"Planar Handbook" - completlely useless?

[Psion]

So the love is really for the Planescape version of modrons, then, and not the originals? As Tzeravitch describes them, I can see how they'd be interesting...

His post is just the long version of mine.

but as I recall them from 1e, they just didn't evoke that feeling.

I think Planescape just takes the concept and runs with it / pressed it to its logical conclusion.

 

[VirgilCaine]

It's not that as a DM I can't use anything in the book. It's as a DM it's so completely uninspiring. As a DM I do not need more spells, feats, blah blah blah.

Keep in mind I don't want or need to be spoonfed anything but....
I want campaign seeds, encounter ideas, demographics, descriptive areas, ideas on power groups, secret organizations, and so much more that these new books just don't really provide.

I agree. I have "enough" adventures that I can get along with what I have or probably jigger up something from local conventional power groups and common problems.
I have enough spells that I can sprinke some non-Core spells around to trip up the PCs. I have more than enough monsters to run what I need (I think so...you think that 95% of the Creature Catalog is enough?).
I think I have enough feats. I have enough magic items. Same for PrCs.

I could probably use what you just described.

 

[diaglo]

Really?

Shrek and donkey paraphrase: really. really.

 

[Nisarg]

Don't try to call it an homage, or a "nod-of-the-head" to PS fans, let's just call it what it is WotC; bait. It's a shiny sticker on the books that says, "Planescape Fans, Buy Me!" That sort of treatment only leads to insulted, dissatisfied fans all around.
What WotC is doing with Planescape material now is the worst kind of necrophilia. Do something proper with it or let it die...

Note: I know plenty of planar material existed before Planescape, but I'm sure we all know the difference between that stuff and what I'll call, for want of a better term, Planescape flavored Intellectual Property.

Or it could just be that Wizards is taking the basic elements of Planescape, many of which were very clever, and is presenting them now without the Planescape "flavour" which so many of us find totally unpalatable. The outer planes, the domains of the gods, the pillars of creation, can finally actually look like something other than a mid-nineties grunge/punk house party.

And yet, Wizards of the coast, the company that OWNS the planes (both PS and otherwise), and therefore has the right to do whatever it wants with them, is being generous enough to leave the same basic skeleton (which again, I'll admit is really very good once you strip it of the gen-x crimes against fashion) intact in such a way that the old Planescape fans (which are a MINORITY) can continue to make use of whatever parts of the new products they wish to, without having to subject the MAJORITY who disliked the old Planescape to the same old stuff, which besides being tasteless in the first place now also suffers from being "totally retro, dude".


Nisarg

 

[edbonny]

The Planar Handbook appears to have been poorly concepted and thus has now become a missed opportunity on many fronts.

The decision to create new races was misguided. Not only do these new races fail to capture the mystery and wonder of the planes but they just don't make sense from this player's perspective (buommen, neph, shadowshyft nd the mephit-guys top my list of bad new races). The Planar Handbook couldhave explored previously established planar/planetouched races created in the age of 3e that have seen almost no development (such as from the MM2 and FF: shyft, chaond, etc.). This was a chance to take some "audience-familiar" planar beings and flesh them out. Instead, there are now more player races on the playing field. The plane-blooded material in Unearthed Arcana is excellent stuff for planar characters and merited a mention if not a section in the Planar Handbook. Two missed opportunities here.

The feats were likewise uninspired if not rather generic. A look at the planetouched feats in Races of Faerun gives a good idea of what kinds of wondrous planar feats this book could have given us.

I could have gone either way with the publishing of PS setting material. I am a PS fan but the Great Wheel with a diminished Ps presence equally acceptable. That said, the effort to bridge the gap with PS continuity could have been greatly improved had original PS designers been consulted (I know consultation of this kind is not normally done but in this case it was worth exploring). Since they were going to put in some PS, I, for one, would have liked to have seen Sigil moved a year or two forward past the Faction War with a small timeline of events.

Lastly, the page allocation for planar touchstones should have been cut in half. Too much information and space was given to this lackluster concept (The Amazing Race meets the planes?). The places described are interesting, the touchstones themselves are not. This space could have been given to new monsters (or to update old ones such as the modrons), new spells or classes (and thus round out all the factions). There is also a huge amount of wonderful 2e planar stuff just waiting to be upgraded to 3.5 (like four entire 2e monstrous compendiums of planar critters; planar sects; a tasked genie template; elemental clerics - and that's for starters).

What I did like about the book: the prestige classes; some new spells; and the monster table in the back of the book that lists monsters found on each plane by reference book. The prestige classes were well done thus making it this book's best feature.

