Player's Option: Skills & Powers (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Rulebook)

Rating:
Summary: Interesting idea that fell way short
Review: I bought this book, thinking it would help my character creation and turn out some amazing and fun characters. Unfortunately, the character point system is confusing, and unimaginative. You may, if you'd like to, buy these character points! The psionicist section is the only part of the book that interests me. It is a vast improvement from the complete psionicist handbook (although you'll have to buy that is you want all of the powers and devotions). If there are psionicists in your group but you didn't like the psionic handbook, get this book. Otherwise, don't bother.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent companion to the AD&D line
Review: I love Skills and Powers!
The best thing about this book is the freedom it finally gives AD&D players. For years many of us have grumbled about not having choices. Well, we need not grumble anymore. This book lets us choose the unique abilites of our characters. While we can't completely break free of the character class, we won't have to use kits to make our characters individuals.
If you're sick of playing Bob the Barbarian, this is the book for you!

Rating:
Summary: Awsome for costomizing characters
Review: i run a semi serious campaign. we have alot of fun expessially with the diff types of races. Nobody ever knew the diff attributes of elves. An elf is a elf is a elf. Now there are High elves, wood elves, drowl, and even aquatic. thanx

Rating:
Summary: Good, but some times, unbalanced
Review: I'm "young" in the AD&D games, but this book gives the players a whole varity of options, helping the advancement of the character in the first levels, when it tends to be a very vunerable beeing. The problem is that anyone can take advantage from this rules to make himself a supercharacter, and you know, supercharacters=boring game for the rest of the people.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book!!!
Review: I've been playing D&D and AD&D for two decades now and I have to say that this is probably the best book ever written to suppliment the AD&D core rule books. It gives you the freedom and guidance to expand your games to unimaginable heights and detail unheard of before the publishing of this work. With it's companion guides for Combat and Spells this book has totally and forever changed the way that I look at the game and my roleplaying experiences in general. BRAVO!!!

Rating:
Summary: Your either Love this, or you hate it
Review: Seems like you either LOVE this book, or you HATE it. It is one of the few supplements that has anything on Psionics, which is rather nice since I am a Psionicist in in a Greyhawk (not Dark Sun) campaign. However, no matter what your view on the book, you have to be careful not to allow super characters. Also, you might want to take a look at Player's Option: Combat and Tactics.

Rating:
Summary: What a funny little book
Review: This book gives some interesting rules variations, but not all of them make sense. There are point-based character creation rules, which allow characters to pick and choose the abilities for their race and class. It also presents the newer edition of the Psionicist class also published in the Dark Sun game. But there are a number of flaws with the new systems.

For example, you can shift the focus of your attributes. Using the rules in this book, you can create a fighter who can comfortably (without encumbrance penalties) carry something several times heavier than he could ever lift.

For another thing, the Psionicist presented in the end of the book is totally incompatible with the point-based creation system in the beginning. I feel that if TSR were giving us a new way to play the game, they should have made all the new material fit together.

The book also presents a new way to learn and improve non-weapon proficiencies. But this new system makes starting characters almost totally helpless. Starting proficiency rolls are now more likely to be 8 or 9 for a character's best abilities. "Character Points" are awarded over the course of the campaign, but a player must devote them almost entirely to proficiencies if he wants to become as competent as characters were under the old system.

It was fun to make up characters in this new system, but playing those characters is another matter. Like most AD&D supplements, I'm sure future books will ignore these rules completely. So, unless you or your DM feel like doing a lot of adapting of future supplements, this book won't be very useful.

Rating:
Summary: A powerful addition to AD&D rules
Review: This book seems to be a great help in Character genarations as well as helping a DM have a wealth of information at his or her fingertips. The only drawback of making the "too powerful" characters can easily be avoided by a good DM or just by asking the group if they want to lay down some rules to avoid such characters.

Rating:
Summary: A powerful addition to AD&D rules
Review: This book seems to be a great help in Character genarations as well as helping a DM have a wealth of information at his or her fingertips. The only drawback of making the "too powerful" characters can easily be avoided by a good DM or just by asking the group if they want to lay down some rules to avoid such characters.

Rating:
Summary: Customizing Characters and Exciting New Rules! Get It!
Review: This is one of the best AD&D books ever created because now you can choose what Abilities you want priority with The new Sub-Abilities Rules. In this book we also have a new System, The Character Point's (CP's). With The CP's we can buy Racial and Classial Abilities. For a example, a Wizard spending 15 CP's can use Armor, and the unspend CP's can be used in Weapon and Non-Weapon Proficiency and much more. If you want more realistic and Exciting for your Campangain This is The Perfect Book for you, GET IT!