Our review:Item Description:Endless adventure and untold excitement await! Prepare to venture forth with your bold compaions into a world of heroic fantasy. Within these pages, you'll discover all the tools and options you need to create characters worthy of song and legend for the
Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game.
The revised
Player's Handbook is the definitive rulebook for the
Dungeons & Dragons game. It contains complete rules for the newest edition and is an essential purchase for anyone who wants to play the game.
The revised
Player's Handbook received revisions to character classes to make them more balanced, including updates to the bard, druid, monk, paladin, and ranger. Spell lists for characters have been revised and some spell levels adjusted. Skills have been consolidated somewhat and clarified. A larger number of feats have been added to give even more options for character customization in this area. In addition, the new and revised content instructs players on how to take full advantage of the tie-in
D&D miniatures line planned to release in the fall of 2003 from Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
Amazon.com Review:This Revised Edition (also called 3.5) of one-third of the Dungeons & Dragons trinity of core rulebooks (the other two being
The Dungeon Master's Guide and
The Monster Manual) contains errata, rules updates, and outright changes to the already-published Third Edition rules. The majority of changes are made in a quest for the holy grail of game rules: balance. To prevent boredom and enable creative choices, no single ability, spell, character class, or weapon should have an overwhelming advantage over another. So what has changed?
- The spells Harm, Heal, and Haste have been toned down. Other spells have been adjusted or renamed.
- Weapons are classified by the Size of the intended wielder, not the size of the individual weapons. A noteworthy effect of this new weapon size system is that Small characters can wield small-size greatswords, longswords, longspears (with reach), and other two-handed weapons.
- Classes have been tweaked. Bards and rangers received the most changes.
- New feats have been added (some original, some from the builder books), and some feats have been altered (a Power Attack now gives double benefit for two-handed weapons).
- Redundant skills have been rolled into one (such as sense motive and read lips) while others have been renamed (such as 'wilderness lore' becoming 'survival'). Skill synergies have been expanded and knowledge skills now include appropriate monster lore.
In addition to outright rules changes and tweaks, much of the core rule content has been clarified and updated with 3E errata. The combat section, in particular, is organized much better. Even the dreaded grapple rules are now relatively clear. A much-appreciated import from the D&D Miniatures game are new and simple rules for cover and line of sight, as well as clear photographic illustrations of the concepts of facing, attacks of opportunity, and reach.
All in all, 3.5 is a welcome update. The typographical errors are forgivable, given the extent of the update. The new options available to players (in the form of new class features and feats) make the play experience more fun. Veterans will enjoy re-learning the game they love and exploring all the new character possibilities. Perhaps more importantly, they'll find that introducing new gamers to the admittedly formidable D&D ruleset is easier with 3.5 than it was with 3E--call it a +2 circumstance bonus.
--Mike Fehlauer
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Buyer Testimonials
Average Buyer's Review:
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never recieved said order
not much to say, e-mailed the company twice and they never sent the book, but they sure took the cash for it. would not tell any one to order from this company, and if you are a service personnel dont waste your cash with this company.
Buyer's review: 
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The essential D&D book
If you want to play D&D, you need to buy this book. This book has the basics for any player. It has a good variety of classes, races, and items. It has helpful reference for playing the game, and is good for people of all skill levels. In my opinion, 3.5 is more balanced than version 4. This is a great investment.
Buyer's review: -
Player's Handbook, Version 3.5
Great book must have for Dungeons and Dragons players whao want to play 3.5 D+D.
Buyer's review: -
Long Live The King!
Forget 4th edition - it's an de-evolution of the RPG.
While there are many who will argue there are plenty of problems with the 3E version of the game, the truth is that 3.5E is the culmination of the D&D game; the largest number of options, the most varied way to play and handle anything in the D&D game. It has a solid mix of in-combat and out-of-combat options to allow for nearly any play style one wishes to pursue.
It's completeness is, in some ways its own downfall. The sheer volume of material available for 3E can bankrupt an individual. There are rules for everything, and just about anything can be quantified if you look hard enough. DMing for 3E can be quite a chore at the higher levels and it doesn't work so well after 10th level (but no edition of D&D ever really has, truth be told).
With the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual, you have enough for nearly endless hours of gameplay.
Buyer's review: -
Seeing the new system made me realize how much I like this one
The 3.5 system allowed for massive customization and character creation, as long as you have an imaginative group and a DM who is good with making house rules to bring things down to earth, then this was the best D&D system to date.
The forth edition really seems set to drain the money out of one's pockets. There's the miniature push, the web site subscription that should help you to solve problems that the books themselves create, oh and the common place D&D material that was left out of the basic books to lure one to have to buy the additional books, hooray.
I'm glad people are this interested in this system and I hope more people discover it.