What's the best and worst D&D book you own from any edition?

[TheSword]

Best: Lords of Madness. So much gribbly wickedness in here. It has advice and crosses over into Eldritch horror as well as good old fashioned monster hunting... accept these monsters have culture and plans and they’re coming for you in the night. I particularly like the organizations fighting back like the Cerulean Sign - i always thought would make a great secret society.
Runner up: Curse of Strahd. Best campaign released for D&D since day 1

Worst: Magic of Incarnum. It just felt like a weird bloated addition at a point where 3.5 was already bloated enough. It didn’t resonate with other products. Instead trying to come up with something completely different. It felt more like a test balloon for 4e, and therefore pretty useless for 3.5e. One of the few products where I felt I got literally nothing positive from. Should never have bought it.
Runner up: Book of Nine Sword. Ridiculously broken in 3.5e. Similar issues to Incarnum.

 

[Gorg]

Wow- tough decision. I own so very many books...

Best: Really, it's a toss-up between my OG Moldvay boxed set; the 3rd ed Forgotten Realms campaign setting; and the OG Unearthed Arcana.

Runners up would be the 1st ed PHB and DMG; Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign setting; the Linked adventures for 3rd ed beginning with Sunless Citadel; Ravenloft (the og module) and a lot of other stuff, lol.

Worst: Epic Level Handbook. Interesting ideas, but not at all what I was looking for- and we never used even a single thing out of it. There are a couple of 3rd party OGL books I bought that weren't as interesting/useful as I thought they'd be, but I'm not home and don't recall any names. Ended up being expensive dust collectors...


Best AND worst: The DM's Book of Dirty Tricks and Misfit Magic. (1st/2nd ed 3rd party publisher) Fiendishly evil, lol. Boy did it ever live up to it's name!! A lot of stuff was utterly broken, but ended up making for some extremely memorable games! One particularly memorable item was called the Girdle of Oxen Strength. It was a "cursed" item that doubled your strength score- and halved your intelligence. Of course we gave it to the Half ogre fighter: Gorg. (my namesake!) He became a total meme of a character in a party full of meme characters- inc a Drizzt clone. But we didn't care- Gorg's player rp'd it to the hilt, and Strong like OX- dumb like rock!! Became really really fun. And true to the claim in the Dungeon article we got the race from, Gorg WAS the world's best door opener, scared the wits out of most weaker humanoids- and most a-holes in bars; and provided some very memorable moments. Just, for the love of Fizban NEVER tell him he's under arrest... (and don't give his little gully dwarf pal any crap- Gorg gets annoyed)

 

[Hex08]

Best - For a cool bit of fluff that can be used in any setting it's Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog from 2nd ed. AD&D. Otherwise it's Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed; a cool take on D&D 3.0 which is heavily influenced by my favorite fantasy books, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Ask me again tomorrow and I will probably change my mind - so much good stuff over the years. Crap, forgot Ptolus - so good....

Worst - That's tough, just about every edition put out some stinkers, especially later in their lives. D&D 3.0 PHB/3.5 PHB/Pathfinder CRB would probably be my pick. I love those games and played what is essentially a single edition longer than any prior one (and I played all except Chainmail until 4th ed.) but they caused the game to become really complicated and crunchy and made combat more of a focus than role playing. It's because of burnout after decades of play that I moved onto Castles & Crusades, Savage Worlds and other games that are simpler. Once again, aske me again tomorrow.....

 

[GreyLord]

I stand the right to change my answers at any time....

I'm not going to say I have a specific Best...but I will list some of the bests...

Bests ---

Rules Cyclopedia - As many have noted, this is a GREAT, self-contained book. I just got bought some of the new copies so that I could give a copy to my kid. I hope that he'll pick it up and be impressed enough to try to run a campaign with it!

2nd edition Players Handbook - Despite it being 2e, this version I felt was a better value than 1e's version. The reason...you could actually run a game with just this book. You may be missing items, but overall, you could run a game. One reason...it actually had the combat charts and Saving throw tables which were missing from the 1e PHB. Yes, there were reasons for them missing from the 1e version, but that doesn't negate that I always felt that at a minimum they should be in the PHB overall.

3e Players Handbook Initial printing - This thing had enough to run the game (see a trend here) completely. It one upped the 2e version because it ALSO had a few monsters and XP tables. Printings after the initial one don't make the cut, but the first printing holds a spot close to my heart because it enabled one to play the game with just that book if they so desired.

For a campaign setting --- The best Campaign setting book ever released, in my opinion, is the FRCS for 3e. Absolutely jampacked to the gills. Liked it better than the Grey Box, liked it better than the various Dragonlance releases (and Dragonlance is my preferred game world over FR even). It was excellent.

Worsts...

