Ralif Redhammer
Legend
I played one of those....I liked that character, but the kit itself felt an awkward fit for the cleric class. I probably should've switched to another kit, but I can be stubborn.
D&D 2E [COMPLETE] Looking back at the leatherette series: PHBR, DMGR, HR and more!
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
I thought so. There's a lot about the Brotherhood's organization, local environment, and activities. It also has a surprising amount on not only the Suel deities, but also the deities of the various indigenous people whom they've displaced/enslaved.
Voadam
Legend
Do you like SKR's writing?
It is a very late 2e take on the topic (taking an undeveloped area of Greyhawk and developing it in-depth creating new stuff).
A lot of Suel genetic nazi stuff, pale Suel degenerate tribesmen, new ethnicities, new languages, creation and fleshing out of the Central/south american fantasy take off pantheon (though not full Faiths & Avatars style).
Almost none of it gets built on later that I am aware of.
el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
I don't have an opinion one way or another.
Since I am getting it just to mine for ideas, whether it was used or built on later in the setting is immaterial to me.
Either way, I ordered it. So too late now!
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
I remember having mixed, but generally positive, feelings toward PHBR3 The Complete Priest's Handbook.
This particular supplement has since gone down in history as "the book that tried to make the cleric even weaker." That idea (a reference to the "Toning Down the Cleric" section on page 122) never really stuck with me, largely because it was very clearly optional (or at least I thought so; the part where it said "Naturally, you should only do this if you personally feel the cleric class is too powerful in your campaign. If you don't, don't change him" seemed pretty clear on that point to me). Certainly, the reductions in power that section suggested were, insofar as I can tell, never seen again.
Rather, what made the strongest impression on me was the instance of the "generic pantheon" presented in this book. I'd been looking for a pre-made pantheon for some time, but one that didn't come with what I felt was a lot of "baggage" from a campaign setting. Unfortunately, the closest I could find were transplanted mythological pantheons in the 2E Legends & Lore (which had too much cultural baggage for me) and monstrous gods in DMGR4 Monster Mythology (which I'll talk about more later; for now it's enough to say that I wanted a human version of that book).
Instead, this book had "placeholder" deities, described so generically that they were essentially templates of religions rather than actual religions. In hindsight I can understand why they presented them like that - it was essentially a how-to guide for making fantasy pantheons rather than a finished product - but at the time I found it very frustrating.
Even then, I couldn't be too upset with the book for giving what seemed like a half-measure, simply because how awesome a lot of the other ideas were. For instance, this is the first time I can recall explicitly seeing reference to clerics being able to gain spells and powers from a faith (i.e. a god), a force, or a philosophy. That certainly got my imagination up! We'd see these later, with things like the clerics in Dark Sun worshiping elemental forces, but for me the best use of this idea was the personified forces of Day, Night, and Twilight (along with the idea that Death was also out there) in the truly excellent S5 The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga (a book that forever enshrined Lisa Smedman among my personal favorite RPG writers).
But more notable was that this book really put forward the idea of what would later be called "specialty priests." That is, religion-specific classes (albeit under 2E's "priest" meta-class group) that had varying weapon and armor allowances, access (both major and minor) to different priest spheres, and special powers. I mean, sure, the 2E Player's Handbook would put forth the idea of "Priests of Specific Mythoi," but this book is where it really made good on that idea...even if later books such as the aforementioned Legends & Lore, as well as Faiths & Avatars, would carry it forward.
Also, looking back I'm a bit impressed at what this book didn't do, which was add more priest spheres to the game. Spheres (if you don't remember them, those were essentially an alternate categorization of spells, in a manner similar to schools of magic) were an excellent idea in terms of differentiating what spellcasters of different religions could do, especially since you could have either minor access (i.e. spells of up to 3rd level) or major access (i.e. spells all the way up to 7th level, the maximum at the time for divine spells) to them. Sure, it wasn't "balanced" as we'd think of it today, but it was evocative as anything!
But I digress. After what we saw in the PHB, there was really only one major expansion of priest spheres, in the Tome of Magic. After that, new spheres in AD&D 2E were incredibly rare, such as the Ritual sphere in Jakandor, Island of War. For PHBR3 not to go that route has always seemed to be to be, for lack of a better word, disciplined. There's no basis for it, but years of watching escalating power levels in D&D has me assuming that there must have been a lot of pushes to create new spheres all over the place, and that there must have been some directive inside of TSR refusing to do so. In actuality, I suspect that it was just because the designers didn't want to have to go back and retroactively add more spheres to the deity listings for all the gods they'd already put out clerical stats for.
It's not perfect, but this book is far from being one that I regret picking up either.
Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.
