Hero Builder's Guidebook

by Ryan Dancey, David Noonan, John D. Rateliff, et al.

Give your character every advantage. When you sit down to create a character, let your mind do the work -- don't just leave it to the dice. The Hero Builder's Guidebook puts at your fingertops... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786916478
• ISBN13: 9780786916474
• Release Date: December 2000
• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.37 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 8.4" x 10.7"

Customer Reviews

A must-own for any DnD player

This is the quintessential DnD manual for anyone playing in 3rd Ed or Ver 3.5. This product tells you how your character fits in society at large, and how the ability scores should be put for which classes. This guide also contains variants on multiclassing, with guides to help you in choosing feats and skills to match. This guide is also helpful for choosing an alignment, and it also has a wonderful name section, with about 100 names each for most of the major races (Elves, Halflings, Gnomes, Humans, Dwarves, and Orcs [for half-orcs]). The part that sold this book for me is the Background generator, or the history of your character at this point. The section is table based, and you roll percentile dice (d100 or 2d10) to find out about your character. I have used this many times when playing, and have found it to be invaluable when you need a quick backstory for your character. It has detailed tables that are easy to navigate, and if you don't want to roll, you can just choose whatever your need for your character at the time, or whatever fits your character. This can be good fot the DM, as he/she can use these parts in the campaign (like enemies and instructors, even families when the PC gets to their hometown). I would recommend this book both as a player and a DM. If you have ever struggled to make a good character backstory, only to have it backfire later, then this is the guide for you.

Great for everyone

I bought this book against the opinion of everyone I knew. It turned out that this book really changed my perspective on characters in role-playing games. As a long time player of D & D, I found that the insights on different class/race combinations was extreamley helpful in overcomming my fantasy realm racial stigmas. I never really liked to play anything except human characters till I read this book and explored the interesting flavor of the class combos. If you want to get a really helpful book for creating a memorable character, buy this book.

Not bad, of more use for novice players

When I first cracked the cover of this book, I realized almost immediately that I wasn't going to get much use from it. I was sort of expecting some rules clarifications and as such was really disappointed. For veterans of D & D, the Hero Builder's Guide is pretty much a waste of cash. The only thing that looked remotely useful to me were the character origin generators and the names lists at the end of the book. As far as origin generators are concerned, the Heroes of Legend does as much, much better job, in my opinion. The one is this book is way too simplistic for my tastes. Aside from a few nuggets, this book probably won't get used much.On the plus side, the Hero Builder Guide would be extremely useful for novice players and DMs. The sections on defining roles (half-orc sorcerers, elven monks, etc.) looked to be quite handy for breaking traditional fantasy stereotypes. Enough can't be said about the aforementioned origin generators and name lists. There also tons of tips and advice for making PCs more three-dimensional and less paper characters.In summary: very worthwhile for newbies, veterans can take a pass.

Great For New Players and Those Who Lack Time

Like many others, I was very anxious to see if third edition D & D would do something similar to second edition, by adding tons of new classes and rules with each new book. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was the not the case (as of yet). This book was relatively interesting to read since it gave a small description of each class/race combination and gave a quick idea for nearly each one. This quickly sparked some ideas in me for races and classes I would not ordinarily play. The guide to creating a character's background was interesting too, but the tables did spend a little too much time describing obvious things and filling up pages.In fact, most of what I would say about this book boils down to the fact that if you're not a very creative person or you're often stumped while trying to create a character, this is definitely the book for you. It will help a player pick a race and class, create a background, choose which feats and skills the player wants to choose, and even think of a name. In a sense, this would also be a terrific book for a newcomer to D & D. Another person it would benefit is someone who wants to create a unique character in a hurry. It would be very easy to just pick a race and class combination and then just choose the skills and feats suggested while determining if the advantages and disadvantages are worth it. However, I could honestly not suggest this to an experienced player who is creative and has the time to create a history, concept, and name for a character. It was relatively short for the money I paid and much of it was packed with filler. The most annoying thing about the guide (to me) was that a few race and class combinations listed to "ideas" or variants because the race/class combination was too unique. Considering the price of the guide, they could have at least tried to given an idea for a player to use.I have the feeling I'll use it a bit, especially to make NPCs or to come up with a concept for a character. I might even use the suggested feats and skills for certain character concepts, but I doubt I'll use the family/history background for my PCs. So, those who don't have much time, who are not very creative, or who are beginners, buy it. Anyone else, consider this purchase carefully.

A great resource for beginning players!

I awaited the Hero Builder's Guide with a certain degree of suspicion and have to admit it was nowhere near as bad as I had feared. Much of the book IS spent giving ideas for each race and class combination. The back half of the book has a really nice alignment test. (36 Questions that help guide you to picking and alignment for your character and help you understand what your alignment really means.) Then there are several charts for fleshing out your character's past. This is reminescent of other products such as the old Central Casting books, but is not as comprehensive. Even so it is still a really good starting point for new players, or maybe even for some of the older hands who just want the challenge of trying something different.