Cody C. Lewis
First Post
3 out of 5 rating for Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide
I waited a bit before doing a review of this book, most likely because I kept changing my opinion of it. This book has been very confusing for me in how much I have enjoyed it mostly because of the difficulties in defining it. It is hard to tell if the book is successful at doing what it wanted well, because it is hard to tell what it was trying to do in the first place. After some consideration I believe it did in fact do what it wanted to do, but the question now is, is that something that appeals to everyone. So in short, if you have the correct expectations, this book is good, not great. If you have unrealistic expectations, you will be disappointed.
What should you expect?
A 5e guide of sorts for players and possibly GMs, that will lay a good foundation as an introduction to the realms. This 'guide' is a skeleton, it is a foundation, it is an introduction. I imagine that WotC was afraid that 4e caused a lot of people to push to other systems, and felt like they needed a book to lay the groundwork for both returning players and new players that may have fallen into the gap of being introduced to TTRPGs with another system.
The Fluff
The fluff is ok. It is not spectacular. It is presented in a sweeping overview. It is painted with the broad stroke of a large brush. Again, I want to reiterate this book is laying the foundation for people to understand Faerun. This book doesn't go into depth with who are the current masked lords, but instead describes the brief history of Waterdeep. It doesn't define NPCs of a city. But instead describes the layout of Baulder's Gate. Broad. Broad.Even the details on the deities are very generic. "This deity covers these things. These types of people worship them. This is their symbol. This is whether or not their altar's are large or small and if their worship is open or secretive." Which, by and large is all you NEED to know to incorporate them into a campaign. But things like X deity is plotting against Y deity for what they said at a deity class reunion 30 years ago... anything that specific is left out. Do not expect plot hooks.
So nothing regarding the fluff is done poorly. It accomplishes exactly what it tries to do.
Crunch
The crunch is good, but not great. My opinion is less based on the amount of options the book has or even the actual crunch itself, and rather the circumstances around the crunch. I'll explain; this is the first real expansion on the rules for 5e, outside of some sub-races and spells from Princes, as such this book feels like it just threw in some new stuff because... stuffs. The backgrounds are cool, but only 1 maybe two of them were completely new, while the others just gave variant features on existing backgrounds. The new archetypes are very cool... but Wizards didn't spread around the archetypes at all. Some classes received 2 new archetypes, some received 1, and others were completely ignored. Is this a positive or a negative? I'm not sure either way. If I had expected Wizards to release a single new archetype for each class, would they all have been good? Maybe they would have felt forced, or worse yet, been unbalanced. Chris Perkins has stated Wizards has no intention of publishing material just to publish material, so asking them to make new archetypes, just to produce material would have gone against this train of thought. However, on the other hand, as an example, there was nothing of real weight for my Bard in this book at all. Sure, it did have some nice background on the colleges, but even that was very small, and only usable as backgrounds for new characters.The spells in this book were interesting, but nearly unusable by anyone already playing a game. They would be fun for a very niche character concept, but I absolutely felt like they were in the book, just to fill the pages up.
Conclusion
I do not regret my purchase of this book. However, I intend on acquiring everything 5e. As far as my recommendation, it would be to pick up this book either only if you are a serious hobbyist, or to absolutely not pay $40/msrp for it. I purchased mine on Amazon for $23. That is about the correct value for this book. Unfortunately, that, more likely than not, means that this is not something I would recommend to pick up at a local shop.
I waited a bit before doing a review of this book, most likely because I kept changing my opinion of it. This book has been very confusing for me in how much I have enjoyed it mostly because of the difficulties in defining it. It is hard to tell if the book is successful at doing what it wanted well, because it is hard to tell what it was trying to do in the first place. After some consideration I believe it did in fact do what it wanted to do, but the question now is, is that something that appeals to everyone. So in short, if you have the correct expectations, this book is good, not great. If you have unrealistic expectations, you will be disappointed.
What should you expect?
A 5e guide of sorts for players and possibly GMs, that will lay a good foundation as an introduction to the realms. This 'guide' is a skeleton, it is a foundation, it is an introduction. I imagine that WotC was afraid that 4e caused a lot of people to push to other systems, and felt like they needed a book to lay the groundwork for both returning players and new players that may have fallen into the gap of being introduced to TTRPGs with another system.
The Fluff
The fluff is ok. It is not spectacular. It is presented in a sweeping overview. It is painted with the broad stroke of a large brush. Again, I want to reiterate this book is laying the foundation for people to understand Faerun. This book doesn't go into depth with who are the current masked lords, but instead describes the brief history of Waterdeep. It doesn't define NPCs of a city. But instead describes the layout of Baulder's Gate. Broad. Broad.Even the details on the deities are very generic. "This deity covers these things. These types of people worship them. This is their symbol. This is whether or not their altar's are large or small and if their worship is open or secretive." Which, by and large is all you NEED to know to incorporate them into a campaign. But things like X deity is plotting against Y deity for what they said at a deity class reunion 30 years ago... anything that specific is left out. Do not expect plot hooks.
So nothing regarding the fluff is done poorly. It accomplishes exactly what it tries to do.
Crunch
The crunch is good, but not great. My opinion is less based on the amount of options the book has or even the actual crunch itself, and rather the circumstances around the crunch. I'll explain; this is the first real expansion on the rules for 5e, outside of some sub-races and spells from Princes, as such this book feels like it just threw in some new stuff because... stuffs. The backgrounds are cool, but only 1 maybe two of them were completely new, while the others just gave variant features on existing backgrounds. The new archetypes are very cool... but Wizards didn't spread around the archetypes at all. Some classes received 2 new archetypes, some received 1, and others were completely ignored. Is this a positive or a negative? I'm not sure either way. If I had expected Wizards to release a single new archetype for each class, would they all have been good? Maybe they would have felt forced, or worse yet, been unbalanced. Chris Perkins has stated Wizards has no intention of publishing material just to publish material, so asking them to make new archetypes, just to produce material would have gone against this train of thought. However, on the other hand, as an example, there was nothing of real weight for my Bard in this book at all. Sure, it did have some nice background on the colleges, but even that was very small, and only usable as backgrounds for new characters.The spells in this book were interesting, but nearly unusable by anyone already playing a game. They would be fun for a very niche character concept, but I absolutely felt like they were in the book, just to fill the pages up.
Conclusion
I do not regret my purchase of this book. However, I intend on acquiring everything 5e. As far as my recommendation, it would be to pick up this book either only if you are a serious hobbyist, or to absolutely not pay $40/msrp for it. I purchased mine on Amazon for $23. That is about the correct value for this book. Unfortunately, that, more likely than not, means that this is not something I would recommend to pick up at a local shop.
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