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Complete Divine

Complete Divine

List Price: $29.95
Your Price: $19.77
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Add a star if you don't have Defenders of the Faith...
Review: ...because this isn't much more than a toned-down rehash. Virtually all the useful prestige classes from Defenders of the Faith were severely weakened for this book (they needed tweaking, but nothing so drastic) and there's very little new material of note. There is a good amount of information on the deities of Oerth, for players and DMs new to Greyhawk, but virtually all of it can be found elsewhere.

What really hurts the book is the terrible editing. There are numberous typos, references to "page XX" without the "XX" filled in, and, most glaringly, a lack of any sort of index! Complete Warrior was good, even if you had the earlier books, but this book I can only recommend to players who really want to have divine prestige classes in their campaign but lack access to Defenders of the Faith or Dragon magazine.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: My opinion
Review: I didn't buy the soft cover books, So this is creat for me. My cleric advanced enough(10th) that I thought I should improve its spell capability. The only thing that bugs me is that it asumes you are in greyhawk for all the Gods referenced. Maybe I'm odd but if you are publishing books that are not realm specific you shouldn't be so "god" specific.
If you intend on continuing in the 3.5 world and you play a cleric I'd buy it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Love the Supplements, buy it
Review: I like this supplment alot. Very well written, good, people should buy it. You will not regret your purchase.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A new level of cleric
Review: I realise that many peole here have collected every DnD supplement since they were able to put it on their christmas list. I haven't. I played first edition and 3.5 (with a large absence due to college career choices).
When asked what super power I wanted most, I thought healing would be super cool. The traditional cleric, although beign able to heal, was a nothing character who walked around with a club like an ape. A spell caster with limited and unfocased abliities, except for healing... which I guess is fine. The complete divine is absolutely necessary for anyone wishing to play a cleric class. With the expanded domains I've seen from this text I've seen convincing clerics of evil, druid/clerics (without the multiclassing.. just take a peak), clerics of retribution, clerics of psyc/telepathy.. just wild. This may have saved the class from absolutely being uninteresting. Wizards, druids, sorcerors.. all have new spells over the last couple of years to make them more interesting. Clerics started to be uninteresting. Play a cleric with the new spells and domains in this book and you may have a great time.
Also don't forget to look at the feat list in this book... want to turn your rebuke undead into maximizing your healing or smiting... oh yes you can. Finially want to heal your friends and be evil.. you can. Want to be a spontaneous summoner with the powers of the elements to match your druid ally for a campaign to overthrow the lord or whatever who is making undead tree ents, have at it. Do you need more turning because your DM is doing an all out cleric campaign.. you can. You can acutally run an interesting campaign with all clerics and not have undead. Just too fun.

Difficulty with some of the mistakes isn't so bad, but it can take a few minutes with the DM to establish better boundaries.. but that's not been that difficult. A revision fixing some of the mistakes would be nice...

As noticed this reviewer plays clerics most and not many of the other divine in this book. For clerics this book is a necessity... for others, ask those who play the class (some druid reviewers didn't like this book). I've played with it for the last few months and still have it open pretty often because I'm evil this month or whatever (also rec. the book of vile darkness if your are playing an evil cleric or batteling one IMO, the book of undead is only ok for characters.. nice monsters). Anyone who wants to raise an army out of "friends" that are being slautered while covering someone in boils and rendering them useless while you drain their friends... have at it. The makings of some fantastic good and some deliciously evil players.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: imperfect, but extremely handy
Review: so far i'm impressed with the "complete" series. complete warrior was underrated. this new one has a broader selection of feats and magic items (called relics here, some are pretty badass). some of the prestige classes i always thought were broken like the Templar have barely been changed. i really like the Black Flame Zealot and the Pelor only prestige class. it almost makes me want to play a game in godforsaken greyhawk. hey i said ALMOST!
overall this book sets out to do what it promises, and delivers. i would have liked to see more content for the price, but its easy enough to buy it discounted or used from amazon. its a good DM resource if nothing else.
B+

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: imperfect, but extremely handy
Review: so far i'm impressed with the "complete" series. complete warrior was underrated. this new one has a broader selection of feats and magic items (called relics here, some are pretty badass). some of the prestige classes i always thought were broken like the Templar have barely been changed. i really like the Black Flame Zealot and the Pelor only prestige class. it almost makes me want to play a game in godforsaken greyhawk. hey i said ALMOST!
overall this book sets out to do what it promises, and delivers. i would have liked to see more content for the price, but its easy enough to buy it discounted or used from amazon. its a good DM resource if nothing else.
B+

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Bring on the God Squad!
Review: The Complete Divine is a must-have for anyone who enjoys playing a cleric, paladin, or their divine counterparts (druids, blackguards, etc.) -- and is eminently recommended for anyone "stuck" playing a "Party Medic" who wants to jazz things up a bit.

