Any Good feats or classes in Dragon Compendium?

[silverwolfer]

I am thinking of going to buy it, as it is on sale for 7 bucks, but wondering if the feats or selection in the book would add much to my gaming table.

[Larkas]

I am thinking of going to buy it, as it is on sale for 7 bucks, but wondering if the feats or selection in the book would add much to my gaming table.

7 bucks?!? Do they have a spare one? :smalleek:

Anyways, from the top of my head: Sha'ir is an awesome primary caster - powerful and full of flavor. Savant is a nice skill-monkey class, though it is somewhat outclassed by the Factotum. Battle Dancer is a nice take on the Monk concept, and more powerful to boot. I've heard some nice things about the Mountebank, but I've never played as one. Force Missile Mage is an awesome blaster PrC - but it is a blaster, so take from that what you may. Tibbit and Diopsid are somewhat nice races. The Bloodline feats are very nice, though some people will say they are overpowered (and I won't say I strongly disagree). Fell Energy Spell metamagic feat is used quite some times in TO. I've used Shorten Grip in a few lower-op melee types, and it was very nice. Vault can also be useful for Dragoon-like builds.

Aside from that, I REALLY like some of the monsters, like the Orange, Purple and Yellow dragons. Bottomline, it is a good buy. Just be sure to grab the errata at Paizo's site.

[Tokuhara]

Among my favorites:

Ring the Golden Bell - Ranged Unarmed Strike

Death Master - Great BBEG caster for the party to face off against. INT-based Necromancer with "Undead Leadership" cohort

[8wGremlin]

yes

Classes: Sha'ir
Races: Tibbit

[Psyren]

I would characterize Tibbit as "awesome" rather than "somewhat nice."

Dvati is perhaps the most interesting (and oddest) race ever printed.

From the feats section, very nice gems include those mentioned above, as well as Serenity and Kung-Fu Genius.

[mattie_p]

Also home of the Seelie Court Fey and Unseelie Fey templates (as well as some other templates of use to DMs)

EDIT: Dvati requires some DM rulings to use in 3.5.

[Xenogears]

A lot of it is underpowered, if flavorful, options but there are a few really good options and a handful of "who cares if it's weak it's so darn stylish." (like this silver band that you can throw to bind undead I found so appealing for some reason...).

[T.G. Oskar]

To say the very least, it's the home to the Serenity feat, which is often touted as one of the few ways to minimize Paladin MAD (by making all class abilities run with Wisdom, instead of Charisma with only spells running off Wisdom), and the Kung Fu Genius feat, which does the same for Monks (and is non-specific, unlike the Carmendine Monk feat from Champions of Valor).

The book also has some nice stuff to polearm users, such as Shorten Grip (which is a much better version of Short Grip from PHB II, allowing to strike with a pole at adjacent creatures at the cost of a -2 to attack rolls), Haft Strike (treat any polearm as a quarterstaff or two-bladed sword for purposes of TWF) and Spinning Defense (+1 dodge bonus to AC and you can deflect projectile weapons with your spear).

The book's feats are pretty balanced, actually: Unorthodox Flurry allows you to use more light weapons when flurrying, which can be sorta nice if used carefully (namely, with a weapon that allows applying your unarmed strike damage, such as a gauntlet), but otherwise it's not spectacular; Precise Strike sacrifices SA damage for bonuses to attack, though the attack must qualify for SA anyways (though it doesn't say anything about whether the creature must be vulnerable to SA damage, which may turn SA into an advantage). You can see that they're flavorful, yet still useful as they enable things that wouldn't work otherwise. It begs the question of why there are so few feats of this kind in 3.5 or PF...

I also love the armor suits presented there, even if they're pretty weak, just because of the lore: Humilianthir, Finaldeath, Hellshield... They're almost the armor equivalent of the Holy Avenger for the Paladin, but they're open for everyone, so they don't get that many benefits: one's great for mounted warriors because you get the same kind of armor as barding, the other's excellent against undead, the third against evil outsiders. However, I find the magic items there are more fluffy than decent, and in desperate need of a revision (the same kind of revision that many items in the MIC went, which I hold as a great book where to search for magic items).