What makes a good splatbook?

[InVinoVeritas]

The Best & Worst books of 3E threads are interesting, and made me think about the Complete series and previous efforts to "flesh out" races and classes. When are they done right? When are they done wrong? Why?

My favorite splatbook is still the Complete Thief's Handbook from 2nd Edition. This was back when "kits" were used to enhance and alter a base class to make it more thematic. Many times, "kits" were another way to abuse the system, adding powers without definite drawbacks. However, this book got it right. Most of the tweaks were minor, and much more thematic in nature than not. Also, any roleplaying benefit had roleplaying drawbacks, and any mechanical benefit had mechanical drawbacks. Furthermore, it introduced good, useful mundane equipment that wasn't overpowering, spent a very large chapter describing how thieves' guilds would work and how to build them for your campaign, and discussed the thief's role in the party and in a campaign world. Years later, I noticed that much of the book was written by John Nephew, and it definitely shows.

The Complete Book of Elves (also from 2nd ed) is a fine example of one done poorly. Elves became better at everything, suggested wholeheartedly handing them a bunch of extra powers for free, and loaded the kewl on top of the kewl. Flying elves? Got 'em. Instant intimidation? Yup. Who's the best stonesmith? Elves. Who's the best--Elves, just elves, that's all. The book did introduce the Bladesinger, though--a style of fighting that everyone would love to get right mechanically, is undeniably a great idea thematically, and always manages to upset the game balance one way or the other. How much I want to love you, Bladesinger.

So, your thoughts? What do you want to see in a splatbook? What makes one bad?

 

[Greg K]

For myself, they should begin by focusing on examining one specific class or race. After that it depends on whether it is a class or race book.

A class splat should examine the archetype and its variants (including Unearthed Arcana style class variants and Prestige Classes related to the archetype), introduce any necessary new or variant rules (e.g., the expanded skill uses and ritual casting rules in Green Ronin's Witch's Handbook), and other relative material (e.g., the spirit template in Green Ronin's Shaman's Handbook). There is nothing more annoying than having to go to one book for sorcerer Draconic heritage feats, another book for Fey heritiage feats, etc. especially if you find the rest of the material in the seperate books worthless and pass on it. This is why enjoyed books like the 2e Thief's Handbook and Green Ronin's Psychic's, Shaman's and WItch's handbooks and pretty much disliked most of WOTC's player material. If I like the treatment of the given class focused on, I buy the book. If I don't like it, I pass. I don't get annoyed by liking a few bits of a class scattered through various books and passing on the book, because I don't like the rest of the book. Furthermore, there is less of a need to carry a bunch of books for one class.

A race book, unless specifically examining a race for a specific setting (and, imo, DND itself is not a setting. Ravenloft, Darksun, Ebberon and Greyhawk are settings), should not include rules for names, holidays, or present a single view of the race as a culture. This is why I found the race books from WOTC to be pretty much worthless. Instead, I want the basic biological information of the race and several variants tailoring that race to specific environments similar to the environmental racial variants in Unearthed Arcana). For example, a book on lizardmen might have aquatic, desert, plains, and marsh/swamp versions and then have a section showing a sample culture for each. It might include expanded skill uses and feats related to lizardmen and the environments in which they live in as well as class variants along the lines of the class variants in Unearthed Arcana.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Beyond the mechanics, there needs to be a spark of life to them.

During their recent sale, I picked up Kenzer's Gnomes/Kobolds book. I love gnomes. A lot. And this is probably the longest splatbook treatment gnomes have ever gotten. Longer than their half of the 2E Complete Gnomes & Halflings, longer than their portion of Races of Stone, longer than the Green Ronin PDF.

Unfortunately, it reads like someone took the 2E Monster Manual description and, despite not being particularly inspired by it, or having a subtle twist to make it cool, just decided to extrapolate out in every direction from this uninspired start.

So the longest gnome splatbook ever is really, really boring, which pains me to say.

I loved the 2E bards, wizards and thieves books, for the reasons stated previously. I found a lot to like in Complete Arcane, Adventurer and Mage for similar reasons.

But really, I don't need new kewl crunch. I'm more than capable of coming up with my own. If I'm dropping $30 on an idea book, I want those ideas to jump off the page at me. I want clever.

I want writers who are excited about the topic and who would slash other writers' tires to take on the topic. I want artists who would be doodling about this subject even if they weren't being paid for the pieces. I want the whole thing to sing.

I have a lot of 3E splatbooks I'm still dumping off at the local library. They didn't offer me a lot in 3E, and their ideas aren't inherently interesting enough to bring into other game systems either.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The best 3e splats fix the core rules. Complete Warrior combined with Player's Handbook II fixes the fighter for example. Book of the Nine Swords fixes all the melee classes. Well, okay, almost fixes. Casters still win. Magic Item Compendium fixes magic items.

It's no coincidence that these are some of the most popular splats.

 

[TerraDave]

Looking at my polls (see sig, and vote!) and thinking about the complete books...

Races seem to be a real probem area. That is when the complete books clearly "broke", and the Races series for 3.5 is looking like a pretty big flop.

