Player's Handbook II (long)

[Sir Edgar]

You're asking a company to combine into one $40 to $60 book 6 books that sell for a combined $130? It will not happen.

If it means increased sales and the profit margins are right, then why not? Sales for these individual books have almost slowed to a halt. If WoTC can get enough sales from a combined book to justify its production, I don't see any reason not to. I'd buy a book like that, though I'm not too enthusiastic about prestige classes. It should be an optional rule book, not a core rule book, however.

 

[Technik4]

Well is the MMII optional or core? I think most people would be won over if this book were done right, which considering that most of the material has already been written and out and playtested (before it came out originally) for quite some time, should be a relatively easy task.

I do think that these old books' sales are sluggish these days. New players would probably rather pick up another company's new splatbook just because its new.

The pros far out-weight the cons from my pov. Everything is updated, therefore it works for Living Greyhawk, it can become OGL material, its convenient, and people will buy it (if its done correctly).

I'm no longer so sure it should be officially dubbed the Players Handbook II, but thats what I will always call it (if it comes to be).

Can anyone present some good counter-arguments against this book? I believe financially it can only be a boon to Wizards who need to start releasing erratad versions of these books anyway. Combine most of the material from the books, sprinkle in some other material from other sources, write a couple extra new things (prcs for bards??), and send it off. 80% reprinted material, thats already balanced, erratad, etc to WotC desire. Get some new art, present a standard layout, and ship it.

Technik

 

[Agamon]

What if it was called "Player's Handbook II: Class Options" or something?

I prefer "Player's Handbook II: Electric Boogaloo"

 

[Damon Griffin]

Picture this: all of the feats, spells, and items from the class-books (including Sword and Fist, Defenders of the Faith, Tome and Blood, Song and Silence, and Masters of the Wild), a select number of feats, spells, and items which "round out" each class,

Although it is very hard to keep up with information that is scattered across several books, my problem is not with the WotC books, it's with the third-party publishers.

If I'm playing a wizard or sorcerer, I may want the PHB, Tome & Blood, and perhaps the FRCS and/or Magic of Faerun. I don't need the other books you have listed. If I'm playing a Ranger I just swap out Masters of the Wild for Tome & Blood. I don't need Song & Silence, Defenders of the Faith or Sword & Fist for either character. It's not hard for me to keep up with two to four books.

My problem is when in addition to those I've mentioned, I also want to have ready access to the spells/feats/magic items in Relics & Rituals, Relics & Rituals II, Spells & Spellcraft, the Books of Eldritch Might, Kingdoms of Kalamar Player's Guide, the Netbook of Feats, etc.

Your PHB2 proposal won't do anything to address the much larger problem of keeping track of character options in third-party publications, and if it doesn't address that, it's no good to me at all. (Mind you, I can't suggest a solution to the third-party tracking option, either.)

There is the additional problem of immediate obsolecense, a problem which will usually plague any book that tries to be a one-stop collection of "all of the" (feats, spells, whatever). The reason for this is obvious: they're still being produced. Even if you limit the collection to just those things actually appearing in WotC sources (which is by far the most practical approach, and what you were suggesting in the first place), new products are coming out all the time.

Virtually every issue of The Dragon is going to have some new feat, spell or prestige class. Regional sourcebooks will have such things as well; if your PHB2 were compiled and hit the shelves next month, it could include material from the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, Magic of Faerun and The Silver Marches...but what about The Unapproachable East? or the next book after that?

When dealing with an in-print, still-growing RPG, you cannot have a "complete" collection of options, you can only have something that is complete as of a certain date. So when do you get PHB3? Or do you just put out PHB2 and then do annual "compendium" style updates to it?

There's no getting around it: there are always going to be several books you're going to want to look at. There is no practical way of condensing them into one book, unless you intentionally limit the scope of those options to only a small subset of the books already in print...and that doesn't make the book useful, it only allows it to be printed.

How many 3e players would want to be told "You can use any option from this list of WotC products, but no other source is allowed?" No doubt gaming groups willing to live with such a restriction would love to have your PHB2, because they really would be able to find everything they needed in one place. But groups that are going to continue to make liberal use of third-party books are going to gain very little by purchasing a PHB2 that makes several of their existing WotC books redundant.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

I'd buy it in a heartbeat.



The way I see it, if Wizards threw in all the errata, made whatever adjustments they need to to accomidate 3.5, and added about 5% or so of new content, they couldn't loose.