Compedium books

[Ramza00]

Well currently we have the Spell Compendium,

the Magic Compendium just shiped,

soon we will have a Rules Compendium (if they are holding back on errata just to publish it here *shake fists*),

we may get a Feat Compendium if Magic Compendium sells well according to WOTC.

so what do you think of the Compendium books so far?
Do you like the idea of the Compendium books?
What future Compendium books do you want?

[Nebulious]

I don't own it personally, but a few of my friends have the SC and I think it's an excellent resource if you really like the compendium's suject matter. One friend is a wizard fanatic, so the book saves him lots of money when normally he might buy a suppliment fior the spells and a feat or two.

My biggest problem with SC is the poor editing. Many spells require guesswork to figure out missing statistics and a handful can't be used at all since there is not enough information. As for balance, most of the spells are fine, though a very few are outright.

I would definately consider a compendium if there was closer attention to detail and fewer errors. Hopefully, the magic item volume will deliver.

[Bears With Lasers]

Just a note: the Rules Compendium will indeed have errata, and Wizards is actually sending it in its current form to a few people from the CharOp boards for "beta testing" and feedback for R&D. The Logic Ninja, who used to be popular on these boards, is one of the people who's going to take a look, find errors, make suggestions, et cetera.

[Dhavaer]

I liked the Spell Compendium. None of the others has really interested me so far, though.

[Ramza00]

Just a note: the Rules Compendium will indeed have errata, and Wizards is actually sending it in its current form to a few people from the CharOp boards for "beta testing" and feedback for R&D. The Logic Ninja, who used to be popular on these boards, is one of the people who's going to take a look, find errors, make suggestions, et cetera.

Got a link for this info. Not that I disbelieve you, but if its getting CharOp tested well that will relieve some of my huge anger about them forcing you to buy errata. Rules compedium may be one of those books, you just suck up your anger, get 5 people to agree to contribute 6 dollars and get it as a group book.

[Bears With Lasers]

Got a link for this info. Not that I disbelieve you, but if its getting CharOp tested well that will relieve some of my huge anger about them forcing you to buy errata. Rules compedium may be one of those books, you just suck up your anger, get 5 people to agree to contribute 6 dollars and get it as a group book.

I heard it from TLN himself; he's Fear the Kittens on AIM, you can IM him.

[Jack Mann]

Got the word from him as well. I'm rather happy, myself.

[Ramza00]

I heard it from TLN himself; he's Fear the Kittens on AIM, you can IM him.

I don't need to bother him on his personal time, I just figured there was a link on one of the boards or enworld or something. Thanks

[JaronK]

*cough*

JaronK

[Flawless]

What happend to TLN anyway? I liked his batman guide and than I saw he was banned... just wondering.

[Shhalahr Windrider]

I'm getting quite annoyed with this, "must buy the new book to get the errata" WotC has been peddlin' lately. It's particularly bad when you play Living Greyhawk. I sunk a sizeable portion of my money into the Complete series. But since Living Greyhawk has to keep everything standardized, everything uses the most up-to-date errata, which means all those spells from Complete Divine/Arcane/Adventurer I was planning using... Well, I gotta use the versions now appearing in Spell Compendium. Sure, most of them haven't changed much. But then, of course, there's briar web, whose Spell Compendium version hardly bears any resemblance to the version in Complete Divine. Unless I plunk down $40 for Spell Compendium, I'm not gonna have any idea which spells are right for a particular situation.

It's not such a big deal in home games, when you can use whatever version you just happen to have available... assuming your Players don't have contradicting versions themselves. Then that just leads to confusion, too. But that kind of confusion will be easier to resolve in the long run, I suppose.

Still, it really steams me.

Why is errata no longer freely available? (Last free errata update: MM3, last June)

[Deus Mortus]

I personally like the spell compendium, though I'm currently putting all the data of my books in an access database, so I'm not sure if I'll buy any other Compendium books.

[pestilenceawaits]

I like the idea of compendiums but the thing that drives me crazy is it seems like as soon as the compendium comes out it is obsolete because newer books have been released. For second edition I dropped a bunch of money on the computer compendiums and thought finally they have it all in one place then next thing I know 3.0 is out I fear the same will happen with these new collections.

[Deus Mortus]

You know what I would buy, an online compendium that they keep updated, hell I'd pay extra for it.

[Ramza00]

What happend to TLN anyway? I liked his batman guide and than I saw he was banned... just wondering.

He got banned due to the moderators not liking his passive aggressive attacks, and his non passive attacks like calling people stupid. (He didn't call the original poster stupid in a thread, but when it became a fighter/wizard debate he call the other person stupid if they did poor argumentation)

[Bears With Lasers]

Yeah, accumulation of 3 warnings.

[Fax Celestis]

These things happen. Move on.

