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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 2426274" data-attributes="member: 1465">No, not a poll here, just a simple question about the VERY latest WotC books (Q2 2005).  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I just wanted to post some thoughts on this because I had the same exact feeling dynamics for the Dungeon Master's Guide II, Heroes of Battle and Weapons of Legacy.With ALL of them three, I became more and more interested as some previews or ToC came out here and there. Finally, I though, some good books for a poor DM who was tired of player-focused material  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> There had been good DM's books before (monsters and environmental series), however those 3 were possibly more general and therefore more interesting to me to come up with something actually new to the game.Then reality kicked in, I read threads about each of them, and from "must-buy" they quickly became "must-forget" books  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /> The DMG II was the least disillusionment, I think the topics are fine, but that too much space is devoted to random tables, DMing advice which I can better learn by playing than reading, and the entire Saltmarsh town.HoB was presented as a tool to set adventures in battle (not mass-battle rules, I know), but still rules about how to adjudicate how the PC influence a battle. At the end, the rules are so simple that they don't seem to help at all. At the end, the DM still has to do all decisions himself.WoL seemed to be a great idea to finally get rid of all the little bad syndromes with D&D magic items, at least for my taste. I though the book gave you uber-items, but for a gold price appropriate to keep everything balanced: that would have meant less magic item per character, much less magic item marketing, but more unique items with a backstory and growing together with the wielders.Instead the author completely missed the easiest solution (i.e. just a high enough progressive gp price), and decided to give you a magic-item beyond its price value, and make you pay with character penalties (including a BAB penalty to pay for... an attack bonus, wow   <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/paranoid.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":uhoh:" title="Paranoid    :uhoh:" data-shortname=":uhoh:" /> ). Consequences: PCs still have lots of standard flavorless items, and hold less personal power in exchange for more item-dependent bonuses than normal.Why do I write this rant? I suppose I want to know if I'm really alone in my disappointment, but also I still hope that someone comes up and shows me that I'm wrong, that maybe WoL has a tiny paragraph with equivalent gp costs if I don't want to use the penalties, or that HoB has so much free-form advice that there is no need for rules at all...  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/nervous.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":heh:" title="Nervous Laugh    :heh:" data-shortname=":heh:" /></blockquote>

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