Rate the Neverwinter Campaign Guide

[S'mon]

Also, no floorplans, or anything like that which could be used to whip up quick adventures from provided content - encounter groups, treasure listings etc.

 

[Kzach]

But hey, you've decided to defend to the death a book you've not even looked through, so I know anything I say will have zero impact.

Defend to the death? That's a slight over-exaggeration. All I've done is use the facts available to me. I know that's a tactic that you're unfamiliar with but in good old reality, we call that logic.

 

[KarinsDad]

First you say it's broken and overpowered and then you say none of your examples circumvent any rules.

Either it's broken or it's not.

Just because something is broken and overpowered doesn't mean that it circumvents any rules. It just means that it's broken and overpowered.

You're comparing x-ray vision, time travel, and precognition to being a rat...

You've been playing D&D too long. If in the real world you could change yourself into a rat, you would have a super power that could be helpful beyond belief. You could go on missions for the CIA and plant bugs in almost any building in the world. You could sneak into an area at night, change back to human, do things, change back and sneak out.

You could easily pull down a million dollars a year, just working for the CIA because of how useful and unique your super power would be.

But because everybody and his brother now have magic spells in D&D, giving them out to everyone like candy is considered the status quo. That doesn't mean that doing so isn't overpowered. And overpowered doesn't necessarily mean in a damage or combat sense. Giving PCs the ability to basically scry for free and to escape many inescapable situations and a wide variety of other useful abilities by being a rat has an extremely high utility. Sure, your DM could find that out the hard way and then could throw a bunch of obstacles into your way, but that's just the natural human reaction to something that's overpowered or overused in the game system. Nerf it. Personally, I'd prefer if WotC nerfed every silly unbalancing idea before it got to print, but they cannot help themselves. They really do have no concept of balance and have a very long errata document. Making the power a Daily would have been fine. As an At Will, it can be problematic and disruptive to a given DM's game. Maybe not to yours, but to other DMs.

Anymore, the players are entitled to have every possible fantasy super power imaginable mindset has turned D&D into a low level super hero game. For example, Dimension Door used to be rare and powerful, now it's a dime a dozen. Any PC can get a short range Teleport power and its the status quo. So much for the concept of studying for years to be a Wizard. There's even a Neverwinter Theme that hands out a short range Teleport and it's not handed out to the Wizard (that same theme can have the PC go invisible, there's another theme with Levitate).

Bigger, badder, better strikes again. Balanced? That B word isn't in WotC's vocabulary.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Much worse, it has a big section on the Shadowfell & part of Thay threatened by Netheril. There's a map of Evernight in the Shadowfell, though nothing for the shadow road to Thay. And, incredibly, no map for the Thay area described in the book.

Really the book is leaving stuff open for the DMs to tailor it to the players. Especially in FR, I vastly prefer this approach to not give the Canon people more ammunition.

The canon people are why I stopped playing FR years and editions ago.

 

[Kzach]

Really the book is leaving stuff open for the DMs to tailor it to the players. Especially in FR, I vastly prefer this approach to not give the Canon people more ammunition.

The canon people are why I stopped playing FR years and editions ago.

This is what I'm liking about it (my friend bought me an early b'day present, yay!). It really reminds me a lot of the 1e boxed sets. Lots of hooks but leaves it up to the players and DM's to fill in the gaps.

 

[Umbran]

I know that's a tactic that you're unfamiliar with but in good old reality, we call that logic.

Kzach, I don't know how many times we need to say this, but once more:

Don't make it personal.

 

[Imaro]

Really the book is leaving stuff open for the DMs to tailor it to the players. Especially in FR, I vastly prefer this approach to not give the Canon people more ammunition.

The canon people are why I stopped playing FR years and editions ago.

This is what I'm liking about it (my friend bought me an early b'day present, yay!). It really reminds me a lot of the 1e boxed sets. Lots of hooks but leaves it up to the players and DM's to fill in the gaps.

these statements are kinda funny to me, since in the other thread DeadScribe argued that one of the main reasons something like this book costs $40 vs. the $15 for Hammerfast or Vor Rukoth was because of all the added depth and detail the setting had... and now people are lauding how it's left so much open for the DM's and players to flesh out. IMO, at $14.95 for something like Hammerfast or Vor Rukoth, I have no problem with leaving details to be fleshed out and areas to be mapped by the DM... at $40 not so much. YMMV of course.

 

[Dead Scribe]

If you are looking for a bunch of maps of castles, this is probably not your book. I don't know why anyone would buy a Neverwinter book expecting or desiring detailed castle floorplans, but in any case this is not that book.

I'm not sure why "lots of detail" is incompatible with "lots of options" either, but whatever.

 

[Dice4Hire]

these statements are kinda funny to me, since in the other thread DeadScribe argued that one of the main reasons something like this book costs $40 vs. the $15 for Hammerfast or Vor Rukoth was because of all the added depth and detail the setting had... and now people are lauding how it's left so much open for the DM's and players to flesh out. IMO, at $14.95 for something like Hammerfast or Vor Rukoth, I have no problem with leaving details to be fleshed out and areas to be mapped by the DM... at $40 not so much. YMMV of course.

I own all three of those products, and they are similar, but Neverwinter has triple the locations and factions of the thinner books. Plus it has the themes and the class, plus a bit of crunch, which the thinner books do not have.

Overall, he three are similar in a way, but Neverwinter has a lot more depth than either of the two thinner books.

For those who are looking for everything mapped out, and the like, since when did a campaign setting do this? They NEVER do this. Dark Sun, Ebberon, FR; all the 4E ones did not.

For those who want the maps and encounters, go buy a module. Stop bashing a different line and type of product for not being something different.

"But you cannot arrange the parts of the flip mat to make a new map, so they are inferior to Dungeon Tiles!!?!?!?!?!?"

 

[Kzach]

these statements are kinda funny to me, since in the other thread DeadScribe argued that one of the main reasons something like this book costs $40 vs. the $15 for Hammerfast or Vor Rukoth was because of all the added depth and detail the setting had... and now people are lauding how it's left so much open for the DM's and players to flesh out. IMO, at $14.95 for something like Hammerfast or Vor Rukoth, I have no problem with leaving details to be fleshed out and areas to be mapped by the DM... at $40 not so much. YMMV of course.

It's not a black and white issue. You don't suddenly cross a line into "detail and depth" which also crosses the border from "left open for DM's".

Take the examples I'm comparing it to. Have you ever read through the 1e Forgotten Realms Greybox? There are two paperbacks worth of material and it goes into great depth and detail about many areas of the Realms. And yet, in comparison to the 3e FRCG, it leaves huge swathes of adventuring potential open to DM's and players whereas the 3e one closes all those avenues down and has NPC's solve them all.

The same goes for the 2e supplements like Iuz the Evil, Ivid the Undying (regardless of it never being officially published, it's still essentially published), From the Ashes, etc. These detailed a lot of areas but in so doing, they didn't close those areas down. Instead, they fleshed them out whilst opening up a thousand plot hooks for everything from one session to an entire campaign.

What I like about the 4e FRCS and the NWCS is that, as a creative DM, I can randomly open a page, randomly drop my finger anywhere on the page and the likelihood of me hitting a paragraph of text that can inspire an adventure is close to 100%. It's not telling me what to do, it's giving me ideas for what could be done. I've never felt able to do that with any of the 3e material and even a lot of the later 2e material. But that's exactly what I used to do with all the 1e/2e stuff like I listed above.