[Druid]

I haven't picked up the spell compendium, but i like the idea. A lot of the time when I'm picking feats or spells I think about how much easier it would be if i didn't have to go through 10+ looking for something good.

[Shhalahr Windrider]

I haven't picked up the spell compendium, but i like the idea. A lot of the time when I'm picking feats or spells I think about how much easier it would be if i didn't have to go through 10+ looking for something good.

Thing is, unlike second edition's Encyclopedia Magica and Wizard's/Priest's Spell Compendium, I haven't seen anything meant to imply that these new compendia are meant to include all the spells, items, etc. from currently available WotC material. There are plenty of previously spells that didn't make it into Spell Compendium. And, as has been mentioned, you've already got a score of new material that has been released since the Spell Compendium came out. These items are far from comprehensive.

The benefits of these books are in the smattering of brand new material and the privelege of getting updated versions of a handful of the older ones.

[Fax Celestis]

The reason for the lack of comprehensive compendiums is that different authors are writing for the D&D lisence, and they don't all work together on every project.

[Nebulious]

It's not such a big deal in home games, when you can use whatever version you just happen to have available... assuming your Players don't have contradicting versions themselves. Then that just leads to confusion, too. But that kind of confusion will be easier to resolve in the long run, I suppose.

That happened to my playgroup not too long ago. My players were in a desert fighting against an enemy army. Part of the encounter included a lutenent kobold wizard riding a wyvern. The party wizard pulled out a wingbind and suddenly that enemy became useless. I thought that the spell could be countered in a certain way, but then I saw that different (and much stronger version) was in the SC.

Stuff happens, but I would appreciate it if Wizards was much more explicit about rule changes.

[StickMan]

I own Spell Compendium and am most likly going to buy the magic item one on BN.com for the $22 member price I saw it at the store and it looked very good. I am hoping for a Class Compendium and a Feat Compendium. I will go nuts if they come out with a rules compendium that is just wrong. I mean I should not have to pay for ettra, put it no the fliping web site.

[Kantolin]

'We screwed up, so we're charging you for it to maintain balance?'

Weird. I do like the Spell Compendium, although as more books come up it's getting increasingly less awesome as spells are (once again) no longer all in the same place. Now it's 'Casting a spell... is it from the SC? The PHB2?'

Oh, well. I'm not going to get a rules compendium, but I'm fairly sure a couple of my collector-friends will. We'll see how that pans out.

[RaistlinandPals]

Magic Compendium you say? I don't remember seeing that one...but I do have spell compendium and our group loves it to the point that we have several copies.

[Piccamo]

Magic Compendium you say? I don't remember seeing that one...but I do have spell compendium and our group loves it to the point that we have several copies.

Magic Item Compendium.

[LotharBot]

I lurb the spell compendium. It's a really good expansion for all of your caster classes, including ranger/paladin/blackguard types (swift-action melee spells like quick haste and lion's charge are made of win.)

I do make my players run spells by me before they take them, so I can eliminate obvious cheese.

[SpiderBrigade]

Spell Compendium is awesome. Magic Item Compendium sounds pretty cool, esp. since I've heard some rumors about updating/revising some classic items that could use a boost.

I have kind of a problem with the Rules Compendium. If I have, say, Tome of Battle, Magic of Incarnum, and Tome of Magic, do I really need them to re-explain the mechanics from those books? If I don't have those books, having the rules won't help much without the classes, spells, etc from the books. And if it's just a hardback errata bundle...that makes me upset.

[TheOOB]

As time goes on I get more and more disenchanted with the new D&D supplements. Sure occasional something like expanded psionics handbook or tome of battle comes along that expands the system and makes it go in new and exciting directions, but most supplements seem to be primarly about adding more classes, spells, feats, and items and such. It's not that those things are cool, it's that they just don't do anything new, and they do nothing to fix the multitude of problums in D&D.

If a player in my group has the spell compendium I'd use it, but I'm not spending $40 on something full of spells, something for which I have no trouble homebreweing myself should I need.

[CASTLEMIKE]

Bought it used. Pretty disappointing IMO because it's an Incomplete Spell Compendium with way to many pictures in the source book taking up space that could have been better utilized. It could have been priced as a standard source book without all the pictures. It many ways it was already obsolete when it was printed with all the new source picture books being rolled out each month.

Lots of little things instead of all the pictures:

Printing a comprehensive class spell lists to include the PHB spells in a spell list.

No Commerce, Feast, Life, Meditation, Necromancer, Passion or Shadow Domains (ECS Non PHB Domains).

Since it is a spell compendium maybe devoting a few pages to original spell research or expanding on some of the differences between arcane and divine spells instead of quite a few more pictures that add little or nothing to spells.

Maybe throw in a few suggested suggested typical known spell builds for the average FS or Sorcer and the typical PC and NPC Generalist Wizard.


It's primary benefit is it can save you some source book spell searching.