Which "Races of" sourcebook is best?

[Knightfall]

okay, I've never bought any of the books in the Races Series. I've heard too many bad things about them. However, I'm thinking one or two of them might be worth owning.

So the question is, which of the "Races of" sourcebooks are worth buying? Most bang for thier buck, most useful overall.

Cheers!

KF72

p.s. Hopefully I didn't forget any of them.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Stone, if you use a lot of dwarves or gnomes. Dragon if you like kobolds. Eberron if you have any interest in the new races, in or out of Eberron.

Leave the others on the shelf.

 

[Sejs]

Eberron, Stone, Faerun. In that order.

Wild was ... okay, Destiny really didn't blow my skirt up, and Dragon sucked on toast.

 

[smootrk]

I voted Races of Stone, Races of Eberron (but only if you play Eberron), and Races of Faerun as the absolute best of the batch. Even if you don't specifically play FR, it has races of all kinds that can make appearances in any game.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Dragon sucked on toast.

You can rip out the spellscales and dragonborn (which wouldn't be a bad idea) and still be left with a better book than Wild or Destiny.

 

[Sejs]

You can rip out the spellscales and dragonborn (which wouldn't be a bad idea) and still be left with a better book than Wild or Destiny.

Destiny, granted. Wild.. eh. In my current game at least I've got more use for some of the peripheral stuff in Wild (catfolk, gnolls, kiloren) than I do for the kobold info that'd be left in Dragon. Were it a different game the story might not be the same however.

 

[Wik]

Stone is a great book, in my humble opinion. And that's been said already.

I don't own Dragon or Eberron, so I can't say either way. Destiny is pretty much useless (there's a good 30-odd pages on human culture and personality.... YEAH!), except for the section on randomly building cities, which I photocopied and keep with me - it was a friend's book, and I hated the whole thing but that chapter.

As for Wild.... I don't know about the racial advice - Elves and Halflings are nice races, and I do like the info they gave on halflings. Raptorans SUCK, though, and most of the PrCs and feats were uninspiring. However, the actual race descriptions were pretty good,and I know I've used the book a fair amount in my games (my last character was a halfling druid that took some options from this book).

Currently, I'm using both STONE and WILD in my upcoming Savage Tide game; I have a Goliath fighter (he can do a whopping 3d6+9 damage with one swing, and he's only a 2nd level character), and a Catfolk Rogue with a dexterity of 22. Both races are fun, and well worth the +1 LA. I'm really looking forward to seeing how well they do in play.

 

[Mycanid]

Well ... to beat a dead horse, Races of Stone was the only one of these I really enjoyed as a whole.

The others were iffy at best IMO.

 

[MerricB]

Most of the "Races..." books are pretty good, with the exception of Races of Destiny, which should be avoided. (It has a few nice things in it, but they shouldn't be in the book, rather in Cityscape!)

RotW has seen a lot of use, as has RoE.

RoS is very good, but fewer people in my games play dwarves and gnomes.

Cheers!

 

[Lord Rasputin]

Didn't vote. "They all sucked" was not available. I suppose "Stone" sucked less than the others.