Divine charecters also seem to be a problem. The original Complete Priest had good intentions, and we had fun with it, but it took so much from the DM to realy make work. For 3rd edition Defenders of the Faith: unpopular. Complete Divine is making both the liked (towards the bottom) list but also unliked lists. Complete Champion is a big meh.

Arcane splats, people like those. In 2nd edition the Tome of Magic was probably one of the most widely used books. In 3rd, Complete Mage, Complete Arcane, and Tome and Blood are all popular.

I currently don't have good theories on these patterns...speculations, but not more.

Book of Nine Swords: PHB II and Complete Warrior: these are popular. Magic Item Compendium: popular. Book of Nine Swords may not make the top 30 from the various polls.

 

[InVinoVeritas]

Here's some theories, based on TerraDave's comments:

* Classes grow and develop throughout a character's career, but races do not. Because of this, there are fewer "fiddly bits" with races than classes. You can't achieve the level of mechanical depth with a race that you could with a class. Also, classes allow for more RP fiddling because various groups, factions, etc. can be added or removed from a single person's campaign without changing the assumptions of the class. It's harder (but not impossible) to do the same thing with races. You could put a section in a book about how to make a thieves' guild for your campaign, but I haven't seen, say, how to make an elven tribe or nation for your campaign.

* Part of the problem with divine casters is the way that the spell lists are generated. Introduce a new divine spell, and poof, all divine casters are immediately more powerful. Introduce a new arcane spell, and poof, all arcane casters are immediately at the same power level as before. If divine casters are limited by spells known, just like arcane casters, this problem goes away.

The Complete Priest's Handbook helped explain one of the best parts of 2e: Priests of different faiths. Lots of neato ways to customize the character in thematic ways! But there were no guidelines to make a good balanced class this way. So the DM was stuck trying to tweak and balance and check and redo and everything with very little support.

I suspect that part of the problem is that divine spellcasters are very powerful (arguably the most powerful, but that's for other threads) but also rather unsexy. As a result, you want to make them cool, but if you actually make them cool, nobody likes them anymore. Also, tweaking clerics involves tweaking deities, and deities are like races in that you can't just introduce them willy-nilly into a campaign world. A faction can rise or fall overnight, but a race or a deity has to, in some way, always have been there. By the time th splatbook comes out, it's too late.

How would you feel about a splatbook that discussed how to make a culture or a religion for a campaign world? How to balance the powers right?

 

[mhensley]

So the longest gnome splatbook ever is really, really boring, which pains me to say.

Don't feel bad, all the Kalamar books are really, really boring IMHO. I'm dumping all the ones I got in the sale at the used book store tonight.

 

[Howndawg]

Typically,in the best splat books I've read, the writer expands the class' or race's horizons, showing what can be done with going beyond the expected stereotype of the class or race.

In the worst, however, the writer delves into what he thinks the class or race ought to be like, and instead of breaking stereotypes, he instead reinforces them.

 

[Fifth Element]

My favorite splatbook is still the Complete Thief's Handbook from 2nd Edition. This was back when "kits" were used to enhance and alter a base class to make it more thematic. Many times, "kits" were another way to abuse the system, adding powers without definite drawbacks. However, this book got it right. Most of the tweaks were minor, and much more thematic in nature than not. Also, any roleplaying benefit had roleplaying drawbacks, and any mechanical benefit had mechanical drawbacks. Furthermore, it introduced good, useful mundane equipment that wasn't overpowering, spent a very large chapter describing how thieves' guilds would work and how to build them for your campaign, and discussed the thief's role in the party and in a campaign world. Years later, I noticed that much of the book was written by John Nephew, and it definitely shows.

The Complete Book of Elves (also from 2nd ed) is a fine example of one done poorly. Elves became better at everything, suggested wholeheartedly handing them a bunch of extra powers for free, and loaded the kewl on top of the kewl. Flying elves? Got 'em. Instant intimidation? Yup. Who's the best stonesmith? Elves. Who's the best--Elves, just elves, that's all. The book did introduce the Bladesinger, though--a style of fighting that everyone would love to get right mechanically, is undeniably a great idea thematically, and always manages to upset the game balance one way or the other. How much I want to love you, Bladesinger.

I don't have a lot to add, I just wanted to say I agree 100% with your assessment of these two books. The first four PHBR books were all quite good (IMHO) - Fighter, Thief, Wizard and Priest. Especially the fighter and thief. After that, the power creep got cranked up to an 11, and kits started to become whole new classes. Unbalanced classes, at that.

 

[Greg K]

I don't have a lot to add, I just wanted to say I agree 100% with your assessment of these two books. The first four PHBR books were all quite good (IMHO) - Fighter, Thief, Wizard and Priest. Especially the fighter and thief. After that, the power creep got cranked up to an 11, and kits started to become whole new classes. Unbalanced classes, at that.

Actually, I liked the Druid book as well.

One thing that hurt the 2e splat books, imo, were the 2e mechanics. There was no unification of the underlying mechanics. Sometimes you ended up with different dice based on class to resolve a problem. They would make up mechanics, that made me go huh (e.g, the Savage kit ability that referenced the alarm spell to represent being a light sleeper).

Honestly, though, with the 3e mechanics, I would have preferred 2e style class books replacing kits with class variants (as per the thug in the PHB and those in UA) to the class splat books we were given.