THE GOOD: The new core classes are excellent. Of particular interest is the Favored Soul core class, which is the clerical equivalent of the sorcerer (and an updated version of the "Evangelist" class concept that first appeared in Dragon Magazine some months ago). Many important 3.5 revisions of prestige classes that first appeared in other sourcebooks can be found herein (from sources such as: "Defenders of the Faith," "Masters of the Wild," "Faiths & Pantheons," and even Dragon Magazine). If those aren't enough, there are several new entries as well, fitting a dizzying variety of character concept molds. To help with this, the book designers even organized a list including each class in terms of the strengths they service (good or bad characters, strong spellcasters, strong physical combat characters, etc.). Feats abound for every divine class. With several new or revised Wild feats, druids are given myriad new options that more than make up for the lack of prestige classes available to them (which better supplements the strengths of playing the druid class than prestige classes can to begin with, anyway). New and revised Divine feats round out cleric- and paladin-based characters, and there is a decent collection of General and Metamagic feats available as well. Particularly impressive is the introduction of the concept of relics -- items that require an element of sacrifice from those that wield them (usually a divine spell slot of a given level, worship of a particular deity, or both) but which grant more bang for the player's buck than "standard" items. An expanded overview of character death explores options and expectations one might be curious about should that dreaded natural "1" come up on your saving throw.

THE BAD: Frankly, there are more prestige classes than you will ever use -- even if you play divine spellcasters of all faiths and persuasions from now until Armageddon -- and for all that, as others have noted, Druids get the shaft in terms of prestige classes anyway. Besides the section on relics, only a few crummy new staff concepts appear in the Magic Items section. General information is included on a multitude of deities -- making selecting a god for your character to worship a less confining task -- but only for the core world of Greyhawk. The table of monster deities detailing "What worships Whom" is interesting, but don't look for any detailed information beyond the table itself because you won't find anything. A brief overview of church organizations and theocracies is given, but it's no more (if not less) detailed than the information originally presented in the old "Defenders of the Faith" splatbook. Finally, this book caters primarily to players -- not DMs. DM's are best-served if they're running an NPC-heavy game and are looking for options with which to pit the players against "unique" opponents.

Overall, be sure you buy the book because you enjoy having options in your game (and lots of them). You're almost certain to impress your fellow gamers when you whip out a new power they've never seen before, and you'll definitely keep your DM and fellow players on their toes the next time they face one of your "run of the mill" clerics.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Lingering potential
Review: The Complete Divine is necessary for my druid character, but only for the spells, sadly. I can't use any of the prestige classes - for blighter, you need to be an ex-druid; geomancer, have some sorcerer/wizard in you; Stormlord, an obsession with lightning. The wild feats are very nice to have around, but a lot of them you have to wait for and sometimes aren't the best choices. Magic items are alright, too, but nothing as grand as Masters of the Wild. Deities don't help out druids very much, either. The druid spells were the gem of the Complete Divine for me - 65 new or renovated spells. You can -always- do with more spells, especially considering the druid's iffy ones in the 3.5 PHB.

I was disappointed about the shoddy editing, as everyone has said. The editors apparently forgot to decide some spells' levels, lengths, and even use... It's a little distracting, but when your main focus is the huge spell list, you're not that concerned until something goes a little awry and then you've got your DM (Dungeon Master) to decide what he'd like best.

I appreciated the surplus of druid images, though! I like seeing the generic druid all around the Complete Divine, but I did notice a lack of other images... the generic ranger hasn't shown up yet in any book, and the cleric is mysteriously missing most of the time. Hm.

However, a good book, it just depends on what you play and what you're looking for. So read these reviews and gather what's there and what's not.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Possible the worst book in 3.5e
Review: The editing in this book is terrible. I can stomach an occasional grammatical error, especially in a large work, but Complete Divine shows an egregious disregard for quality. I can't read a few pages without finding either grammatical errors, rules errors, or text that just does not flow. Much of the book's text appears to be a careless cut and paste job from 3.0e., such that skills, feats, or rules in 3.0e are referenced (exotic weapon: kukri), instead of the updated versions in 3.5e. Many of the spells are unbalanced (miasma), and the PrCs range from bland and mediocre (sacred exorcist) to useless (shining blade, entropomancer). I don't think WoTC has learned yet that even single caster level is a high price to pay for a PrC's abilities.

I did like that some of the common PrCs from 3.0 were updated (contemplative), and a few of the feats were interesting additions to D&D. The artwork is pleasant, overall. It's a shame that a lack of competent editing tears down an otherwise interesting work. Complete Divine is one of the few WoTC products I regret purchasing.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Where's the Druid?
Review: This book is alright, and adds several useful prestige classes geared toward clerics, as well as some moderately useful feats and content, but the other divine spellcaster, the druid, is almost completely neglected. I mean, the Complete Warrior book gives the druid more useful prestige classes than this book (Nature's Warrior and Warshaper). Where are the interesting prestige classes from the Masters of the Wild like Verdant Lord, Animal Lord, Shifter, and Tamer of Beasts? The druid is my favorite class and they get almost nothing out of this supposedly "Complete" Divine book. Even many of the prestige classes geared toward clerics are only moderately useful to completely unplayable.


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