races of destiny --has D&D 3.5 jumped the shark?

[Nightfall]

odd, I'd say that is probly the best class book wizards has ever put out

Agreed. It put most other class book to shame. And I say that even with my name credited to Player's Guide to Rangers and Rogues!

Yeah, hasn't "jumped the shark" kind lost its zing? I mean, can you really gripe about creativity when you're using a (mainly) internet phrase that was cool for about 4 months a couple years ago?

Yeah if you want to say maybe "Races of Destiny = Destiny of WotC to fail!" That might be at least semi original.

 

[Mercule]

odd, I'd say that is probly the best class book wizards has ever put out

Yup. The quality of that book alone got me purchasing the whole, lackluster, Complete series.

Illumians and the Chameleon are both horrid creations. If they are indicative of the direction WotC is headed, then I'll be quite happy to end my purchases after Complete Adventurer. I've got enough crunch, anyway.

 

[Nightfall]

Well I am interested in Spell theif...but not sure about the rest.

I DO wish they'd do a complete Wild guide. They need that more. Druids, Rangers and even to a small degree, Barbarians are SO getting shafted by these complete books.

 

[Pants]

Races of Destiny: the font of creativity that is Andy Collins introduces us to the god of cities known only as Urbanis...

Who's children include Streetis (God of Road Ways), Buildis (Goddess of Sky Scrappers),and Dungis (Demigod of Dung carts)

I seriously hope you're joking...

Illumians and the Chameleon are both horrid creations. If they are indicative of the direction WotC is headed, then I'll be quite happy to end my purchases after Complete Adventurer. I've got enough crunch, anyway.

Then again, maybe Sharn is the new direction that they're heading in (hopefully).

 

[Brennin Magalus]

I, for one, believe the quality of D&D books would improve if Andy Collins were reassigned to another department.

 

[BryonD]

I don't see any reason to make sweeping predictions.

I haven't actually seen RoD yet, but all the previews and talk I have heard so far make it sound like a true dog. So for now I'm going to just assume that it really is an awful book.

Draconomicon was awesome. After it came out, there were some people that complained that later books did not live up to the standard that Draconomicon set. IMO, we should simply be happy that we got such an outstanding book and expect future products to tend to be closer to average.

Well, if RoD is a complete dog, then the same thinking still applies. You can be disappointed about the missed chance. But you should still expect future products to be closer to average.

Now if the next few products were to establish a pattern of dogs, then that would be another matter altogether. But there is no reason to expect that yet.

One pattern I do note is the new races. Races of Stone was a decent book, but a third of it was spent on Goliaths. I don't have any problem with throwing some new races out and seeing what people like. But to just jump in with a new race and give it just as much supporting material as dwarves receive is, IMO, a really stupid move. It appears we are getting the same treatment with Illumians. sigh.....
I'll assume that Races of the Wild we also be the same. So that is a big push for me to not buy that. Basically they will need to convince me that 2/3 of a book is worth buying the whole thing. That will be hard to do.

But I expect to still buy other upcoming stuff. One outlier, up or down, does not establish a trend.

 

[ajanders]

*Snif* Poor 'llumians

Oddly enough, I needed the Illumians.
Among one of the many strange campaign ideas I'm tinkering with is one where language is magic: speaking the ancient words that precisely define certain things can make those things happen.
As a result, I'm always glad to see things with rune magic, glyph magic, or spoken magic.
It also occurs to me it might be a nice thing to retrofit into a campaign that just hit Epic levels and needs a visible signal that things just got wild.
The transformation rituals and secret knowledge of the Illumians sound like decent epic-level things for me.

 

[BryonD]

I, for one, believe the quality of D&D books would improve if Andy Collins were reassigned to another department.

Or, maybe if his name was on the cover of this book, it would have been better.

IMO the 3.5 splatbooks are vastly superior to the 3E ones.

I don't see any reason to credit Andy with that. But blaming him for lower quality makes far less sense when the quality is mostly equal to and in some cases better than what is was before.

 

[FireLance]

I will not comment on the quality of Races of Destiny as a whole since I haven't even seen the book yet, but I will say a word about Illumians, based on my impressions from the WotC previews.

I like the basic concept of the Illumians as a race that gets significant advantages from multiclassing because they are able to pull together the abilities of different classes to make something that is greater than the sum of its parts. I don't like the idea of glowing letters dancing around the head, so I will change that to runic tattoos, or sigils that have to be inscribed on clothing or armor, or something similar.

And, there's also a difference between an episode in a TV series and a supplement for a role-playing game. One is received passively, the other is used actively. Some ideas and concepts may seem lame to some, but those same ideas and concepts can spark ideas in others and lead to many hours of enjoyable gaming for them and their group. As long as a group of gamers put energy and enthusiasm into their campaign, I dare say that their game will never jump the shark.

 

[Darrin Drader]

I think ENWorld has jumped the shark.