Well, I dragged my butt too long and now I’m backlogged with three (relatively) new books for D&D from WoTC and Paizo. Where are the others? Good question. It appears that the other publishers have really petered out lately. I can’t really think of anything I really wanted from anyone other than the Game Mechanics (the best publishers for d20 Modern materials) or the long overdue 2320 AD.
I’ll start with Hellspike Prison, the second in WoTC’s Fantastic Locations series of adventures (heavy on the color maps and plastic minis with a plot thinner than Dungeon Siege). This one is supposed to be a challenge for a quartet of 9th-level characters but I still feel that six is more appropriate (three warriors, one wizard, one priest and one expert or some cross-classing to get the right combination). The module emphasizes battle scenarios for the miniatures line so a party with only one warrior in it will be slaughtered quickly in my experience. The premise (or lack of) to this adventure is more of a drawn-out encounter or sidequest the DM can spring on the players: the population of an entire village has disappeared or slaughtered. All the clues point toward the missing being sent to a nearby haunted castle which is oddly surrounded with lava in an area lacking volcanoes. HP contains all the essentials to set up the fights and locations of the various castle denizens. The DM needs to provide the deeper plot elements outside any basic motivations of the main NPCs; he has to do all the work, defeating the purpose of buying a pre-made adventure. And once again, Wizards lists minis from discontinued sets and a couple from one not even shipping yet to flesh out the battles.
Spell Compendium is a more promising sourcebook that’s really a revision and consolidation from previous sources. Personally, I would’ve preferred the spells being printed on 3 x 5 cards as they did in Second Edition and another publisher did with Third. The cards are easier to handle (the casters just have the cards with their character sheets), they cut down on having to thumb through the PHB in the middle of a fight and it prevents the bored player from researching instead of not paying attention (I have a house rule saying all books are closed until needed). Despite what the book is not, Compendium is a welcome title putting the spells from the Complete series into one volume plus those from numerous other supplements, freebies from wizards.com and Dragon articles. About 20% of the material originated from Third Edition books like Savage Species, Magic of Faerun and Manual of the Planes. Page 285 of the book gives the complete list of sources but it doesn’t mean every spell from them is included (I haven’t had the time to comb over it for such a level of detail).
Dragon Compendium: Volume I is Paizo’s first entry of supplemental D&D material outside of the magazines they took over from Wizards. Paizo is hoping this is successful enough to do at least several more which may focus on certain topics instead of the potpourri this one is. Dragon has been around for 30 years so there was a vault of material the publishers could choose from and update to the 3.5 rules. Sadly it’s rather hit or miss for my tastes. The book is broken into chapters covering Races, Classes, Prestige Classes, Feats, Magic Items, Monsters, Appendices and an interesting section called Classics. The latter needs a bit more explanation. Classics is an updated section covering old favorites on tesseracts (Baba Yaga’s hut is a painful reminder) and early Forgotten Realms. The Appendices contain an updated version of the critical damage tables and a pronunciation guide for all the confusing monster names from the core rule books. Those definitely sold me on the book even though the other chapters were terribly extraneous. For example, what good is the Deathmaster class when the Necromancer from Libris Mortis is a more effective foe?
The Bottom Line:
- Hellspike Prison is only worth buying if you’re a huge fan of colorful maps or you need the scenario for the minis game. Otherwise, this is too pricey for $15. There was a more interesting and better written adventure with a similar premise in Dungeon several years ago.
- Spell Compendium is also a tad steep at $40, especially if you own the hardback sourcebooks the originals came from yet its convenience factor soothes the pain for my copy being defective (it’s in the process of being exchanged with Wizards’ customer service). It would’ve been perfect if it incorporated the spells from PHB, had them in order by level instead of alphabetical and included 3.5 versions of spells from The Book of Vile Darkness. In lieu the book’s shortcomings, it’s still worth purchasing.
- Dragon Compendium: Volume I is a great trip down memory lane for me and some other gamers. Its $40 price might have many skip that journey instead. I would agree with most because this is packed with what D&D doesn’t currently need; more of that so called crunch nonsense I read on enworld.org. My campaign is awash in too many optional prestige classes we’ll never use, monsters that will never be encountered and races too boring to bother with. This year I plan on culling my collection of books in order to try to focus on the essentials. The publishers have no such luxury, making more supplemental material is how they stay in business even if D&D is drowning in too many options as the two rulebooks demonstrate.