Player's Option: Skills & Powers (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Rulebook) [Hardcover]

Dale Donovan (Author), Doug Niles (Author), Jeff Easley (Illustrator)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 210 pages
• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast (July 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786901497
• ISBN-13: 978-0786901494
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 8.2 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #715,997 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Better than 2nd Edition, but could have been more., May 31, 2000

By 

Ross J. Cook - See all my reviews

This review is from: Player's Option: Skills & Powers (AD&D Fantasy Roleplaying Rulebook, 2154) (Paperback)

My gaming group owns two different copies of this book. One is a first printing and the other is a second printing, both in hardback. The second printing is more concise than the first, but there are still plenty of ambiguous paragraphs where you simply hand the book to a lawyer and ask for an interpretation. But it's still better than the first printing of the book, which we use under the short leg of the table. There are more errors, omissions, and conflicting passages than in the US tax code. Example: first printing does not give a limit to the number of points that can be gained from taking disadvantages. Second printing, if you read far enough, eventually says that the limit is 15 points. When this discrepency was found, half of our group had used one printing and the other half had used the other, and the differences in the characters created was fairly extreme.

Despite the problems, we still use Skills and Powers more than the Player's Handbook, mostly because of the ability to customize the characters with different abilities. One note however, when customizing wizards and clerics, I've found that you're better off using Spells and Powers as your primary source.

The updated psionics chapter was a nice touch, and I realize it was meant for Dark Sun more than anything else, but it would have been nice if they had updated to a system that was still mostly compatible with the Monstrous Compendium entries, as opposed to having to completely revamp a psionic creature so that it is consistent with our psionicist PC before being able to use it.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars What a funny little book, January 11, 2000

By 

Christopher Dudley (Laurel, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Player's Option: Skills & Powers (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Rulebook) (Hardcover)

This book gives some interesting rules variations, but not all of them make sense. There are point-based character creation rules, which allow characters to pick and choose the abilities for their race and class. It also presents the newer edition of the Psionicist class also published in the Dark Sun game. But there are a number of flaws with the new systems.

For example, you can shift the focus of your attributes. Using the rules in this book, you can create a fighter who can comfortably (without encumbrance penalties) carry something several times heavier than he could ever lift.

For another thing, the Psionicist presented in the end of the book is totally incompatible with the point-based creation system in the beginning. I feel that if TSR were giving us a new way to play the game, they should have made all the new material fit together.

The book also presents a new way to learn and improve non-weapon proficiencies. But this new system makes starting characters almost totally helpless. Starting proficiency rolls are now more likely to be 8 or 9 for a character's best abilities. "Character Points" are awarded over the course of the campaign, but a player must devote them almost entirely to proficiencies if he wants to become as competent as characters were under the old system.

It was fun to make up characters in this new system, but playing those characters is another matter. Like most AD&D supplements, I'm sure future books will ignore these rules completely. So, unless you or your DM feel like doing a lot of adapting of future supplements, this book won't be very useful.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Customizing Characters and Exciting New Rules! Get It!, May 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Player's Option: Skills & Powers (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Rulebook) (Hardcover)

This is one of the best AD&D books ever created because now you can choose what Abilities you want priority with The new Sub-Abilities Rules. In this book we also have a new System, The Character Point's (CP's). With The CP's we can buy Racial and Classial Abilities. For a example, a Wizard spending 15 CP's can use Armor, and the unspend CP's can be used in Weapon and Non-Weapon Proficiency and much more. If you want more realistic and Exciting for your Campangain This is The Perfect Book for you, GET IT!