Rating: Summary: Get it right the first time, will ya?! Review: It's a great book, with a whole lot of great content.Even if you don't want to use D20 Revised, this would still be a good buy. Whether you're playing a Fighter, Cleric, or Sorcerer (that's not an all-inclusive list), it has something for you. Lots of prestige classes to add diversity, and plenty to add specialization as well. It includes some new spells, Epic feats, and other useful info. I just wish WotC would stop milking the product so much... just get it right the first time, and/or use eratta if it needs it, but don't make us waste hundreds of dollars on second rate books (compared to these new ones, that is). Forget business tactics! Also, it's cheaper than the other ones that are coming out (Unearthed Arcana, Complete Divine, etc...), so those are probably going to be extremely cool!
Rating: Summary: Think "Manual of Puissant Skill at Arms" Review: No, this book won't actually boost your character's Strength score and kick him/her up a level, but you'll feel like it did if you love playing warrior classes and start incorporating material from this supplement.
WHY IT ROCKS: The new core classes are neat and useful for more specialized warrior characters. The Samurai core class deserves special notice as a must-have for you Oriental Adventures fans, (and it improves markedly upon the "Master Samurai" prestige class concept originally introduced in "Sword & Fist"). For players that enjoy playing paladins and rangers but could care less about those classes' spellcasting ability, the book introduces variant concepts for those classes that replace spellcasting with other benefits. The prestige classes are myriad and marvelous. Some simply provide excellent 3.5 revisions of classes that originally appeared in the various "original" splatbooks ("Defenders of the Faith," "Masters of the Wild," "Sword & Fist," and "Tome & Blood" -- though I noticed no "Song & Silence" reprints), as well as the Forgotten Realms campaign setting and Dragon Magazine, but there are also several brand spankin' new ones to boot. Of the new prestige classes, it is important to note that most are short (3- or 5-level) classes that cover very specialized and interesting concepts, such as fighting with small weapons, natural weapons or no weapons, and even some that incorporate spellcasting classes and creatures with spell-like abilities into martial combat. The feats are great and well-thought out. While revisions of a number of familiar feats appear (mostly from S&F and MoW), a horde of new ones abound that even non-warriors will want to take advantage of. Introduced herein are the new Tactical feats that grant combat feat oriented characters a trio each of new fighting tricks to add to the bag, and the Weapon Style feats that make certain weapon preferences and mixes even more useful and deadly in the hands of martially skilled characters. Excellent rules for conceptual combat types such as jousts, gladiatorial matches, archery contests, and more are presented to spice up the role- AND roll-playing side of things. Finally, rounding out the back of the book is a modest section on warrior organizations, new war deity concepts, notes on epic warrior class progression, and a few new weapon types just to keep DMs and players alike on their toes.
WHY IT DOESN'T: Like the other "Complete" books in the series, there are more prestige classes than you can shake a stick at, and, unless you want to experiment with a tremendous variety of warrior concepts, you'll likely never use a number of them. Most of the 3.5 revisions of existing classes (especially those from "Sword & Fist") are important if you don't trust your own judgment in making your own conversions, but are not altogether necessary (though a few change quite dramatically). The Weapon Style feats cater mostly to two-weapon fighters and little else. Finally, the extremely short list of new spells (though somewhat understandably so), the crummy "guardian familiars" concept following them, and the distinctly short and unremarkable Magic Items section all beg the question, "Why'd they even bother printing those pages?"
In summary, the book is a must-have for today's warrior on the go. The wide array of concepts and options available in these pages should appeal strongly to both the role-player and the power-gamer in you, and the base classes and feats introduced are more useful in building concept characters -- of almost any class -- than most other "new" classes and feats appearing in other sourcebooks. The book is also a must-have for the DM who wants to juice up the campaign -- because, let's face it, the most common monsters and NPCs encountered are basically warrior-types. Believe me, you'll savor listening to the satisfying sound of players' jaws hitting the table when the "puny" goblin champion puts the smackdown on them with some moves they've never seen before!
Rating: Summary: Brown Books Revisited Review: Older fans of AD&D may remember the infamous 'Brown Books' (or 'Red Books'; depending on one's perception). If DMs permitted them, these books destroyed perfectly good campaigns. They contained a truck-load of new rules, many of which were contradictory to the rules found in the core books. They introduced needless complexity, and allowed players to quote 'rules' busy DMs did not have time to consider properly. Here again, we have a slew of new prestige classes, core classes and game mechanics (things affecting quantitative game outcomes). In my reading, the only useful information was related to interesting and 'special' character backgrounds and such; for example, we get to see a brief history of the samurai. However, most people should be able to dig up interesting character ideas for free by visiting the history section of their local library, and tailoring the existing warrior classes to fit by taking appropriate skills. There is certainly no need for this book, whose introduction sane DMs will find proves worse than useless. As for the more fantastic classes and feats, how about using some imagination? I would give this rubbish no stars if I could.
