Complete Adventurer - 10 Reasons for Players on Wizards site

[jmucchiello]

My reaction was different from yours. It was "silly feat, paladins must be lawful or lose class abilities, bards must be non-lawful."

Bah! Details!!

 

[A'koss]

It does sound like a poorly named class. Maybe they should have gone with... rogue/ranger.

I was just wondering how I would name it, Huntsman maybe...

I'm not a fan of new base classes. It decreases the need to multiclass, and is definitely a slippery slope. Once you add the Scout, why not add the Heavy Scout? Or the Mounted Scout? Or Sea Scout? With limited base classes you'd make such things with feats and multiclassing, but once you start adding more and more classes why not just make a new class?

Anyway, that's probably a discussion for a "I wonder what 4th ed will be like?" thread.

-z

Since I just plunder this stuff for ideas for my own game, they can make a hundred base classes for all I care! I agree thought that it is a slippery slope when running a core game... One can already ask if the Barbarian, Ranger, Sorcerer and martial arts aren't better off as feats/class options, the Paladin (perhaps the Ranger too in some minds) and Bard as a prestige classes... But that does get into a much larger discussion.

Cheers!

 

[Telperion]

I just want to complete my 'Complete' series.

No more Complete books? O' well, guess I'll have to go back to buying 3rd party stuff...

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Check out Wizards site.

They've got all sorts of stuff listed up. DMG 2, Races of Eberron, Ancient Empires (FR book), Lords of Madness, Sandstorm, etc.. etc... etc...

Hmm...looks like I'm right. They seem to be using 2005 to put some focus on the campaign setting worlds. It's nice to see that they haven't decided that Forgotten Realms isn't making enough money quite yet. I'm looking forward to the Waterdeep book. I've only recently got into the Realms, and I'm finding the sourcebooks so far to be great reads (with the exception of the Player's Guide, which seems to be a glorified errata sheet...useful, but bland).

 

[Kerrick]

Hmm... a few of these things sound interesting, but I don't know if it'd be enough to buy the book.

10. Put Those Skill Ranks to Good Use: The skills section in this book offers big rewards for characters who have truly mastered their skills. A character who doesn't mind higher DCs for skill checks can complete tasks faster and with more panache than ever before.

This one, for example. We use critical success/failures for skill checks, so it's likely nothing new, but it might be interesting to see...

9. Focus in with Feats: Complete Adventurer's extensive feats section offers plenty of options for sharpening and focusing your character's abilities. For example, the Extraordinary Spell Aim feat allows a spellcaster to shape an area spell so that its effects flow around a selected creature. Now your character can blast away with spells and not worry about harming an ally!

Sculpt Spell? BTW, that spell everyone keeps talking about has been done in several forms, by many people - our group even has a version of it.

8. Expanded Multiclassing Options: Many of the new feats in Complete Adventurer help to make some often-overlooked multiclassing options more viable. For example, how about a singing paladin? The Devoted Performer feat lets a character stack paladin and bard levels together to determine damage for the smite evil ability as well as uses per day of bardic music.

Umm... sure. Never mind that you have to lose one to gain the other... Ya know, there's probably a reason things like this are "often overlooked".

7. Go for Some Prestige: If your character takes care of business in a special way, these new prestige classes are for you. For example, the daggerspell mage and daggerspell shaper combine arcane magic, dagger fighting, and wildshape. The bloodhound excels at tracking down elusive foes, and the ghost-faced killer can bring fear and silent death to his enemies.

The daggerspell [whatever] sounds interesting, but you lost me at "and wildshape". Huh?? Is this a dagger-wielding druidic wizard? The Bloodhound... I dunno, somehow the description of this thing just doesn't trip my trigger. And the ghost-faced killer - that's just a wonky name for a PrC.

5. Alchemical Wonders: A wide array of handy materials awaits characters within these pages. Need to literally throw off the dogs? Try some catstink. In a tight spot? Freeglide provides the way out.

Didn't they have most of this in S&S? And in the Complete Thieves' Handbook?

3. A Grab Bag of Magic: Complete Adventurer offers a veritable treasure trove of magical goodies. Consider the possibilities offered by the ring offilcher's friend, which can pull in lightweight, metal objects.

Oh look, it's a ring of mage hand!

2. Spells for Everyone: If you like to collect interesting spells, this book offers a great selection. In Complete Adventurer, you'll find new spells for every spellcasting class, including "secondary" spellcasters, such as rangers and assassins.

