Complete books - too much feat- and PrC material?

[Barbelos]

I'm not among those who have unlimited funds for RPG stuff, especially if I want a life besides games and my studies, so have to consider seriously the use I expect to get out of every purchase. I never play D&D as a player, but am always the DM. Specifically I'd like to get some input from other DMs on the "Complete" series of books. And am especially interested in hearing from other DMs with a similar practice when it comes to prestige classes and other 'cool new shiny crunch'. So here follows first a chaotic outline of how that sort of thing works in my campaign.

I tend to use PrCs very sparely even for NPCs, and a PC would have to have a good ingame reason to take up a PrC. In fact, I can't see a situation in my campaign where a player could just come up to me and request to take a PrC for the next level at all. If the PCs have come in touch with some organization or otherwise where a PrC exists in my world, fine, the character can try to join and to learn. Hasn't happened yet though. Rules-wise my campaign is mostly 'core books' stuff, partly to keep it simple, partly to emphasize what is actually 'normal' and what is not in my world. I certainly don't see a need for more core classes for my campaign world, though what I've heard of the Warlock in the upcoming Complete Arcane seems to fill a niche in my homebrew.

What I enjoy the most in game accessories are cool concepts which spawn ideas for adventure- and world design. Crunch has a place here, certainly, but I'd also like to see a book like "Complete Divine" give some advice on the role of religion in a D&D world, various ideas for religious organizations, perhaps a few ideas on a cleric's role and duties to a temple, roleplaying tips centred on religion and concepts of the holy etc. Similarily the "Complete Warrior" could have sections on fantasy warfare, various roles for the warrior classes in society and other roleplaying material to compliment the crunchy rollplaying content.

Leafing through the "Complete Warrior" at the store was a complete shock to me. Two thirds of the book consisted of nothing but prestige classes, new core classes, feats etc. Many parts of the book I would find interesting were short enough to neither be inspiring nor very informative. The "Complete Divine" didn't seem much better when I looked through that.
Don't misunderstand, I don't completely abhor rules-material. Many of the prestige classes coming out are cool concepts, but there's only room for so many in a campaign world before things start getting ridiculous, chaotic and unpredictable. Likewise, the arcane duel rules promised to be in the upcoming "Complete Arcane" seems really nice. Doubtless the treatment of it will be rules heavy, but these are rules tied to a very exciting concept which adds something truly new to the campaign - unlike the grab-bag of new powers, abilities etc. that an avalanche of new feats and classes brings.

Before this becomes far too long I should get to the point here...

Is there anything I'm missing out on? I haven't really taken a close look at these books to be honest, perhaps there are more cool concepts for my homebrew setting there than I realize. Perhaps someone with a similar approach to prestige classes could tell me something about these books that I have missed completely. How would you rate the material in the "complete" series for the sort of DM who does not allow the players to use every new toy from the supplements without a good reason?

Edit: Really awful spelling mistake

 

[MerricB]

Yes: the front cover of each of these books proclaims "A Player's Guide to..."

They're not meant to be books for DMs - well, not primarily, though DMs can make use of the material within, and there are sections that greatly aid the DM in adventure preparation.

In fact, I can't see a situation in my campaign where a player could just come up to me and request to take a PrC for the next level at all.

That's the opposite to how I run my campaign. Rather than I (as the DM) designing it all, I let my players browse through the Complete books and other supplements and tell me what they want to play.

So, if a player wants to be a Shadow Dancer, I then determine the role of the Shadow Dancers in the campaign world. (They're a secret order of Xan Yae followers). Thus, the campaign is enriched by a decision made by my players: I don't have to do it all. Of course, if an idea is totally against the themes of my campaign, I don't allow it.

With respect to the world-building material you want (roles of fighters, clerics and suchlike), some of that is addressed in the Complete series, but mostly it is supporting the core D&D experience.

Thus, the Complete Warrior gives ideas for how a fantasy war might be conducted and the role of the PCs in that war - and indeed, quite a few mission ideas - but it's by no means a major part of the book. It's covered sufficiently for my purposes at the moment, though.

As I recall, Complete Divine has ideas for missions (quests) the clerics of various deities may be sent on, and broad tips on church organisations, but the day-to-day business of conducting services and so forth is not covered.

One reason for that is that such business is not the stuff of great adventures. It's certainly true that the 3e game is written to support heroic adventures, and the background material is not covered in great detail.

Cheers!

 

[JoeGKushner]

I love PrCs. I've been going through some of my old NPC's, and while most of them don't take advantage of a PrC, those that the players remember, almost always do. This is espeically true of PrCs' that are of an odd nature like the Pale Master or True Necromancer, things that players probably shouldn't be anyway.

As far as letting players take PrCs, I'm pretty open about it. I mean, if you cut out PrCs for your campaign and the players are cool with it, no problem, but for me, I see PrCs as a tool used to help build the setting. I've introduced differently knightly orders based on some PrCs, new schools of magic, and dozens of other ideas from my readings and the player's interest.

From crunch, as a GM, you get what you put into it.

 

[Barbelos]

Yes: the front cover of each of these books proclaims "A Player's Guide to..."

True, not really expecting the same sort of material as in books that are meant for the DMs either.

That's the opposite to how I run my campaign. Rather than I (as the DM) designing it all, I let my players browse through the Complete books and other supplements and tell me what they want to play.

So, if a player wants to be a Shadow Dancer, I then determine the role of the Shadow Dancers in the campaign world. (They're a secret order of Xan Yae followers). Thus, the campaign is enriched by a decision made by my players: I don't have to do it all. Of course, if an idea is totally against the themes of my campaign, I don't allow it.