Rating: Summary: All in one Review: Reading these reviews prompted me to run to the local bookshop, peruse and then buy this book. I was thinking it would be great for WOTC to put out a book with all the basic feats, skills, classes and prestige classes in an all in one book for quick reference. This book almost does that. It takes from most of the original supplements as well as a few new flavors. I bought it for this exact reason. A quick reference book for the players. Now if they would just come out with a book of skills and feats....
Rating: Summary: very good compilation for 3.5 material Review: the biggest complaint i'm hearing about this book is that its a compilation of all the prestige classes from the secondary 3e books. well yes it is, but then again i didn't buy all of them. a lot of the prestige classes are highly specialized and will rarely be used but add flavor if you wish (i.e. warshaper and mindspy). i'm all about new prestige classes and feats. that and some of the weapon writeups are interesting to say the least. i hope they follow through and have a complete mage, rogue, and priest. i find it to be one of the resources i use the most in running my own game, after the core books, psionics handbook, and magic and races of faerun.
Rating: Summary: Great for the Price... Review: The book was a bit short for my taste...especially for a hardcover. But...for ten bucks it was a great deal and at that price anyone who plays 3.0 or 3.5 should pick this volume up...
Rating: Summary: A noticeable improvement, but... Review: The Complete series is WotC's new line of D&D 3.5 splatbooks (books devoted to a certain class or group). However, this line is more for concept rather than class; the Complete Warrior is not just for fighters and monks, since they have new combat options for everyone (even new spells). There are three new core classes; the Hexblade, which looks okay but really does stink (its powers are too short in duration to be useful), the Samurai, who's more of a two-weapon intimidating fighter, and the Swashbuckler, who's a bouncy light fighter. There are also a LOT of prestige classes, many of which are reprints from previous books or Dragon magazines. Unfortunately, the reprints, while sometimes necessary, are really kind of bland, and often lower the power level from previous incarnations. The new prestige classes, though, are usually pretty cool. There are also a great many new and revised feats, and the same holds true; the revised feats pale in comparison to their previous versions, while the new feats are pretty good. Especially welcome are the Tactical feats, which allow the characters to set up situations and gain certain bonuses. For example, Elusive Target (my favorite) lets you avoid bonus damage from Power Attack from your dodge target, while Giantbane lets you emulate a certain elven archer's feats of climbing onto larger opponents. There are also weapon style feats, which seem to be mostly to encourage suboptimal weapon use. Neat in theory, but the return on investment isn't that great. There are a few magic items, though not nearly as many weapon/armor types as one would think. There are also a few spells, and a few new domains for the included warrior-only pantheon. Advice is given for running a warrior-heavy campaign, and also on using warfare and a mercenary setting. Finally, more rules for epic play are included, including new and revised epic feats. I'm not sorry I bought this. However, I'm not nearly as excited about it as I thought I would be. It's nice, and useful, but not very cool. I'd be tempted to give it three stars, but the tactical feats (again, the coolest thing in here) make me raise it to four stars.
Rating: Summary: Very good but not great Review: This book gives us 3.5 compliant PrCs, base classes, feats and so much more. It is definately worth the bucks for any 3.5 player or DM. I knwo that many of us will not like the Oriental classes provided- but once you can just accpt that the names are bad but the class is good, you'll be ok! <g> Finally- a Swashbuckler base class! And many great feats. Buy it!
Rating: Summary: For the less subtle . . . Review: This book is a fine resource, especially for players who have just become familar with DnD but not quite ready to tackle the use of magic. A great deal of the information in this book deals specifically with the martial side of DnD, and provides interesting ways not only to develop a martial character but also to run a martial campaign.
There are a few glitches. Prestige classes like the Frenzied Berserker are relatively useless when one can multi-class as a barbarian, especially considering that battle frenzy does not stack with rage inasmuch as it is not rage but something wholly different.
Some of their newer, more martial deities need a little work or, perhaps, more coverage.
Rating: Summary: disapointed Review: this book is at best for serious collectors and new players.if you've played D&D for any lenght of time you'll recognize some of the material from previous supplements and whats left just is'nt good enough to warrant the cash,if you can get a lend of it of a friend or elsewhere then do so as it has some mildly interesting bits and pieces but nothing ground breaking
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