Wrath of the Immortals - I've have it. I even downloaded it from DMs guild so now have it in PDF. I've never used it. Ironically I don't like some of how the ideas are presented. Brings me to question why I keep pursuing it...actual answer...don't know.

Epic Level Handbook - This puts me into the frame where you should NEVER have two completely different rule sets for leveling up (maybe this is why I'm not as big a fan of Wrath of the Immortals as well). You should not neuter things and make it so things really are inconsistent (for example...is it better to be a 20/20 Wizard/Fighter or a 20/20 Fighter/Wizard...these two are not equal and one is absolutely better than the other because the Epic Level Handbook's rules were screwed up in a major fashion). Because it was so flawed, epic level was more of a house-ruled hodgepodge for us. I used the Advanced Players Guide (Swords and Wizardry I believe) instead, though sometimes tossed in some of the Epic Level feats system. At least the APG was more consistent with the base 3e/3.5 rules than the Epic Level Handbook.

 

[Gradine]

I loved Magic of Incarnum. A very fresh and interesting concept that allowed for the creation of many different types of characters. Having recently finally gotten through the MCU Dr. Strange movie, its use of "relics" (especially Mordo's boots) gave me major Incarnum feels.

Alas and alack, I never owned it myself, or else it would definitely be my top book.

So instead, I'll go with Heroes of Horror for 3.5 for the best D&D book I've ever owned. I mean, it's really a tie between that and the original Eberron Campaign Setting, but HoH did a really great job of introducing horror as a concept that could work incredibly well, even in the high power 3.X era. Also the Archivist is probably the best new class of the 3.x era.

As for the worst D&D book I've owned... that's tougher. Probably the Arms & Equipment Guide.

 

[Remus Lupin]

The worst book in any edition is clearly The Stronghold Builder's Guidebook from Third Edition. I was so looking forward to that. What a piece of garbage.

 

[Emerikol]

Controversial take! Most people I know that are also into the OSR deride ACKS as D&D but with spreadsheets. Why that and not say, Labyrinth Lord or Old School Essentials?

First I am not one of those people who think any edition of D&D was perfect. I want the feel of an edition and not necessarily the funky mechanical crunch. I think ACKS seriously addresses issues addressed in the 1e DMG. It covers a lot of things a new DM might not fully grasp.

1. So first, I believe ACKS fully embraces the old school concept that bad things can happen to a character and that is okay in fact it's essential to a fun game. So energy drain, stat loss, etc... are built in. Wandering monsters in the wilderness are at a certain level. You may want to run sometimes.
2. ACKS advocates sandbox design and gives you a lot of tools for building that sandbox effectively. It gives good advice to DMs on how to play that style.
3. ACKS has a clear system that is more modern but doesn't get in the way of the old school feel. Precalculate everything and get to a number. Then during the game it's only addition. You throw your number or you don't. Addition only math is a good thing.
4. As for the complaint there are lots of tables. Well there are for things the DM has to manage out of game but when in combat there really aren't that many tables. The tables are there to build PCs and monsters but once you've done that you can go. No need to look at tables otherwise.
5. It is old school enough that it can run almost every module with very little change. Treasure is x.p. and fighting every enemy is not always best.
6. Proficiencies provide enough extra crunch to be fun but they aren't a burden. They cover skills, feats, and etc...

I guess I see it as the second edition of 1e D&D done right.

 

[Dioltach]

Woah, nice thread necromancy!

The third time it's been resurrected, by my count. The thread that couldn't die...

My personal favourite ... Too many to choose from, so I'm going to go with the Mentzer Basic PHB, for giving us Aleena.

Least favourite is probably Weapons of Legacy, for being cast aside after less than an hour for taking a really exciting concept and making it so disappointingly unusable.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

The third time it's been resurrected, by my count. The thread that couldn't die...

My personal favourite ... Too many to choose from, so I'm going to go with the Mentzer Basic PHB, for giving us Aleena.

Least favourite is probably Weapons of Legacy, for being cast aside after less than an hour for taking a really exciting concept and making it so disappointingly unusable.

Weapons of Legacy has some really cool ideas executed in a poor way. I can see what they were trying to do, but they totally flubbed the landing.

I love the concept of it, but have never figured out a way to get the cool bits of it without the horrible drawbacks side of things without making the weapons overpowered at the same time.

 

[Bluenose]

Best: D&D Rules Cyclopedia, like several other people. Honourable mentions to Eberron Campaign Guide (3e, the 4e one was also very good), Corsairs of the Great Sea (the Al-Qadim line was surprisingly good compared to the OA material), and Havens of the Great Bay (2e, Birthright), 4e Dark Sun Guide, and the Poor Wizard's Almanacs.

Worst: Actually is very hard to pick, because there's a lot of stuff that should never have been published, but the product that got me out of D&D is the 5e PHB. DisHonourable mentions to BoVD and BoED, Oriental Adventures, Maztica and Complete Book of Elves (2e).