Community

First, my premise:

• 1.) Handbooks are one of the major highlights of the CharOp boards; and,
  
• 2.) Handbooks vary widely in quality, in comparison to one another.

It's my intention here to point out those handbooks of the highest quality, and to illustrate why these handbooks are the best, in the hope that it will encourage lesser handbooks to improve. This is a contest of format, layout, and ease of comprehension, but not of the specifics of each handbook's content. (In other words, this is thread is about comparing the structure of all the handbooks, rather than comparing on a class-handbook-to-class-handbook basis.)

First, I'll post a link to the handbook that I think is the best, and I will illustrate why. After that, please feel free to respond to my choice (constructively, of course), as well as to indicate your own choice of "Best Handbook" and your reasons.

My vote for Best Handbook?
"The Paladin's Handbook: Facestabbing in the name of thy God", by Litigation.

My reasons for choosing this handbook?

• Concisely laid out, using standard CharOp conventions such as spoiler blocks and Dictum Mortuum's color-coding system appropriately;
  
• Straightforward text which avoids unnecessary wordiness;
  
• Easy for a CharOp beginner (like me) to follow a specific build from the beginning to the end of this handbook;
  
• No totally incomplete sections;
  
• Mostly up-to-date.
  
• Specific well-done sections:
  
  
  • Detailed treatment of builds by weapon-type, including stat-arrays (particularly useful because of the relationship between certain weapons and ability scores, thanks to feats);
    
  • Detailed treatment of each race, including lots of helpful information about how to make the best of a bad race/class combination;
    
  • Includes ratings of skill choices, which some handbooks ignore.
    
  • Excellent power-by-power explanations, sorted by build;
    
  • Similarly awesome explanation of feats;
    
  • Very helpful magic item guide, especially helpful because it's sorted by level.

Arguments against this handbook:

• Some sections aren't totally up-to-date. For example, the "Races" section:
  • Doesn't treat the Dragon Magazine versions of Gnoll and Minotaur any different from the NPC versions in the Monster Manual, despite their differences;
    
  • Doesn't include the Bladeling race, which was presented as an NPC-race in December's Manual of the Planes.
  
  
• Missing a number of Paragon Paths, ones which appeared in Dragon Magazine;
  
• Equipment section is incomplete.

Summary: I think that Litigation's Paladin Handbook rocks because it makes few assumptions about the character one wants to make, and helps make a Paladin character the best zie can be within any concept, and at any level. Feel free to respond to my selection and my reasons.

Which handbook do you think is the best, and why? (Don't forget to post a link to it.) And remember, this thread is for highlighting the best features of a CharOp handbook, not simply for plugging your own handiwork, so be honest when you choose.

Final note: This exercise has already convinced me that a forum is not the ideal medium for these handbooks, because they rely too heavily upon a single poster to keep updating the handbook as new options come along, which I imagine is a pretty daunting task. What we need is a CharOp Wiki, so that individual CharOpers can contribute directly to every handbook according to their area of expertise, without requiring a single person to make all the updates.

I like handbooks that tackle the strategic decisions. It's good to have race, stats, power-by-power and feat-by-feat analysis, and so on. But often, the key decision is 'what weapon/feat tree/PP', which then colours all the following data. I like handbooks that really go into the key optimisation questions in some detail, presenting conclusions based on all the subsequent information (and preferably play experience with the main options) before going into detail of the choices.

And after all those details, it's nice to see some fully statted builds of the archetypes, with explanations of the strategies of those builds (feat and power lists are pretty hard to follow unless you've done the build yourself).

Different handbooks on these boards do different parts of that well. Personally, I congratulate anyone who's put the effort in.

necrosnoop110 wrote:

Too many good ones to choose just one

Would it help if the question were rephrased, "Which one handbook would you most like the other handbooks to be laid out like, and why?" Alternatively, if you can't pick a single favorite, point out your favorite features which you would like to see applied to all handbooks. Lastly, feel free to constructively critique the features of any handbook.

To restate, the point of this thread is to get folks thinking about effective layout and presentation. This is a thread to discuss handbooks in general, so that we can help make all handbooks the best they can be for everyone. (Bear in mind, lots of folks who aren't experienced optimizers use these handbooks to build their characters, so exclusionism shouldn't have a place here.)

Finally, nobody responded to my comment about creating a CharOp Wiki for hosting handbooks and builds; it's the perfect medium for such things. Does anything like this already exist somewhere? I think it should, but I've got neither the Skill Focus (Internet) feat nor the requisite skill training in Optimization to create it myself. What are your opinions on it?

Wouldn't you need full sanction from WotC for something like that?

If you can't post something on a wiki, you can't do it here either.