Alternate books worth it? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Alternate books worth it? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Gold Katana
05-29-04, 01:24 PM Hey everyone,

My group has always relied solely on the PHB (now using 3.5) for spells. However, the same spell combos are wearing a little thin. We have not made use of spells offered by posters to this board because we don't want to mess with game balance. But are any of the other spell caster books worth having? Are there many balance issues with the spells they contain - especially since they were written for 3.0 and we're using 3.5? We've never even thumbed through them but I know many of you have played with them a lot and your input would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Gold Katana :D
Eldren
05-29-04, 01:59 PM Second question first: Asking if there are "balance issues" with some other books on these boards is much akin to taking a Bic lighter in a room full of methane and activating it. You're gonna get a large (if prettily blue) explosion.

First question second: There are other books out there published by Wizards of the Coast that have spells in them. For arcane casters, your best bet is to pick up the handbook on Wizards and Sorcerors, entitled "Tome & Blood". However, since they're likely to update some of that material when they get around to releasing The Complete Arcane, I would imagine you might want to wait on that.

The best book of magic in the 3rd Edition game is actually a Forgotten Realms accessory entitled "Magic of Faerun". It's chock-full of new magic items and spells, and most of them are pretty well-designed. At least one spell underwent a major change in errata (the spell Ball Lightning), but it was a worthwhile change, and if you can immobilize an opponent, the duration-based nature of that spell means you can do some hefty damage. Another spell from that book works awesomely in concert with a Boccob's Blessed Book (from your Dungeon Master's Guide), removing for all intents and purposes both the time and financial requirements of scribing spells. That spell is called Amanuensis. But while it gave a words-per-minute rate for the spell to write with, it didn't indicate how many words were actually contained in a given written spell, so your Dungeon Master is going to have to make a ruling on it. Personally, my Dungeon Master at the time ruled that the spell took one minute per level of the spell it was scribing.

There are other nice spells in there, although a lot of them tend to be slightly more powerful or slightly less powerful variants of some of the spells in the Player's Handbook. But at the end of the day, it's still an awesome book to have.

You can find more spells in The Complete Warrior and The Complete Divine, and the latter book contains some updated spells from the book on Clerics and Paladins, entitled "Defenders of the Faith". You might want to pick both up, just so you have access to some of the spells which didn't make the cut in the 3.5 revision (and "The Complete" books are all primarily 3.5 revisions to the existing classbooks). It also has some spells from the book on Rangers, Druids and Barbarians, entitled "Masters of the Wild", including a hotly-debated spell called Miasma. I haven't read The Complete Divine version of it yet, but I understand that one of the changes is that the spell was placed at a higher level; I don't know if they otherwise altered it, but I can already tell I'm likely to keep wanting to use the 3.0 version from Masters of the Wild in my games.

So for arcane casters and divine casters (the primary casting classes of Cleric, Druid, Wizard and Sorceror, although the Bard might be thrown in there as well), your best bet would be to pick up the following books:

Tome & Blood
Masters of the Wild
Magic of Faerun
The Complete Warrior
The Complete Divine

This should give you plenty of spells to play around with. If you're willing to go into the third-party d20 publishers' works, you should also look at the Book of Hallowed Might, Relics & Rituals, the Ultimate Arcane Spellbook, Ultimate Divine Spells, The Book of Eldritch Might (and its various sequels), etc. There are a lot of third-party magic resources out there, but you get a bit dicier with the quality and level of playtesting they underwent than if you went with one of the official WotC products.

Hope this has helped!
Galahad the Pure
05-29-04, 05:10 PM I can't speak for the FR or Complete Divine content, but I am familiar with Complete Warrior and the 3.0 splatbooks.

Complete Warrior gave us 8 new spells. If you're buying it for magic, you'll be disappointed.

