Class Books

[Erekose]

Now that we have the five class books I wondered what people thought of them as a whole?

* Sword and Fist
* Tome and Blood
* Defenders of the Faith
* Song and Silence
* Masters of the Wild

As a general rule it seems to me that they have matured in terms of production values but have become progressively less useful to implement.

I only recieved Masters of the Wild at the weekend (I'm in the UK) so my opinion of it is only from brief reading. The feats don't seem to be terribly innovative (and I dislike class specific feats and many seem to be based on class abilities - rage, wild shape, favoured enemy, etc.). The prestige classes are interesting but I'm not sure if I'd actually use any in play.

 

[Henry]

My position is that they really should slash and burn the current Inventory for Sword and Fist, and re-release it with all errata included. That is the only one that is almost unplayable IMO, with 6 pages of errata to fix.

Otherwise, the books are useful and good, and full of interesting ideas. There is an obvious quality progression with the books, and Song and Silence and Masters of the Wild are very low-error.

On the contrary, I found lots of usefulness in the Feats section. It really expands the horizons of the three classes it handles, and makes playing a druid or Ranger much more fun.

 

[Psion]

My position is that they really should slash and burn the current Inventory for Sword and Fist, and re-release it with all errata included. That is the only one that is almost unplayable IMO, with 6 pages of errata to fix.

6 pages of erratta isn't too telling considering that it consists of things like:

Feat names of feats to be added to the fighter list with one feat name per line.
A restatement of the Ninja save and BAB advancement table
A one-per-line listing of class ability names to include the Ex/Su/Sp designations.

The scope of most of the changes to S&F is rather finicky.

And at least you have the errata, unlike most third party stuff that you will never see errata for.

Further, and most essentially, there are a lot of good ideas and staples in S&F. More PrCs get used out of S&F than any other PrC resource.

Otherwise, the books are useful and good, and full of interesting ideas. There is an obvious quality progression with the books, and Song and Silence and Masters of the Wild are very low-error.

Too bad S&S's prestige class section could be used for a sleep aid. Low error it is, but also low flavor.

I agree MotW is the best of the line

 

[Darklone]

Too bad S&S's prestige class section could be used for a sleep aid. Low error it is, but also low flavor.

I agree MotW is the best of the line

Hmm. That's a matter of taste. Oozemaster? Well, if you like high fantasy... or if high fantasy means for you to change your hero into something nonhumanoid... Slime anyone?

I disliked most of the class books. PrClasses didn't seem very balanced, feats were mostly boring...

I wait for the next Mongoose Quintessential things series. The Fighter was very good. IMHO. But as I said... It's all a matter of taste.

 

[Holy Bovine]

I recently went back and re-read Sowrd and Fist and have decided that it is the most unfairly disparged classbook of the bunch. Yes there were some bad typos and rules-errors (how do you forget to put in a BAB advancement?!). But the PrC are actually very good. And they fill some much needed holes for character development - namely the mounted knight, the ninja and an archer. I've decided that these are 3 of the most useful PrC and should be able to find a home in virtually any campaign (before you say it just change the name 'ninja' to 'assassin' and you have an excellent assassin-style character, much better than the so-called assassin in the DMG).

Most of the feats are very colourful and can add a great deal of depth to your character (ie - my friend made up a LG figher for a 'fill-in' game last night - he was going to do a paladin but decided that this person wanted to be a paladin but just didn't have the personality for it (low CHA) and is going to take 'dirty-fighting' as his next feat - another reason he can't be a paladin - he fights too dirty! ). I can't really find and feat that is overpowered IMO (some are a little weak though but usually make up for this by thier 'cool' factor).

Song and Silence seems to be the weakest in writing style and usefulness of the PrC and feats. Is was the biggest disappointment to me especially when you see how excellent Tome and Blood was (the strongest of all the classbooks although I haven't seen MotW yet)..

Remember all this is IMO!

