Remind me again why I should like the PHB II?

[johnnype]

I say "like" because I already own it. That said I spent an hour paging through it yesterday and didn't really find that much to be impressed about. Yes, it has four new core classes, but are they any good? The sheer abundance of classes (and feats, and spells, and magic items) has greatly cheapened their value in my eyes. There has to be more to it than that!

About the only thing that I find useful is the appendix simplifying character creation, even though it is mostly for use with NPC's. I love rolling up new characters but must admit it can be a bit of a pain in the ass sometimes.

Anyhow, what else is so great about this book 'cause I'm not seeing it? Give me a reason to spend more time with it.

 

[wayne62682]

The classes are great... Duskblade, Knight and Beguiler are awesome. Dragon Shaman.. eh.. never really looked at it.

The reason it's so good is BECAUSE of the new feats and options it offers... it gives the players more options to customize their characters. New class abilities if they want something to be "different". That's what is so great about PHII.

 

[buzz]

I would say that everything other than the 60 pages about playing your character and making up backgrounds is excellent. Affiliations rule.

 

[Pants]

Anyhow, what else is so great about this book 'cause I'm not seeing it? Give me a reason to spend more time with it.

The feats, the spells, the new classes, and the alternate class variants are all, imo, really f**kin' awesome. PHBII, since the time it has come out, has been elevated to 'Core' status because of its general usability and over all quality of content.

While the background stuff may not be great, I think it may help some people and that's all that matters.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I've found the vast majority of the new feats and the new spells to be worth looking at. (There are a small handful that I think are either borderline broken, or just not thematically what I'm looking for, but it's a very low percentage.) I think the feats alone really do wonders for fighters; there's now a mechanical reason, as opposed to a pure RP one, to play a single-classed fighter all the way through 20th level.

I really like all four of the new core classes, as well. They're a little more niche than those in the PHB, but that's par for the course, and they do what they do well enough, and interestingly enough, to be worth including.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I haven't seen a WotC product where I liked most of the book since D20 Modern, the XPH and the Eberron CS (and the XPH barely made the grade). I might say the same of Tome of Battle, but I only get to borrow that for a week.

So with those low expectations, PHII looks good. It actually has fighter feats (and things that might as well be fighter feats, but are termed "alternate fighter abilities"). I try to ignore stuff like the Knight, on the grounds that any WotC DnD book is bound to have something I hate in it.

 

[Henry]

Here's what I got out of it:

Knight -- excellent Armored tank who can offer challenges and stand ground almost as good as a dwarven defender -- but without having to be a dwarf.

Beguiler and Duskblade -- excellent blended "charmer/rogue" and "fighter/mage" classes, which remove the weakness constantly present in the basic D&D multiclasses. If you find any players expressing an interest in a classic warrior or thief/mage, point them this way.

Feats -- Fighters have VERY VERY VERY badly needed feats geared for above 10th level play, and they are the only ones with the sheer number of feat choices who can seriously take advantage of the feats in the PHB2. If you have lower-level games, this won't be as big for you.

The affiliations -- if you have trouble getting your players to get more involved in game-world organizations, behind-the scenes RPG'ing, and campaigning for more authority in your world, affiliations is the "carrot and stick" to help this along.

The rebuild quests I didn't get much out of, because it's a little too far-fetched for my tastes, but the retraining options are very well balanced and offer a player a chance to swap something out without breaking continuity too much. If you have your own system that's working for that, it's not as useful.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Ditto everything Henry said.

The feats are deliberately "holy sh*t!" in some places -- the designers said they were tired of making safe, boring feats.

Affiliations are the most exciting thing to happen to the game in years. I adore them.

 

[Henry]

Ditto everything Henry said.

The feats are deliberately "holy sh*t!" in some places -- the designers said they were tired of making safe, boring feats.

Affiliations are the most exciting thing to happen to the game in years. I adore them.

Interesting side note: The Artificer player in my Eberron Campaign a while back had offers from three different guilds (Order of Aureon, Order of Starlight and Shadows, and House Cannith) to become one of their principal item-makers and spell-users. I kludged together some benefits for each, and hand-waved the advancement process over time.

If I were to re-do it, the Affiliations system would have been PERFECT to spell all that stuff out, to have "triggers" for advancement, to have real tangible in-game benefits for advancing through the ranks instead of a generic "prestige and money" benefit, and the player would have probably enjoyed it more overall. (He's a Robin Laws textbook "Power-gamer" ) He's a little high in rank to get much sense of accomplishment from it now, but the next campaign I run, affiliations/organizations will be a part of it.

 

[Crothian]

It has some nice stuff in it, but I wasn't that blown away like other people.