Customer Reviews

Complete Divine: A Player's Guide to Divine Magic for all Classes (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying Supplement)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

...because this isn't much more than a toned-down rehash. Virtually all the useful prestige classes from Defenders of the Faith were severely weakened for this book (they needed tweaking, but nothing so drastic) and there's very little new material of note. There is a good amount of information on the deities of Oerth, for players and DMs new to Greyhawk, but virtually all of it can be found elsewhere.

What really hurts the book is the terrible editing. There are numberous typos, references to "page XX" without the "XX" filled in, and, most glaringly, a lack of any sort of index! Complete Warrior was good, even if you had the earlier books, but this book I can only recommend to players who really want to have divine prestige classes in their campaign but lack access to Defenders of the Faith or Dragon magazine.

This pretty well nails the coffin closed for "Defenders of the Faith". It updates most Prestige classes, and adds some very interesting new ones.

It also has some very cool new feats, and some stuff on the Greyhawk pantheon- which is good if you're in that world. Personally, I think that was a waste for most of us.

I'd give it a 4 if it wasn't for some terrible editing. There are some glaring typos, two of which woudl be game-breakers if read "as is". One spell (Miasma) that forgot to add the fact there is a Fort save. And a feat(Divine Metamagic) that if read wrong (yes, you do have to have the metamagic feat first, and yes it only works on divine spells) makes it a killer.

There is no excuse for this slipshod editing on a hardcover book of this price.

The Complete Divine is a must-have for anyone who enjoys playing a cleric, paladin, or their divine counterparts (druids, blackguards, etc.) -- and is eminently recommended for anyone "stuck" playing a "Party Medic" who wants to jazz things up a bit.

THE GOOD: The new core classes are excellent. Of particular interest is the Favored Soul core class, which is the clerical equivalent of the sorcerer (and an updated version of the "Evangelist" class concept that first appeared in Dragon Magazine some months ago). Many important 3.5 revisions of prestige classes that first appeared in other sourcebooks can be found herein (from sources such as: "Defenders of the Faith," "Masters of the Wild," "Faiths & Pantheons," and even Dragon Magazine). If those aren't enough, there are several new entries as well, fitting a dizzying variety of character concept molds. To help with this, the book designers even organized a list including each class in terms of the strengths they service (good or bad characters, strong spellcasters, strong physical combat characters, etc.). Feats abound for every divine class. With several new or revised Wild feats, druids are given myriad new options that more than make up for the lack of prestige classes available to them (which better supplements the strengths of playing the druid class than prestige classes can to begin with, anyway). New and revised Divine feats round out cleric- and paladin-based characters, and there is a decent collection of General and Metamagic feats available as well. Particularly impressive is the introduction of the concept of relics -- items that require an element of sacrifice from those that wield them (usually a divine spell slot of a given level, worship of a particular deity, or both) but which grant more bang for the player's buck than "standard" items. An expanded overview of character death explores options and expectations one might be curious about should that dreaded natural "1" come up on your saving throw.

THE BAD: Frankly, there are more prestige classes than you will ever use -- even if you play divine spellcasters of all faiths and persuasions from now until Armageddon -- and for all that, as others have noted, Druids get the shaft in terms of prestige classes anyway. Besides the section on relics, only a few crummy new staff concepts appear in the Magic Items section. General information is included on a multitude of deities -- making selecting a god for your character to worship a less confining task -- but only for the core world of Greyhawk. The table of monster deities detailing "What worships Whom" is interesting, but don't look for any detailed information beyond the table itself because you won't find anything. A brief overview of church organizations and theocracies is given, but it's no more (if not less) detailed than the information originally presented in the old "Defenders of the Faith" splatbook. Finally, this book caters primarily to players -- not DMs. DM's are best-served if they're running an NPC-heavy game and are looking for options with which to pit the players against "unique" opponents.

Overall, be sure you buy the book because you enjoy having options in your game (and lots of them). You're almost certain to impress your fellow gamers when you whip out a new power they've never seen before, and you'll definitely keep your DM and fellow players on their toes the next time they face one of your "run of the mill" clerics.

I almost didn't purchase this volume of the complete series, but the completist in me egged me on. I have to say, I am SO glad I did.

The classes presented I found to be so-so. I'm not a big divine player, so my opinion is essentially skewed. I'll leave the review of this section to the experts.

