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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 1162054" data-attributes="member: 172">I find the Lore and School series being headed up by Kevin Wilson to be top notch. And Midnight seems to be well done (though I am not following it).However, with some notable exceptions (like Monsters Handbook), I have been underwhelmed by their generic hardbounds. Dungeoncraft was lackluster and really only helpful for beginning DMs. Sorcery & Steam had a great first chapter (which I bet Lizard wrote), but the rest of the book seemed like a bunch of individual game items poured into the book with little coordination or over-arching connectedness. The path books have a few diamonds in a lot of rough; their quality is haphazard, again apparently due to a number of otherwise decent authors with little coordination and their own ideas on how things ought to be done. The classes are very good in some books but off the mark in others (path of magic classes where very strong, but those is PotSword were excellent.) I really love the approach of "detachable organizations" with prestige classes, but they have multiple methods of doing organizations and the method of schools seems ridiculous and unjusitified. The additional material also varies widely in quality. Frex, the bardic methods material in path of magic is great and IMO the shot in the arm that bards needed, but IMO the additional material did nothing for wizards and sorcerers (fortunately, the Quint books by Mongoose regarding those two classes are among the best.) Legendary classes are a great concept, but despite their power, asking a spellcaster to give up all of their spellcasting advancement totally guts a class.Yeah. My faves are Sorcerer, Wizard, Monk, and Rogue. I still regret buying some others and have overcome my "gotta have it all" mentality and am now only buying them selectively. Alas, though the EA series was once my favorite series by mongoose, they have been relegated to this status too.I find most one-word books pretty good; their only crime seems to be 1) the earlier books (War and before) and 2) that they often tread on territory that WotC, Malhavoc, of Green Ronin do a bit better (Good < Book of Hallowed Might, Evil < BoVD and Unholy Warrior's Handbook, Monster's crossbreeds < Bastard & Bloodlines, etc.)I initially liked Magic, but I am finding despite my initial warmth to it, I don't get much use out of it, primarily because of the approach. I just cannot find room for that many new core classes (the same thing applies to those in recent Dragons and FFG's class books.) I have no major complaints on Mercenaries, Monster, Good, Wilds, Relics, and Undead and use them as needed. Toolbox remains in my "primary" bookcase of stuff I want close at hand during a game it is so useful. Though I did see some flaws in Dragons, I just pulled it out to use it last night. In short, though I don't think they are perfect, I think they have come a long way since WarL5R is good quality, but I find that the supplement books aren't really all that essential to run the game, but at least I can live with the approach. SA I like a little less. I liked the fighting styles of the original book, but think that in retrospect, they should have used class based defense bonuses instead of shuffling it off to feats, and many new classes in it are redundant (noble AND courtier, guys?). The follow on books I don't have many of (AEG has wisely stuck to not sending them too me), but the one I do have seems to also go overboard on the "new core class" thing.I guess I can sort of see where Jeremy is coming from, though the reasons I would attribute it to are different. I don't think it is because they are "just trying to pump out" books. I think it the problem, if it exists, is primarily editorial and conceptual. AEG's earlier books seems sort of scattershot because despite tapping some decent authors, they sort of just took individual peices and poured them into a book, not unlike FFGs path books. I think their later books are better because they have more editorial coordination and focus, and use fewer authors. OTOH, it seems like FFG is going through the same editorial growing pains that AEG (mainly their topic line) went through. Their Path books, Sorcery and Steam, etc., are all very scattershot, though there books with fewer auhtors and/or tighter editorial focus (Monsters Handbook, Lore and School series) seem to be better in quality.</blockquote>

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