Complete Divine

[IronWolf]

The most detailed resource ever released on accessing divine power and divine favor in the D&D world.
Complete Divine provides Dungeon & Dragons players with an in-depth look at how to gain the favor of the gods and use that power to a character's advantage. There is a rundown of new gods in the D&D pantheon, in addition to new feats, spells, prestige classes, and magic items. In addition, this title adds new and revised base classes to a player's character choices, and clerics in particular are provided with many new and updated spell domains and spells.

This title also contains a wealth of material for non-clerics, so the tips and data provided will assist all class types, including those classes not typically associated with garnering divine power.

 

[JoeGKushner]

The Complete Divine is a full color 192-page hardcover sourcebook that deals with divine magic for all classes. In doing so, it updates a lot of older material found in various sourcebooks and Dragon magazines to the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons.

Broken into seven chapters, the book starts off with some brief ideas about why do you serve the gods and what do you serve. A small section that briefly covers worshipping specific deities, pantheons and forces. It jumps into new core classes including the favored soul, shugenja and spirit shaman. None of these are brand new classes and the favored soul is actually from a 3.5 product. Color me silly, but why update one class from the Miniatures Handbook and not another, the healer, why you’re at it? That class would have a little easier time being added to a standard campaign than either the shugenja or the spirit shaman.

The favored soul is to the cleric what the sorcerer is to the mage. A spellcaster with innate power that can only learn a limited number of spells but can cast them more frequently and doesn’t have to memorize her spells. They gain skill with the deity’s favorite weapon, starting with weapon focus and moving up to weapon specialization. A strong class overall but unchanged from its first appearance.

I was a little worried when I saw shugenja as I thought that the Complete Warrior fairly butchered the Samurai as a core class. Thankfully, they left the version from Oriental Adventurers fairly unchanged. Alchemy and Scry for example are gone, but skill points, alignment, hit dice, and other class features, are virtually unchanged. Unfortunately, it’s also the first time I notice the sloppy editing with a reference to page XX. Despite the editing, the shugenja is a good example of a divine spellcaster with an elemental focus.

The spirit shaman is not the same as the shaman from Oriental Adventurers. Instead, it’s a divine spellcaster that knows a limited number of spells but can change them on a daily basis. They have spirit guides that are similar to familiars and have abilities that focus on the spirit shaman’s relationship to the spirits including the ability to detect them or affect them with a ghost touch special ability.

The section on prestige classes does a good job of breaking them up into various groups ranging from good guys/bad guys, strong spellcasting to stealthy. I find the chart useful because sometimes I don’t know quite what I want, but have a general idea. The chart helps narrow the search. Still, I almost wish that there were a table with a one to two line description of each PrC with requirements. That would let me create NPCs even quicker.

Some specific PrCs are updated here and made generic like the Black Flame Zealot. Thankfully, they include an adaptation section that notes some appropriate deities, in this case Pyremius and Kossuth. Each PrC include background, adaptation, requirements, class skills, class features and an NPC already generated. To me, too many of these PrCs have individual spell lists like the Divine Crusader or the Holy Liberator. This makes them very Paladin like in spell progression and if that’s the idea, perhaps a chapter discussing various ways to bring a paladin like feel, that of a cleric-fighter, to other alignments and causes, would’ve been better than all of these spells per day tables.

Overall, there is a good mix of PrCs here. My personal favorites are those that help augment the cleric just a tad in the fighting department, usually in exchange for spellcasting levels. Take the warpriest for example, a master of diplomacy who is always ready for war. They have reduced spellcasting ability, gaining spells every other level, but have proficiency with all simple and martial weapons, as well as bonus domains and bonus spells that effect a large number of people like mass cure light wounds and heroes feast.

Chapter three, supplemental rules, includes new feats and epic-level divine rules in addition to options for other classes. The Divine Feats are updated here. Those feats require you to expend a turning attempt in order to use them. This often makes them more powerful than a standard feat but limits their use, as they aren’t innate like other feats. Wild feats are also updated and often follow the pattern of divine feats, requiring the user to give up a wild shape ability to activate.

