Class Books

[Psion]

Actually, it was more than that:
The fighter feats were never recognized as such. The original errata was that NONE of them were fighter feats...

The Ninja, AND the Halfling outrider were screwed up in Attack Bonuses... the original answer? "The lack of BAB is NOT an error."


Approximately 6 or the Exotic Weapons had stats interchanged so as to be useless for balance. As errata'ed I would allow them, but as unerrata'ed, they were insane and heavily unbalanced. The original answer? "Hey, some weapon has to be the best!"

Yes, I remember that... and remember being aggravated by the lackey who propogated the nonsense. That was "email ruling" type garbage. Which should tell you how reliable that is...

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I haven't studied them all in a comprehensive fashion, but I'd rank them in terms of usefulness to my campaign this way.

1. Tome & Blood
2. Sword & Fist
3. Defenders of the Faith
4. Song & Silence
5. Masters of the Wild (noone plays a druid, ranger or barbarian)

 

[drowdude]

All 5 class books see some degree of use in my campaign, with Song & Silence seeing the least amount of use, and, oddly enough, Sword & Fist seeing the most use.

Sword & Fist really isnt *that* bad, you just have to work out some of the rough edges is all

Overall I agree that Masters of the Wild was the best of the bunch.

 

[Moulin Rogue]

With a year's perspective it does really look like S&F was hurt by coming out so early, I know I've read around here somewhere that the 3e quality control council wasn't quite set up yet when it was in production.

They never did manage to explain the logic of the stump knife's special damage quality either, did they? And that part about how the fighter class works for the different races just feels like a leftover chunk of "Hero Builder's Guidebook" (if you're a half-elf and you roll good scores, you get to keep them!), as nothing like this ever appeared in subsequent classbooks.

That said, I agree with those who have already pointed out its good qualities, like most of the PrCs and quite a few feats. The Swashbuckler is a big fantasy archetype.

I found DotF the most useful for day-to-day stuff with the temples, but T&B was a close second and had some very cool PrCs (...Alienist....). I don't have the last two classbooks yet.

 

[Quickbeam]

Here's my quick take:

-- Sword and Fist is used pretty frequently in our group, despite its errors, and I like many of the feats and PrC options provided.
-- Tome and Blood is nice for NPC's (as noted elsewhere in this thread), but there's very little here any of the players in our group use for their characters.
-- Defenders of the Faith was very disappointing IMHO. Perhaps that's because I wanted so much from it, since I enjoy playing paladins and clerics. It gets used every so often, but left me wanting more.
-- Song and Silence is the only book of the five that I haven't really perused thoroughly, so I'll withhold judgement.
-- Masters of the Wild is my personal favorite, primarily based on the interesting PrC's and added flavor text related to the ranger, druid and barbarian classes. The feats are a bit lacking, but this one still earns top honors in my mind.

BTW, I really like the format, layout and content in the Quintessential books...probably moreso than the WotC class supplements.

 

[TrizzlWizzl]

Overall, I think the class books are decent. I'm a little miffed that they backpeddled from the Greyhawk support found in S&F. I use Greyhawk, Greyhawk's supposed to be 'default setting' and was really looking forward to having the setting supported with 3E material... I've been very dissapointed. I was all stoked when S&F came out; there was lots of cool GH bits n' peices, but then when the rest of the books came out with all kinds of random organizations having nothing at all to do with the 'default' setting I was bummed.

The rules and stuff were usable but any and all descriptions of the organizations and such were just tossed right out the window.

In short, I would be much happier with my gaming shelf right now had WotC supported GH a little more comprehensively.

P.S. I don't wanna hear anything about 'oh, well if Greyhawk is the default setting, then everything in the class books are Greyhawk!'. That's bull. 'The Arcane Order', which has it's headquarters under a volcano? C'mon. That's not Greyhawk, that's Random Fantasy Schlock.

 

[Psion]

Overall, I think the class books are decent. I'm a little miffed that they backpeddled from the Greyhawk support found in S&F.

Oh, I'm not. I think they made a serious mistake going as heavily Greyhawk as they where. The most single played setting is FR, and more people still homebrew. I was glad to see that T&B and MotW had less Greyhawk baggage.

 

[Sodalis]

I think that they should have a re-release of all the class materials in one hard covered book- say for about 60-80 dollars.

that way- we can have all the calsses (feats, skills, and PRC) in ne place- instead of roamin arund to look for them all over the palce. (i often misplace the smaller books)

And it will be a lil cheaper to have a hardcover book (at 80 bucks) with all the classes than to have five smaller books (at 20 a pop)

just my two cents-

and 80 dolars if they come out

 

[bondetamp]

But for me, with the Quintessential books from Mongoose and the upcoming Class books from Green Ronin - and isn't there another company putting some out - aren't we hitting a bit of a glut in this very narrow topic?

I don't think that it is a narrow topic. For rogues, one can probably write several books on thief guilds alone.

 

[dagger]

Id have to say Tome and Blood, Defenders of Faith, and Song and Silence get heavy use in our group. With the other two getting some use.

Personally I think T&B was the 2nd best next to MoTW, I like playing wizards though.