Customer Reviews

Races of Faerun (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.0 Fantasy Roleplaying, Forgotten Realms Setting)

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

 

 

Well, this book covers many races for Forgotten Realms. It also adds in a few interesting feats and a few items. It gives much greater depth to all the races already covered in FRCS. However, there is one problem here- if the race already had it's base stats covered in FRCS, only the extra "fluff" is here, none of the "crunch". This means you'll need both books, and note that Race of Faerun is 3.5 and FRCS is 3.0, so there's a little problem here. I'd have prefered a bit less fluff, and the basic race stats redone for all.

However, there are also quite a few interesting new races here, some which were only covered lightly in another supplement. For instance, there are complete rules for playing a Shade or a Wemic.

There is also a lot of background fluff on the various human "races'. This may thrill you or bore you- depending.

Anyway, if you play in the FR, at least one of your group should get this book.

Three years ago, Wizards of the Coast breathed life into the shriveled, wheezing husk that the Dungeons & Dragons game had become. With few exceptions, their experience with Magic: The Gathering and their other product lines has proven to be a key element in their design of this newest edition of the D&D game, and Races of Faerun is no exception.

This book is an accessory for use with the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (which was very thorough and in this reviewer's opinion a tough act to beat). As usual, the Wizards have outdone themselves with an organized layout, quality artwork, and, most importantly, useful, enjoyable content. This book discusses the history, motivations, societal structure, and character elements of the major races on Faerun (elves, dwarves, halfings, humans, half-elves, gnomes, and half-orces), as well as some of the rarer and more obscure races (planetouched beings such as fey'ir, for example).

The histories are richly details and well-written, making them readable and understandable for all levels of player. Perhaps most interestingly, the histories also shed some much-needed light on the origins of many of the until-now-obscure special abilities of many of the races (for example,a nd most prominently, the preternatural resistance of elves to sleep and charm spells).

For players interested in playing these races, the effective level adjustment system is an innovative way to balance powerful races. This system trades power for advancement speed, slowing a more powerful race's level progression in exchange for special abilities and advantages.

If I have one criticism, it is the quantity of race-specific feats included in the appendix of the book. While scads of new feats are always a welcomed addition for the sake of diversity (and I know the book is called RACES of Faerun), some of these feats are extremely specialized, to the point where I believe they simply could have been included as special racial abilities, or made more general to allow other races to take advantage of them with the proper prerequisite training.

Overall, an excellent book, an excellent buy, and one of the many reason for Wizard's success with the new D&D game.

Races of Faerun provides more background to some of the lesser known, but just as popular other races that populate the Dungeons and Dragons world of Faerun. For the more experienced players old friends such as the Winged Elves are finally brought up in the Third Edition rules. For the new player many more choices will be laid out before them to make thier character truly unique, and game masters across the world will be pulling thier hair out as players try to utilize as much as possible in making the game their own. Each of the 50 or so races are explored well, and in a fair amount of depth. The book explores region, equipment, religion, and even feelings toward some of the other races. The art is nice, and the game content is just first rate.
This is one sourcebook that EVERYONE can use, and not have to worry about learning too much information. The price is a bit steep for the half hearted player, but the book really is very nice, and worth the money you are going to shell out. I was just happy to see one of my favorite raves the Wemic included, but was a bit disappointed that the Saurials were dropped for "Lack of Interest". I was interested! I won't let that one decision override or cloud a glowing review of another excellent product put out by Wizards of the Coast.

i really liked this book. i think it expanded nicely on the basic races set up in the forgotten realms campaign setting. some of the new races i really liked, such as the Orogs and the Avariels that i remember from 2nd ed. speaking of which, they brought back probably my 2 favorite specialty classes from 2nd edition-blade singer and dwarven battlerager. granted bladesinger was in tome and blood but this version is much beefier. and some of the feats like high born drow bring the races back to their old glory. i really enjoyed all of the racial feats.
most of the magic items are weak, and i was hoping for new enhancements like were brought up in magic of faerun, but oh well. overall it does what you'd think it would, it gives a gajillion options for making non-human races more interesting.

