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OVERVIEW
D&D 3.5 provides players with a vast assortment of classes, skills, feats, spells, magic items and monsters, such a multitude that finding the information on a particular feat, spell, or monster can require a tedious amount of book shuffling and page flipping, often followed by laborious hand copying of stats and other information. With Creative Mountain Games? SRD 3.5 Revised bundle players have easy access to all of the classes, skills, feats, spells, magic items, and monsters contained in the SRD. This information is easy to find via the capstone index PDF, which links to the individual PDFs, each of which has an extensive hyperlinked table of contents as well as precision bookmarks (The bookmarks actually take you to the section of the page where the text starts, not just the page it?s on.) Once you?ve clicked to the information you are looking for, you can cut and paste it to your own document for printing as needed. When you need to reference another text, you can use the bookmarks to jump to the cover page of the individual PDF and click on the CMG link there, which takes you back to the main index. From which you can navigate to the information as above. These features make this product a quite a timesaver for a GM preparing adventures, or a player needing to read up on a feat or skill, or write up his character?s spells.
The SRD 3.5 Revised bundle is comprised of 17 individual PDFs. The main index PDF, which has bookmarks too, and thumbnail links to, each individual PDF?s cover page.
The individual PDFs are:
Core Rules:
The SRD 3.5 Revised Basics, Spells, and Magic Items (475 page PDF)
The SRD 3.5 Revised Psionics Rules (319 page PDF)
The SRD 3.5 Revised Epic Rules (302 page PDF)
The SRD 3.5 Revised Divine Rules (55 page PDF)
Monsters:
The SRD 3.5 Revised Monsters (standard format - 578 page PDF)
The SRD 3.5 Revised Creature Stat Blocks (569 page PDF)
Spells:
The SRD 3.5 Revised Adept Spells (69 page PDF) NEW!
The SRD 3.5 Revised Assassin Spells (30 page PDF)
The SRD 3.5 Revised Blackguard Spells (22 page PDF)
The SRD 3.5 Revised Bard Spells (137 page PDF)
The SRD 3.5 Revised Cleric Spells (188 page PDF)
The SRD 3.5 Revised Domain Spells (189 page PDF)
The SRD 3.5 Revised Druid Spells (151 page PDF)
The SRD 3.5 Revised Paladin Spells (40 page PDF)
The SRD 3.5 Revised Ranger Spells (47 page PDF)
SRD 3.5 Revised Sorcerer and Wizard Spells (332 page PDF)!
BASICS, SPELLS & MAGIC ITEMS
This PDF covers the basics of D20 system, basic resolution, abilities, Races, Classes (including the entire standard, NPC, and prestige classes from the SRD), Skills, Feats, Combat, other adventuring rules (carrying, exploration & movement, wilderness, weather & environment, traps, & the Planes), Equipment, Treasure, Magic Items, and Magic.
The TOC also includes a spell list index, by class, and an alphabetical index of spells, with hyperlinks to the individual class spell PDFs
EPIC, DIVINE, & PSIONICS
There are 3 PDFs covering the Epic, Divine and Psionics SRDs The Epic SRD provides rules for characters above level 21, the Divine SRD provides rules for creating gods, the Psionics SRD provides rules for psionic abilities, races, classes, feats, etc. (None of the material from the Psionics SRD has been integrated into the monster or basic PDFs, however.)
MONSTERS
The monsters PDFs include the standard monster info from the SRD, as well as the Creature Stat Block PDF. The CSB provides condensed stat blocks for every monster from the SRD readily available for you to cut and paste, making setting up encounters very easy for GM?s. Another nice feature in the CSB PDF is a TOC of creature types by Challenge Rating, a TOC of creatures by type, alphabetically, and a TOC of creature types by CR. Unfortunately a listing of monsters by Environment isn?t included.
SPELLS
There are 10 spell PDFs, one for Adepts, Assassins, Blackguards, Bards, Clerics (and another for domain spells. The extra domains included in the Divine PDF are not included however), Druids, Paladins, Rangers, and Sorcerers/Wizards. Each PDF includes a spell list by level and spell descriptions by level as well as an alphabetical listing of spell descriptions, all of which can be reached via the TOC.
LAYOUT & ARTWORK
The PDFs themselves are pretty plain, mostly done in single column, with some sections done in a double column layout. The fonts used seem readable enough on the screen, being that are over 3500 pages, I didn?t bother to print them out, but they should be readable enough. There is a lot of whitespace in the tables and spell listings, so for those who do print them out, they will be using up quite a bit of paper. Many of the sections could use a tighter more space saving layout. The only artwork included is on the cover pages of each PDF, they appear to be scans of old medieval artwork, and are nice enough to look at, though one appeared quite pixilated to me. No borders or backgrounds are used on any of the pages, so you won?t have to waste any ink on fluff. Overall the layout is serviceable, and you don?t buy a product like this for the artwork.
SUMMARY
For a GM putting together an adventure or creating NPCs, or a player putting together his spell book or browsing for new Feats, this is an excellent product. Creative Mountain Games? SRD 3.5 Revised bundle is guaranteed to save them time and effort putting together their game materials. If you happen to use a laptop or other PC while you game, it makes an excellent online reference as well, thanks to the very well done hyper linking and bookmarks in each PDF. With these PDFs on your computer, you can make sorting through the reams of game information, Races, Classes, Skills, Feats, Spells, Monsters, Treasures and Magic Items that make up D&D 3.5, to find the information you are looking for easy, and getting that information into your own gaming materials is a snap once you have found it. Thus I recommend this product to anyone who plays D&D 3.5, has need of a good rules reference, and prepares gaming materials for use in his game.
<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: Excellent hyper linking and bookmarks, quick and easy cutting and pasting of information. <br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Too much whitespace in many tables and descriptions, link to main index PDF only on cover page of individual PDFs<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br><BR>[THIS REVIEW WAS EDITED]<BR>
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