Worst book WotC made for 3.0?

[Myconid Sage]

I agree about the DDG and ELH, they should have been made compatible. However on their own they are not overly bad, just not great. Now the HBG, now that was bad, unless you were new to rpg's in general.

Just my two coppers.

 

[Rasmus]

I like the BoVD. I think it has loads of crunchy bits that spices up a game.

I agree with the vote of DDG. I have no use for these gods. I mean if you don't run a Greayhawk or earthbased campaign, you pay 25$ for 20-25 pages...

 

[Arken]

The ELH not because I object to concept (i LOVE the concept) but because the execution was bad. It didn't scale well, calsses weren't interesting enough, spell system didn't work. I liked teh monster section though. All in all I think my problem is that it just made weaknesses out of the standard D20 system in places it didn't even need to.
To be honest teh approach in teh very elementary stages (FR campaign setting) seemed like a better base point...oh well.

And then the AAEG and DDG because they weren't as useful as they should have been and didn't contain enough spark in them for me.

Of course the Hero Builder's Guide tops all of these in teh lameness stakes

 

[Bagpuss]

Can't really judge any of those as I don't own them of the ones I own either Sword and Fist or the first Monster Manual.

 

[Green Knight]

Sword & Fist. The numbers of errors in it is just downright amazing.

 

[Stormfalcon]

While the D&D Gazeteer has already been mentioned, I'm surprised that no one's brought up the Living Greyhawk Gazeteer as well. A fine example of taking a classic setting and making it boring as all hell by rendering it drier than a high school or college textbook. Let's not forget the awful artwork contained within. Greyhawk deserved better than this.

 

[LGodamus]

I feel the epic level handbook is the lamest D&D product ever....I felt ripped off when I bought it. Cause at first it looked cool , but then I read it......

 

[Wombat]

This took a lot of deciding on my part...

Exhibit A: Deities & Demigods -- gods don't have hit dice, neat categories, or weapons that do specific amounts of mortal damage. Gods are beyond all that. So the book has little use in my games.

Exhibit B: Manual of the Planes -- I never got into the whole "planes" thing. I accept that the gods live somewhere other than here and all like that, but this book always struck me as overly mechanistic. Again, no use in my games.

Exhibit C: Arms & Equipment Guide -- err, well, I either already had or made up on my own all the equipment I needed, so this book seems redundant.

Exhibit D: Savage Species --I get more than enough mileage out of the base races. Didn't see a need for this; it's easy enough just to plug character classes onto sentient creatures, if you need that.

Exhibit E: Epic Level Handbook -- Been spendin' most my time livin' in a Munchkin's Paradise...

Exhibit F: Stronghold Builders Guidebook -- I know what castles look like, how they are constructed, etc. I rarely get into siege warfare in rpgs, mainly because it is long and boring, so no need for this book.

Exhibit G: Book of Challenges -- how to construct traps that do not logically fit with the technological achievements of the age.

I finally went with Exhibit G, The Book of Challanges, mainly because it annoyed me the most.

OTOH, I know people who like each of these books and I would never tell people NOT to buy them. Hey! if you like the book it is good for you, even if it isn't good for me. In the end that's what it's all about

 

[Staffan]

I'm ignoring the "small" books here (like Sword & Fist and Hero Builder's Guide), and concentrating on the big releases. Out of these, the one that I'm least interested in is the Deities and Demi-gods book.

Unlike some people, I'm not really philosophically opposed to gods having stats. What I am opposed to is wasting all that space on them - judging by Faiths & Pantheons, roughly half of each deity's description would be stats, which is totally pointless in 95% of all campaigns. I would much rather have seen that space spent on either more pantheons or more detail on the ones covered.

For an example of a good god-book, see Green Ronin's Book of the Righteous.

 

[Psion]

Unlike some people, I'm not really philosophically opposed to gods having stats. What I am opposed to is wasting all that space on them - judging by Faiths & Pantheons, roughly half of each deity's description would be stats, which is totally pointless in 95% of all campaigns. I would much rather have seen that space spent on either more pantheons or more detail on the ones covered.

For an example of a good god-book, see Green Ronin's Book of the Righteous.

What he said.


Also: What's with the angst over Book of Challenges? After Stronghold Builders Guidbook, I was convinced that WotC was going downhill and I avoided BoC for a while. But then I bit the bullet and got it and was pleasantly surprised. These traps and situations, unlike those in some d20 trap books, are actually easy to work into dungeons and campaigns, and some of the puzzles are actually interesting.