The Prestige classes here are what makes this book shine! The Evangelist is an awesome progression for any cleric. I am absolutely in love with the idea of a Pious Templar as an NPC in my campaign. There are so many great PRCs here, I could go on and on.

The feats, what can I say, wow! Every dedicated healer should pick the Augment Healing feat, such a great feat! You also have to love the Spontaneous healer feat as well, giving you the ability to drop your spells for healing spells. Again, I can't say more about the feats presented here!

The only sections I took issue with is the Dieties section and the Divine World sections. For those of you running Greyhawk or another published CS this section is indespensible, however a lot of people create their own pantheons and religions. Personally, I can see how the sections could be useful, I just didn't find a use for them in my homebrew campaign setting.

And the spells, wow! I love the options given to the Druid, a oft overlooked class in my opinion. The extra domains really impress me as well. They really feel natural in their design, I was quite impressed.

All in all I would say this is a must have for any DND library.

While this book contains some old stuff from D&D 3.0 (updated to 3.5), it also contains a lot of new material. The writers collected a lot of info on the divine spellcasters from various older books and magazines (a good thing, as you do not have to carry tons of books and magazines), and also added new ideas and value to the game. Some ideas in the book (like most PrCs) are "only for role players", and power gamers will find several things not really useful. Also, the chapter on the divine world and the role of religion in the D&D world is mainly useful for beginners (but experienced gamers may also find some ideas useful).

Me, the guy who always plays the Cleric or Druid, could'nt resist picking this up, and it was worth every penny. Lets start with the beginning:
Chapter 1: The Favored Soul, Shunenja, and Spirit Shaman are all nice classes, though I have to say I'll probably only use the first two.
Chapter 2: The best part in my opinion. Every type of Divine spellcaster, and even some arcane spellcasters, has a class here. My favorites are the Pious Templar, Warpriest, and Divine Oracle (all of whitch I hope to become in the near future.)
Chapter 3: The feats of the book where pretty good, but I'll probably only use the Wild Feats, whitch are mostly variations of other feats but with lower prequisites. Some of the divine feats are nice, like Spontanous Healer/Inflict/summoner if your not the apropriate class. It also touched on Epic Divine spellcasters, but all the feats are in Epic Level Handbook, but its good if you dont have it.
Chapter 4: The Relics where a nice touch to the book, and although its exclusive to the core Greyhawk Dieties, It gave me some ideas on artifacts for my campiagn, as well as that of my freind's.
Chapter 5: This chapter gives a synopsis of the rites, worship, temples, and practices of the core dieties as well as others, such as Bahamut and Lolth. It also touches on other minor Greyhawk deities.
Chapter 6: The descriptions of what happens after death in these chapters has silenced many arguements at the table, such as intricacy's in resurrection and how the soul reacts to its new home (Or old one if its devoted to Fharlangh or Vecna. It also decribes Religous groups, though I knew all this stuff already.
Chapter 7: 5 pages of new domains. If thats not enough, alot of new Cleric and Druid spells (As well as Blackguard, Ranger, And Paladin, though not nearly as many of them.) Though most are useful to me, some I'll never even think of agian. But there are always those spells that seem as if they were put there to address something that almost never comes up.
I really like this book, and it ranks with my top 5 most used/useful supplements at #4. I use this book whenever I'm making a Cleric, Paladin, Blackguard, or Druid. If your Pcs don't play these (Why?) then consider other books, but otherwise, read this and I believe you'll find something to make you Diviner's the best they can be.

So I've been back and forth over this book a few times, especially once I first got it. After running through it a few times, I've come to the conclusion that it is pretty useful for bits and pieces of using Divine casters in a game.

Like most recent Wizards releases, there's lots of extra material I as a player and DM never use and don't intend on. Too many Prestige Classes. Lots of them take hits on caster level for a special ability, or some other small bonus. It can be hard enough to run a caster at its full casting level without having taking an extra hit.

Most of the magic items or artifacts presented aren't necessarily worth putting into a game without a specific use. Some of the regular magic items I wouldn't want to put in as part of a hoard or random treasure. They seem to be either overpowering or underwhelming, no happy medium.

Feats were hit or miss, either you can use them in a multitude of places and on many types of characters or they were built for one class only. However some of the one class only feats, such as the Wild feats are helpful if you run a Druid to some of the middle and higher levels. Augment Healing was a nice one, a little help with healing every time doesn't hurt, until you get Heal and works good after run out of Heals too.

