D&D 5E Escapist article on SCAG is Brutal.

[JohnLynch]

The amount of crunch is beside the point. It's the style of the thing. The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide is more in the *style* of the PGtF and FRPG than the FRCS or FRCG. It's intended more for players. Yes, it might not have enough stuff in it for some people's tastes, but that doesn't mean it's not essentially a player's guide, rather than a campaign setting book.

That's fair enough. I just saw "this is meant to be like the FRPG" which had significant crunch and was like "no, no, no. There's nowhere near that much crunch!"

 

[pukunui]

That's fair enough. I just saw "this is meant to be like the FRPG" which had significant crunch and was like "no, no, no. There's nowhere near that much crunch!"

Yeah, no, that's not what I meant at all. I just meant in terms of the point of the book. I think a lot of people are disappointed because they were expecting it to be something it wasn't designed to be - eg. a replacement (or update) for the FRCS or FRCG, complete with pull-out map. It isn't. It's a replacement (or update) for the PGtF and FRPG. I'll be happy to admit that it doesn't equal its predecessors in terms of the quantity of its content (can't speak to the quality so much as of yet), but I think the gist of my point stands: One should be approaching this book as a player's guide, not a full campaign guide (or some kind of bizarre amalgamation of the two).

 

[JohnLynch]

Definitely agreed. I think this book will generate most disappointment among fans of prior editions who want a book that more closely resembles prior edition books (not enough crunch for those who want a crunch heavy book. Not enough info for fans who want a detailed look at the Realms). Those who go in with the least number of assumptions and preconceptions will probably enjoy the book most.

 

[hejtmane]

Sorry, you had my attention, but just lost it with this. (I love warlords and the kind of play they bring to the table)

I was so excited about the book, but I'm still on the fence. $40 is no small money, and I'm not that big into the realms... Well it is $32 on the book depository, but I could buy like six books from my wishlist with it...

It is like $23-24 on amazon if you want to save a little (sorry you can ignore I saw the post after this saying you live out side the us) never mine

 

[Huntsman57]

Seems that's just what the Escapist does these days. Seen their piece on Star Citizen? They've pretty much descended from honest reporting to pretty much just trolling.

 

[Tia Nadiezja]

One thing I honestly enjoy about 5e's design is how space-efficient new options are. Each subclass in the book - of which there are a lot, each taking less than a page - is multiple player character concepts by itself.

To be hefty, a book doesn't need hundreds of pages of crunch any more.

 

[aramis erak]

The Escapist reviewer lets some weird hangups dominate the review (dislike of the Realms, bitterness over 4E failing, etc). I bought the book, will be forming my own opinion soon enough.

I'm no fan of the realms†, but, having bought it because I'm running AL games, it's got the core stuff I need covered well addressed.

Well, I am fond of ONE realms-branded product... but there's no mention of Far Vandmeer, Wu, Chu, Chi, nor Al-Ubaid.

As far as the additional stuff goes, it's decent. It's canonized a couple of Unearthed Arcana classes - some have significant changes.

The Baronette/Purple Knight is another "Not quite a match to the 4E Warlord"... I expect the fan-whinging to commence any minute now... now, instead of just Valor College Bard or Cleric of War, we get to add Baronette Fighter.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
† I'm not a realms hater, either.

 

[JohnLynch]

One thing I honestly enjoy about 5e's design is how space-efficient new options are. Each subclass in the book - of which there are a lot, each taking less than a page - is multiple player character concepts by itself.

To be hefty, a book doesn't need hundreds of pages of crunch any more.

I do love this about 5th edition, however this book does have a few missteps.

Gray Dwarves: The flavour of these are essentially dwarven drow (evil Underdark race that enslaves other creatures and are hated by their surface kin. Not really opening up any new character concepts here.

Path of the Battlerager doesn't really enable new character concepts. Dwarven barbarians can easily be represented by Beserker barbarians. This is simply different mechanics for the same character concept. This is something 5th edition has worked hard to avoid and it's disappointing to see WotC cave in now.

Oath of the Crown is also thematically very similar to the oath of devotion. However the one saving grace is that where the devotion paladin is a striker/leader the crown paladin is a defender/leader (if you can forgive the 4th ed terms).

Purple Knights are quite disappointing as the mechanics could match any knightly order, rather than just the Purple Knights. The enforced flavour to justify them being purple knights is better suited in a background, not a class feature.

That said, 1 misstep out of 5 are variant racial options and 2 missteps out of 12 subrace options are not bad considering the scarce page count the mechanics actually take up (as opposed to the flavour writeup each class gets). It does make a bad first impression though (it was only in writing this post that I realized the mechanics weren't as bad as I first thought.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think the review is off in a few places - Jonathan Bolding dismisses too easily the value of the race lore, and his crying about the PDK smacks of someone who for some reason has never seen an Action Surge (any "cool warlord powers" would have to give that right up). But he's right that FR lore is too generic to be of much use to most homebrewers, and the book does seem unfocused. But I didn't come out in that different of a place in my 3/5 review here, so I think we probably agree more than we disagree.

 

[pukunui]

Gray Dwarves: The flavour of these are essentially dwarven drow (evil Underdark race that enslaves other creatures and are hated by their surface kin. Not really opening up any new character concepts here.

Yeah, but that's been the established lore for FR duergar for ages now so it shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone familiar with FR lore.