Some of the divine feats allow you to augment spells with metamagic feats. Others allow you to heal elementals or grant allies fast healing. The wild feats have a broad range of abilities ranging from growing wings to gaining claws.

Fortunately, not all feats fall into those two camps. There are new metamagic feats, some of these updated or compiled from previous sources like Consecrate and Corrupt Spell, the former giving a spell the good descriptor, the latter the devil descriptor. One feat I can see some mages taking is arcane disciple, allowing you to select a domain available to clerics of the deity that allows you to cast those domain spells. You use your wisdom to determine if you can cast the spell, as well as determining the DC of the spell and you can only prepare one of those domain spells per spell level, but it’s still a great ability.

Another variant, Faith Feats, allows those true believers to take a feat and gain Faith Points. Faith Points are similar to action points in that they can be used to do things beyond the normal range of a character’s abilities. For example, Pious Defense allows you to spend a faith point and when an attack would reduce you to 0 or fewer hit points, you can spend a faith point to take half damage. Now if the attack is great enough to bring you to some horrible negative, that’s not going to mean much, but it’s a 50 point attack that’s going to take you to –10, then shaving 25 points off of that attack is a good thing that leaves you still standing.

My problem with Faith Points is that they exist in a vacuum. What about Action points, an option in Unearthed Arcana, and a standard in other d20 settings? No advice on combing the two. Would such a character be too powerful? Too in charge of his own destiny without dice? I don’t know. I’ll have to playtest and report.

The epic material follows similar material we’ve seen before with advice on how to make prestige classes into epic prestige classes and includes a sample, the Epic Holy Liberator. Epic Feats help round out the section including bonus domains and even the ability to strike incorporeal creatures normally.

Chapter four, magic items, covers a wide range of devices. This includes relics, devices that require you to sacrifice spell slots (or have the True Believer feat) and be a certain level. These items are often powerful, but not obscenely so. Their limited nature insures that you can use one or two of them as plot devices without undue fear of a player suddenly picking up the Chromatic Rod and turning it on the world.

Other items include staffs. Many of these are similar to the staff of the magi or a staff of power with different abilities. For example, the Greater Wanton has cloak of chaos, unholy aura, and word of chaos. Not bad eh? The wide variety of relics prevents the chapter from being boring but their utility is limited. More items wold’ve benefited this section.

Chapter five augments the standard deities in a campaign and most, if not all of these, are Greyhawk natives. The deity descriptions include portfolios, domains, cleric training, quests, prayers, temples, rites, relics and herald and allies. The core deities are listed, along with four new ones, Bahamut (platinum dragon), Kurtulmak (kobolds), Lolth (drow) and Tiamat (chromatic dragon). The new bits of information are useful and can add a little more depth to the standard worshipper and provides the GM a quick guide to the various relics introduced in this book. For example, under Heironeous, you can see that he has the following items, Helm of the purple plume and sword of virtue beyond reproach.

For me, much more interesting, just because they awaken older memories, are the other Greyhawk deities including individuals like Incabulos, lord of plagues and famine and Pyremius, the god of poisons, assassins and fire. Some of these are old Suel gods that I haven’t seen in a long, long time. Unfortunately, WoTC bails out on these deities, providing only rank, a few sentences of information, portfolio and domains. Others like Zuoken, are familiar due to their relatively new nature from the Expanded Psionics Handbook.

Chapter six, the Divine World, is a little odd in that it offers numerous pieces of information on where your soul goes after you die. Information that is probably better left to the Manual of the Planes or the upcoming player resource on the planes. More useful is the section on organized religion in the d&d campaign. This includes information on theocracies, global churches and sects and schisms. It provides some brief notes on their orign and use, structure, important NPCs, adventure seeds and what role a PC can have in such an organization.

The closing chapter introduces new spells. They are broken down by class and level and include numerous new domains. Unfortunately, in spell selection at least, the cleric gets the shaft with a handful of new high level spells, while the druid gets five new ninth level spells alone. Some of these spells, like Bolts of Bedevilment, are domain spells only. Others like Domination domain, are updated from other 3.5 books. Now I don’t mind it when something from a 3.0 book is updated but there are too many 3.5 materials updated in this book.