The Minis Handbook takes a lot of flack online, but I largely liked the new spells. There are a lot of new low-level spells for wizards and clerics which are kind of fun, and that might be something you want to pursue if you get tired of shooting off magic missiles all the time. Not to mention better spellcasting options for the paladins and rangers. Too bad the book isn't so great overall.

As for the 3.0 splats, spells range from broken to pointless, with a few interesting ones.

Masters of the Wild leans more towards the high end on the power curve, since it gave us among other things miasma. There's a lot of debate over that spell, and some have called it a save-or-die spell that doesn't offer a save. I'm not interested in seeing this thread plunge into a miasma debate, but you do need to think critically when looking at this and other spells to see if they fit in your game.

Defenders of the Faith was a lot of interesting spells, but nothing that I was ever interested in using in a game.

Tome and Blood was also pretty pointless, with the exception of the twinkerific spell hide life. Some of the better spells were included in the 3.5 PHB.

I liked the spells in Song and Silence, just because they gave the sucky 3.0 bards just a little more options. I haven't looked at it since, and I can't really give a great assessment of it without putting it in the context of the 3.5 bard list. For what it's worth, though, the spells in song and silence weren't terribly popular in the online community.

That's about all there is. I don't own the draconomicon or the Book of Exalted Deeds, but there's some interesting stuff in there. Just use caution with the Book of Exalted Deeds because it's a pandora's box with all its munchtacular content.
Frodo Lives
05-29-04, 07:04 PM I am also a stickler for game balance, I hate having things introduced, wether it's a feat, PrC, or spell, that will upset the game.

I personally find that in the slightly older splatbooks (Tome and Blood, Defenders of the Faith, etc)and a lot of the stuff in FRCS and PgtFR are horribly broken. There are a ton of spells in those books that would automatically go on my spell list. And not because they are "cool". ;)

Complete Warrior is actually pretty good with introducing new things that are balanced, and while there are one or two that I find overpowered, I find most of it's stuff workable. I'm hoping that the other "Complete *" will be the same way.

