Fester said:
For me, if more of the book was like the last chapter (which is, to be fair, fifty pages), which actually expands upon the planes , the whole thing would have been much more worthwhile.
*shudder* The last 30 odd pages of the book were a mockery of the planes and perhaps the single worst implimented idea in all of 3e DnD. The Planar Touchstones made me shudder. Each of the sites was in terms of flavor interesting, but the way they shoehorned them into being nothing more than powerups for players, the planar equivalent of fireflowers and yoshi eggs, made them wasted page space IMHO.
Seriously, you go to interesting places on the planes and you fight monsters from a freaking random encounter table. For instance there's a 'planar touchstone' in Sigil and it honestly says that you fight or otherwise defeat the randomly rolled monsters to 'establish yourself' in that area of the city. It's more likely to get you a trip to the city court is what it's likely to get you. *shudder*
It makes planar adventuring more about number crunching than actually visiting the planes for any reason other than finding a high level dungeon and high CR monsters to kill for more kewl lewt. They seriously dropped the ball on that part of the book.
That, by itself, more or less ruined the book for me. I enjoyed the sections of Sigil, Tunarath, and the City of Brass, and I even liked the Mephlings (though why they need to keep introducing more new LA 0 or +1 races is starting to get overdone. God forbid people give up a level or two to take an advanced race like a Bladeling or a mephit, as opposed to the watered down versions). The feats and spells were 'ok' though nothing spectacular, and the monsters were largely pretty darn good, though the art was hit or miss.
