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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 1710629" data-attributes="member: 14159">Hero Builder's Guidebook. . .if you've ever played D&D before it's an epic waste of time & money.Complete Warrior. . .Complete reprints is more like it.  I got the biggest sense of deja-vu that virtually everything in there was either a reprint or had been done better somewhere else (that version of samurai will never see the light of day in any game I ever run, ever.  OA samurai is far better).Enemies and Allies was pretty bland and forgettable.  Pages and pages of generic pregen NPC's, when the DMG was filled with a chapter of them already.  Maybe I'm just a little over-dedicated, but when I start a campaign I write up some generic NPC's (or have some left over from campaigns in the same setting).  What is a typical merchant here like?  What about guardsmen, or peasants, or street thugs?  A dozen or so simple pregens saves a lot of time, and they always seem to have more flavor than generic off-the-sheft WotC-issued pregens.I can't completely condemn Book of Exalted Deeds though.  Ravages and Afflictions were cheesy, admittedly, and I don't need stats for Archangels and yet more PrC's, but the Exalted feats were nice (except maybe the controversial VoP), and it did have some nice spells.  It might not have been exceptional, but it was certainly not bland and forgettable.But for true, bland, boring, why-oh-merciful-deity-did-you-let-me-buy-this, I'd have to say the Arms and Equipment Guide.  Sorry, maybe I was spoiled on Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog, but a book which was just reprinting some items out of that book (without the enjoyable flavor text) and some items from old issues of dragon, in plain black & white (the only B&W WotC hardcover for D&D I know of).  I've never even cracked it open for a game.  I still have my copy of Aurora's (and convert things on-the-fly if I must), and between that and my PHB, I've never needed more.  Anyway, my copy of Aurora's has better ambiance, and is frankly a dang good read.  I'd wish they'd have just made a 3e/d20 version, but neat books like that just don't fit in with WotC's current paradigm.</blockquote>

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