 

[Crothian]

I have and use all five. S&F is the one most people hate, but even before the errata came out I was using it. To me, all of it's little problesm were an easy fix. S&S does have bland pr cl but for my Bard it has been preiceless. THe information of the instruments and the bardic feats are very useful. MotW is my favorite as a player because it has the most character ideas for me. T&B has the most NPC ideas for me, though I found the spells bland in that one.

It's all a matter of taste and opinion. I also like the Quintessential series and think it compliments Wizards class books nicely.

 

[Erekose]

I haven't seen either of the "Quintessential" books. To be honest with the five "official" books there's more than enough to work with!

For me, S&F has definitely proved to be the most useful of the five despite its low production values.

 

[Henry]

...6 pages of erratta isn't too telling considering that it consists of things like:

Feat names of feats to be added to the fighter list with one feat name per line.
A restatement of the Ninja save and BAB advancement table
A one-per-line listing of class ability names to include the Ex/Su/Sp designations.

The scope of most of the changes to S&F is rather finicky...

...And at least you have the errata, unlike most third party stuff that you will never see errata for.... Further, and most essentially, there are a lot of good ideas and staples in S&F. More PrCs get used out of S&F than any other PrC resource.... Too bad S&S's prestige class section could be used for a sleep aid. Low error it is, but also low flavor.

I agree MotW is the best of the line

Actually, it was more than that:
The fighter feats were never recognized as such. The original errata was that NONE of them were fighter feats...

The Ninja, AND the Halfling outrider were screwed up in Attack Bonuses... the original answer? "The lack of BAB is NOT an error."

Approximately 6 or the Exotic Weapons had stats interchanged so as to be useless for balance. As errata'ed I would allow them, but as unerrata'ed, they were insane and heavily unbalanced. The original answer? "Hey, some weapon has to be the best!"

The weapon master was toned down.

There are many more, but these are the ones I can think of off the top of my head without looking.

I myself use S&F, and have been since its release. However, those six pages of errata incorporate almost half of the rules material in the book - and really hurt the introduction of the rest of the class books. It wasn't until Tome and Blood appeared that most gamers on these boards were willing to give it a serious look-see. I bought every one promptly, and have used all of them in my and others' campaigns.

 

[RogueJK]

The fighter feats were never recognized as such. The original errata was that NONE of them were fighter feats...

The Ninja, AND the Halfling outrider were screwed up in Attack Bonuses... the original answer? "The lack of BAB is NOT an error."

Approximately 6 or the Exotic Weapons had stats interchanged so as to be useless for balance. As errata'ed I would allow them, but as unerrata'ed, they were insane and heavily unbalanced. The original answer? "Hey, some weapon has to be the best!"

Haha. I remember that.

IIRC, they tried to justify the BAB omission by saying "The Outrider is a scout. It isn't supposed to be getting into fights" or something along those lines.

Shortly thereafter, they woke up, removed their heads from their... nether region... and put out the joints they had been smoking.

You gotta love RPGs when they have just come out. Wackyness abounds. Some of the time, the people working on and writing for them know less about the game than the people who have played it, at least for a while. Luckily, that tends to change fairly quickly.

 

[Holden MaGroin]

I have them all, but rarely use them. Some interesting ideas.

But for me, with the Quintessential books from Mongoose and the upcoming Class books from Green Ronin - and isn't there another company putting some out - aren't we hitting a bit of a glut in this very narrow topic?

Not to mention all the stuff in Dragon each month...

I thought it would be kinda cool to have the five classbooks and be done - but we keep seeing people treading on the same ground. And, while I thought S&F was just OK (after the errata - I'm not a big fighter guy), I wasn't too impressed with Qunitessential Fighter either. So, it's re-treading the same ground but not necessarily improving anything.

Haven't seen Q. Rogue yet, but I have liked Mike Mearls' stuff so far, so I may give it a shot depending on what's at the game store this saturday.

I guess I'm just hitting the splat book overload - much earlier than I thought I would, anyway!

- HM