Post/Author/DateTime	Post
cybosage 01-20-05, 10:41 AM	I just ordered - Adventurer, Warrior, Divinve and Arcane from amazon. At $20 a piece I think it was reasonable. I suppose I should have asked what you think of the books BEFORE I ordered...but.... What do you think of these books?
Draco Strang 01-20-05, 11:20 AM	well, you got a 33% deal on each of them, and the shipping wont be so bad with them bundled. Personally, I think the whole series is pretty good. Adventurer and Arcane are my favorites, but Warrior is an EXCELLENT book. Diviine is my least favorite, but then again, I don't really get off on playing clerics. Overall, I think you did ok.
TheUnknownZombie 01-20-05, 11:38 AM	Complete Warrior adds a couple of decent Core Classes (Swashbuckler and Hexblade) and a fairly weak one (IMO) - the Samurai. It's like being a Fighter, but without the versatility. The prestige-classes are mostly average with some interesting ones thrown in (Invisible Blade, Hunter Of The Dead, Dervish etc.) The new rules don't look too inspiring (at least I haven't been inspired to use anyhting but the new weapons). Complete Divine is the weakest of the books. The new Core Classes aren't as interesting (although I'm tempted to play a Spirit Shaman, the Shujenga and Favoured Soul leave something to be desired). There are plenty of Prestice Classes, but nothing excitingly unique. The relics, Faith Feats and new spells are good though. Complete Arcane is pretty good. The Warlock class is brand new, and could either be a unique playing experience or a one-trick pony, depending on how you look at it. The War Mage and Wu Jen are fairly interesting too, but I haven't seen either in action yet. The prestige classes are pretty varied and you should be able to create your ideal spellcaster (or at least pretty close to it) from the options given. Unsurprisingly there are a load of new spells to try, some great new magical items and rules for Effigies, Pseudonatural and Spellstitched creatures. In my opinion, Complete Adventurer is the jewel in the crown. All the new core classes are interesting (even if the Spellthief doesn't look like the most obvious choice for a core class - it's a Prestige Class in disguise). Prestige Classes mostly look pretty good (but there could be a lot more). The expanded Skill rules are useful and the organisations provide a load of springboards to start adventures (or even whole campaigns) off of. They're all worthwhile books in their way, although I could quite easily do without Complete Divine (and with some convincing, Complete Warrior). But, this is just one man's opinion...
cybosage 01-20-05, 11:42 AM	Well Im glad to hear good reviews, looks like my players wont be dissapointed :)
Seeker95 01-20-05, 07:25 PM	As a DM, I like them for the DM. As a Player, I love them for the Player. As a DM, I despise them for the Player. I caution any DM who introduces these into his or her game to be wary what elements to include. Some of the spells, Prestige Classes and items are too over the top. This advice generally applies to any non-core supplement.
CuttinCurt 01-21-05, 12:34 PM	I have them all. I Love the new feats in most of the books. (The only one I havent looked in is the adventurer for feats). Here are my highlights from the books. Arcane: WarMage class looks fantastic with the armor option. Only SpellSword had anything like it. But WarMage goes up by armor type, rather than spell failier % like Spell sword, so you can wear all light armor when you get that class feat, even chain, which has a 20% failer. SpellSword starts at 1st level with 10% reduction arcane spell failier. Feats are fantastic in this book, Draconic Feats are cool, with some great options for starting with spell like powers. Transdimensional Spell in the meta magic area was a great idea, allowing any spell metamagicked with this feat to effect creatures in other dimensions, (Ethreal, shadow, ect...), not just force spells. Also the prestige classes in here are awsome. I dont have room to explain all the ones I liked. Warrior: Prestige classes were good and the feats were good. SpellSword was redone and I personally dont like it, waiting to 4th level of the prestige class to get the channeling ability. The Silent blade, hunter of the dead, justicular are just a few that jump out at me that I liked. And there are some good feats, especially for the barbarian that rock. Barbarians will love this book the most I think. Divine: I play clerics, so I can say that this book is very good for the cleric. The sorcerer type clerics that are in the 20lvl classes are good. I liked the theme of them and the role they can play within the hierchy of the church. Divine feats are ok, but some of the other feats that rock this book are the ones like, Practiced Spellcaster, Augment Healing, Arcane Disciple. These are general feats that are awsome. Especially if you multiclass like so many priest tend to do. Take a few levels of fighter, up to 4 and your cleric level for casting goes up with it if you have practiced spell caster. Augment healing gives +2 per level of caster on your healing spells.... a huge advantage, and the arcane lets you put arcane spells from a domain into your regular list. These are gigantic and the divine feats along with them are good. The prestige classes are not that good, and are the weakest point of the book. Adventurer: Prestige classes and regular classes look awsome. Daggerspell mage, and daggerspell shaper are two that look awsome in the prestige classes, and I liked the spellthief and the ninja both. Those looked like classes I might play one day. This is all I have gotten to so far in this book for I just got it 2 days ago. But that is my review. Overall, great books. CC
Tevish Szat 01-21-05, 01:33 PM	I'm going to go against the general trend here... I got complete warrior, and not any of the others, so this is a review that may only apply to complete warrior. I am going to come out and say it: Complete warrior isthe reason i didn;t get any of the other Complete ______ Books. I found it to be a waste of my money. YES there were some good things in it, but thoes tings did not warrant the price i paid for the book. The hexblade was an intersting idea nad so was the swashbuckler (don't much care for the samuari outside of an asian setting. why put it in a general book?), but neither of them really went anywhere. of the PrCs, the only ones that have seen the light of day are the invisible blade/master thrower duo, and even then that NPC never entered combat (i DM). Overall, Complete warrior is adust collector for me. It sits there, waiting until it accidently might ge some use. overall, i think the list price was far too much money to pay for it. I wouldn't use it as a player (Different reason, i'm an arcane caster sort of guy. won;t hold that agaisnt CW), and haven't really found a use for it as DM. After being so heavily let down by Complete Warrior (I had high hopes, especially for the hexblade), i decided not to continue with the complete line. I might, at some point, pick up Arcane because that's what i'm more used to, but somehow i don';t think i should let my hopes get to high about what any complete line book i pucrhase will contain.