And that is probably one of my problems with the book. It takes material that some may not have, like spells and domains from the Draconomicon, as well as core classes and other details from the Miniatures handbook, and combines that with older material from Defenders of the Faith and Masters of the Wild and it doesn’t come out as a unified whole. Some of this is due to the poor editing. I expect a little bit more from WoTC than I do an average publisher but there are numerous (page XX) over the book and other typos that indicate that this shouldn’t have been the final draft. The art ranges from fantastic to below average, and once again, for WoTC, that’s not a good thing. When a company can hire Ron Spencer do to a full page painting of an elf like female surrounded by various animals in the wild and Wyane Reynolds to do a full page painting of Tiamat in the lower realms, why do we have these smoking boots by Wayne Reynolds, an old illustration, joining D. Crabapple’s terrible illustration of a bogun, that’s also seen print before? Why can Green Ronin and Malhavok have books with consistently good art, all the way through, and strong editing in them and WoTC can’t? No reason at all.

There is a lot of information here that can be used by any fan of a divine spellcaster. The prestige classes and feats are a good collection of crunch. The maps for the various churches, despite having no accompanying write up, are good filler material to be used in a pinch. I’m not too crazy about the NPCs but its good to have if needed in a flash. The book makes efforts to be useful, but fails just as often as it succeeds due to poor editing and reprinting too much modern material. The book is a fair price, coming in at $29.95 for almost 200 full color pages in hardcover. Hopefully we’ll see some errata and official updates soon. I’d like to stop getting ribbed by my players about Tharizdun’s favorite weapon being “check toee”. “How much damage does that do? What’s the critical threat on that? Can I get a masterwork check toee?”

 

[geoffrey d`glanville]

After having spent most of my reviewing time on German formats such as www.dragonworld.de, I felt that after well over 3 three years of reviewing it was time to come to the big leagues, i.e. EN World.
After having checked with some of the reviews here, I like to say that most of them are quite good, a comparatively large number is splendid. But, many people tend to give better marks than a lot of d20 books deserve, at least in my opinion.
E.g. the two-star review of Complete Warrior, which was critizised a lot. I thought it was fully justified. I have a similar style, and want to review the books as objectively as possible, although I`m a big D&D fan. So, you cannot expect a lot of 5 star frogsplashes...ehh...reviews from me.
I usually judge every aspect of a book with a mark from 0.0 - 5.10, which gives the system (which I find a little bit too simple) here on EN World a little bit more detail.
O.K., so let`s go, I hope you enjoy my reviews and find them useful for you.

This book represents the v.3.5 revision work of the former 3.0e spaltbook Defenders of the Faith and partly other splatbooks like Masters of the Wild.

The overall concept to do it in colour and as a hardcover for a reasonable price is very nice, 5.4.

The cover is a good one, but I´ve seen a lot of better ones (3.6). I also have to say that both the covers of Masters of the Wild and Defenders of the Faith were better.
I liked the sparkling that came out of the amulett and the whirling clothes of the cleric, but the stare in his eyes looks like that of an undead and I guess that`s the ultimate insult to a Pelorite.

The overall front- and backcover layout is very good, 4.7, as usual, for a WotC product.

The `Introduction´ was fairly boring to read and did not make me want to read on instantely; it`s more like a prose contents` table and a statement on which books were slaughtered to make this one, 2.6.

`The Devoted´ (14 pages) is a rather poor chapter. I found the Favored Soul to be very unimaginative and it feels almost in no way different to a normal cleric or cleric/paladin.
The Shugenja I think doesn`t belong into mainstream fantasy supplement, but the Spirit Shaman clearly rescues this chapter from going 2.2, 2.8.

`Prestige Classes´ (58 pages) is very solid, 3.6, but offers too few real highlights. Many of the ugly overpowered PrCs of the 3.0e splatbooks have received a decent facelifting, and I liked the Black Flame Zealot very much; its illu (better, the amulett of the guy) even gave birth to a CE god in my campaign! The Void Disciple was also nice; but, I think it almost to be an insult to my money spent that the Stormlord was just copied from a Forgotten Realms book into this one.
From my experience, those D&D gamers that buy more than the PHB usually buy almost every WotC book, so there`s a big chance that a lot of people will have the same stuff twice, and that`s not a good thing.