This particular supplement has since gone down in history as "the book that tried to make the cleric even weaker." That idea (a reference to the "Toning Down the Cleric" section on page 122) never really stuck with me, largely because it was very clearly optional (or at least I thought so; the part where it said "Naturally, you should only do this if you personally feel the cleric class is too powerful in your campaign. If you don't, don't change him" seemed pretty clear on that point to me). Certainly, the reductions in power that section suggested were, insofar as I can tell, never seen again.
Rather, what made the strongest impression on me was the instance of the "generic pantheon" presented in this book. I'd been looking for a pre-made pantheon for some time, but one that didn't come with what I felt was a lot of "baggage" from a campaign setting. Unfortunately, the closest I could find were transplanted mythological pantheons in the 2E Legends & Lore (which had too much cultural baggage for me) and monstrous gods in DMGR4 Monster Mythology (which I'll talk about more later; for now it's enough to say that I wanted a human version of that book).
Instead, this book had "placeholder" deities, described so generically that they were essentially templates of religions rather than actual religions. In hindsight I can understand why they presented them like that - it was essentially a how-to guide for making fantasy pantheons rather than a finished product - but at the time I found it very frustrating.
Even then, I couldn't be too upset with the book for giving what seemed like a half-measure, simply because how awesome a lot of the other ideas were. For instance, this is the first time I can recall explicitly seeing reference to clerics being able to gain spells and powers from a faith (i.e. a god), a force, or a philosophy. That certainly got my imagination up! We'd see these later, with things like the clerics in Dark Sun worshiping elemental forces, but for me the best use of this idea was the personified forces of Day, Night, and Twilight (along with the idea that Death was also out there) in the truly excellent S5 The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga (a book that forever enshrined Lisa Smedman among my personal favorite RPG writers).
But more notable was that this book really put forward the idea of what would later be called "specialty priests." That is, religion-specific classes (albeit under 2E's "priest" meta-class group) that had varying weapon and armor allowances, access (both major and minor) to different priest spheres, and special powers. I mean, sure, the 2E Player's Handbook would put forth the idea of "Priests of Specific Mythoi," but this book is where it really made good on that idea...even if later books such as the aforementioned Legends & Lore, as well as Faiths & Avatars, would carry it forward.
Also, looking back I'm a bit impressed at what this book didn't do, which was add more priest spheres to the game. Spheres (if you don't remember them, those were essentially an alternate categorization of spells, in a manner similar to schools of magic) were an excellent idea in terms of differentiating what spellcasters of different religions could do, especially since you could have either minor access (i.e. spells of up to 3rd level) or major access (i.e. spells all the way up to 7th level, the maximum at the time for divine spells) to them. Sure, it wasn't "balanced" as we'd think of it today, but it was evocative as anything!
But I digress. After what we saw in the PHB, there was really only one major expansion of priest spheres, in the Tome of Magic. After that, new spheres in AD&D 2E were incredibly rare, such as the Ritual sphere in Jakandor, Island of War. For PHBR3 not to go that route has always seemed to be to be, for lack of a better word, disciplined. There's no basis for it, but years of watching escalating power levels in D&D has me assuming that there must have been a lot of pushes to create new spheres all over the place, and that there must have been some directive inside of TSR refusing to do so. In actuality, I suspect that it was just because the designers didn't want to have to go back and retroactively add more spheres to the deity listings for all the gods they'd already put out clerical stats for.
It's not perfect, but this book is far from being one that I regret picking up either.
Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.
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Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
Complete Fighter's and Complete Priest's definitely got the most use at our tables back in the day.
While the latter definitely seemed guided by a strong directive not to make any of the kits too powerful, and generally to err on the side of making them weaker, we still loved them. One of my longest-running 2nd ed characters was a half elven Fighter/Wizard/Priest of War, and I still remember him fondly.
While the latter definitely seemed guided by a strong directive not to make any of the kits too powerful, and generally to err on the side of making them weaker, we still loved them. One of my longest-running 2nd ed characters was a half elven Fighter/Wizard/Priest of War, and I still remember him fondly.
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Voadam
Legend
I agree the low power level really hurt with these thematically cool specialty priests being sub par to the standard cleric. A lot like the god-specific specialty clerics in 1e's Dragonlance Adventures. I always felt being sub par mechanically for a neat concept was an annoying structural choice.
Voadam
Legend
I particularly liked the philosophy and force ideas and was glad to see a little of that in 2e's Legends & Lore and as a concept in the core 3e PH clerics.
cbwjm
Seb-wejem
I was also a fan of the priests handbook, the low power priests could be fixed with the addition of a few extra spheres as well as maybe some extra weapon and armour proficiencies. I found the ideas of gods of specific portfolios an invaluable tool for building a pantheon, it just provided ideas of which gods might exist and what they cared about. I used it to help fill out the pantheon for my current game.
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