Ty 01-21-05, 05:59 PM	At $20.00 bucks a pop I think you're getting your money's worth. Complete Adventurer is worth the $36 or so you pay with tax and Complete Arcane *might* be worth that much but Complete Divine is about as weak as Races of Destiny. Not much there really. Complete Warrior gives me this warm, gooey feeling ; like sitting in mud really. It's there, it has a funky feel, but I'm not motivated to yell "Get it off! Get it off!" Overall, absent analogies, it's useful in some respects and in others, it's downright a darn shame they killed a tree.
CuttinCurt 01-25-05, 11:00 AM	Well, I wanted to update my response to this thread with a few other items no one has said here. First off, All of these books come with magical items and some with monsters, all have updates to skill uses, and useful feats for the dm to use for thier (out of the ordinary) npcs and villans. I am a spellcaster type, but being in the militia in this last campaign of mine made me feel confortable about taking a fighter level. (I usually would not do this for I want spells now and not later), but it fit the character. So my 1/2 bard, 1/2 wizard starting character was a 1/1/1 bard/wizard/fighter at 3rd level. What does this mean? It only means that I must rethink what I wanted for this character at its inception, for circumstances dictated me changing how I went up in level. I now can use all sorts of interesting feats I would not have otherwise used... Like Arcan Strike. Like Practiced Spellcaster Like Magic Artificer ect... All these books, other than the divine one can aid me in my quest to maqke a character that I like, and fits the circumstances surrounding her in her progression in levels. Without these books, the options would be slim and the variety would not be there. Anyway, there is so much that they offer that I like, and it is my opinion that you asked for, so there it is. Have a good one. CC
johnboy069 01-26-05, 05:38 AM	I have three of the four complete books (all but divine, which I can not find anywhere) and of the three I have, my favorite would be the Complete Arcane. I love playing blaster type mages ( along with necros) and the new warmage sets it off. I also liked the Draconic feats, and would have liked to see a return of the Dragon Disciple in this book. Complete Warrior was cool, because in my spare time, I throw knives and the Master Thrower PRC is reall cool IMHO. The Complete Adventurer is nice as well, and I really like the Daggerspell Mage. I think you did get your moneys' worth. :)
Tealgorthian 01-26-05, 12:00 PM	You can read my reveiw of the Complete Arcane in my sig.
The_Declaration 01-26-05, 03:17 PM	What do you think of these books? crap
Grond 02-02-05, 08:56 AM	In my opinion, Complete Adventurer is the jewel in the crown. All the new core classes are interesting (even if the Spellthief doesn't look like the most obvious choice for a core class - it's a Prestige Class in disguise). Prestige Classes mostly look pretty good (but there could be a lot more). The expanded Skill rules are useful and the organisations provide a load of springboards to start adventures (or even whole campaigns) off of. They're all worthwhile books in their way, although I could quite easily do without Complete Divine (and with some convincing, Complete Warrior). But, this is just one man's opinion... I have to disagree here, I thought that Complete Adventurer was a steaming pile. I really didn't find anything that stood out as particularly useful to me. I can't say the classes were bad, they just didn't inspire me. The new feats were blah at best, though I'm getting burned out on the massive collection of feats now available. The expanded skill rules was the best part of this book and the disappointing thing about that was it's brevity, I would have liked to have seen more. The organizations, again nothing terribly inspiring there. I loved the other 3 complete books and found numerous things to use from each of them, I was disappointed to discover that book 4 did not live up to my expectations. The funny thing is I was expecting great things from the Complete series and was skeptical about the Environmental series. Between the two I would heartily recommend the Environmental, I only have Frostburn, but I think I've used something from every chapter of that book, plan to use more and am looking forward to the others in the series.
was_fired 02-02-05, 09:48 AM	I only picked up complete warrior and complete arcane, but I like both of them. The complete arcane only had one PrC which looked to be broken, and even that might just be very potent. The complete warrior had a few PrCs which I outright banned, but the feat section is extremely well balanced. As for the complete arcane's feat section... I ended up with 7 banned feats, and 2 feats which suffered adjustments. Then again I am a bit of a balance nut.
