The Gaming Den

Not exactly a book I hate, but every book from Spell Compendium onward, I hate just a little bit purely for the later statblock format. Whatever other sins or virtues the books may have, I hate them for having that useless layout.

Also I kind of think that monster books (Libris Mortis, Draconomicon, both Fiendish Codexes) should have compiled all monsters in their subject printed before the book, even core monsters. Sure it would have padded them, but it would have made them more useful, as well.

PhoneLobster wrote:Savage Species.

It claimed to be trying to do something difficult. Like say, something you would need a whole splat book and an edition transition to do.

I have way more respect for a book that attempts to do something difficult and fails miserably than I do for a book that attempts to do something simple and fails miserably.

Complete Warrior was such a big disappointment. The Samurai is a fighter that gets less feats, and they are picked for you? same for Swashbuckler. *shudder*
And also Lords of Madness or whatever the tentacool book is. Nothing useful at all in it. It is just one giant book of nothing. No good flavour, no good classes, no good feats, and the spells are worthless as well. and the monsters are boring.

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You don't like the Tsochar and Neogi?

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Don't forget Darkstalker, a requisite feat for the mid to high level Rogue.

There's also Ocular Spell one of the more degenerate metamagic tricks.

And while I wouldn't say it's good (and indeed, the requirements are fucked, due most likely to last-minute changing of the requirements for Craft Graft), the Prestige Class that lets you make extra grafts and turns your familiar into a bizarre monstrosity is kind of cool. If it were Full Caster and if the Familiar rules didn't blow, it'd be completely decent.

Complete Divine is the worst book from 3.5E D&D, though you could make a case for Complete Warrior. Psionics Handbook is the worst book from 3.0E, though you could make a strong case for Monsters of Faerun or Magic of Faerun.

It's pretty hard to pin down 4E D&D awfulness since they have a baseline of shitty. Do I condemn the 4E PHB for setting the bar so low, the Rules Compendium for being the most fucked-up cash crap, the 4E DMG2 for being an unintentional parody of the games' worst features...? Who knows.

Whaaaaaaat! Magic of Faerun? That book is packed full of broken crazy spells. Defend your position sir!

hogarth wrote:I have way more respect for a book that attempts to do something difficult

Except they didn't attempt it. They told their customers they were attempting it but the internal direction was "sabotage this product so it isn't usable for advertised purpose" and THAT is what they attempted, and they have openly stated as such (after publishing).

PhoneLobster wrote:

hogarth wrote:I have way more respect for a book that attempts to do something difficult

Except they didn't attempt it.

Attempt what? To me, it was clear they were attempting to create a balanced system for playing monsters from level 1 while not changing anything in the existing rules about level adjustments, etc. That's definitely a difficult (if not impossible) task.

I don't know what you think they were attempting to do.

Phonelobster may have the exact quotes but the writers have talked about how they assumed playing monsters would be broken, and that in creating rules for it they would accidentally create combos that were too powerful. As a solution to that problem they opted to design the entire system with the goal of making it fall far short of being level appropriate and to generally be a terribly underpowered choice. It is also worth noting that the power level they were trying to shoot under would have been that of a Fighter or Blaster Wizard anyway.

As a result the entire system is useless. Even if you "power-gamed" it you would still end up far below being level appropriate so no one has ever used it. It would be like making a Magic card set that you intentionally made terribly out of fear that someone somewhere would combo some of your cards into a useful deck.

Yeah, for Savage Species they deliberately set out to fail. And they succeeded (at failing). They didn't try to make something work, they just poisoned the game and caused reverberating damage that continued throughout future books and caused terrible things to sprout amongst the community.

I'd also nominate Skip Williams Hates Sorcerers, that one really shits me. I've become jaded to fighters not getting nice things so Complete Warrior didn't disappoint me, it was exactly what I expected. But a book all about primary Arcane Casters that gives Bards more than it gives Sorcerers and is basically "Wizards are better than you" (including that stupid spell that you cast once ever and are then immune to being killed) was something else entirely.

Those are the books that really took stuff I wanted to play (monstrous creatures and sorcerers respectively) and took a hammer to them. So on a subjective "What do you personally hate?" list, they're at the top of mine. The bland uselessness of It's Wet Outside and the overall stupid of Book of Exalted Furries just can't compare.

Vampire the Masquerade 2e.

I know its totally irrational. I like its rules. art, etc. But sadly it epitomized the "GM comes with his story to tell us" mode of play to our group, which I hate with a passion.

deanruel87 wrote:Phonelobster may have the exact quotes but the writers have talked about how they assumed playing monsters would be broken, and that in creating rules for it they would accidentally create combos that were too powerful. As a solution to that problem they opted to design the entire system with the goal of making it fall far short of being level appropriate and to generally be a terribly underpowered choice.

You know what...I was confused. I thought that level adjustments predated Savage Species and so it was stuck using them, but I was wrong. Mea culpa!

No, you were right. Level adjustment featured in Oriental Adventures and even the DMG. 3.X has just never had good rules for playing monsters.

Still, in OA it was just "X race is a bit better than most, so they start one level lower" (IIRC it was literally "you start with one level fewer", in the same way that becoming Necropolitan takes a level away but doesn't add LA, so you pretty much make the difference up soon enough). In the DMG it was a real quick-and-easy "Okay, X monster is worth Y levels, whatever". Some scrap notes, and you knew from the start that it was bullshit but also that nobody really cared and you should eyeball it yourself.

SS tried to make it official and carve it in and "prove" that a fair challenge for one minotaur with some slightly higher stats (and Feats selected by the player) is "six minotaurs" or whatever. It took "a half-drunk scrap of a very basic idea" and made it terrible. It also went with the idea of all creatures being like dragons in that they gradually grow into their role along a level progression instead of saying "If you want to be an ECL 6 thing and the game is third level, tough shit".

Prak_Anima wrote:No, you were right. Level adjustment featured in Oriental Adventures and even the DMG. 3.X has just never had good rules for playing monsters.

I was going to give hogarth's troll a low score because of how trite it is. But you got fooled, so 8/10 hogarth.

I remembered it being more complicated in OA, but apparently that was mostly because they explained it horrible.

Gehenna. All of the Time of Judgment nonsense, really, but Gehenna gives me a rage boner to this day.

hogarth wrote:You know what...I was confused. I thought that level adjustments...

Take the time to note that Savage Species was failed even for the bits that weren't intended as deliberate sabotage. The entire methodology was flawed.

But before they started that explicitly had the direction not to make monster characters playable, and aside from being lazy and using a stupid failed methodology (or indeed, three or so stupid failed methodologies) they proceeded on top of that to deliberately sabotage "the numbers" in those methodologies until even the dumb ass creators thought they were unusable.

The bait and switch intent of the whole thing makes it bad. And the simple fact is that whatever minimal chance the "ambitious" mission statement might have ever had of succeeding was squashed into nothing the moment they included sabotage on their to do list. I mean why even bother trying to fix anything and produce a workable underlying system if the direction all along was to sabotage it "at the last moment"?

Its hard to argue the difference between incompetence and laziness, but if I were writing under that direction I'd certainly half ass it right up to the sabotage bit.

D20 modern. Guns and Hit points just don't mix.

Urban Arcana d20. Mid levels and epic-level spellcasting just don't mix.