Best (and worst) of 2006

[Greg K]

Oh and me too, on that count. However, I think that the PHBII has enough other (good) things in it, to make it worth the while.

Oh, the "to each their own comment" was directed soley at the Duskblade. As for the PHB2 itself, I think it is an ok book just not great- while there is plenty of stuff that I did like, it also contains plenty of content that I did not like (e.g., 3 of the classes, most of the class variants, many of the feats) or just considered wasted space.

 

[Turjan]

Well, I have to pick my entries from a very limited stock I bought this year (at least for D&D). I'm still waiting for a few books I bought in a Christmas sale, like Complete Mage and Dragon Magic, and I got Ptolus as a surprise but haven't really read enough of it to cast a vote. This leaves me with:


Best

Players Handbook II: The expanded classes and some feats make a good addition to the game, and the rest was an enjoyable read, some of it really helpful for less experienced players.

Red Hand of Doom: An adventure in a "mission" structure like a strategy game. And it's for the sweet spot of D&D levels (as I personally perceive them). A nice entry.

Honorable mention
Bard's Gate: It's the somewhat sloppy editing that keeps this one from the front seats. It's "your generic fantasy city". I liked what I read, and its perfect for a homebase that doesn't take too much of the spotlight on its own.

Worst

Mysteries of the Moonsea: The four parts are of different quality, but ultimately they failed because they didn't make me want to play in that area of the FR. That's a bit unfortunate for the good old FR. Let's see whether I can at least plunder some parts.

 

[Kishin]

The Good

Tome of Battle: Definitely the product to inspire the most extreme reactions in the playerbase (from glowing praise to disgusted snorts). I freely admit I fall squarely into the former category. Melee needed a boost, and the book does allow for the style of warrior I've had a craving to play for years now.

PHB II: Chock full of useful material, and feats that are for once worth taking. The Duskblade's a fan favorite amongst my own group.

Red Hand of Doom: IMO, simply the best adventure published in...possibly ever. Great epic feel, and doesn't overrely on dungeons.

The Bad

Mysteries of the Moonsea: I haven't played in an FR game for some time, but the Moonsea region is a cornerstone of the setting. It deserved the Silver Marches treatment, not a shoddy clambake of adventure ideas.

Monster Manual IV: Not only was too much time spent on the spawn of Tiamat (Ok, their concept isn't terrible, but I didn't need 30+ pages of them) and bland classed monsters, but the original ideas in there weren't that sparkiling overall. There were of course, exceptions, like the Balhannoth, but still.

Dragonmarked: Ok, Bad is a bit too strong a phrase to use here....But I was just disappointed in this book. It could have been so much more than it was, honestly. Far too few pages were spent talking about the Houses, and most of those pages simply told us stuff we already knew. Far, far too many pages were wasted on crunch where longer writeups on the Houses would have been eminently more useful and interesting, and the book itself felt too short.

The Ugly

The Bloodhulk Illustration, MMIV: *rimshot*

 

[The Human Target]

Sticking mostly to WotC stuff.

And for the record, I love the new comic-style art WotC is using.

Best-

Three Dragon Ante- A fun and fast little game that I've gotten gamers and non-gamers alike to play and enjoy with me. And the character generation method they had in Dragon (or Dungeon, I forget) was really pretty well done and a neat alternative.

Dungeon and Dragon- Both have really become must buys for me. Lots of useful new articles, and a real constantly high level of quality.

Player's Handbook II & Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords- Books that really get points for trying to break some conventions. They really take the game into some new and interesting directions. I see a lot of ideas I hope make it into the next edition of the game.

Dragons of Faerûn- A strong book. Everyone might not need it, but I did. An dits a fun read.

Player's Guide to Eberron- Any Eberron player or DM could get a lot of use out of this book.

Meh books-

Power of Faerûn- An excellent book in its own right, but not really at all what I was expecting. All fluff, no crunch. Nothing very "epic level" about it.

Ptolus- I'm not gonna badmouth the book in terms of effort. There is just so much there, and so much of it is thoughtful and well put together. Its a really mammoth accomplishment. But unfortunately, I really don't like the setting itself. Nothing sparked my creative interest. Its pretty vanilla.

Races of the Dragon- Scrapping the bottom of the barrel race wise. I like kobolds and all, but nothing here really felt important.

Worst-

Monster Manual IV- I like the new easy to read stat blocks. But not all monsters need as much flavor and explanation as they get in this book. Especially when many of them are boring retreads of monsters archetypes we've seen a dozen times.

Mysteries of the Moonsea- I echo the sentiment of everyone else. I love the Realms, but this was a failed experiment to me.

Complete Psionic- On its own, this was a bad book. Poor classes, powers, PRCS, and feats. But considering how little psionic support there is, it goes from bad to terrible. The onlt Complete book I think can be completely ignored for expanded play.

