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Summary: Adds Depth
Review: "Experts" adds a lot of depth to the adventuring that happens between the hacking, slashing, fireballs, and dice-rolling. The tables and rules in this book make it quick and easy to have a town or outpost populated with folk who are NOT cookie-cutter "services" for the adventurers with every town and sage/blacksmith/guide/whatever exactly alike. There is also a lengthy list of fully prepared non-player characters for the DM who has a game tonight and no time to prepare. Well thought out and valuable content for the money.
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Summary: Great tool for creating realistic campaign settings...
Review: "Experts" is the perfect reference tool for GMs to ease the burden of populating their campaigns with a wide variety of skilled NPCs. Whether you need a quickly-generated gemcutter or a fully fleshed-out musician, "Experts" provides the tools you need to create unique and individual NPCs. One of the hardest things for a gamemaster to do is to manage to create and fill the roles of all of the various NPCs that players will encounter in the course of a game. GMs often find themselves falling into the pattern of creating either "cookie-cutter" NPCs (i.e. every blacksmith in every village has the same skills, etc.), or creating the "uber-NPC" - an NPC that the players resort to for everything they need. Obviously, this detracts from the believability of the game that the GM strives to create and the players rely on for their enjoyment of the game. "Experts" is the best tool I have found for the D20 system to help both experienced and novice GMs from falling into these pitfalls.
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Summary: Awesome!
Review: ...- what a great book! It's packed with useful information. There are a slew of Expert class characters described in this book, including Armorers, Artificers, Blacksmiths, Jewlers, Shipwrights, Taxidermists, Courtesans, Engineers, Physicians, Alchemists, Archaeologists, Sages, Brewers, Merchants, Sailers, Slavers, and more. There are also a couple new Prestige Classes, Feats, tons of skills (at least a hundred), and some new magic items and Expert-type NPCs. As a long-time DM this is exactly the type of information I've been looking for. My player's like it too, one of them is planning on multi-classing his Rogue as an Expert to provide a cover.
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Summary: A great resource for gamers
Review: A bunch of Expert class characters, new skills, new magic items, and other stuff that a DM will find useful--and a lot of the ideas translate over to other (non-D&D) role-playing settings. All in all, a great resource.
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Summary: A great World filling reference
Review: A great reference for filling out my campaign world. Gives you enough details that you can just grab interesting characters, and the rules and flexability to creat every inhabitant of every town.
Rating:
Summary: A great World filling reference
Review: A great reference for filling out my campaign world. Gives you enough details that you can just grab interesting characters, and the rules and flexability to creat every inhabitant of every town.
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Summary: A valuable resource for any game
Review: An amazing book full of detailed information to enable any campaign to flush itself out with characters from all walks of life. Good for building specialize background characters to make the game run smoother, give a quest to further the plot, or even to allow Player Characters something to make them more unique this book has is all. More Feats and Skills to have players make or arrange to have made just about anything they can think of. From the simple tradesman to a citywide guild, you can create what you need for your campaign. New Items, ready made characters, DC tables to guide tasks for the Trades and Professions, as well as more than twenty five expert classes. Defiantly worth keeping in your library of books.
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Summary: Putting the 'Roleplaying' back into 3E
Review: Experts is a key asset for DMs interested in extracting the _roleplaying_ from 3rd Ed.Once key NPCs are 'fleshed out' as bonafide skilled individuals, it only follows that they have personality, unique goals, and complex motivations. This book is a wonderful tool towards the goal of creating 'three dimensional' NPCs by covering that first step (clearly defined skill sets). From the players' perspective this book is also valuable, as multi-classing a core adventuring class with one of the Expert classes in this book ought to provide players with noteworthy roleplaying opportunities. What fighter wouldn't appreciate some knowledge of battle dressing? What spy can't use a cover identity? Why shouldn't wizards also be scholars of a less arcane sort? Experts, as presented here, also make ideal henchmen a la the Leadership feat. Designing a patently non-combatant henchman around a skill set that distinctly contrasts the skills of a typical adventuring party will vastly expand the types of adventures that are viable for typical parties.
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Summary: Experts Fills the Bill
Review: Experts is a very handy book for any DM looking to flesh out his world, especially in an urban setting. The text is firmly focused on its stated objective: defining and expanding on the use of experts. The rules are simple and straightforward, easily incorporated into a fantasy or medieval d20 campaign. The charts are clean and helpful, and the illustrations are very evocative.
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Summary: FLESH OUT YOUR 3E CAMPAIGN!
Review: Experts is one of a refreshing few resources that address the non-combat elements of the game. I enjoy a good romp through an ancient wizard's tower as much as the next guy, but where do you go afterward. Having a well-developed city populated with tradesmen and professionals lends to the overall game play immensely. Experts provides a wealth of information. There are new classes, skills, and feats as well as charts and building diagrams. This is a good addition to any DMs library.
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