The D&D Compendium – A Review

Caveat: I write this review assuming that not everything is working perfectly with the information database since this is the first day the Compendium has been online. I do not worry about whether or not it works perfectly, but rather how it presents info and what it presents.

Wizards of the Coast put their D&D Compendium online today. This is a feature of their D&D Insider program that, for now, is free to view but, in the future, will be a pay-to-use feature. With that in mind, I thought I’d review it and determine whether or not it will be worth it.

Purpose of the D&D Compendium

The Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game provides an ever-expanding array of character options for players. Each new game supplement, whether book or Dragon magazine, adds to the number of races, classes, paragon paths, epic destinies, feats, powers, and magic items available to choose from.

As the number of choices grows, it becomes increasingly difficult in this data-rich world to explore and keep track of all your options.

The D&D Compendium is the answer.

The D&D Compendium was created as an online tool to make browsing the various options quick, easy, and fun. Every race, class, skill, feat, power, paragon path, epic destiny, and magic item that appears in an official 4th Edition D&D product can be found in this online database.

While a few players may possess a photographic memory, and others are willing to pore over all the printed source material numerous times, we wanted to provide a tool for the rest of you designed to help players search the various options, sort them, and present them in a format similar to what is in our printed books.

Let’s test this out.

Taking it for a Test Drive

I opened up my books and started plugging in terms and phrases. The first term I plugged in was “race”. I like the way the results are broken up. Instead of presenting a straight list of results, it breaks them up in categories such as “Races,” “Classes,” “Feats,” etc. For the term “race,” the Races category had all races listed. Classes gave me two results that each had the word “race” in the class’ description.

When you click on a result, it gives you every piece of information that is in the Player’s Handbook. For races, that includes their height, weight, ability mods, size, speed, vision, languages, skill bonuses, racial powers, physical qualities, tips on playing that race, etc. That’s a lot of info. More than you used to get in the 3.5 System Reference Document.

I then put in the phrase “rogue” and received a lot of results as well. I had the “rogue” listed under Classes, of course, but it also listed the races that mention rogues in their descriptions. It also listed every rogue power and all feats associated with rogues. Again, when you click on a result, it lists every single piece of info that is in the Player’s Handbook. Even the Power Cards have the same layout as the book.

So far, so good. Let’s try a phrase from the Dungeon Master’s Guide; “skill challenges”. Ah, here’s where we hit a snag. As it stands, this is not a tool for DMs. There is absolutely no information about skill challenges in the Compendium. The only result it returned, the “cleric” and “paladin” classes, had the word “challenges” in their descriptions. So for a DM, this tool does nothing to help look up rules or try to clarify terms found in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.

Figuring I would get the same results with the Monster Manual, I input the word “zombie”. I was right. This time, I had absolutely no results. Again, this is proving to be a tool for players only, not for DMs. So to call it a “compendium” at this point is really laughable. Granted, the purpose listed above does state that it is for players, but if they want this to be a more well-rounded, useful tool, they need to expand it beyond information for players only.

Plusses

1. As is, this is a great tool for players who don’t have access to the books but do have access to the internet.
2. As Wizards updates the database with options from future expansions, Dungeon magazine, and Dragon magazine, as they claim they will, it will make it a lot easier to find out the options for your character. You won’t have to flip through multiple pages just to find a feat or power that applies to your chosen race or class.
3. Wizards also plans on implementing filtering, so that will cut down even more on the amount of information you will be looking at at any given time.
4. There is a plethora of information available. The detail is much more than was given in the 3.5 SRD.

Minuses

1. It offers nothing to the DM. If this is supposed to be a “compendium,” you would think it would include all information about not only races, classes, etc, but also about things such as what affects movement or how to use skill challenges. Same goes for monster information.
2. This was all free before. With 3.0 and 3.5, I could go to the SRD and look up information on everything from the core books all for free. Granted, it did not always include every single piece of information that was in the books, but it did give enough to allow me to make a gaming decision.
3. The price of the 4.0 core books rose. The books went up in price and that would not be as big of a deal if not for my second point. So not only have I paid more for my books but now the resource I used to be able to use for free suddenly becomes a pay-for-use product.

The Bottom Line

Is the Compendium a nice feature? Yes. Very much so. It is a fantastic tool that allows a player to quickly and easily access everything they need to create or manipulate a character. Is it worth paying for? Sadly, no. Paying a monthly fee for only one-third of the information from the core books is asinine.

If Wizards really wants to make this worth it, they’ll start working on new compendiums to use with rules and with monsters. Until then, they’re really stunting their potential earnings by only appealing to a fraction of the market; gamers who are players only, don’t ever DM, and never plan on trying it. And I never met a gamer that meets that description.

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Posted in: 4E, RPG, Reviews