Next is `Supplemental Rules´ (14 pages) which is again solid, 3.3. Most of the feats are nice, esp. "Elemental Healing" and "Oaken Resilience"; but there were a few kitchies in there, too, like "Elephant`s Hide".
The rules with the Faith Feats are a nice add on, but nothing that saves your roleplaying evening.

Next is `Magic Items´ (14 pages), one of the better chapters in the book, 3.8. Most of them are nice to use, but in the end, an imagiantive DM...you know the story. But if you run out of ideas or have no time to prepare, it`s a good one.

Then comes `Deities´ (18 pages) which has more info on the Greyhawk (or default D&D) gods. The description of the main deities builds upon the ones in the PHB, but to a too small degree; I also missed the symbols of the new ones.
The descrption of the not-so-often-used gods like Beltar was way too small; again, no symbols here.
While it`s nice to finally see almost all Greyhawk gods in a shiny, glossy WotC hardcover - but who on Earth is playing this?
I know about 50 or more D&D gamers over here in Germany and nobody, I mean literally -NOBODY- is playing Greyhawk. Some use the default deities in their own settings, but the majority uses either Forgotten Realms or the Kingdoms of Kalamar.
While I think Greyhawk does not deserve this at all (it`s a nice old school fantasy setting) it`s WotC`s fault. In the first place, Greyhawk seems to have finally become knighted by WotC in Fall 2000 to act as their default D&D setting, it was literally torn to pieces by publishing a flappy b/w 30 pages+ Gazatteer, a little less flappy b/w Living Greyhawk Gazatteer (which is even out of print by now), a few articles in the Dragon, and then handing the rest over to the RPGA, which is virtually nonexistent over here in Europe.
Every major setting has a nice, shiny hardcover; the orphan Greyhawk not. That`s why nobody`s playing it over here in Europe.
I`d really be interested how well-liked Greyhawk is over in the US/EN World. Give me a comment, please. Overall, 3.2.

Then up next is `The Divine World´ which is basically the only fluff chapter in the book, which is way too miniscule. Although it comments nicely on subjects like the afterworld, cults and theocracies, the whole thing seems to me like an apology to players who did not just want to buy Feat No. 3.465 - 3.474 and PrC No. 1.265 - 1.276. A good try, but much too small, 3.7.

But the next mega-cruch isn`t far away. `Domains and Spells´ is 51 pages strong full of just that. Well done, but not a little page-filler? 3.6.

As the WotC books are also in-part artbooks, the discussion of the art therein is pretty detailed.

Then, the looks. The book has an amazing number of illus, way over 100, which makes it more than one illus per page (also counting the temple diagrams as illus), that`s almost a little bit too much, 4.9. There are even 4 full page colur illus and one full page temple diagram.

But, most of it is really quantity, not quality. The illus average at 3.4.

Art of course is subjective, but a good portion of it wasn`t really top-of-the notch, in my opinion; thus, I think it was there to fill space WotC creativity couldn`t.

Wayne Reynolds was my favourite, averaging 4.3 (11 illus, one full colour, a 5.3, which was just great). Of those 11 illus 4 were item illus, which lowered the average, because he`s better at moving people around the pages in my eyes.
He also had 4 b/w illus in there for an average of 3.1 that I did not count in.

Then comes William O`Connor, 4.1, 3 illus, with one full colour, which is stunning, 4.0.

Then the others:

Kyle Anderson, 4.5, only 1 illu (too few to qualify, why not more?)
Raven Mimura, 4.4, 1 illu (doesn`t really qualify for the rating with just one picture; moreover, it`s the Stormlord PrC illu that has already appeared in the Forgotten Realms Player`s Guide, if I`m right.
Jeremy Jarvis, 3.7, only three illus. (what a pity!)
Wayne England, 3.6, 16 item-only illus.
Rich Sardhina, 3.6, again, only three illus. (what a pity!)
Dennis Crabapple, 3.3, 2 illus. (the Bogun has also already appeared somewhere else, in the MM II, if I`m right.
Steven Belledin, 3.3, 6 illus.
Franz Vohwinkel, 3.3, 8 illus.
Jim Pavelec, 3.2, 5 illus.
Ron Spencer, 3.0, 14 illus. (way too many for that mediocre artist, in my opinion), amongst them a pretty kitchy illu with a female druid with a lot of wild animals; in my opinion, that page could have been put to much better use)
Tom Baxa, 2.8, 8 illus., amongst those sadly is also one pretty bad (in my opinion) full colour illu which I gave a 2.5.
Least is Scott Roller, who was allowed to do the light-brown pages that highlight every chapter, 2.7. 7 full page illus. Sadly, his picts. are nowhere near the quality of those in the core books.
Chris Dornaus, 2.5, 1 illu. (does not qualify)

