Complete Adventurer: A Review
So, Monday I scored CA, today, Deities and Demigods. I'll review Complete Adventurer today, since I haven't had much time to read through D&D yet. Unfortunately, I left the book at home in case Wendy wanted to check it out, so it won't be a chapter by chapter review. Doubly unfortunate, I think I told John most of the stuff today at work, so there isn't much in this bad boy for him to read. Sorry J Dogg.
So, as with the other Complete's, we open in the first chapter with three new classes. These of course are rogue replacements, or rather upgrades, essentially. Do they replace the rogue? Poop no.
The ninja replaces it's sneak attack with a "sudden attack" which is basically only useful when your opponent is denied his AC (ie surprised or tied up). Trading the utility of the sneak attack, along with some skill points, the ninja gets the ability to hide more effectively and eventually be invisible and what not.
The scout comes closer to replacing the ranger than the rogue. He's definitely a wilderness madman and specializes in skirmishing. Skirmishing acts like the rogue's sneak attack, but is applied only when the scout moves 10 ft or more in a round. Later in life, skirmishing adds to his AC. Trading in a few skill points, the scout gets a higher HD, better attack progression (I think) and a few minor trades in evasion-like abilities.
The spellthief can grab spells, spell-like abilities, spell resistance and all kinds of handy magic from his opponents, on top of casting spells himself.
Like all the other Completes, this one's got a hefty load of prestige classes. Most of them are from the older paperbacks like Song and Silence and Masters of the Wild, but check out the Ghost Faced Killer. That's a bad mamma jamma.
There's some good advice in the next chapter on skills and their uses, working together in forms other than "aid another" and a lot of info on skill synergy. Several of the feats promote odd multi-classing, such as the feat that gives a benefit (which I've forgotten) for using your rogue sneak attack ability in tandem with your paladin smite ability. In fact there's a lot of paladin and monk specific multi-class feats. There are a lot of good ones, but not as many ripped off the pages like the Draconic Heritage feats in Complete Arcane.
I thought the equipment chapter was probably the weakest in the book. The little oral tablets probably won't make it into my campaign. Kind of gay if you ask me. All of the weapons are exotic variants on others, and I've yet to decide if it's cool that you can apply the normal weapon's feats, such as Weapon Focus and the like, to the exotic variant or not. I mean, if it's close enough for those feats to work, why do you need to spend an Exotic Weapon feat on it. *shrug* Guess we'll see in playtesting if any of the players wanna go that route.
The book wrapped up with a chapter on organizations. Much like the final chapter in all of the other Completes, if you're a DM short on time, experience, or just not interested in working on this sort of thing, you might find some of these handy. Even if you've made world after world in your 15 year tenure as a DM (damn I'm getting old), read through them. They'll either spark an idea for your world or make you ask some interesting questions about the organizations you have made. The very end of this chapter wraps up with some random generation tables for organizations along the same vein of those in the DMG for towns/cities. Good stuff there for sparking ideas as well. I'll prolly roll up one for every town I make, just cause it gives a chance for a bit of flavor you might not expect.
All in all, a good buy. If I had to rank the four Completes in order of preference for me, I'd first have to state that this ranking is biased by two things. A) My preferences as a player. and B) The needs of the campaign I'm running right now. Regardless, here goes.
1. Complete Arcane - Big surprise considering I loves me some magic, eh? For arcane casters, this book brings a lot to the table.
2/3. Complete Adventurer/Complete Warrior - Each of these books brings something a little different to the table. Tactical Feats rock, as does the Hexblade and Swashbuckler. The Scout rules, and really the only thing lacking in CA is my interest in the equipment preseneted.
4. Complete Divine - The last divine spellcaster I played as a player OR DM was G-leaf. He rocked, but was a 3.0 Geomancer, so I didn't even use this book. Still, the Spirit Shaman might see play from me in Monte's campaign, and I'm using the Celerity domain for my Thri-Kreen. An upcoming villain did take a few feats from this book, but other than that, my style and the needs of the campaign don't call for it much. Still, that might change if I use that Spirit Shaman.
