How Well Received Was "The Complete Ninja"?

[Arkhandus]

It was awesome. I still wish I had a copy of my own, but alas, I only got to borrow a friend's copy once and as soon as I had the money to buy a copy myself, the local game store had no copies left, and wouldn't get any more because 3rd Edition was about to be released.

 

[jdrakeh]

It's always weird to see so much praise lumped on products that, at the time of their release, were widely maligned. At the time that the Complete books were released and as recently as the late 1990s, a large many of them were hailed (both online and off) as the last bastion of powergamers or otherwise derided as being broken.

I've noticed that since the announcement of 4e, there seems to have been a flood of rose-tinted nostalgic recollection for many products largely regarded as, well. . . crap. . . in years past. The Complete books are a good example, as are once widely reviled early D&D 3.0 products such as The Epic Level Handbook and Manual of the Planes.

Check those eBay and Amazon prices! Yowza!

 

[Agamon]

Thats odd. I paid $50 for mine on eBay. :\

Ah, right, it was the Barbarian one I couldn't hawk. Wrong thread, it would seem.

Guess I shoulda eBayed my Ninja book, I sold it here for $2. My dislike for the 2E handbooks clouded my judgment; I was wondering if $2 was a rip off....

 

[GeorgeFields]

Strange, everyone I've talked to about this book had pretty much the same opinion: toilet paper bound in fake leather.

 

[rogueattorney]

Ebay price can have more to do with the size of the print run than the quality of the product.

 

[jdrakeh]

Ebay price can have more to do with the size of the print run than the quality of the product.

True. That said, within the past three years, I have seen boxes upon boxes of the Complete manuals in used book stores across the nation for pennies on the dollar. They aren't rare by any means. What the prices on Amazon and eBay typically reflect is not rarity or quality but, rather, simply what the seller thinks he can get people to pay (and more often than not, what people have been paying recently).

I think what we're seeing is a resurgence in popularity of OOP products due to nostalgia which is itself brought on by the anxiety surrounding the new D&D edition. Note that back around the time of D&D 3x's initial release, there was a similar clamoring for older D&D and AD&D books (particularly the Rules Cyclopedia, which was demanding $150 or so on eBay at the time). This is hardly a new phenomena.

 

[Herobizkit]

I found the book to be an excelent resource for highlighting various ninja "styles" -- the charmer, the sneakthief, the brute, and so on. It also had great information on running ninja campaigns.

What it DIDN'T have, IMO, was a decent re-vamp of the Ninja class. IMO, the designers took the Bard, chopped all its decent abilities, and called THAT the Ninja. I get what the concept was attempting to do, but I didn't like it at all.

As always, the re-vamped Oriental weapons was spot on.

 

[Drowbane]

IME, of course

Top 5 Complete Books (of 2e)

1) Psi
2) Ninja
3) Fighter
4) Sha'ir
5) Humanoid

Honorable mention: Barbarian & Thief

 

[Drowbane]

I found the book to be an excelent resource for highlighting various ninja "styles" -- the charmer, the sneakthief, the brute, and so on. It also had great information on running ninja campaigns.

What it DIDN'T have, IMO, was a decent re-vamp of the Ninja class. IMO, the designers took the Bard, chopped all its decent abilities, and called THAT the Ninja. I get what the concept was attempting to do, but I didn't like it at all.

As always, the re-vamped Oriental weapons was spot on.

the Shinobi kits were what we used for "ninjas"... Shinobi Thief in particular.

 

[Jack Daniel]

This book was pretty much one of the few indispensable, non-core supplements to my 2e games. Between this and "The Scarlett Brotherhood" (once that finally came out and officially updated monks to 2e for real), I was finally able to quit lugging around my 1e copies of the PHB and OA just to play a simple game of AD&D! I, for one, was quite happy with the 2e ninja class, because it was balanced for once -- no split class BS, no assassination table. (I did, however, make sure that the Spirit Warrior kit was for all intents and purposes the standard version of the ninja class, just to keep things flavorful). The weapons, proficiencies, martial arts, and fluffy bits were all pure awesome.

So for my 2e games, my "core rules" consisted of the following books:

-Player's Handbook
-Dungeon Master's Guide
-Monstrous Manual
-The Complete Ninja's Handbook
-The Complete Psionics Handbook
-The Scarlett Brotherhood (or rather, the monk class from this book and little else)
-DM's Option: High-Level Campaigns

That was all I needed for a good 2e game (although I must admit to occasionally dabbling with the Player's Option: Combat & Tactics rules).