"Planar Handbook" - completlely useless?

[mhacdebhandia]

MOST COMPANIES, INCLUDING WOTC, DON'T SEEM TO REMEMBER WHAT PrCS WERE MEANT TO DO. They were MEANT to be highly specialized classes that reflected a particular in-story organization, dedication, etc, that was not inherently more powerful than a regular class, only differently-oriented.

So? The core rules don't contain tactical feats, do they? Yet the idea of a "feat" is wider than the game originally provided for. Why should the idea of a "prestige class" be any different?

My whole point is that people who think prestige classes should be one small kind of thing with no variation are, well, narrow-minded. They're useful for multiple applications, including "advanced classes" if that's what a group wants to use them for.

Instead, what they have TURNED OUT TO BE is almost always "advanced character classes".

This, along with your nonsensical example of a badly-designed weapon, reveal what I consider the flaw in your thinking:

These prestige classes which you so adamantly criticise are not actually as powerful as you seem to think - and when they are, it's usually an accident of bad design, at least as far as I can tell.

It's extremely foolish for people to assume that Wizards are actually catering to power-gamers - if you don't believe me, go and look at the "Character Optimisation" forum in the Wizards of the Coast message boards. I guarantee that you will be educated as to the contempt in which most of these people - dedicated min-maxing number-crunchers, exactly the kind of person that comes to mind when most people think of a power-gamer - hold most of the prestige classes that come out in Wizards products.

Hell, if Wizards treat prestige classes like powered-up "advanced classes", why the Hell do they publish prestige classes for spellcasters without full spellcasting progression? I guarantee that 90% of such classes will be met with scorn by power-gamers - and that there aren't more than a handful left which you could even get half the power-gamers around to agree are worth giving up spellcasting for.

It's absolutely fair for you to hold a narrow opinion of what prestige classes should be, or to wish that Wizards and other game companies published less mechanics and more flavour. But try to hew closer to reality when you do so, man.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

On the topic of the Planar Handbook, I played and loved Planescape during Second Edition and I like the book. It may be that I'm more easy-going than most people - I look at "Lady of Pain, LN female, unknown race" and go "Wow. Dumb. Ignored." I look at the planar touchstones and see just another example of how the planes can be different - something that I always loved about Planescape - and handwave the flavour back to something more fitting my Second Edition vision of the planes where necessary.

However, it's true that as much as I love cool and fascinating flavour ideas, I don't buy books for their flavour. I can come up with good flavour myself - and when I see so-so flavour, like some of the material in the Planar Handbook, I find it trivially easy to spice it up.

I also get great ideas for flavour from new mechanics - where one person looks at spikers and sees bladeling ripoffs, I try to think of a way I can make it cool in my game alongside bladelings. If, when my ordered copy of Races of Stone arrives, and the cultural information isn't to my taste, I can tweak it around.

This is easy, at least for me. Sure, I'd love to have flavour as cool as Planescape's was alongside good mechanics, but I don't think Wizards is a company that can afford to cater to my tastes, and it wouldn't make that much difference to the end product anyway.

 

[Belen]

Mystery Man: I understand your feelings. I get the same idea. As to ppl saying that DM's are only about 1/4th of the market, market research by TSR/WOTC from some time ago showed that DM's shell about 10 times as much money out for books then players, so the DM market is definately a lot bigger money wise....

That's because DMs tend to be hardcore gamers, thus they buy more books because gaming is a lifestyle for them. WOTC is really shooting themselves in the foot on this one. I think a backlash is coming...

Of course, I think their strategy is to slowly get rid of the GM or relegate GMs to judges that do nothing but arbitrate combat. They want to turn all those players into hardcore gamers, which will not happen but will alienate the current crowd of hardcore gamers.

Then the real trick will be to stop producing print books in 10-20 years and sell you online supplements to go with your cheesemeister computer game. Just think of the market for virtual minis, PrC and adventures...

 

[diaglo]

To one who hasn't had his eyes shut since 1985,

i only wish my eyes were shut. i've had them wide open since they started producing more and more junk.

sooner or later they are bound to produce something i can use.

 

[Belen]

How interesting. A complaint about a book that clearly says that it's a Player's Guide that it doesn't help the DM enough. Really?

Absolutely pathetic.

Merric, I like you. I really do, but you're the best WOTC marketer I have ever seen.

 

[Pants]

Still, his basic point is valid. Save Eberron and some of the regional FR books, which recently featured the excellent Serpent Kingdoms, WotC has not published a single book this year which I would have deemed really creative and/or inspiring.

Unearthed Arcana, Eberron, Serpent Kingdoms, d20 Future, Races of Stone.

On the pipeline:
MMIII, Libris Mortis, Races of Destiny, Frostburn, Sandstorm, Codex Anathema, Races of the Wild.

