Forgotten Realms Player's Guide: A 4th Edition D&D Supplement (Forgotten Realms Supplement)

This is a good supplement. The new Swordmage class, as well as the Drow and Genasi races, make it worth the money spent. Also some of the feats are pretty good as well. Nice addition to any D&D campaign even if you are playing in the Forgotten Realms.

Seems a lot of reviews have been done on this product already. I'll just add my 2 cents to this. Firstly, I agree with some of the other reviews that the suggested retail price for this product is a complete rip-off, I'm glad I bought it at discount from Amazon, if you have to have it, try used or some shops that gives big discounts, you'll feel better after that.

Overall the book has been short of its full potential, I might even say a tad disappointing. Compared with the 3.5 edition of Players Guide to Faerun, the information in this 4th edition version is quite limited. To someone who has already played 3.5 D&D and in the FR world, then there isn't much meat in it. There is only one new character class the Swordmage, which is quite good I might say that 2 of my players immediately killed off their characters to make a new Swordmage character!

After the first 50 pages or so, the book kinda goes downhill. They added the Spellplague multiclass option, if you're like me and a former 3.5 player, then you won't be interested in this. Multiclass in 4th ed bites - but that's a whole other topic.

The second half of the book is mostly detail on the world, again albeit on a different player's angle compared to the Campaign Guide. Now they could have skipped a lot of this, it is boring and unnecessary. In fact they could have made just one book.

The individual artwork is good, I don't remember noticing any repeat art from older books. But the quality is just not as good as any 3.5 books, I liked that the older books had thicker paper, and the pages were designed to look worn and that was unique. In fact the entire 4th edition series I think reminds me of school textboooks in terms of print quality and overall design.

Overall, a useful book if you want the new class details or some new feats. Otherwise, skip it or buy 2nd hand, I certainly felt that it is lacking.

Forgotten Realms Player's Guide: A 4th Edition D&D Supplement (Forgotten Realms Supplement)

This addition to my 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons set was very welcomed. For a long itme I always wanted to play a character capable of weilding magic thru his blade and now with the Swordmage its now posible. The gensai and drow race additions to the possible races also was very rewarding. Finaly the background benifits based on the region you decide your character is form was a very good addition to the campaign i run with my friends, evryone was able to find a region they liked. A very good addition to anyone's 4th edition collection wether you use it for forgotten realms or not it was worth the price and shipping :)

I'll admit, I bought this one for the Swordmage. Yep, one class caused me to buy this whole friggin' book. But, once I started leafing through, I found plenty more to keep me interested: a new warlock path, the 4e rewrite of the Genasi, new Epic Destinies, new Paragon Paths and some very, very useful feats. Now, I am not a Forgotten Realms fan. If anything, I actually despise Greenwood's seminal anglocentric setting. However, this book is full not just of game crunch, but some setting fluff that -- while I can't use it in my Points of Light campaign -- I can use to mine for ideas.

Now for some specifics:

The Swordmage, the first arcane defender published for 4e, is fantastic. I think that it would be a useful addition to any adventuring party and fills both the defender role and the "gish" archetype very well.

The Dark Pact given to Warlocks is themed around Drow and the Underdark, but could easily be re-written into any other campaign setting as the truly evil path of Warlock magic (if the Star Pact and Infernal Pact weren't evil enough for you already). This would be a great pact for villains or PCs in a villainous campaign.

The Paragon Paths presented mostly are tied to the realms, but a few just require a brief rewrite to be useful outside of FR. Of these, I think the War Wizard is the one most likely to see use in my campaign, but there are several others that I could see fitting in quite nicely.

The Epic Destinies don't exactly add much new content. Although my party's cleric is toying with the idea of being a Chosen of Pelor (just changing the name Amaunator to Pelor), that Epic Destiny doesn't really do much that the Demigod (from the PHB) doesn't already do (they changed one power, but kept the rest the same).

While the Genasi are, in my opinion, one of this book's greatest additions to 4e, this book also introduces the Drow as a playable race. Boo! I'm totally sick of all the Drizzt-fanboy-ism rampant in Realms players and DnD in general. However, the races section does give us a few hints at races that will become available as player races in the near future (most of which have been corroborated on the Wizards' website in one fashion or another): goliaths, devas (used to be aasimar), half-orcs, etc.

The feats are pretty great, too. Again, some are setting-specific, but enough are setting-agnostic that this book could be mined for some really great player options.

All in all, I think that the FRPG was a very good purchase and I can see it lending a lot of future awesomeness to my campaign. Even if none of my players use it, I can see me, the DM, using it for a number of challenges and villains as well as campaign information (again, the Genasi) and themes.

I bought this book for my son who plays D&D. He said it was a good one!