Priest's Spell Compendium (Volume 3)

Rating:
Summary: Very useful
Review: AD&D always needed some sort of compendium to gather all the materials it has spawned over the years. It has been done to magical items, artifacts, wizard spells, and now - priest spells. I don't see how one can argue against this book: all the spells are copied correctly , with no changes from their original entries ( sources are quoted, as always). It's an incredible thing to own a gathering of spells where you can just flip through the pages and pick a spell instead of going through tons of useless materials. Also, the format is great - "Tome" look is very soulful. I also enjoyed the notacion and the font, both of which are very good and readable.

Rating:
Summary: A Must Have
Review: If you play priest, druids or shamans on a regular basis, you need this set of books. These volumes contain all of the speels from the Player's Handbook, Tome of Magic and Spells and Powers, as well as all of the differant campaign world books(Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravenloft, Birthright, etc) and from all of the Dragon magazines. 100s of spells that spanned many, many books all compiled into a nice managable collection.

Rating:
Summary: A Must Have
Review: If you play priest, druids or shamans on a regular basis, you need this set of books. These volumes contain all of the speels from the Player's Handbook, Tome of Magic and Spells and Powers, as well as all of the differant campaign world books(Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravenloft, Birthright, etc) and from all of the Dragon magazines. 100s of spells that spanned many, many books all compiled into a nice managable collection.

Rating:
Summary: A Must Have
Review: If you play priests, druids or shamans on a regular basis, you need this set of books. These volumes contain all of the speels from the Player's Handbook, Tome of Magic and Spells and Powers, as well as all of the differant campaign world books(Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravenloft, Birthright, etc) and from all of the Dragon magazines. 100s of spells that spanned many, many books all compiled into a nice managable collection.

Rating:
Summary: A Must Have
Review: If you play priests, druids or shamans on a regular basis, you need this set of books. These volumes contain all of the speels from the Player's Handbook, Tome of Magic and Spells and Powers, as well as all of the differant campaign world books(Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravenloft, Birthright, etc) and from all of the Dragon magazines. 100s of spells that spanned many, many books all compiled into a nice managable collection.

Rating:
Summary: You can't get many of these spells anywhere else
Review: Introduction

The Priest's Spell Compendium (PSC) is the fifth installment in a welcome trend: TSR/WOTC cleaning out their vaults, collating their material, and placing them in sourcebooks. The Wizard's Spell Compendium, now complete, was a valuable addition to any player or Dungeon Master's repertoire of spells. On the other hand, it was just gravy, and it suffered (like other collections) from typos, poor editing, and the general impression that someone cut and pasted the information together haphazardly.

In the case of specialty Priests, the division of spells that occurred as a result of the Second Edition rules caused some serious unbalances in the game. Some specialty Priests have spheres with few spells in them, like the Astral sphere. Because many spells can be "reversed," evil Priests have access to the Healing sphere and good Priests have access to the Necromantic sphere.

Then there's "powers" which are unique abilities bestowed upon Priests by their gods. The distinction between spells and powers is murky, as powers are not subject to the sphere categorizations. It was a convenient loophole for giving Priests spells that didn't fit with their deities profile.

With this confusing situation making a specialty Priest's life difficult, and the powers and spells largely up to the Dungeon Master's discretion, a sourcebook with more Priest spells is a welcome addition.

Content

Having a compilation of spells is useful for Druids and other specialty Priests who suffered from the sparse spheres they had to choose from. The PSC claims on page 3:
"Some description have been updated or combined with similar effects to eliminate duplication; some have been modified for better play, and a very few have been dropped entirely." It's a no-brainer: take all the out-of-print supplements, put them into a database, and hit the print button. Then, just edit the combined content. How hard could that be?