When it came to classes, I've only be able to get into the Favored Soul. It's a pretty straight forward Divine casting sorcerer. It's got a d8 hit die, weapon focus as a bonus feat and 3 energy resistances through its level progression. Spell casting is a little slow compared to the Cleric, but you can do pretty well with bonus spells per day and a good Charisma score. Plus, you don't prepare spells, you spontaneous cast, which comes in handy when you need to act fast as both the healer and small tank. Wings in the late levels seem more as add on flavor text than as an actual perk of the class.

It's not a bad book overall, I'd suggest snagging a copy if Divine casters are your thing, or borrowing one to make you next cleric, druid or other divine caster.

The editing in this book is terrible. I can stomach an occasional grammatical error, especially in a large work, but Complete Divine shows an egregious disregard for quality. I can't read a few pages without finding either grammatical errors, rules errors, or text that just does not flow. Much of the book's text appears to be a careless cut and paste job from 3.0e., such that skills, feats, or rules in 3.0e are referenced (exotic weapon: kukri), instead of the updated versions in 3.5e. Many of the spells are unbalanced (miasma), and the PrCs range from bland and mediocre (sacred exorcist) to useless (shining blade, entropomancer). I don't think WoTC has learned yet that even single caster level is a high price to pay for a PrC's abilities.

I did like that some of the common PrCs from 3.0 were updated (contemplative), and a few of the feats were interesting additions to D&D. The artwork is pleasant, overall. It's a shame that a lack of competent editing tears down an otherwise interesting work. Complete Divine is one of the few WoTC products I regret purchasing.

I realise that many peole here have collected every DnD supplement since they were able to put it on their christmas list. I haven't. I played first edition and 3.5 (with a large absence due to college career choices).
When asked what super power I wanted most, I thought healing would be super cool. The traditional cleric, although beign able to heal, was a nothing character who walked around with a club like an ape. A spell caster with limited and unfocased abliities, except for healing... which I guess is fine. The complete divine is absolutely necessary for anyone wishing to play a cleric class. With the expanded domains I've seen from this text I've seen convincing clerics of evil, druid/clerics (without the multiclassing.. just take a peak), clerics of retribution, clerics of psyc/telepathy.. just wild. This may have saved the class from absolutely being uninteresting. Wizards, druids, sorcerors.. all have new spells over the last couple of years to make them more interesting. Clerics started to be uninteresting. Play a cleric with the new spells and domains in this book and you may have a great time.
Also don't forget to look at the feat list in this book... want to turn your rebuke undead into maximizing your healing or smiting... oh yes you can. Finially want to heal your friends and be evil.. you can. Want to be a spontaneous summoner with the powers of the elements to match your druid ally for a campaign to overthrow the lord or whatever who is making undead tree ents, have at it. Do you need more turning because your DM is doing an all out cleric campaign.. you can. You can acutally run an interesting campaign with all clerics and not have undead. Just too fun.

Difficulty with some of the mistakes isn't so bad, but it can take a few minutes with the DM to establish better boundaries.. but that's not been that difficult. A revision fixing some of the mistakes would be nice...

As noticed this reviewer plays clerics most and not many of the other divine in this book. For clerics this book is a necessity... for others, ask those who play the class (some druid reviewers didn't like this book). I've played with it for the last few months and still have it open pretty often because I'm evil this month or whatever (also rec. the book of vile darkness if your are playing an evil cleric or batteling one IMO, the book of undead is only ok for characters.. nice monsters). Anyone who wants to raise an army out of "friends" that are being slautered while covering someone in boils and rendering them useless while you drain their friends... have at it. The makings of some fantastic good and some deliciously evil players.

so far i'm impressed with the "complete" series. complete warrior was underrated. this new one has a broader selection of feats and magic items (called relics here, some are pretty badass). some of the prestige classes i always thought were broken like the Templar have barely been changed. i really like the Black Flame Zealot and the Pelor only prestige class. it almost makes me want to play a game in godforsaken greyhawk. hey i said ALMOST!
overall this book sets out to do what it promises, and delivers. i would have liked to see more content for the price, but its easy enough to buy it discounted or used from amazon. its a good DM resource if nothing else.
B+