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Title: Hero Builder's Guidebook (Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd Edition) by Ryan Dancey, David Noonan, John Rateliff ISBN: 0-7869-1647-8 Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Pub. Date: 15 December, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.86 (28 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Slightly Useful For Any Occasion
Comment: I first bought the Hero Builder's Guide with great expectations for it to do something for future characters for me and the characters that I created. Now that I look back on my expectations for it at the time, this was about the worst investment for what I had in mind.
Let me say this right off the back: If you are a player and you like sticking it through with one character and developing him from Lv. 1 to Lv. 20, this book is not going to do a whole lot for you.
If you are like me and you find yourself creating a multitude of characters because yours keep dying or because you play D&D with a lot of different parties and have to create multiple adventurers for different campaigns, this book is slightly more useful. Especially the chapter labeled "Creating Your Personal History". If you're like me you want to get into your character and provide him with a background. This provides you with a lot of different scenarios that your adventurer can come from, whether you want to role a dice to determine a background or you want to get more ideas.
Now for us dungeon masters out there, I would highly recommend this book to those that find themselves teaching newbies how to build a character and how to build a character history. With this book you can have players scan the "Choosing Your Race And Class" chapter of the book to provide descriptions for each race's class. You want to be a half-orc cleric? Get a quick history of the things that they go through and their motivation.
This book is especially useful when the newbies are creating a personal history of their character. I can't tell you how many times I ask my player to think of a history for their newly developed character, and 4 out of 5 of them describe how their parents were killed by some sort of evil and they're on vengeance quests. Variety is an important key to a DM's campaign, and this book is great at providing an alternative way to "force" your players to take a pre-determined basic history and use their imagination to build it from there.
There's a quiz in the, "Selecting Your Alignment" area that I find useful here and there, but I typically don't use since the Player's Handbook has a pretty self-explanatory alignment description anyway.
The "Planning Your Future" chapter is rather basic and gives beginners a peak into prestige classes, but it's the most useless chapter of the book, and is the reason why I give it a 4 out of 5.
The "Appendix of Names" is helpful when I or others start running out of names to use for our characters. There's definitely plenty in there for you to choose from.
Altogether, I suggest buying this if you are a DM that anticipates teaching newbies the game, or if you are constantly creating new characters. If you aren't these two, you're better off sticking with the core books...
Rating: 4
Summary: A Generally Useful Book, Even For Veteran Players
Comment: Ten years ago, long before the emergence of the 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons game, I would have condemned this book as another one of TSR's attempts to manufacture as many supplements as possible in an attempt to increase sales for a game that had already been on a breathing machine for several years. These "Dark Ages of AD&D," as one of my cohorts lovingly refers to this period, are gone, and with them, I think, are the days of books as formless and unoriginal as must-see TV.
The Hero Builder's Guidebook at first seemed to me (and to many others, based on the reviewers' opinions) to be one of those holdovers from the Dark Ages. However, after giving the book a chance and reading it in its entirety, I realized that it was not necessarily meant to enlighten the gaming career of the ages-old rolegamer. This book is an excellent resource for new players trying to understand the concept of character in a totally imagination-based environment, but it did something even greater than that - it teaches anyone that reads it how to think in terms of 3rd edition D&D.
This book was released in the first months of the 3e revolution, and really does shed some light on how to use the rules to the player's advantage - in fact, one chapter teaches a player how to use the multiclassing rules and feats and skills to the greatest possible advantage. This technique would have been called "engineering" or "broken" by some, but in my opinion it gives a solid impression of the true scale of the heroic character Dungeons & Dragons 3e is supposed to produce.
Some have criticized D&D 3e as a "powergamers' game." I submit that the whole reason to play this game is to play a character that goes far beyond the normal expectations (what fun would it be to play someone as mundane as yourself, or your neighbor).
Bravo, once again, to the wizards of Wizards.
Rating: 2
Summary: New Players will benefit, but lacks depth...
Comment: This book is great for new players and idea generating. However, it lacks depth, focuses too heavily on fantasy cliches (the D&D core setting), and often provides characters with backgrounds they can't match due to limited skill selection. One variant this book should have included is how background can affect skill and feat selection. The book is pricey for its content.
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