Spell Compendium

[Crothian]

.....

 

[Xath]

I have to say, I was a bit disappointed by this book. It was heralded as a "Spell Compendium;" a be all end all to spell lists and descriptions. But what I found as I opened the cover was hardly comprehensive. Instead, it seems that the publishers may have drawn the list of sources they used at random out of a hat.

This is not to say that the end result was bad, merely incomplete. I understand them not including the Player's Handbook spells. That book is a core book, and anyone playing the game probably owns it. But out of all of the supplements released in 3.0 and 3.5, they only used 13. That's less than 1/3 of the supplements with additional spells that have been released since 2003. For example, the "Complete" series is included, but the "Races" and Climate series are left out. Two Faerun books are compiled, but no Eberron. Wizard's choices for this book seem to lack direction, making the Spell Compendium less than its name suggests.

Despite that, the organization and presentation of this book are superb. Spells are well organized and easy to locate, and are accompanied by superb artwork and excellent descriptions. I have to say that the spell descriptions are my favorite part of the book. There's something about knowing the little details about how the world works that truly bring life to a game, and the writers certainly do an excellent job here. Wizards brought back their best artists for this book, and while some of the pictures may have been dramatically enhanced, there is not a single bad piece of art from cover to cover.

The spell lists are fairly standard for WotC publications. Though I did find myself wishing for at least a complete spell list, even if they did not include the supplemental descriptions in this book. One thing I find to be peculiar is that even though all of the spells of the Complete books were included, none of the spell lists for the new core classes were. Instead, the beginning of the book has a small blurb advising DMs to choose and add spells at their own discretion. I suppose this gives the GM more freedom to tailor the new classes to his or her world, but it seemed like a bit of a cop-out to me.

The cleric domain lists are also arranged in the standard Wizards manner. I was quite impressed with the variety of domains presented in this book. After checking through my supplemental materials, the only ones I could find that were missing were those from the Book of Exalted Deeds and the Book of Vile Darkness.

Overall, I felt that the book was presented beautifully, but hardly lives up to its name. I realize that one book could not hold all of the spell material WotC has published over the past 3 years. However, I feel this could have been remedied by releasing the Spell Compendium as another 3.5 series. I would have rather seen a set of books similar to TSR's 4-Volume Wizard's Compendium, instead of this one incomplete text.