Besides, what's not creative for you may be creative for someone else. On the flip side, most of the 3rd party stuff that I've bought has failed to impress me, but yet I don't automatically assume that the rest that I HAVEN'T looked through is crap as well. Most likely, it's just not my style and I'll freely admit that I may be passing up on good books because of that.

 

[Shemeska]

Now, Planescape devotees may have read this before, but they don't represent the majority of D&D players - there will be plenty of people to whom this is new.

And if they like it they'll check out the older material and realize how much it lost in transition since it was originally written. The book was ok, but it wasn't by and large what I was hoping for. And while certain parts were well done, Sigil for instance, those parts were few and far between compared to yet more overpowered LA 0/+1 races, continuity errors that would have taken 5 minutes to check, yoshi eggs and fireflowers errr planar touchstones, etc. It was like nuggets of gourmet chocolate suspended in slightly rancid mayonaise.

But if there's a saving grace in the book it's that it'll hopefully snag some people to look at the material it was based upon in large part. It could have been much, much worse. It could have been Complete Divine.

 

[Mystery Man]

And if they like it they'll check out the older material and realize how much it lost in transition since it was originally written. The book was ok, but it wasn't by and large what I was hoping for. And while certain parts were well done, Sigil for instance, those parts were few and far between compared to yet more overpowered LA 0/+1 races, continuity errors that would have taken 5 minutes to check, yoshi eggs and fireflowers errr planar touchstones, etc. It was like nuggets of gourmet chocolate suspended in slightly rancid mayonaise.

But if there's a saving grace in the book it's that it'll hopefully snag some people to look at the material it was based upon in large part. It could have been much, much worse. It could have been Complete Divine.

Now I know of course I'm risking sounding crazy here but there is not much in the Planar Handbook worthy of comparing to Planescape. It seems to be too far removed and generalized. PRC's, Feats and spells maybe but that's not anything different than any other publication.

 

[fanboy2000]

I'm a Planescape fan

I would like to point out that the planes existed long before Planescape, and the feel back then was quite diffrent. Also, not everyone liked planescape before, not everyone liked it now. I find it interesting that everytime WotC does a planer book, people compair it to Planescape rather than say 1e Manual of the Planes, or even 1e Deities and Demigods (which had planer information, if I remember). It seems obvious to me that WotC isn't reviving Planescape, and has no plans to. The Planer Handbook, I expect, is more in the old 1e mold rather than the Planescape mode.

 

[Tzarevitch]

I wonder if the Planar Handbook could have ever worked for both the Planescape fan and the non-Planescape fan?

Wizards couldn't assume that everyone (or even most) of the people buying the Planar Handbook had Planescape already. It's really more "Inspired by Planescape" than anything else - and like both "I, Robot" and "Troy" that doesn't equate to much in the eyes of the fans of the original material.

Cheers!

The issue is not whether or not the PlHB is inspired by Planescape or has anything to do with Planescape. The issue is it wasn't a very good book.

I run a Planescape game. I wasn't expecting a Planescape book, I was expecting a USEFUL book. The PlHB was simply a poor effort. 32 pages of Planar Touchstone junk plus reprinted information and lots of useless other bits just made me mad.

I understand some people may like the touchstones, but from the point of view of a book that is for general appeal, devoting that much of it to a marginal idea is a poor idea. They should've given 2-3 examples of touchstones and rules on how to make them. That way if you like the idea you can make more, if you don't you can ignore it. At 32 pages you CAN'T ignore it. If you hate the touchstones you tend to hate the book.

As if the touchstones weren't bad enough they then reprint the asimar, bariaur and tieflings; AGAIN! The feats are of questionable use even in a planar campaign and the spells tend to be of limited utility or reprints. The authors then waste even more space with junk such as details on the githyanki capital city with is about fun to advanture in as Stalin's USSR.

The final nail in the coffin however was the prestige classes. The faction classes are interesting but they only made classes and gave information for SOME of them. What good is SOME of them? That is what pisses me off.

Why did they bother with them at all if they only were going to print SOME of them? That is like expecting people to play a game in Eberron but only giving them some of the rulebook. And the Astral Dancer? I won't even dignify that class with a discussion. One or two like the Elemental Warrior are pretty good but by then my impression of this book had hit bottom and even the wonderful planar substitution rules couldn't save it.

Honestly the book was lousy. It has nothing to do with Planescape nostalgia. I love Planescape, but I wasn't expecting this book to BE Planescape. I was however expecting it to be a decent book and worthy of my hard-earned cash. Not necessarily useful for me, but at least decent. I do not think that was an unreasonable expectation. Thankfully, Races of Stone has since restored my confidence in WoTC's products but PlHB was a very poor offering.

Tzarevitch