Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 790
EAN num: 9780786913596
ISBN number: 0786913592
Label: TSR
Manufacturer: TSR
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 288
Printing Date: May 11, 1999
Publishing house: TSR
Release Date: May 11, 1999
Sale Popularity Level: 1059214
Studio: TSR
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
The Priest's Spell Compendium is a three-volume series describing every priest spell for the AD&D game. Spells have been collected from rule books, campaign settings, supplements, adventures, and magazines dating back to 1975. Early entries have been updated to be immediately usable, making this the player's and DM's definitive source for priest spells.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
If you play priests, druids or shamans on a regular basis, you need this set of books. These volumes contain all of the speels from the Player's Handbook, Tome of Magic and Spells and Powers, as well as all of the differant campaign world books(Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravenloft, Birthright, etc) and from all of the Dragon magazines. 100s of spells that spanned many, many books all compiled into a nice managable collection.
Rated by buyers -
If you play priest, druids or shamans on a regular basis, you need this set of books. These volumes contain all of the speels from the Player's Handbook, Tome of Magic and Spells and Powers, as well as all of the differant campaign world books(Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravenloft, Birthright, etc) and from all of the Dragon magazines. 100s of spells that spanned many, many books all compiled into a nice managable collection.
Rated by buyers 
-
Introduction
The Priest's Spell Compendium (PSC) is the fifth installment in a welcome trend: TSR/WOTC cleaning out their vaults, collating their material, and placing them in sourcebooks. The Wizard's Spell Compendium, now complete, was a valuable addition to any player or Dungeon Master's repertoire of spells. On the other hand, it was just gravy, and it suffered (like other collections) from typos, poor editing, and the general impression that someone cut and pasted the information together haphazardly.
In the case of specialty Priests, the division of spells that occurred as a result of the Second Edition rules caused some serious unbalances in the game. Some specialty Priests have spheres with few spells in them, like the Astral sphere. Because many spells can be "reversed," evil Priests have acess to the Healing sphere and good Priests have acess to the Necromantic sphere.
Then there's "powers" which are unique abilities bestowed upon Priests by their gods. The distinction between spells and powers is murky, as powers are not subject to the sphere categorizations. It was a convenient loophole for giving Priests spells that didn't fit with their deities profile.
With this confusing situation making a specialty Priest's life difficult, and the powers and spells largely up to the Dungeon Master's discretion, a sourcebook with more Priest spells is a welcome addition.
Content
Having a compilation of spells is useful for Druids and other specialty Priests who suffered from the sparse spheres they had to choose from. The PSC claims on page 3:
"Some description have been updated or combined with similar effects to eliminate duplication; some have been modified for better play, and a very few have been dropped entirely." It's a no-brainer: take all the out-of-print supplements, put them into a database, and hit the print button. Then, just edit the combined content. How hard could that be?
Very hard, unfortunately. The PSC, while better edited than its predecessors (and that's not saying much), is still plagued by what seems an unwillingness on the part of the editors to comb through the book line by line. Nowhere is this more obvious than on page 9:
"In the sword-and-sandal Dark Sun setting, priests are preservers or defilers, depending on whether or not their magic drains the living energy of that world." Priests are not preservers or defilers. That's a title applied to wizards in the Dark Sun setting. However, the above sentence is in the Wizard's Spell Compendium . Somebody replaced the word "Wizard" with "Priest" and pasted the introduction into the book. This did not bode well for the rest of the volume.
Organization
Some of the problems with PSC deal with the manner in which old spells were categorized into the new spheres created for Priests in the Second Edition rules. For example, why is age plant (p. 9) in the Time sphere, but not the Plant sphere? Several other spells are included in multiple spheres. The A section was a bit of a let down: the disturbingly slim Astral sphere only has a handful of spells in it, even with all the spells from other sources.
Icons accompany each spell to indicate, at a glance, what setting the spell fits best. This system is used inconsistently. Bad medicine (p. 52), a Shaman spell, is missing the savage setting icon.
There are several spells that create or summon monsters. The monster statistics are usually reproduced in the volume -- a necessity if the spells are to be of any use. Only some of the monsters' statistics appear, however: Create crypt thing (p. 154) has the created monster's statistics, but create death tyrant (p. 155) does not. If these statistics were removed intentionally to save space, it doesn't explain the large patches of blank space on pages 51 and 175.
Anyone remember the Dragon magazine article with six other Paladin classes, each based on a unique alignment? The Paramander's spells ended up in the Wizard's Spell Compendium, but the priest spells for the other Paladin classes are strangely excluded from this volume.
And then there's the inclusion of the coalstone's statistics without the actual spell to create it (p. 126). Why bother?
Artwork
The artwork consists of serviceable grey and white pictures, mostly portraits. One evident change of WOTC's takeover of TSR is their unwillingness to recycle old artwork. This may seem like a minor quibble, but it's a sore point with a lot of TSR products. Yes, I can recognize reused artwork from the Pick A Path/Which Way Adventure books! Thankfully, the artwork always applies to a spell on the same page.
Conclusion
With the Third Edition of Dungeons and Dragons on its way, it's possible that editing this volume wasn't the top priority. Indeed, it may be that instead of providing a quality product, TSR's ... Read More
Rated by buyers 
-
These books are invaluable. The spells are alphabetical rather than by effect(as with the Encyclopedia Magica) and are given effective descriptions. Two minor complaints: quest & war spells were thrown into the final volume. While I can seee the quest spells, I think the war spells should have been included in the main. The other problem is more serious and prevents 5 stars. The index catalogs spells by sphere - but only spells the authors thought should be listed; instead of using a special notation for non-standard spells, they put them in their own index! For those who like to allow all spells, regardless of setting (through creative renaming), this is something of a hindrance. Otherwise an incredible resource.
Rated by buyers 
-
well, again TSR (wizards of the coast ) thinks only on how to make more money. so you must buy the all Compendium if you want it to worth something. instead of arraging the spell by levels, (like in the PHB) they arrange them by the a b c. now go and search the spell you want to memorize. a nasty trick by WOC (as was done in the wizard spell compendium)
Find other books like this one:
