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K, just a simple poll to get some opinions on the NEW complete series. This means disregard Complete Arcane, Adventurer, Divine, and Warrior completely.

What do you all think of the new complete series coming out? Mage, Psionic, Scoundrel, Champion, etc?

IMO, so not needed. The first complete series was bad enough, now they're expanding on the already confusing rules for a newbie to DND. I just got complete scoundrel and am reading about "Skill Tricks" and "Masks." Not gonna go in depth, but basically it's a new ruleset for the soul purpose of options, cross referencing galore, and min/maxing.

Mage was bad enough, they took the already crappy class "Warlock" and made it worse by giving it 3 very poorly done prestige classes that could all have been accomplished by a warlock with feats and skills and the book of exalted deeds.

the complete scoundrel product description states-

You know how to take advantage of every situation, and you don’t mind getting your hands dirty.

Which should be reworded as-
You know how to take advantage of every situation, and you don’t mind making players wait for hours while you look up new rules on how to screw the DM's adventure.

3.5 used to be good to me, what with a few simple revisions to make the game a little more coherent. Now they're just sucking the soul and fun out of the game and making it one giant math problem.

So my vote is a 1, these are a waste of money and time that could have been used to fire skip williams, at least when a Monte Cook splatbook comes out for Swords and Sorcery, it's guarenteed worth reading even if some things aren't that great. IMO, they should just try to get Gygax back, his thought capacity for some of his adventure ideas could be put to incredible use at Wizards.

I actually enjoy the complete books. While I agree that much of what they offer can be done through the use of other books, the complete series no only compiles these choices, but it also expands them. In addition, I enjoy the fact that it allows for more personality and difference in characters. Before the complete series I felt that characters were far too cookie cutter of each other.

The biggest issue I see with the series, though, is that some of the options of glaringly unbalanced. For instance, the skill tricks. As cool as they are, some of them are too powerful, while others are seemingly pointless.

A large amount of what was in the complete books was already made up by my own group. (This is the first complete series here). And I have to say, the prestige classes and base classes that my group made up were better made than most of what I found in the complete series. A few really cool classes that simply weren't there before are good though. I liked the warlock and the pale master, for instance. But the class my group made: the necro-tyrant was better balanced and more intelligently designed than the pale master. I mean, a bonus to fort saves VS things you get immunity to LATER in the prestige class? That was a very dumb thing.

Overall I was unimpressed, but most people do not have time or other people to help them make their own stuff, so I vote that they are useful (4), but not a godsend. They have some good stuff, but the annoyance comes when you spend three or more hours digging through the crap to get to it.

HisDivineShadow wrote:A large amount of what was in the complete books was already made up by my own group. (This is the first complete series here). And I have to say, the prestige classes and base classes that my group made up were better made than most of what I found in the complete series. A few really cool classes that simply weren't there before are good though. I liked the warlock and the pale master, for instance. But the class my group made: the necro-tyrant was better balanced and more intelligently designed than the pale master. I mean, a bonus to fort saves VS things you get immunity to LATER in the prestige class? That was a very dumb thing.

Overall I was unimpressed, but most people do not have time or other people to help them make their own stuff, so I vote that they are useful (4), but not a godsend. They have some good stuff, but the annoyance comes when you spend three or more hours digging through the crap to get to it.

Now I'm confused, is that about the second tier of complete books? The first ones (Arcane, Adventurer, Divine, Warrior) I have a completely different opinion on, but the second tier books (Mage, Scoundrel, Warrior). Or is your rating just an overall opinion for all the books?

I think the first series of "Complete anything" sucks, due to the "let's-screw-all-the-classes-over-and-give-them-10-times-more-power"-potential. It's a pointless addon, and you can pretty much come up with that stuff yourself.

What's next, Complete Arch Mage?

I give it 1.