11d7 02-02-05, 09:49 AM	I only own Complete Arcane but have read all of them but dont know enouph to make a fair review as I only read the parts that i knew i would like: Complete Arcane: 8/10 Pros: I love the Warlock and War Mage, The Wu Jen is better due to my house rules because Wu Jen does mean "Taoist Magician", I put more enfasice on 'Taoist' so Its divine magic IMC making it very interesting. I dont like all of the PrC but I love the Aleinist, Blood Magus and Geometer. I like the Mindbender and Mage of the Arcane Order. The rest are all passable IMO becuase none of the real have a place in the camapign world I'm building. I like the new feats, exept the Draconic feats but I only skimmed them becuase I dont play sorcerers and haven't needed to build any Sorcerer NPCs yet. The frist plot NPC my PCs met was a Human Rogue with Insightful and Necropolis Born feats. "Huh? WTF? Is he a Wizard? Why is he sneak attacking? Are you being a cheap DM ignoring the rules?" My players were so confused lol. I love the Sudden Metamagic feats and the Twin and other new ones like the one that lets you do 2 elemental damages. Combind with the Artificer's Metamagic Spell Completion ability and the Wand Mastery Feat and for 12 charges for a wand of Fireball and you do a Maximized, Twined and <2 elemental Types> Fire/Acid ball at level 7 that does 216 damage that you need 2 saves to pass that half the damage ignores hardness, no one walks away muahahahaha! The new spells IMO are ok because I like having lots of spell in my campaign world but not many stand out to me but I have only used the new level 1 and 2 spells as a player so I dont know everything yet. The new magic items are good and I love the Aroma of Curdled Death and Aroma of Dreams but then again I think they were intended as one use Items but I house rule them as 20 uses items. The new creatures I love and like using the Grues and Spell Stiched Undead, an NPC ally of the PCs in a one shot level 9 adventure I did had an Effgy Giant Eagle, the PCs loved it becuase I characterized it as a mindles smetal bird that didn't relize they were riding on it (becuase its master rode next to it on a broom of flying) and when it did manuves they all have to make checks to not fall of and it made a noise when conferming orders that sounded like a cross between a fog horn and a computer beep, what they really like was that I actualy made the noise, lol 1 guy fell out of his chair the frist time I did it.
Derren S. 02-02-05, 09:54 AM	7 feats might be a bit extensive, but the general statement is correct. It is a must to, before you even show this books to your playrs, to read through the feat, PRC, spell and magical items section and weed out the unbalanced/broken ones. Every of these books has them (Haven't looked at adventurer yet).
Keenath 02-02-05, 10:55 AM	The Complete Warrior is a great piece of help for fighters who, with the core rules, desperately need high-powered, high-prereq feats to keep up with everyone else at the high levels. One of the best things, almost worth the price of admission all by itself, is the section on Tactical feats. They're feats where you get three related abilities that have fairly restrictive setups -- like for instance, a bonus when you charge, or an advantage against foes who are two sizes larger than you -- and the more difficult it is to set up, the more powerful the ability is. It's pretty cool; for the cost of a feat, you get three abilities that are more difficult to set up, rather than one ability that you can use all the time. Complete Arcane is rather nice as well; I think I'd like to play a wu-jen some time (an elementally-biased arcane caster). The PRCs are good -- possibly too good in a few cases -- and the feats are decent. Definitely worth the $20. I haven't read Complete Adventurer yet, and while I hear some nice things, some of the feats I've heard about sound fairly powerful. I don't know, I'm all for high-prereq feats that grant a big bonus (particularly for high-level fighters), but I'd have to see the book to make a decision. Complete Divine? Eh. Like Clerics aren't powerful enough already? Oh yeah - and ignore the "mage slayer" feats from Complete Arcane. They're a mess.
Blackrazorblade 02-07-05, 05:29 PM	well i own CW, one of my players owns CA and i have looked at CD quite a bit in the book store, overall CD didn't impress me all that much. both CA and CW have some very nice things inside. From CW the PrC's are very cool i like the combat style feats. the warlock is prehaps the coolest thing in the books IMO. The books are definatly better for players than DMs thouhg it does have a premade NPC for every PrC which is nice.