Complete Divine--Review

[Lago_AM3P]

Frank, I know it's really selfish and greedy to ask this, but could you pretty please post one of your most-excellent reviews of the Complete Divine, ala Unearthed Arcana or Complete Warrior?

Those are always a hoot and a half.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Frank's already done a review of Unearthed Arcana. You can find it HERE

-Desdan

[Lago_AM3P]

I know. I meant doing the Complete Divine review thing the same way UA was.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Ah, my bad. Misread.

-Desdan

[Username17]

Um... that'll take a while. Currently I'm living in South Lake Tahoe, in a small room in a horrible run-down hotel. It's more of a flop-house, and it's actually full of cut-throats and thieves. The place smells like a mixture of ciggarette butts and urinal cakes, and you have to wash your clothes every week even if you didn't wear them, because they smell bad just from being in the room.

It's seriously one of those places where you take the princess because people will never look for her there. Sounds and smells come through the wall like rain through a picnic basket and the only reason that there isn't violent crime right outside my door is that the people in adjacent rooms are just too broken down and dispririted to try.

So I haven't really brought much of my stuff up here. Partially because I don't want to expose anything I can't wash or throw away to the room, and partially because my window doesn't close all the way and I don't have any faith in anything especially valuable actually being in my room when I get back from class. And while washing a D&D book is entertaining, it's also the kind of fun you can really only have once per book.

My computer and D&D books are all the way in Santa Cruz, and it's modestly difficult for me to contact them telepathically. A Complete Divine full review will have to wait until I visit Ted and Lucy again, which should be in like 2 weeks.

-Username17

[User3]

Well, here is my take on the matter:

Complete divine is a joke. In the new-found tradition of 3.5, it nerfs or just unneccisarily changes the moderately powerful and cool (Holy liberator, etc), while leaving the truly broken stuff untouched or upgraded (Spikes, etc), and adding some broken material of its own (Divine metamagic, Relics--whatever happened to BoED relics?-- etc).
And then there are a few moderately interesting PrCs/abilities/etc, which are just weak enough that no one in their right mind would ever take them.

Again, like most of the other 3.5 suppliments (Excluding Eberron, which I don't have, Draconomicon, and BoED), the largest portion of it consists of un-updated reprints.

For a perfect example, look at the web enhancement: Dweomercheater of doom, depressingly nerfed MoS and Nightwhatever, and the odd (but fairly useless) lycanthro-cleric.



-catharz godsfoot

[fbmf]

[Great Fence Builder]
Thread split to at least keep it somewhat on topic. Well wishes for Frank (and it sounds like he could use them) have been moved here.

[/Great Fence Builder]

Game On,
fbmf

[Username17]

For a perfect example, look at the web enhancement: Dweomercheater of doom, depressingly nerfed MoS and Nightwhatever, and the odd (but fairly useless) lycanthro-cleric.

Fairly useless? that Lycanthropocleric is actually nonexistant - for all practicality you can't ever play one. Why? Because of the way Level Adjustment works in the 3.5 rules.

In order to take the class you have to be a fifth level Cleric with some feats you are rather unlikely to have. More importantly, you need to be an afflicted lycanthrope. Let's make this easy and assume that you are a Werewolf, since that's just about the easiest its going to get to qualify for this class.

So you were a fifth level character, which means that you have between 10,000 and 14,999 XP. Now you just gained two animal hit dice, and a Level Adjustment of +1, and a curse. The curse undermines your ability to wear heavy armor, but more importantly it changes your alignment periodically, so you have to take the class quickly if you do't want to lose all of your spellcasting abilties from an alignment change (and coincidentally lose your prereqs for the class).

But there's a problem. Now that you just gained +1 BAB and a curse, you count as three levels higher. But you haven't gained any XP, and the rest of the party is in pretty much the same situation it has always been (except that the cleric can't wear heav armor any more, and may have to make willpower saves before casting healing spells) - so the challenges you will be facing are still probably in the fifth level range. Now in order for you to gain a level, you'll need to pick up a total of 36,000 XP, which is more than twice as much as you've so far accumulated in your entire life - and you're now collecting XP at less than half the rate of the rest of your party members.

So by the time you pick up your first level of Lycanthropo-Cleric tomfoolery, you're party members are going to be 10th or 11th level - having dragged a cursed and useless 5th level Cleric behind them as a team mascot since level 5.

That class doesn't exist, actually taking it is beyond the capabilities of any character.

-Username17

[User3]

Well, its basically the kind of character where you say "and we all start at 11th level. I'm going to be a lycanthrope-cleric!" Everyone moans, since multiclass spellcasters suck, but its pretty unnoticable around when you get at least 4th to 7th level spells when the spell levels don't do any dramatic jumps in power. Once some people are getting 8th level spells and you are not, you start to cry.

[The_Hanged_Man]

For some reason, 3.5 doesn't like the somewhat arbitrary but useful "NPC-only" rules of classic D&D. IMO, they get around this by making some of the PrC's virtually unplayable, like the Forsaker and this monstrosity. As PC's, they are truly useless in a campaign. As NPC's, they can be cool for one encounter or so, and work pretty well. Maybe even as a recurring villain.

Not to give too much credit to the designers, analyzing everything from PC PoV doesn't show the full picture. I probably won't use it, but when I take my group back to Ravenloft (Bwa, ha, ha, ha), I'll consider throwing one of these into a werepack.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I'd like to use the Entropomancer. I really really would.

The problem is, my players would make fun of me for making a crappy villain, and not having it as a joke.

As cool as a cleric that can harness the very power of nothing is conceptually, I'd rather have the 8th and 9th level spells.

The divine feats are great, in my opinion. I have thrown evil clerics against my players repeatedly, adn there is simply no way for them to use their turning abilities, since none of my players are undead, or have undead companions, or whatever. So basically, I switch out useless turnings for more power for my evil clerics. For me as a DM, it's a win/win situation!

I wouldn't know what effect it has on PC clerics, the group's cleric switched out his turnings for smite evil and Aura of Courage. so I am unqualified as to what effect it has for players.

[Username17]

If you consider levels of Entropomancer to be "non-associated" (and I do), then for NPC Monstrous Clerics, the Entropomancer class can be considered to be an obscure loophole to give the big bad evil guy bonus hit points.

That is, so far, the only use I can think of for that class.

-Username17

[Draco_Argentum]

CD is just plain crap. I hated it more than CW. The only thing in CD I liked was the fluff text for the rainbow servant (or whatever its called), the mechanics for it suck hardcore.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Plus, the illustration for Rainbow Servant had really big boobs.

Although, I was talkign with Galahd Knight, and he seemed to think it was actually a man in women's clothing. Which totally impacted my enjoyment of ogling large, illustrateed knockers.

[Lago_AM3P]

Although, I was talkign with Galahd Knight, and he seemed to think it was actually a man in women's clothing. Which totally impacted my enjoyment of ogling large, illustrateed knockers.

LAGO TO TEH RESCUE

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/cd_ga ... r][br]Here you go. Happy ogling, you deviants.

BTW, the last person in that link is a halfling.

[Josh_Kablack]

I have been Teh Rescued, thanks Lago.

This of course begs the question of just how many book sales WotC loses to deviants/connesuiers like me by making their art galleries available online.

[RandomCasualty]

1089547682[/unixtime]]CD is just plain crap.

Agreed.