My three MVP`s (in that order) go to the Lolth illu (5.6) on page 115 by Wayne Reynolds, the Warpriest illu (5.5) on page 75, also by Wayne Reynolds and the Black Flame Zealot illu (5.3) by Franz Vohwinkel on page 21.
Runners-up were the Tiamat full-page illu on page 133, again by Wayne Reynolds, the Sacred Fist illu on page 59 by Wayne Reynolds and the Entropomancer illu by William O`Connor on page 37.
The three Golden Tomatoes go to Scott Roller, for the chapter illu `Deities´on page 107, which seems to have been done three minutes before the printing, the chapter illu on page 135, again by Scott Roller, which seems in my opinion to have been done by a 7-year-old and the Tom Baxa full colou illu on page 9 (he`s done so much better picts. in the Dungeon, why not choose such a one when WotC is not afraid to recycle material, anyway?)

Sadly, I have to crititzise WotC Art Director Dawn Murin (who did a lot of splendid jobs in the past) for letting the weakest artists do the most pictures (also the most full page ones). Less illus would have been nice, for the sake of quality. Also, it`s an insult to us customers to present us with recycled art from former publications!!
Though I do understand the need of a universal product to satisfy many people, I think I have a pretty mainstream view of art and basically all of my friends shared my opinion on the art aspect of this book.

The 15 maps (one full page) of the books were nice to look at, done by Todd Gamble, but relatively uninspired, in my opinion, 3.1.

The binding is premium, 5.4.

Paperquality is very good, 5.2.

Value for money is not bad, 3.7 (only a nice-to-look-at crunch book, with no sparkling ideas whatsoever, almost no real prose (fluff) and over 60% purely recycled material mainly from 3.0e books and Dragon magazines).

Overall, Complete Divine is basically an all-crunch book that you do not need for your roleplaying D&D 3.5e survival. For clerics, basically the same is true. It`s no fault to buy it, but Exalted Deeds is better. It even loses in value if you already own the 3.0 splatbooks Defenders of the Faith and Masters of the Wild.
If you do not play 3.5e, do not buy it.
I think it has the greatest charms for a relative newcomer to the game who only has the v.3.5 rulebooks.

It only averages in at 3.3, three relatively weak stars here on EN World.

 

[Seeker95]

I have read many reviews on ENWorld, and have to comment on this one...
Using the same system the reviewer uses, I would end up giving this review a 5.0
Among the best I have ever read. I enjoy being taken for the ride through the reviewer's thought process, and feel the criteria by which d'glanville bases his score could easily be used as the standard for future reviews.

As but one example:
The cover concept and delivery received a 5.4
The cover art received a 3.6
The cover (and back) layout received a 4.7

Most reviews that I see make any comment on the cover at all give a single score. More an imporession than a review.

So, Mr. d'glanville, please continue to offer your reviews here at ENWorld. Please.

 

[cholke]

Good review, but...

I'm glad for the Greyhawk content. I guess my friends and I don't need a "nice, shiny cover" to enjoy good material. Are you suggesting that Europeans buy their gaming material based upon pictures/covers and not content?

I guess if you are basing your entire concept of Greyhawk on not having a "shiny" hardcover, I could see where you are coming from. I know of a lot of people online (Greytalk, Canonfire) as well as locals that are glad for the content.

Loved the style and depth of the review, but you lost me on the personal bias in your critique vs. usefulness and playability.

