The Best & Worst of 3rd Edition: WotC Player Supplements (Winners Announced)

[megamania]

Scary how many products were published in the last 7 years..... and how many of them I have.

A few surprises so far in the poll. 20 that did NOT like PHB II. I didn't that many in truth.

 

[TerraDave]

bump for another day of voting.

 

[TerraDave]

and one more time

 

[Psion]

Why do people like Complete Scoundrel? I found it nearly useless...

Luck feats and the PrCs are pretty cool. A complete book without more base classes to throw on the pile is an extra bonus to me.

I don't like the way skill tricks are implemented, but in play they seem to work pretty well. Spending skill points for feat like abilities is sketchy to me, but it just drives home the basic problem: characters don't get enough feat slots.

 

[WayneLigon]

I bought all of the 3.0 and 3.5 splatbooks but very few other things; none of the 'Heroes of..' books, for instance. And I got most of those cheap when a bookstore closed.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Throw my vote in for Savage Species as the worst. Its the only book thats actually designed NOT to be used. The designers admitted they made the monster classes blow because they wanted to discourage monster PCS's. WHAT THE IS THE POINT OF DOING A MONSTER PC BOOK THEN?!

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Yep. Sometimes having the rule to lean on can persuade the less innovative/receptive DM.

So why not just add some DC's for em, instead of making people blow more skill points?

I'm not a fan of skill bloat, which is what this is... you needing to spend mroe resources to do what should be covered by existing rules. Didnt Sword and fist and the other 3.0 splats have "Same Skill, New Use" sections or was that some other book? Thats how these things should have been handled.

Complete Scoundrel ranks lowest on the 3.5 class books IMO. More underpowered rogue/bard prc's and weak luck feats. Continuing the proud tradition of Suck and Silence.

 

[Altair]

The only supplement I felt was absolutely useless was Races of Destiny.

I don't think I need to explain why, since the results of the poll seem to show that most people think the same way as me.

 

[jdrakeh]

*sigh* I keep saying that I won't buy anymore 3.5 books but the Complete series looks like a winner across the board. I guess I had better tuck away some extra cash :\

 

[TerraDave]

While the poll is still open, I am going to go ahead and call it with 279 votes:

The best player suplement is Players Handbook II

The top ten follow. The first number is the number of raw votes for, the second the % that liked the book of those that expressed an opinion:

Player's Handbook II 212| 0.8907563
Complete Arcane 190| 0.875576
Complete Adventurer 179| 0.8731707
Complete Warrior 193| 0.8693694
Complete Mage 145| 0.7967033
Heroes of Horror 111| 0.7302632
Tome and Blood: ... 122| 0.7134503
Complete Scoundrel 116| 0.7116564
Complete Divine... 130| 0.65
Sword and Fist: .... 102| 0.5828571

And the worst: Hero Builder's Guidebook

The bottom ten follow. The first number is raw votes against, the second the % not liking of those that expressed an opinion. Pretty strong correlation.

Hero Builder's Guidebook 126 0.782609
Races of Destiny 111 0.69375
Complete Psionic 101 0.668874
Races of the Dragon 86 0.605634
Complete Champion 75 0.535714
Races of the Wild 78 0.534247
Song and Silence... 87 0.527273
Planar Handbook 79 0.509677
Defenders of the Faith... 76 0.484076