Hooray! Finally, spells for the lesser classes!

1. Three New Classes: The ninja, the scout, and the spellthief are new base classes.

Oh boy, just what we needed - more base classes. I'm one of those people who prefer to use the core classes and extrapolate anything else I need with feats and PrCs. I prefer a little generality in my base classes - the better to design PrCs and multiclass.

Animal Lord
Ascetic Hunter (Ranger/Monk)
Beastmaster
Bloodhound
Daggerspell Adept
Dread Pirate
Dungeon Delver
Exemplar
Fochulcan Lyrist
Ghost-faced Killer
Highland Stalker
Nightsong Enforcer
Nightsong Infiltator
Shadowbane Inquisitor
Shadowbane Stalker
Shadowmind
Spell Dagger Evoker
Spymaster
Street Fighter
Tempest
Thief-acrobat
Vigilante
Virtuoso

Hmm... a quarter of those are from S&S... two are from MotW (and the Tempest was considered broken then - what are the odds they've fixed it?) and the Shadowmind is from the WotC site, unless I'm mistaken (a shadow psionicist). Animal Lord and Beastmaster sound like the same thing...

 

[beaver1024]

Wow more ways to make the already unviable arcane spellcasting classes more unpalatable to play.

 

[reanjr]

My reaction was different from yours. It was "silly feat, paladins must be lawful or lose class abilities, bards must be non-lawful."

Right, but bards do not lose any abilities by becoming lawful. So you can take a few levels in bard, change aligment, and progress on as paladin.

 

[MadBlue]

Right, but bards do not lose any abilities by becoming lawful. So you can take a few levels in bard, change aligment, and progress on as paladin.

It would also work nicely with the variant CG Paladin in UA.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Hooray! Finally, spells for the lesser classes!

I'm not holding my breath.

 

[Li Shenron]

It's unlikely I'm going to buy the 4th book of a series of which I didn't buy the previous ones, but at some point a couple of months ago I thought CAdv might have had something really interesting. However, I had the same feeling for CWar before I read it, and the same with CDiv, and the same with CArc...

10. Put Those Skill Ranks to Good Use

I think S&S did a very bad job about skills, so I was expecting CAdv to take the chance of expanding skills use a lot. The potential to do so is there, does it look like the book gives a new edge to skills? I can't say from the preview, but I seriously wish it isn't just about doing things faster... This section is the only hope left for me to get this book.

9. Focus in with Feats

I like feats, and the Complete books have plenty of them, tho many are just reprints. This one isn't a new idea tho. There's Sculpt Spell (unless it hasn't been reprinted yet, and this new feat is Sculpt Spell renamed) which is already one of the cheapest metamagic around. If it's a new one, ESA is probably a nonmetamagic lesser version.

8. Expanded Multiclassing Options

As someone mentions, how can one "overlook" a multiclass option which is simply not possible? Yes, you could be an ex-Bar/Pal or ex-Pal/Bar, but shunning such difficult path is NOT "overlooking"!

In any case, good idea to make a new character concept/combination available (which we should remember however that it wasn't available because of questionable alignment restrictions). Not-so-good idea to make it available through a feat, but that already has a sort-of precedent with Practiced Spellcaster. Probably we wouldn't need specific "fixes" to each multiclass combo if they had thought of a single fix for multiclassing in general.

7. Go for Some Prestige

Not many "new" PrCls in the list really. Another shaping character... another bounty hunter / vengeance character... another assassin? There's so many PrCl around to cover the same few concepts... in a way it's positive to have different options for the same thing, but in another way it waters down the role of classes in a class-based game, IMO.

6. Tools of the Trade
5. Alchemical Wonders
4. Go Exotic
3. A Grab Bag of Magic

New tools and materials? Well, why not? These can always be nice additions of course.

2. Spells for Everyone

As usual, there'll be new ones but also about half will be just reprints.

1. Three New Classes

The ninja could be ok, but I still think the idea of spreading oriental classes in many books is not elegant, and it doesn't care for those who really play oriental adventures.
The scout doesn't sound like a scout if he doesnt... scout! Sounds like the 3.0 Ranger instead.
The spellthief is a (not new) nice idea, but IMHO it shouldn't be a core class. It might be a core class in a special setting, where magic works in a way that there are people who cast spells and people who steal them. But it's a too much specific niche that is just perfect for a PrCl.