Your least-favorite pre-3e D&D/AD&D books

[Dark Jezter]

Off topic, but I like your sig, Krieg. Queen of the Black Coast is a great story.

 

[Krieg]

Off topic, but I like your sig, Krieg. Queen of the Black Coast is a great story.

I felt it was a apropriate with Conan D20 on the way...

 

[Orius]

Hands down, Sages and Specialists, the most useless 2e tree-murdering paper waste ever published. Rendered completely and totally obsolete by NPC classes in 3e.

 

[Orius]

I don't really understand the hatred towards the complete book of elves? I liked the book. I didn't really like some of the classes in it, but I really liked the rest of the book. Maybe since most people have that dark side inside them, they have trouble believing that a near utopean society could exist even in fantasy. I'll admit that I'm sick of the constant elven subraces. I mean really. We don't need a different subrace for every cultural difference.

Probably two reasons:

First and foremost, the bladesinger. It wasn't the concept itself that was bad, if the concept sucked, would bladesinger be a PrC now? I doubt it. The problem with the 2e bladesinger was that it was very frontloaded, gaining a huge number of combat bounses at 1st level. Bladesinger as a PrC is toned down.

Secondly, it had drow as a PC choice, and look how much people hate that.

 

[Orius]

I can see why Skills and Powers gets a lot of votes. If the DM is careless, the group can end up with totally munched characters. The best solution really, is to throw out the subabilities. They may look good on paper, but in practice, they overcomplicate things, and anyone can use them to boost a score while sacrificing very little. The absolute worst was Muscle, because S&P was saddled with the outdated exceptional strength crap, and by putting Muscle at 19 or 20, you could effectively boost the stat by 6 slots. And in addition, Muscle covered all the uses of Strength except encumbrance -- HUGE mistake, given the number of DMs that ignore encumbrance.

Secondly, the DM really should monitor how character points are spent buying racial and class abilities, since munching can happen fairly easily there too, perhaps disallowing some choices.

On the positive side, S&P had a proficiency system that was superior to the core 2e system. It also had less clunky psionics rules than the Psionics Handbook

 

[AeroDm]

Elf ninjas are the REAL ULTIMATE POWER!

You mock, but my 12 year old friends and I friggin LOVED elf ninjas in 2e. Bladesong rocked!

 

[AeroDm]

Guide to Hell and its companion (Guide to Heaven?) were largely worthless.

Wilderness Survival Guide was too complex to use.

Deities and Demigods was filled with earth mythos gods stated out, but you were encouraged to purchase their settings.

 

[Nightfall]

Vecna Lives (Let's not just break with canon on one setting. Let's do it for all of them!)
Faction War
The original DL series of adventures

Think that summons it up for me. Course I didn't much care for VR's Guide to Ghosts either.

 

[Gez]

Elf ninjas are the REAL ULTIMATE POWER!

Well, but elves aren't mammals. Mialee would have boobies if they were.

50 years ago, Tolkien published The Lord of the Rings, a book where the elves are oh-so-perfect and better than humans in every way. Ever since then, it's become common for elves in fantasy to be portrayed as perfectly wise and enlightened and beautiful, while humans are violent and short-sighted, and dwarves are greedy and ugly and used for comic relief.

Worst thing is, Tolkien's elves are far from being oh-so-perfect and better than others in every way. They are noble, graceful, and mighty in magic and combat, that much is true... But their wisdom and enlightenment is not above humanity's. Plenty of examples of obsessive, destructive, or greedy actions of elves in the Silmarilion.

Tolkien's merely an excuse for people who just want to play supermen with pointy ears.

And this pic sums it nicely (©2004 Josh Sortelli, click here for the source):

 

[Nightfall]

Mm now I know why you like forsaken elves Gez.