Now, I'd like to go read Deities & Demigods, but work calls.
So, as with the other Complete's, we open in the first chapter with three new classes. These of course are rogue replacements, or rather upgrades, essentially. Do they replace the rogue? Poop no.
The ninja replaces it's sneak attack with a "sudden attack" which is basically only useful when your opponent is denied his AC (ie surprised or tied up). Trading the utility of the sneak attack, along with some skill points, the ninja gets the ability to hide more effectively and eventually be invisible and what not.
The scout comes closer to replacing the ranger than the rogue. He's definitely a wilderness madman and specializes in skirmishing. Skirmishing acts like the rogue's sneak attack, but is applied only when the scout moves 10 ft or more in a round. Later in life, skirmishing adds to his AC. Trading in a few skill points, the scout gets a higher HD, better attack progression (I think) and a few minor trades in evasion-like abilities.
The spellthief can grab spells, spell-like abilities, spell resistance and all kinds of handy magic from his opponents, on top of casting spells himself.
Like all the other Completes, this one's got a hefty load of prestige classes. Most of them are from the older paperbacks like Song and Silence and Masters of the Wild, but check out the Ghost Faced Killer. That's a bad mamma jamma.
There's some good advice in the next chapter on skills and their uses, working together in forms other than "aid another" and a lot of info on skill synergy. Several of the feats promote odd multi-classing, such as the feat that gives a benefit (which I've forgotten) for using your rogue sneak attack ability in tandem with your paladin smite ability. In fact there's a lot of paladin and monk specific multi-class feats. There are a lot of good ones, but not as many ripped off the pages like the Draconic Heritage feats in Complete Arcane.
I thought the equipment chapter was probably the weakest in the book. The little oral tablets probably won't make it into my campaign. Kind of gay if you ask me. All of the weapons are exotic variants on others, and I've yet to decide if it's cool that you can apply the normal weapon's feats, such as Weapon Focus and the like, to the exotic variant or not. I mean, if it's close enough for those feats to work, why do you need to spend an Exotic Weapon feat on it. *shrug* Guess we'll see in playtesting if any of the players wanna go that route.
The book wrapped up with a chapter on organizations. Much like the final chapter in all of the other Completes, if you're a DM short on time, experience, or just not interested in working on this sort of thing, you might find some of these handy. Even if you've made world after world in your 15 year tenure as a DM (damn I'm getting old), read through them. They'll either spark an idea for your world or make you ask some interesting questions about the organizations you have made. The very end of this chapter wraps up with some random generation tables for organizations along the same vein of those in the DMG for towns/cities. Good stuff there for sparking ideas as well. I'll prolly roll up one for every town I make, just cause it gives a chance for a bit of flavor you might not expect.
All in all, a good buy. If I had to rank the four Completes in order of preference for me, I'd first have to state that this ranking is biased by two things. A) My preferences as a player. and B) The needs of the campaign I'm running right now. Regardless, here goes.
1. Complete Arcane - Big surprise considering I loves me some magic, eh? For arcane casters, this book brings a lot to the table.
2/3. Complete Adventurer/Complete Warrior - Each of these books brings something a little different to the table. Tactical Feats rock, as does the Hexblade and Swashbuckler. The Scout rules, and really the only thing lacking in CA is my interest in the equipment preseneted.
4. Complete Divine - The last divine spellcaster I played as a player OR DM was G-leaf. He rocked, but was a 3.0 Geomancer, so I didn't even use this book. Still, the Spirit Shaman might see play from me in Monte's campaign, and I'm using the Celerity domain for my Thri-Kreen. An upcoming villain did take a few feats from this book, but other than that, my style and the needs of the campaign don't call for it much. Still, that might change if I use that Spirit Shaman.
Now, I'd like to go read Deities & Demigods, but work calls.
posted by Amazing Shafeman at 4:35 PM
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