wasted space and bad advice (still better than the others I've seen), but the rationale for having a separate DMG has never been clear to me. It seems like a combination of stuff that could have been in the main book (magic items, environment rules), stuff that shouldn't be anywhere (XP rules, wealth by level, example campaigns), and advice.

 

GlassEye

Adventurer

• Nov 12, 2013

• #27

The things I consider 'best' are one that I enjoyed reading and inspired me to create campaigns and got me excited to play. In that regard the 3.5 DMG failed because I found it terribly boring to read and it didn't inspire me to do anything. I would have a hard time narrowing my best down to one product but the ones I feel are contenders for best are: Den of Thieves (2e), Elements of Magic revised (3.5e), Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe (3.5e). I also enjoyed reading the Binder section of Tome of Magic and the related 3pp Secrets of Pact Magic but I never got the opportunity to use them in play.

For 'worst': I second the horrible Castle Greyhawk adventure. It marketed itself as one thing and turned out to be something totally different and it failed at what it was trying to be as well. There are a number of totally uninspired and dull books that could also go on this list but I don't think any of them reach the badness of that adventure.

 

Halivar

First Post

• Nov 12, 2013

• #28

Best: Definitely Unearthed Arcana. 3rd Edition had been getting pretty stale, and we'd started playing other systems. UA brought us back into the D&D fold. Gestalt, in particular, became default D&D for us.

Honorable Mentions: Manual of the Planes was imaginative, and I loved some of the PrC's. Book of Exalted Deeds gets a bad rap, but I liked the focus on really, really good characters after what I thought were a spate of books intended for evil or unheroic campaigns (anathema in our group).

Worst: Arms and Equipment Guide. Utterly useless. Never used. 'Nuff said.

Dishonorable Mention: When one of my group's resident power gamers got his hands on a copy of Tome of Magic and cleared it with the DM, the game just went straight to hell. This book is emblematic of the power creep that cemented, IMHO, the necessity to kill 3.5 and take its stuff.

 

S

Scorpio616

First Post

• Nov 12, 2013

• #29

Best: 1E DMG

Worst? That's hard since I sold off a few stinkers. Book of Exalted Furverts was sold off within a week of arrival.

For sheer incompatibility with the base game, 3.5 Magic Item Compendium is a real stinker. But so much of the Wotc Supplements had the same issue.

I can't say Hero Builder's Guidebook since that was the only time WotC actually did some codifying for their alignment system. That counts for a tiny bit IMHO.

Worst: Freedom from 2E Darksun. Not only did Troy Denning's novels ruin the setting, the PCs in this adventure get to watch it get done by high level NPCs while they sit on the sidelines.

 

Olaf the Stout

Hero

• Nov 12, 2013

• #30

Why do you say the MIC wasn't compatible with the base game? Because many of the items seem better than the DMG magic items?

Personally the MIC is one of my best books.