 

[Seeker95]

Re: Greyhawk content

Cholke, I interpretted his comments on the Greyhawk content as being too little and too late. This book has Greyhawk content, but Greyhawk is so unsupported as a setting that it seems out of place.

As a 23-year player in Greyhawk, I am not sure I *want* Wizards adding more support, since it could easily become as bloated as the Realms. And while I am content with the amount of Greyhawk content in Complete Divine, I can also understand how someone might think otherwise.

I wouldn't mind if Wizards put Greyhawk out of its misery and left it 100% to the fans.

 

[ivocaliban]

A fantastic review of a mediocre book!

I'm basically writing to respond to your question about Greyhawk, however. While I understand many people are concerned about what WotC might do to Greyhawk if they were to devote their resources to the setting, I would still like to see it happen. Let me amend this by saying that I don't believe for a second that it ever will. Not in this edition, at least. When you consider how many Greyhawk races, creatures, prestige classes, deities, and so on already exist in the 3.5 system...and you add to that the history and geography from the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer...you'll find very little left upon which to found a setting.

Essentially, to release a hardcover of the Greyhawk setting (a la Forgotten Realms 3.0), would just be collecting all that material in one place and adding some recent history/events and full-color art. This would mean even more of the duplication, reprinting, and updating that the Complete series brought to the table. Most of the ingredients for Greyhawk 3.5e are already out there, they're just dressed up in generic clothes and scattered throughout a few dozen books.

Maybe someday down the road a bit, Greyhawk will rise up like a phoenix and be reborn, but for now I think we'll just have to make do with things as they are by sifting through the ashes.

 

[Testament]

Ron Spencer, a mediocre artist? His full page of Vadania and her menagerie not good?

Ummm...what on earth are you smoking? Sure, some art is subjective, but as far as I'm concerned, Ron Spencer is one of the best artists on their books right now, along with Franz Vohwinkel and Wayne Reynolds. Jeremy Jarvis, Dennis Crabapple-Cramer are the other end of the scale.

Otherwise, an accurate review. I'm suprised you made no mention of how horribly overpowered this book is though, look at the Radiant Servant, or Divine Metamagic.

 

[geoffrey d`glanville]

To ivocaliban and Seeker95: Thanks for the nice comments, it`s always nice for a newcomer to be greeted warmly, and yes, Seeker95 you were right in interpreting my opinion about the Greyhawk setting treatment.
I, personally, hope that one day it does get its own full-clour HC (as I would like to see for other setting, like Planescape, e.g.)
To cholke: Of course I cannot speak for 300+ million Europeans, but I guess that a beautiful product generally sells better than a mediocre looking one. Of course, content is the prime concern, but since WotC raised the measuring stick very high since Fall 2000 for Rpg books, I guess our tastes also did (at least mine).
Let us assume that for one moment that Greyhawk was the way superior setting to, let`s say the Forgotten Realms setting; a newcomer to the game, let`s say a kid at the age of 8-12 stumbles into a gaming store in search of that "freaky D&D".
Then, he would see more than 10 beautifully designed HC`s about the Forgotten Realms and, on the other hand, the Living Greyhawk Gazatteer. Which setting do you think would he start? I know which one I´d have chosen at that age. And sinve Rpg`s do have a problem with bringing in the younger ones, I think the looks of it is a big factor.
I just want to say that some former D&D settings are treated like step-children by WotC (although I fully understand their economic interest to concentrate on the products/settings that sold well in the past) and that is why that they do not only sell weakly, but they are in danger of dying out, at least of what I tell over here in Europe, and that is the second largest market for WotC, if I`m right. It is just a pity, that`s all I wanted to state.
Also you are certainly right about the fact that a good few crunchy aspects of the book are still a little bit too overpowered, but since that is obviuosly the style that some people play, I guess that WotC also wanted to satisfy that group of potential buyers (or Dave Noonan just wanted to right the damn` thing in there for his own cleric)
To testament: Yes, of course, art is highly subjective. That is why I chose my words wisely as to not insult somebody (mainly the artist, of course); I hope I`ve succeeded. But when I think that a picture is not good, there`s no point for me as a reviewer not to say it, or is there?

Thanks for the feedback, guys, and keep on gaming!