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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GQuail" data-source="post: 2745179" data-attributes="member: 30709">You acknowledge it's a compilation, then complain because "It's not like the game NEEDS more spells.", which seems a bit counter-intuitive: though I think I agree on that point regardless.  :>Still, no, I happen to think that you're being quite unfair in mocking the book because it doesn't include something earth-shatteringly new.  It's clear marked and marketed as what it is: a collection of spells form lots of different sources (various D&D sourcebooks, magazines and web articles) and gives you a single book which features them in unified lists.  I play my D&D game at home, but remember having to carry X books with me alld ay because I didn't have time after lectures to go home, get D&D books and come back to Uni for my RPG club: and the core rulebooks could be bad enough, without having to bring campaign or adventure specific sourcebooks.  The utility of a single book that pulls all these sources together for that kind of situation is immense: rather than carrya huge wad of books, photocopies, or a laptop with PDFs or OCRs of your spell lists, all of which involves way more rooting around in game time.  Even with the best notes in the world, you'll still slow the game down having to crack open a new book every time you cast a spell.So actually, yes, I think it is quite innovative to pack a pile of spells, complete with some errata, into one handy book, with an implication this process will be repeated.  Wizards have been mocked before for their somewhat liberal use of reprinting at times (I'd rather that than TSRs "assume you've read every D&D sourcebook ever released" policy, but still...) but this time it's totally upfront and put together in a useful way: especially since they've also thrown in web/magazine spells.  All too often, I've read a great spell in Dragon, but bene put off trying to drop it into my game because of the hassle of either trusting the players with more sheets of paper to keep track of it's rules, or having to add Dragon 326 or whatever into the "players books" pile.OK, innovative is quite a heavy word: a "greatest hits" collection is hardly a unique idea.  But it's still a good one, and even if you don't want the book, complaining that it's intrinsically inferior to something like, say, Magic of Incarnum because it's not a brand spanking new game mechanic seems unfair.  In fact, considering that you have given Magic of Incarnum a relatively low review, wouldn't you concede that simply having an idea which "breaks the mould" does not a good game product make?(Note: I've enjoyed "innovative" products as much as the dull ones,  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> so I don't want to dig on peple for liking new game system books like WoL and MoI: I think they're interesting too.  But I'm far more likely to use the Spell Compendium in my campaign, and in fact in any D&D campaign I ran, on a constant basis, so it's to me a "better" product idea by far.)</blockquote>

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