Very hard, unfortunately. The PSC, while better edited than its predecessors (and that's not saying much), is still plagued by what seems an unwillingness on the part of the editors to comb through the book line by line. Nowhere is this more obvious than on page 9:

"In the sword-and-sandal Dark Sun setting, priests are preservers or defilers, depending on whether or not their magic drains the living energy of that world." Priests are not preservers or defilers. That's a title applied to wizards in the Dark Sun setting. However, the above sentence is in the Wizard's Spell Compendium . Somebody replaced the word "Wizard" with "Priest" and pasted the introduction into the book. This did not bode well for the rest of the volume.

Organization

Some of the problems with PSC deal with the manner in which old spells were categorized into the new spheres created for Priests in the Second Edition rules. For example, why is age plant (p. 9) in the Time sphere, but not the Plant sphere? Several other spells are included in multiple spheres. The A section was a bit of a let down: the disturbingly slim Astral sphere only has a handful of spells in it, even with all the spells from other sources.

Icons accompany each spell to indicate, at a glance, what setting the spell fits best. This system is used inconsistently. Bad medicine (p. 52), a Shaman spell, is missing the savage setting icon.

There are several spells that create or summon monsters. The monster statistics are usually reproduced in the volume -- a necessity if the spells are to be of any use. Only some of the monsters' statistics appear, however: Create crypt thing (p. 154) has the created monster's statistics, but create death tyrant (p. 155) does not. If these statistics were removed intentionally to save space, it doesn't explain the large patches of blank space on pages 51 and 175.

Anyone remember the Dragon magazine article with six other Paladin classes, each based on a unique alignment? The Paramander's spells ended up in the Wizard's Spell Compendium, but the priest spells for the other Paladin classes are strangely excluded from this volume.

And then there's the inclusion of the coalstone's statistics without the actual spell to create it (p. 126). Why bother?

Artwork

The artwork consists of serviceable black and white pictures, mostly portraits. One evident change of WOTC's takeover of TSR is their unwillingness to recycle old artwork. This may seem like a minor quibble, but it's a sore point with a lot of TSR products. Yes, I can recognize reused artwork from the Pick A Path/Which Way Adventure books! Thankfully, the artwork always applies to a spell on the same page.

Conclusion

With the Third Edition of Dungeons and Dragons on its way, it's possible that editing this volume wasn't the top priority. Indeed, it may be that instead of providing a quality product, TSR's goal is to recycle all out-of-print material and then release them in electronic format at a much lower price.

The Priest's Spell Compendium selling point is obvious: you can't get many of these spells anywhere else. For players of specialty priests, it's a valuable addition to their library. Unfortunately, TSR just doesn't put enough effort into editing and organizing the spells to justify its high price tag for anyone else.

Rating:
Summary: tsr does it again
Review: The Priest Spell Compendium is an on going project of TSR to print all the priest spells in one set, that is probably the best idea I have heard in a while. While the concept is sound, the way the Compendium is spoon-fed to the public is not. The Compendium, when they are all in print, will be the definative source, but until the spell by level chart is printed in the back of the third volume. Volume One and Two have little use unless you can memorize all the spells names and levels. This is an ambitious task and it will pay off for TSR. I know I'm getting all three!

Rating:
Summary: A Must Have
Review: These books are invaluable. The spells are alphabetical rather than by effect(as with the Encyclopedia Magica) and are given effective descriptions. Two minor complaints: quest & war spells were thrown into the final volume. While I can seee the quest spells, I think the war spells should have been included in the main. The other problem is more serious and prevents 5 stars. The index catalogs spells by sphere - but only spells the authors thought should be listed; instead of using a special notation for non-standard spells, they put them in their own index! For those who like to allow all spells, regardless of setting (through creative renaming), this is something of a hindrance. Otherwise an incredible resource.

Rating:
Summary: Perfect opening book for the series
Review: Volume one of the Priest's Spell Compendium series starts them off with a bang. Information is easily accessible (following the same format as the Wizard's Spell Compendium series). It looks like the next three volumes won't disappoint, either.

Both Compendium series should have included some additional spells "just for fun," but I can't fault TSR or the editors -- this is, after all, a compendium.