I try to encourage player-participation in creating the world as well. This is actually a quite good idea for one way that would work.
What I meant was that I'm not one of those DMs who will throw 'everything' into my game without a good reason. If a player wants to play something really unusual, it should be because they like the character concept and plan to roleplay their character accordingly, not solely for the cool abilities. There are also a few prestige classes that belong in places or organizations that are well enough known for just about any PC who qualifies to take them. For example, there's a variant of the Knight Protector in a high-visibility knighthood, and just about any elf who hasn't betrayed their people could learn to be an arcane archer.

With respect to the world-building material you want (roles of fighters, clerics and suchlike), some of that is addressed in the Complete series, but mostly it is supporting the core D&D experience.

I know they are player guides, but I feel this material is really useful to players who want to roleplay their characters. I've seen too many clerics played as though the gods didn't matter. This sort of info is also great for spawning character ideas for players, and gives their PCs a place to feel at home in the setting. Of course, this sort of material is a great source of ideas for DMs as well.

One reason for that is that such business is not the stuff of great adventures. It's certainly true that the 3e game is written to support heroic adventures, and the background material is not covered in great detail.

Sure. My campaigns lately tend to be less epic in scope though, partly because the players aren't usually playing characters motivated to 'save the world'. When the world-saving epic comes along, I suspect it will be more of a side effect of something they've done for other reasons. Possibly due to work they do for one of those factions or organizations the characters affiliate with

What you mentioned above though, presenting to the players the range of PrCs that exist (they don't buy any D&D supplements themselves) and finding a place for them in the world with the players who want play them is a good reason why I could find more use for the "Complete" series than I thought, thanks!
Anyone else have compelling arguments to why a DM like me would be interested in books where such a large amount of material consists of new classes and feats?

Edited for typos

 

[Barbelos]

I love PrCs. I've been going through some of my old NPC's, and while most of them don't take advantage of a PrC, those that the players remember, almost always do. This is espeically true of PrCs' that are of an odd nature like the Pale Master or True Necromancer, things that players probably shouldn't be anyway.

That's how it works here as well.

As far as letting players take PrCs, I'm pretty open about it. I mean, if you cut out PrCs for your campaign and the players are cool with it, no problem, but for me, I see PrCs as a tool used to help build the setting. I've introduced differently knightly orders based on some PrCs, new schools of magic, and dozens of other ideas from my readings and the player's interest.

That's where I'm a bit more restrictive, precisely because I see PrCs as a tool to help build the setting. Things just become weird if every character has some sort of PrC without good reason. Most knightly orders in my campaign consist of fighters, clerics and paladins. The Order of the Star is a bit unusual in several ways, and is also the most prestigious. It has one knight PrC and a special priestly PrC as well corresponding to different roles in that organization.

 

[Psion]

Well, to echo Merric's though, I thought that feat and PrC material was sort of the point of the book. How much of the old builder books did you use. I mean, I used the wizard's dwelling in T&B, but that could have been part of their (now defunct) map feature. I have never used the sample shrines/temples in DotF.

Character options are what players buy builder books for. The rest is often filler.

(Not that I consider the compleat books above reproach... a lot of them feel like filler too.)

I also agree with Joe: PrCs make for disntinctive villains.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Yes: the front cover of each of these books proclaims "A Player's Guide to..."

They're not meant to be books for DMs - well, not primarily, though DMs can make use of the material within,

This is one of the things that seems strange to me - after such effort was made in the 3e and 3.5e revision to place prestige classes in the DMG as a Dm's tool... and then stuff players books full of them.

At worst I think it is a cheap and simple way of padding out pages - it takes considerably less thought to put together a prestige class (concept, level abilities, done!) than it does to write good rules for mass battles, or divine intervention or anything *new*. I'm not saying that all the prestige classes are thrown together, but there is so little consideration to their origin, background, ways in which a DM could use or introduce them...

I think the Complete books would have been hugely improved if they had hardly any new prestige classes or feats, but concentrated on new situations with appropriate rules, expanded uses for skills within the context of the book, class combinations and 'recipes', opportunities and threats faced by warriors etc. etc.

THAT would have been much more valuable in my mind.

Cheers

 

[Li Shenron]

Is there anything I'm missing out on? I haven't really taken a close look at these books to be honest, perhaps there are more cool concepts for my homebrew setting there than I realize. Perhaps someone with a similar approach to prestige classes could tell me something about these books that I have missed completely. How would you rate the material in the "complete" series for the sort of DM who does not allow the players to use every new toy from the supplements without a good reason?

Well I am both a player and DM, and decided not to buy the first 2 complete books after looking at CW and hearing about CD. I have the 5 old 3.0 classbooks tho and in general I think it's not so difficult to incorporate prestige classes from generic books into a campaign, but it's true that you are mostly on your own in the integration job.

OTOH campaign settings books usually put quite good informations about which role those PrCls have in the setting. Clearly, you still probably want to adapt them to your own world, but IMXP building one's setting is always about "stealing" ideas here and there, and I'm not against having the Red Wizards of Thay in a world which has nothing to do with Faerun (just call'em Blue Wizards of Yaht ). Maybe you could consider this other sort of books instead of the generic ones...

 

[ivocaliban]

I'm the sort of person who wants the best of both worlds. I love PrCs and Feats, but I'm inclined to agree that the Complete volumes would benefit from a few less of both and a bit more general information. The problem with that is and always will be that the few PrCs and Feats that I can do without may be the very ones another player builds his entire character around.

In another post someone mentioned that WotC ignores one of its greatest resources...the ideas and opinions of the players. I think they're absolutely right. Just think if WotC offered information and polls far in advance of a book's release. People could vote on PrC concepts (or even more general topics) before they're ever fully fleshed out, so WotC could get a much better idea of the kinds of things their players would like to see. I don't expect this to happen, of course, because that's just not how must businesses operate, but I think it would certainly have more folks flocking to their website.