Failed promises

[Psion]

Planar Handbook

Well, while I agree so totally (what kills me was the RACES! Still no non FR full racial writeup of planetouched, despite the face this is where they belong!), after a few botched attempts to do PS in 3e in Dragon etc., I had already lost faith in them by the time Planar Handbook was out.

 

[Turanil]

Well, people, what books have you bought because they sounded way cool, but - when you finally read them - failed to deliver?

For me, I believed with utter certainty that Beyond Countless Doorways would be the greatest book ever on planes, and it happened to be one of the worst... I was so disappointed that it angered me, and incited me to write a review about it for that sole reason (viewable on Enworld's reviews).

 

[the Jester]

Another vote against the Planar Handbook.

All the Races of... books- I didn't even end up buying them.

[edit: and I'm a gaming whore.]

The Book of Exalted Deeds.

 

[Shemeska]

The Book of Exalted Deeds.

What is this BoED you speak of? ... *psychotic flashback episode* Make the terribly shallow book go away! *whine* Oh the wretched concept of the deathless that it inflicted on the world!

*curls up in the corner with a stuffed ultroloth doll, whimpering for all the so-called good to go away*

 

[wingsandsword]

Champions of Ruin - Book of Vile Darkness lite, and I was hoping for a bit more detail on more than a select handful of groups that had already been covered before in other 3e FR books. What really got me were stats for beings that the gods of Toril fear but who in the CR 20ish range would be smacked around and left for dead. Oh, and the admitted reason they were put in the CR 20ish range was solely so PCs could kill them, otherwise they wouldn't be attractive targets for most PCs in FR games. That's just sad.

I'll second this one.

"Hey, we just killed Dendar the Night Serpent!"
"That means we saved the world, he was supposed to destroy Toril at the end of time."
"Yeah, that was almost easy too, I wonder why in the last 20,000 years nobody else has done that. You'd think that the Seven Sisters, Elminster, Drizzt, King Azoun, some great wyrm dragon, any of the Netherese Archmages, the gods (or their chosen, avatars, or high priests), or even Zass Tamm or Larloch would have gotten around to killing the being that was guaranteed to be the eventual undoing of the entire world. Even the bad guys know it would destroy them too."
"You'd think that, but for some odd reason it never came up."

Some things are just too big for most PC's to ever deal with, that's part of the Realms. It's not just the personal playground of the PC's, they can be heroes and save the day, but there are true epic challenges out there for epic level characters too (some people think it cheapens the PC's by making them not the biggest players in the world, I think it makes it more plausible since there is always a bigger fish). Why bother having Epic level rules, and even practically inventing the epic rules set for 3e (in the original FRCS) when you don't even make the main Epic monsters of the Realms actually have epic stats?

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Here is my lkist of products that have disappointed me: FR Underdark, Masque of the Red Death (Arthaus), Portals & Planes, Broncosaurus Rex, Encyclopaedia Arcane: Chronomancy and Encyclopaedia Arcane: Crossbreeding.

 

[Crothian]

Complete Arcane and Complete Divine. They weren't complete in the least, Warrior and Adventure at least made an attempt at being complete.

D&Dg, though I don't mind the stats for gods the sheer lack of useful info was what killed it for me

Epic Level handbook: it is high level, and it looks just like low level with bigger numbers.

 

[Particle_Man]

Swashbuckling Arcana. The writers put in character descriptions that could not be duplicated by the rules, and had some magic using feats with DC's that were impossible to meet. Not just difficult. Impossible according to the rules in the book. You see, guys, when you change from an "exploding dice pool system" to a "d20 system" you are meant to check the DC's and either lower them or allow for lots of bonuses to that new "magic roll" that you put in. You can't just cut and paste from your older books.

The Last Days of Constantinople. The fluff was ok, but the crunch let me down. A 3rd level prostitute with chr 27 and assassin death attack? Pass.

I must admit, that, though I like C&C overall, I was disappointed by the encumbrance rules, and the lack of monsters and treasure (although I hear that the M&T book is finally coming out).

As for official wotc stuff: And I have been disappointed by how the illusionist has been treated in 2nd edition (not wotc, but tsr) and 3rd edition, but that is the topic for a whole different rant and thread. Let's just say that I haven't found any official or 3rd party products that have left me completely happy here. They seem to leave the illusionist either too weak (standard stuff) or too powerful (some third party stuff).

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Epic Level handbook: it is high level, and it looks just like low level with bigger numbers.

That didn't bother me so much.

The adventure in the back bothered me, I am personally of the opinion that it was never playtested. Maybe I'm wrong, but I really don't see how a party of four 23rd level level characters could survive that dragon encounter outside the fortress. I mean, use the rules (remember you aren't allowed to spend more than 1/2 your gold on a single item) and try to beat it. You get to start out with that egg thing and that's nice, but I really don't see how that encounter can end in anything other than a TPK and it's the second one or so. The rest of the adventure is pretty much undead and constructs. Bleah.

 

[Psion]

How could I forget Epic Level Handbook.

Not that I loathed it. It was a useful extension to the rules, albeit with a few warts.

But the flavor is SO not worthy of the name Epic.

And I hate union with the burning anger of one thousand suns.