 

[Set]

Recent favorites;

Was Heroes of Horror this year? I forget, but I bought it this year, so that counts for me. The Dread Necromancer totally works for me, plus, as an Al-Qadim goob, it was nice to at least see the name Kazarabet again, even if the axe-weilding asian hottie was very much not the Kazarabet I remember...

Player's Handbook 2. Like Unearthed Arcana before it, it just expanded the possibilities in all directions. Very cool. The Duskblade, IMO, is what the Hexblade so miserably failed to be.

Complete Mage. Reserve Feats are a cool idea, and WoTC made them even cooler than WW did back in Vigil Watch: Asaatthi as 'Locus Feats.'

Tome of Magic. On the fence, kinda, I liked all three ideas, but the implementation of the Shadowcaster and Truenamer didn't work so well for me mechanically. (Although Ari's suggested tweaks resolve any qualms I have about the Shadowcaster.)

Not so much a favorite;

World's Largest Dungeon. Ugh. How much do I loathe adventures that have lists of PCs that the material can't handle. If it's big, it should be inclusive, yanno, instead of being 'World's Fattest Book you may not be able to use.'

Cityscape. I wanted to like this one, but it didn't blow up my skirt. It deserves points for veering away from the occasionally scattershot kitchen-sink format of Stormwrack / Frostburn / Sandstorm, but I think it veered too far and didn't have enough 'crunch' for my tastes.

Tome of Battle. I don't own this book, and like Faiths of Eberron, it's on that list of books I call, 'If the guys over on the Character Optimization forums cackle maniacally while stroking their mustachios about about how gloriously broken it is, I'm not even gonna buy it, for the sake of my sanity...' For some sort of Exalted / Wuxia-style game where the Fighter-types are supposed to have all sorts of cinematic 'kill everybody in 60' with a toothpick' powers, fine, but I don't plan on playing such a game. I'm too old to 'get' anime.

 

[Hussar]

I'm not sure when the World's largest Dungeon was published, but, there's a thread on ENWorld of people playing it in 2004, so I'm thinking it prolly shouldn't be on this list, good, bad or otherwise.

 

[Soel]

Best-
Tome of Magic - Even for all its flaws (all classed therein need a little tinkering upwards,)
it still is a wonderful book that has filled me with lots of inspiration. I want to play all of the classes!

Tome of Battle - Great addition to D&D overall.

Player's Handbook 2 - Nice feats for higher level melee types, and new design elements on spells makes this a nice book.

Book of Templates-Deluxe Edition - (might have come out in '05, not sure,) This, along with Green Ronin's Advanced Bestiary are wonderful additions to any dm's arsenal.

Untapped Potential - Much better supplement than Complete Psionic. The powers section really shines, but you'll likely find a lot of useful things if you use psionics.


Worst-
Complete Psionic - It just failed on nearly every level. I hate all the classes, except for maybe the Erudite. Only redeemable things are the few good powers inside.


Mixed-
Monster Manual IV - Loved the extended ecologies/info sections, hated the MM1 classed monsters (and the filler reprint of their ecology sections,) the maps (just doesn't belong in a monster book,) and the sheer number of Spawn of Tiamat creatures (too much of one type of critter is a no-no.)

Complete Mage - Like Reserve Feats, hate the "repeat" feats and spells (those that require you to perform the same action in subsequent rounds. Kinda going backwards design-wise here, I think,) Also, not nearly enough new Invocations for the Warlock (even just 3 more pages would hav
e been great!)

 

[Seeten]

Best:

Heroes of Horror: My absolutely favorite of 2006. Dread Necromancer is my favorite base class of all time. Great book.

Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords: Great ideas. Good mechanics, for the most part. Some overpowered maneuvers, but you know what? There are some overpowered spells too. Warblade is a better fighter. But you know what? We needed a better Fighter, frankly, so I don't consider this a downside, either.

Dragon Magic: Quite surprised, this book was great. Yes, Dragon Adept is a Warlock in dragon's clothing, but for many, thats a big deal, lots of DM's wouldnt allow a Warlock, because they are "EVIL" and this fixes that completely.

Player's Handbook II: Outstanding book. Feats, base classes. Great job all around.


Worst:

I didnt purchase any poor products in 2006. Reviews and prudence kept me to good products only. =)

 

[Nikosandros]

At the risk of hijacking, I wanted to quickly address this. Psion, I actually agree with you; the shadowcaster, as much as I enjoyed writing it, came out weaker than I intended. I offered some hypothetical fixes a while back, here: http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=2957649&postcount=76. I'd be happy to hear what you think of them.

How much playtesting did the class get?

 

[Nikosandros]

Not once you start using some of the high-level fighter-appropriate feats from PHB2. Put them in the core book, and the fighter becomes one of the deadliest damage-dealers in the game at high levels--as he should be.

Indeed. The material in PHBII is, IMHO, an essential addition for the fighter.