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Best and worst of 5E
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<blockquote data-quote="pukunui" data-source="post: 7803706" data-attributes="member: 54629"><p><strong>Best: </strong><em>Volo's Guide to Monsters</em>. Lots of rich lore on some core monsters. The bestiary is good too. (The playable races section is arguably the worst part of the book, in my opinion, simply because it's obvious WotC couldn't be bothered balancing some of the races.)</p><p></p><p><strong>Runner-up: </strong><em>Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide</em>. Love the "in-game" presentation of the lore. Has some pretty cool character options, too. I consider it essential if you're running a game set on the Sword Coast. Not so useful if you're not. Would win out over Volo's if it wasn't such a thin book. (They could easily have included more spells, some magic items, more subclasses, more lore! It's unfortunate they were being so conservative.)</p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>Worst: </strong><em>Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. </em>A hot mess with some of the worst examples of railroading I've seen (even worse than <em>Hoard of the Dragon Queen's</em>, and I actually enjoyed running that adventure.). It's trying too hard to be too many different things and fails miserably at all of them. Only really redeeming parts are the Waterdeep gazetteer (which, even then, is a bit light on content) and the easily cut-and-pastable encounter locations. Some of the NPCs are pretty good too.</p><p></p><p><strong>Runners-up: </strong><em>Xanathar's Guide to Everything</em> and <em>Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. </em>Both because they are disappointingly random grab-bags of good, bad, meh, and ugly. XGE could have been so much better than what we actually got, and MTF doesn't do what it says on the tin. The bestiary is OK but the lore isn't particularly useful.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pukunui, post: 7803706, member: 54629"] [B]Best: [/B][I]Volo's Guide to Monsters[/I]. Lots of rich lore on some core monsters. The bestiary is good too. (The playable races section is arguably the worst part of the book, in my opinion, simply because it's obvious WotC couldn't be bothered balancing some of the races.) [B]Runner-up: [/B][I]Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide[/I]. Love the "in-game" presentation of the lore. Has some pretty cool character options, too. I consider it essential if you're running a game set on the Sword Coast. Not so useful if you're not. Would win out over Volo's if it wasn't such a thin book. (They could easily have included more spells, some magic items, more subclasses, more lore! It's unfortunate they were being so conservative.) [B]Worst: [/B][I]Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. [/I]A hot mess with some of the worst examples of railroading I've seen (even worse than [I]Hoard of the Dragon Queen's[/I], and I actually enjoyed running that adventure.). It's trying too hard to be too many different things and fails miserably at all of them. Only really redeeming parts are the Waterdeep gazetteer (which, even then, is a bit light on content) and the easily cut-and-pastable encounter locations. Some of the NPCs are pretty good too. [B]Runners-up: [/B][I]Xanathar's Guide to Everything[/I] and [I]Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. [/I]Both because they are disappointingly random grab-bags of good, bad, meh, and ugly. XGE could have been so much better than what we actually got, and MTF doesn't do what it says on the tin. The bestiary is OK but the lore isn't particularly useful. [/QUOTE]
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