I wouldn't go out and buy a ton of the older stuff, but if you have it use some of it on a trial basis, and make decisions on a case to case basis.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Gold Katana 05-29-04, 01:24 PM	Hey everyone, My group has always relied solely on the PHB (now using 3.5) for spells. However, the same spell combos are wearing a little thin. We have not made use of spells offered by posters to this board because we don't want to mess with game balance. But are any of the other spell caster books worth having? Are there many balance issues with the spells they contain - especially since they were written for 3.0 and we're using 3.5? We've never even thumbed through them but I know many of you have played with them a lot and your input would be appreciated. Thanks, Gold Katana :D
Eldren 05-29-04, 01:59 PM	Second question first: Asking if there are "balance issues" with some other books on these boards is much akin to taking a Bic lighter in a room full of methane and activating it. You're gonna get a large (if prettily blue) explosion. First question second: There are other books out there published by Wizards of the Coast that have spells in them. For arcane casters, your best bet is to pick up the handbook on Wizards and Sorcerors, entitled "Tome & Blood". However, since they're likely to update some of that material when they get around to releasing The Complete Arcane, I would imagine you might want to wait on that. The best book of magic in the 3rd Edition game is actually a Forgotten Realms accessory entitled "Magic of Faerun". It's chock-full of new magic items and spells, and most of them are pretty well-designed. At least one spell underwent a major change in errata (the spell Ball Lightning), but it was a worthwhile change, and if you can immobilize an opponent, the duration-based nature of that spell means you can do some hefty damage. Another spell from that book works awesomely in concert with a Boccob's Blessed Book (from your Dungeon Master's Guide), removing for all intents and purposes both the time and financial requirements of scribing spells. That spell is called Amanuensis. But while it gave a words-per-minute rate for the spell to write with, it didn't indicate how many words were actually contained in a given written spell, so your Dungeon Master is going to have to make a ruling on it. Personally, my Dungeon Master at the time ruled that the spell took one minute per level of the spell it was scribing. There are other nice spells in there, although a lot of them tend to be slightly more powerful or slightly less powerful variants of some of the spells in the Player's Handbook. But at the end of the day, it's still an awesome book to have. You can find more spells in The Complete Warrior and The Complete Divine, and the latter book contains some updated spells from the book on Clerics and Paladins, entitled "Defenders of the Faith". You might want to pick both up, just so you have access to some of the spells which didn't make the cut in the 3.5 revision (and "The Complete" books are all primarily 3.5 revisions to the existing classbooks). It also has some spells from the book on Rangers, Druids and Barbarians, entitled "Masters of the Wild", including a hotly-debated spell called Miasma. I haven't read The Complete Divine version of it yet, but I understand that one of the changes is that the spell was placed at a higher level; I don't know if they otherwise altered it, but I can already tell I'm likely to keep wanting to use the 3.0 version from Masters of the Wild in my games. So for arcane casters and divine casters (the primary casting classes of Cleric, Druid, Wizard and Sorceror, although the Bard might be thrown in there as well), your best bet would be to pick up the following books: Tome & Blood Masters of the Wild Magic of Faerun The Complete Warrior The Complete Divine This should give you plenty of spells to play around with. If you're willing to go into the third-party d20 publishers' works, you should also look at the Book of Hallowed Might, Relics & Rituals, the Ultimate Arcane Spellbook, Ultimate Divine Spells, The Book of Eldritch Might (and its various sequels), etc. There are a lot of third-party magic resources out there, but you get a bit dicier with the quality and level of playtesting they underwent than if you went with one of the official WotC products. Hope this has helped!
Galahad the Pure 05-29-04, 05:10 PM	I can't speak for the FR or Complete Divine content, but I am familiar with Complete Warrior and the 3.0 splatbooks. Complete Warrior gave us 8 new spells. If you're buying it for magic, you'll be disappointed. The Minis Handbook takes a lot of flack online, but I largely liked the new spells. There are a lot of new low-level spells for wizards and clerics which are kind of fun, and that might be something you want to pursue if you get tired of shooting off magic missiles all the time. Not to mention better spellcasting options for the paladins and rangers. Too bad the book isn't so great overall. As for the 3.0 splats, spells range from broken to pointless, with a few interesting ones. Masters of the Wild leans more towards the high end on the power curve, since it gave us among other things miasma. There's a lot of debate over that spell, and some have called it a save-or-die spell that doesn't offer a save. I'm not interested in seeing this thread plunge into a miasma debate, but you do need to think critically when looking at this and other spells to see if they fit in your game. Defenders of the Faith was a lot of interesting spells, but nothing that I was ever interested in using in a game. Tome and Blood was also pretty pointless, with the exception of the twinkerific spell hide life. Some of the better spells were included in the 3.5 PHB. I liked the spells in Song and Silence, just because they gave the sucky 3.0 bards just a little more options. I haven't looked at it since, and I can't really give a great assessment of it without putting it in the context of the 3.5 bard list. For what it's worth, though, the spells in song and silence weren't terribly popular in the online community. That's about all there is. I don't own the draconomicon or the Book of Exalted Deeds, but there's some interesting stuff in there. Just use caution with the Book of Exalted Deeds because it's a pandora's box with all its munchtacular content.
Frodo Lives 05-29-04, 07:04 PM	I am also a stickler for game balance, I hate having things introduced, wether it's a feat, PrC, or spell, that will upset the game. I personally find that in the slightly older splatbooks (Tome and Blood, Defenders of the Faith, etc)and a lot of the stuff in FRCS and PgtFR are horribly broken. There are a ton of spells in those books that would automatically go on my spell list. And not because they are "cool". ;) Complete Warrior is actually pretty good with introducing new things that are balanced, and while there are one or two that I find overpowered, I find most of it's stuff workable. I'm hoping that the other "Complete *" will be the same way. I wouldn't go out and buy a ton of the older stuff, but if you have it use some of it on a trial basis, and make decisions on a case to case basis.