FR: Players Guide to Faerun is out what do you think?

Hi all,
I was just at my FLGS and saw that the new Players Guide is out, updating the Realms to 3.5. I looked at it and saw a lot of rules: feats, prestige classes and spells.

Here's my question for those brave souls who bought the book: I don't run a FR campaign, so how much of this material is going to be useful to me? The original FR book for Third Edition had some balance issues for use in a "standard" 3E game, and Magic of Faerun had even more (that's just my opinion of course). Has this same sort of thing been carried over to the new edition, or is it more "generic 3.5 friendly?"

Any comments you would like to make about the book are welcome as well: what feats/classes/spells/domains are you most interested in?

Thanks!

--Steve

It still has balance issues. One feat gives you proficiency with all martial weapons -- so an Eldritch Knight doesn't need to take a fighter level anymore. Another feat lets you sell loot for 75% of book price instead of 50%. What party wouldn't want this?

WoTC really needs to hire back Monte Cook.

Ken McKinney

SteveC said:

Hi all,
I was just at my FLGS and saw that the new Players Guide is out, updating the Realms to 3.5. I looked at it and saw a lot of rules: feats, prestige classes and spells.

Here's my question for those brave souls who bought the book: I don't run a FR campaign, so how much of this material is going to be useful to me? The original FR book for Third Edition had some balance issues for use in a "standard" 3E game, and Magic of Faerun had even more (that's just my opinion of course). Has this same sort of thing been carried over to the new edition, or is it more "generic 3.5 friendly?"

Any comments you would like to make about the book are welcome as well: what feats/classes/spells/domains are you most interested in?

Thanks!

--Steve

Click to expand...

Haffrung Helleyes said:

It still has balance issues. One feat gives you proficiency with all martial weapons -- so an Eldritch Knight doesn't need to take a fighter level anymore. Another feat lets you sell loot for 75% of book price instead of 50%. What party wouldn't want this?

WoTC really needs to hire back Monte Cook.

Ken McKinney

Click to expand...

Being aware of some of Monte's notions of balance, I would be careful what you wish for. And neither of the feats you listed really pose huge balance problems.

I don't think it had any severe balance issues. Some of the feats were better than normal, yes, but that's because they were regional feats: you can only take one of those, and at 1st level. The rest of the feats seemed pretty much in line with relative feats from the PHB.

In regards to how much is "lootable" for a non-FR game...well, its not the easiest thing to remove a lot of this for a more generic game unless you want to be doing heavy borrowing. Things like the region listings, cosmology, etc. seem pretty closely tied. If you just want to use the feats, spells, PrC's etc., you shouldn't have too bad a time.

Alzrius said:

I don't think it had any severe balance issues. Some of the feats were better than normal, yes, but that's because they were regional feats: you can only take one of those, and at 1st level. The rest of the feats seemed pretty much in line with relative feats from the PHB.

In regards to how much is "lootable" for a non-FR game...well, its not the easiest thing to remove a lot of this for a more generic game unless you want to be doing heavy borrowing. Things like the region listings, cosmology, etc. seem pretty closely tied. If you just want to use the feats, spells, PrC's etc., you shouldn't have too bad a time.

Click to expand...

Interesting stuff. How much of the material is new, and how much is converted from 3.0?

Haffrung Helleyes said:

It still has balance issues. One feat gives you proficiency with all martial weapons -- so an Eldritch Knight doesn't need to take a fighter level anymore. Another feat lets you sell loot for 75% of book price instead of 50%. What party wouldn't want this?

WoTC really needs to hire back Monte Cook.

Ken McKinney

Click to expand...

Didn't Monte's variant Player's Handbook have a feat that in essence gave you all exotic weapon profiencies (that were heavy) and their dire versions for one feat? Might want to rethink that statement.

I don't think it had any severe balance issues. Some of the feats were better than normal, yes, but that's because they were regional feats: you can only take one of those, and at 1st level. The rest of the feats seemed pretty much in line with relative feats from the PHB.

Click to expand...

That's questionable balance-fu. Even regional feats should be in line with other feats that a character can take at first level, because they are exactly the same cost (1 feat, at 1st level). It doesn't matter the quantity, it's the quality....if I made a class that was better than the others but you could only take one level of it, and it *had* to be your first class level, that would still be bad balance because it's the same cost for a better power.

That said, the 75% sellback isn't too bad (should be bigger than 1st level, but no biggie), but the 1 feat for all martial weapons is pretty volatile.

Mostly I'm interested to see how the Planetouched are updated...that was basically the reason I picked up the first one, after all.......

Kamikaze Midget said:

That's questionable balance-fu. Even regional feats should be in line with other feats that a character can take at first level, because they are exactly the same cost (1 feat, at 1st level).

Click to expand...

Not so. This got a sidebar for why they deliberately changed regional feats to make them better than normal feats. The design philosophy is that since regional feats require the character to be grounded in the campaign world (essentially being a strong encouragement for role-playing) that they should reward the character more.

Originally posted by SteveC
Interesting stuff. How much of the material is new, and how much is converted from 3.0?

Click to expand...

Not having done a complete check, it seems like the first half of the book was 3E to 3.5E updates, since that corrects the (regional) feats, spells, and PrC's (conversely, the magic items section seemed to be almost all new material). The second half of the book, dealing with cosmology, epic levels, the appendix for psionic/exalted/vile material, and the short section on playing "under-powered" versions of races with a level adjustment, was mostly new material (some of it was taken from the WotC website though).

I looked at it today in the store for about an hour, and I have to say I thought it was a VERY weak book. Most of the material (I'd say 60-70% from eyeballing it) is reprinted from other FR books and updated to 3.5. The regional feats are pretty much all the same, with a few minor mods to up their power. Some of the spells were new, but lots were revisions of spells from older FR stuff. The PrCs were the major thing though- almost all of them are from the FRCS, and only slightly modified for casters so the DCs are lower and in line with 3.5 (which is a good thing). Looks like there were some new properties for weapons and armor and items, but not that many. Some new epic level stuff (blah), some FR cosmology details (useful for FR fans, useless otherwise), and an update of events in the realms, as well as ways to include stuff from the BoVD and BoED. Overall a very mediocre book, and one I would only recommend to diehard FR fans. Pass on it if you don't play the Realms.

Not so. This got a sidebar for why they deliberately changed regional feats to make them better than normal feats. The design philosophy is that since regional feats require the character to be grounded in the campaign world (essentially being a strong encouragement for role-playing) that they should reward the character more.

Click to expand...

Did I mention that my one-level first-level class is v. exclusive to only this world? Heck, it varies by region...it grounds you more in the world!

Eh, it's still a bad reason. While I can see the logic, it's crossing the flavor/mechanics boundary (you've done something for flavor! here's a mechanical benefit!), and it's effectively saying "Guys from FR are better than your mooks from wherever else you guys are from, 'cuz we've got REGIONAL FEATS! And those make us POWERFUL!"

I mean, it doesn't exactly shatter the game, but it's significant enough to grate on me...it's like saying something can be powerful because it's 'rare.' This is bad rules fu, methinks.