This post continues my series assessing 3.5e materials for their use in my upcoming D&D (4e) campaign. For an explanation of the rationale, see the first post in the series.

The Complete series offered a broad range of character options, so the bulk of each book was addressed to players. I’m approaching these assessments from a DM’s perspective, so it’s pretty obvious from the beginning that these books will be less useful to me as a DM than the environment books or monster books. On the other hand, there’s still some very interesting material in these books.

For the full survey, please follow the “Read more” link below.

Complete Adventurer. The classes (base and prestige), skills, feats, and spells presented in all of the Complete books added breadth to 3.5e but would take a lot of work to covert to 4e. As far as classes go, I’ll wait for native 4e options to expand. Thus, chapters 1–3 and 5 of Complete Adventurer don’t offer me much outside of artwork that I might use as NPC portraits. Chapter 4, however, offers a lot of interesting weapons and equipment that I might work into a 4e campaign, with a little tweaking; I’m especially thinking of salting some of the alchemical items into various adventures. In principle, the examples from chapter 6, “Organizations,” could provide some campaign inspiration for a 4e campaign, if you tweaked the crunch. I’m not particularly attracted to any of the specific organizations in that chapter, personally, but other DMs might find them useful.

Complete Arcane. I never really found Complete Arcane to be that great in 3.5e play, and none of my players ever made extensive use of the options supplied there. Aside from some artwork that I might use to illustrate handouts (NPC portraits or magic item cards), Complete Arcane won’t add much to my 4e library.

Complete Champion. I love clerics and paladins, but Complete Champion never really lit my fire in 3.5e, so I’m not likely to put much effort into salvaging its content for 4e.

Complete Divine. One of my favorite 3.5e sourcebooks due to its theme, Complete Divine doesn’t offer as much as some of the other sourcebooks for 4e use. I may try to convert some of the relics from chapter 4 into artifacts for my 4e campaign, but I haven’t really decided on the specifics yet. I can always use artwork from that chapter to illustrate magic item cards. Chapter 5, “Deities,” could be a good source for DMs cobbling together a customized pantheon, and I may draw in some of the deities from that chapter as the storyline of my campaign progresses.

Complete Mage. Artwork for NPC portraits and inspiration for magic items are the main things I’m interested in carrying over to 4e from Complete Mage. The table of “One Hundred [Arcane] Adventure Ideas” on pp. 138–139 is mostly edition-proof, so it remains in my active library of “adventure seed” sources. Chapter 6′s sample magical locations have a lot of crunch associated with them, so I can’t just plunk them down into a 4e adventure, but with a little reconcepting I think several of those locations may show up over the course of my upcoming campaign.

Complete Psionic. For the moment, Complete Psionic is just a clip art book for my 4e campaign. After the rules for 4e psionics are released (I’m hoping that “psionic” will be an additional power source in 4e, later on) I will look back through Complete Psionic to see how it might enrich my 4e campaign for players and psionic NPCs.

Complete Scoundrel. The “fluffy stuff” in chapter 1 about “types of scoundrels” can still provide plenty of inspiration for role-playing PC or NPC rogues. Chapter 2′s prestige classes don’t have any immediate application to my 4e campaign, though as my players gain levels I may return to those prestige classes to see whether they inspire any alternative paragon paths. I haven’t yet gone through chapters 3 (feats) and 4 (spells) carefully enough to know whether I want to try to migrate any of those to 4e. Chapter 5, “Scoundrel Equipment,” on the other hands, holds lots of promise for immediate use. The descriptions of hidden spaces can be used directly in 4e campaigns, possibly with a little scaling of the prices and adjustments of the base Search DCs. The same is true for “surprise weapons” (crossbows with bayonets, yeah!) Some of the alchemical items, like clearwater tablets and nerv, can be used in 4e exactly as written. Others need to be adjusted a bit; take liquid sunlight as an example.

Liquid Sunlight (as written for 3.5): Shining with the light of a torch, a pellet of liquid sunlight is a half-inch-diameter sphere of glass that contains a gold-colored liquid. The pellet can be thrown as a ranged attack with a range increment of 5 feet. Alternatively, it can be loaded into a sling and used as a sling bullet. When it strikes a firm surface, it bursts and sprays out the liquid within. The liquid continues to glow with the light of a torch for 1 round after exposure to the air. Creatures with light sensitivity are dazzled for 1 round if struck by a liquid sunlight pellet. The pellet deals 1d6 points of damage to a vampire, vampire spawn, or any other creature similarly harmed by daylight.

Liquid Sunlight (rewritten for 4e): Shining with the light of a torch, a pellet of liquid sunlight is a half-inch-diameter sphere of glass that contains a gold-colored liquid. The pellet can be thrown as a ranged attack against Reflex with a range of 5/10. Alternatively, it can be loaded into a sling and used as a sling bullet. When it strikes a firm surface, it bursts and sprays out the liquid within. The liquid continues to glow with the light of a torch for 1 round after exposure to the air. If the pellet hits a target creature, it deals radiant damage equal to 1d4 + the attacker’s Strength modifier and the target is blinded until the end of its next turn.

The 4e version packs a slightly stronger punch than the 3.5e version, since it can damage (a little bit) and blind any target, whereas the 3.5e version works only against creatures “harmed by daylight.” “Harmed by daylight” is not actually a technical game term; it’s a bit of fluff that the DM will have to adjudicate, though s/he won’t find that difficult to do. In 4e, however, there is a specific keyword, “radiant,” that fits the bill. A 4e vampire has the property “Vulnerable 10 radiant,” meaning that the vampire takes 10 extra hp of damage when hit by an attack with the “radiant” keyword. Thus the mechanics are all in place to express the effects of the liquid sunlight using 4e keywords, and I’ve “redeemed” a paragraph from my 3.5e book for 4e use. Pretty neat, isn’t it?

Similarly, chapter 6, “Scoundrel Adventures,” is almost inherently edition-proof. Aside from a few references to skill DCs, the material in that chapter can be used by a 4e DM just as easily as a 3.5e DM.

Complete Warrior. Here again, I’m not very interested in trying to rewrite any of the Complete Warrior base or prestige classes as 4e classes. Ditto for most of the feats in chapter 3. Some of the magical items presented in chapter 4 are quite interesting, but I’m even more inclined to give some of my NPCs or monsters some of the exotic but mundane weapons presented in that chapter. DMs can choose to use the Improvised Weapon damage table on Complete Warrior p. 159, though the table on p. 42 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide (4e) is probably better tuned to 4e.

Since I’m approaching this series as a DM rather than as a player, you could have predicted that I would find less to preserve into 4e from the Complete series than from other 3.5e sourcebooks. Even so, there’s usally a little something in each of the Complete books that I can bring over into 4e if I find a use for it in my campaign. Watch this space for future installments of the Conversion Clinic, in which I’ll try to squeeze more life out of the Complete series for a 4th edition campaign.