- Ed

 

[Staffan]

And yet, Wizards of the coast, the company that OWNS the planes (both PS and otherwise), and therefore has the right to do whatever it wants with them, is being generous enough to leave the same basic skeleton (which again, I'll admit is really very good once you strip it of the gen-x crimes against fashion) intact in such a way that the old Planescape fans (which are a MINORITY) can continue to make use of whatever parts of the new products they wish to, without having to subject the MAJORITY who disliked the old Planescape to the same old stuff, which besides being tasteless in the first place now also suffers from being "totally retro, dude".

Just wondering what kind of numbers you have to support that those who like Planescape are fewer than those who dislike it (I'll freely admit that both categories are likely smaller than the category that goes "Planescape? Whazzat?"). In the campaign settings II poll, Planescape came in second place with multiple choices allowed (beating out Eberron, Al-Qadim, Dragonlance, Greyhawk, Mystara, and pretty much every other TSR/WOTC setting except FR), having almost as many votes as the lead choice (Forgotten Realms) - OK, a poll on a non-representative Internet forum might not be the most scientific way to do market research, but it does show that Planescape is an immensely popular setting.

 

[Incenjucar]

-Modrons have a massive potential if you can get past their shape; honestly, do they look all that much sillier than Cthulhoid tentacle monsters? The trick is they made rogue modrons too visible (And rogues pretty much ARE humor factories -- they're like fey modrons), rather than the normal ones. They really needed to have thrown together a nice rainy grimy night in sigil where the quadrone crushes the life out of a tiefling because said tiefling was walking through an alley where the modron had been told "Any tiefers who go through here get killed", and the modron saw the tiefling was about to get out alive.

-It's obscenely easy to keep Sigil the way PSers know it without orienting it towards the punkish aura. The 'punk' thing was 90% art, 10% cant. While most PSers will most the first and many the second, we're an understanding enough bunch not to get uppity that it was skipped. Now, screw up the Lady and turn her in to an NPC (when we were never supposed to know if she was even more than an illusion) , yeah, then we get a little annoyed at.

-Touchstones, again, are a -great- idea. They just did it horribly horribly wrong.

 

[Nisarg]

Just wondering what kind of numbers you have to support that those who like Planescape are fewer than those who dislike it (I'll freely admit that both categories are likely smaller than the category that goes "Planescape? Whazzat?"). In the campaign settings II poll, Planescape came in second place with multiple choices allowed (beating out Eberron, Al-Qadim, Dragonlance, Greyhawk, Mystara, and pretty much every other TSR/WOTC setting except FR), having almost as many votes as the lead choice (Forgotten Realms) - OK, a poll on a non-representative Internet forum might not be the most scientific way to do market research, but it does show that Planescape is an immensely popular setting.

unrepresentative is right. Planescape is big among a small group of dedicated fanatics who also overwhelmingly frequent places like Enworld. The average gamer post TSR (that is, who only started gaming in the last 5 years) would definitely give a big "huh?" to Planescape, but given the success of the current planar books (there's a REASON why they've come out with another Planes book; its popular!) I would guess if told "hey wouldn't it be cool if instead of geting to pick how to run the realms you were instead forced to adopt a decade-old dead setting where the planes are all full of punks and grunge slackers wearing spiky clothing, clockwork devices and talking funny?" they would probably respond by bashing your head in with a copy of "Portals & Planes".
But even if you ignore THAT, Planescape fans are in the minority of overall D&D gamers who predate WotC. Planescape was one of so many settings TSR put out to appeal to a niche of gamers (Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Ravenloft, Birthright etc). It never had MAINSTREAM appeal. Its common sense to say that the MAJORITY of gamers did not care for Planescape, and when you add that to the numbers who don't even know what Planescape is, you end up getting the conclusion that WoTC changing its entire policy to cater to the cadre of drooling fanboys of a dead TSR product line would probably be a BAD idea.

Especially since there is nothing in the current materials that makes it impossible for said fanboy to run a "3.x Planescape" campaign. The demand on the part of said fanboys that the new planar material be EXCLUSIVELY Planescape is nothing more than a mean spirited desire to force their particular vision of the planes on all the rest of us.


Nisarg

 

[Mystery Man]

Well if I've learned one thing from this thread, it's for me personally never to start a rant again.

 

[Psion]

unrepresentative is right. Planescape is big among a small group of dedicated fanatics who also overwhelmingly frequent places like Enworld.

And you have figures that show this, too, right?

It may not be statistically significant, but it is more trustworthy than blind assertions.

Especially since there is nothing in the current materials that makes it impossible for said fanboy to run a "3.x Planescape" campaign. The demand on the part of said fanboys that the new planar material be EXCLUSIVELY Planescape is nothing more than a mean spirited desire to force their particular vision of the planes on all the rest of us.

It couldn't be that they are adults now and have more money to purchase quality books supporting than time to do a potentially less adequate job themselves? No, they are out to get you?

Think a bit more carefully about what motivates people. I have no reason to wish ill on your campaign.