Three years ago, Wizards of the Coast breathed life into the shriveled, wheezing husk that the Dungeons & Dragons game had become. With few exceptions, their experience with Magic: The Gathering and their other product lines has proven to be a key element in their design of this newest edition of the D&D game, and Races of Faerun is no exception.

This book is an accessory for use with the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (which was very thorough and in this reviewer's opinion a tough act to beat). As usual, the Wizards have outdone themselves with an organized layout, quality artwork, and, most importantly, useful, enjoyable content. This book discusses the history, motivations, societal structure, and character elements of the major races on Faerun (elves, dwarves, halfings, humans, half-elves, gnomes, and half-orces), as well as some of the rarer and more obscure races (planetouched beings such as fey'ir, for example).

The histories are richly details and well-written, making them readable and understandable for all levels of player. Perhaps most interestingly, the histories also shed some much-needed light on the origins of many of the until-now-obscure special abilities of many of the races (for example,a nd most prominently, the preternatural resistance of elves to sleep and charm spells).

For players interested in playing these races, the effective level adjustment system is an innovative way to balance powerful races. This system trades power for advancement speed, slowing a more powerful race's level progression in exchange for special abilities and advantages.

If I have one criticism, it is the quantity of race-specific feats included in the appendix of the book. While scads of new feats are always a welcomed addition for the sake of diversity (and I know the book is called RACES of Faerun), some of these feats are extremely specialized, to the point where I believe they simply could have been included as special racial abilities, or made more general to allow other races to take advantage of them with the proper prerequisite training.

Overall, an excellent book, an excellent buy, and one of the many reason for Wizard's success with the new D&D game.

This book is quite useful.
It expands on some races and reintroduces some old classics. like the Winged Elf, the water elf, the Wemic, and the centur.

However it also just copies the entries for dark elves and planetouched races basically straight from the Forgotten realms campaign settingbook.
They could have used the space a little better instead of repeating races that 97% of us have access to. (If you have an interest in this book then its pretty much fact that you already have the Forgotten Realms Campaign setting).

Some of the region feats are nice and the a couple of the prestige classes are going to appeal to my players so for that regard it was worth the purchase price.

Summing up it gathers all the races from the Realms campaign setting and adds in some new ones. Mixes in some new feats, some old ones tweaked and a few prestige classes.

It should be called SOME of the Races of Faerun. The book offers a great deal of information, however it leaves gaps here and there just so it can fill them through another volume. For the price tag of this book I feel it is a bit incomplete. It could contain a lot more info on a lot more races. If you're only looking for general information on the most prominent races of Faerun, this is for you. However it should not be considered THE source of info, as it is anything but complete and thorough.

This books contains volumes of information about a number of previously described races, a more thorough description of races briefly mentioned and outlines rather completely some races I wasn't expecting. It also has some new magic items, lots of new feats and a whole lot other stuff to add flavour to just about any campain, not just the ones in Faerun.

Of course, the Player's Handbook contained a lot of information as well, but in its initial incarnation, it was hampered by formatting that made it hard to find the information you needed. This pattern would repeat through several books; the format would be easy to read, with information that was less than useful or the format would be confusing, with excellent information. Here, we have a perfect synthesis.

My only quibble is that some of the feats and items seem a little powerful, but a creative DM can work around any of that.

This is the book I've been waiting for. As a great lover of all of the PC race books from 2nd edition, I have been waiting with baited breath for the 3rd edition version and now I have it. I'll say now I was impressed. It's very well written and put together, with in depth views of each subrace and their place in the grand scheme of the race in general, their social lives and the strictures of their societies as well as racial prestige classes, new feats based on race and lineage. It goes into detail about the different regions and nationalities of humans, the religions of each race and subrace, it's truly a credit to the writers. Bravo!

This is excellent work by WOTC and of course the writers Sean K. Reynolds, James Jacobs, Matt Forbeck. Wonderful details of all the different Dwarf,Elf,Orc's,Goblin.Gnomes..etc...etc races on Faerun. Lots of new feats, many of them specially designed for the different races. Prestige classes, monsters and much more. Here you can really build a character you never wanna take any chances with ingame. Thrilled to see that Humans from different regions of Faerun is described so good. In my opinion this is so far the best "expansion" from WOTC.