Please rate Stonghold Builders Guide for me

[Eternalknight]

I am looking to purchase this book, and want some informed opinions. I have read the reviews, but want to know what everyone thinks. Please rate it according to usefulness of the rules and crunchy bits (I'm not interested in typos or bad editing, Ican ignore all that). 10 being great, 1 being awful. Thanks in advance!

 

[Reprisal]

Eight

I liked it, but not as much as other books I've picked up. It'd definately one of the best soft-cover, non-module, products that WotC's put out to date. Well, at least I think so, .

I use it whenever I need to create a stronghold that the PCs could possibly take over, .

 

[Aeolius]

While I appreciate the example strongholds presented in the book, I feel they could have been made more useful, with geographic placements. For example, I would have enjoyed seeing a submerging stronghold on the Sinking Isle or a hidden sylvan fortress in the Suss Forest.

Also, the wondrous architechture section seemed more like filler, than content.

 

[Buttercup]

It's nicely done, but by no means a must have. I can think of dozens of books that I'll get more use out of. Any of the Penumbra sourcebooks for example.

 

[Eternalknight]

*Bump*

 

[Reprisal]

It's nicely done, but by no means a must have. I can think of dozens of books that I'll get more use out of. Any of the Penumbra sourcebooks for example.

Yes, I suppose this would make sense. Although, I believe that I would use sourcebooks more often than the crunchy books, too. At least, I think that the books you're talking about are setting related, as opposed to the more crunchy Stronghold Builder's Guidebook.

Looking over it again, I find it rather useful, but at the same time lacking in some areas. I would have liked more exposition on the nature of strongholds and effective stronghold design. I'm actually quite sure that I've made some serious mistakes with my current creations, and I won't be made aware until the gestalt of minds, otherwise known as my players, will find an obvious flaw that they can easily exploit.

Ah well, there's always your basic Google search...

 

[7thlvlDM]

I think it's a very useful sourcebook. The content can be found nowhere else. The modular approach to designing strongholds is applicable to normal dwellings and dungeons, as well as castles. I recall not liking the writing style when I first started reading it, though, so because of presentation I knocked it down to an 8/10.

 

[Randolph Carter]

I haven't spent all that much time with my copy but I'd give it a six. It seems fairly complete but I'd like more of an in campaign feel rather than a manual feel. Still, if you need it, you need it.

On an even more subjective level, I find it uninspiring. Some books make me want to go out and put their contents to work in my campaign. This one makes me want to avoid it's contents wherever possible.

Tyranny,
PTL

 

[faete]

oddly enough i liked the manual approach. there are some problems with editing in several parts of the book, and you should double check any price listing to see if you can find it elsewhere.

on the other hand, it is a good representation of what it tries to be: a plug-and-play method of building strongholds. its probably the simplist method of building strongholds that i've ever seen, though the system does tend to break down with very small structures.

i also would have liked a listing of how many laborers are required for building, but that can be easily determined from costs.

much of the magic seemed like filler, and there are problems with the feat included in the book.

but i gave it 7/10

 

[Gizzard]

It has some great things and some horrible things.

Best thing is that it does a decent job of suggesting how to build pretty much anything you can imagine. Tower surrounded by a hurricane? Staffing, defenses and accoutrements for said tower? All there. But how useful is this all? Depends on you. If you are a DM in search of ways to flesh out an evil wizards tower or a friendly temple then its spiffy. If you are a party of adventurers bulding your stronghold, its very useful as a one-shot and continues to be somewhat useful if you want to upgrade. All good possibilities.

Worst thing is the editing. Omigod, I dont think I've seen a professional product released in this state. It's full of stuff like, "Undead cannot be created or summoned into this space. Undead created or summoned in this space gain +2 hit points per HD." (p75) Huh? Some stuff doesn't even make that amount of non-sense, its the sort of sentence fragments you get when you start cut-n-pasting too fast in the ol' word processor. Abysmal.

Slightly bad: The "Traps" section is reprinted from Song and Silence. If you already have this book (and I bought it just for this very section) then you now have two copies. Sad face.

More than slightly good: The sample strongholds at the end. Six good, solid examples to get your mind churning about the practice of making fabulous buildings/dungeons/towers.

Unknown, untested: There are a lot of magic rooms, magic items and magic effects for your stronghold. Some of them worried me about how balanced they might be; I dont think I'd rubber-stamp any design PCs brought to me without carefully checking which items & zones they had chosen. Until I playtest though, I cant know for sure.

Overall, the good outweighs the bad. I dont think its a must-have book, a playgroup could easily get by without it; but if you are interested in some solid guidelines for buildings, here you are.