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Dungeonscape: An Essential Guide to Dungeon Adventuring (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying) | 
 enlarge | Authors: Jason Bulmahn, Rich Burlew
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $8.47
You Save: $21.48 (72%)
New (18) Used (10) from $8.47
Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 39139
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 160
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 10.9 x 8.4 x 0.6
ISBN: 0786941189
Dewey Decimal Number: 793
EAN: 9780786941186
ASIN: 0786941189
Publication Date: February 13, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new, may have remainder mark or slight shelfware
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| Customer Reviews:
 No flavor here. March 31, 2008
Mr. Chris (Atlanta, GA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I wanted a list of cool dungeon features--some with rule implications and others just for flavor. The books runs through types of walls. Wall of air, fire, ice, water, acid, magic, bones etc. Then they cover floors: air, fire ice, water, acid, magic, bones. I was hoping for a little more than a run through elements and adjectives commonly found in D&D. I pay for creativity. Given an hour the most inexperienced D&D player could have brainstormed the short list of commonly found dungeon rooms.
The book talks about "Acidborn sharks" that are bred to breath acid like water. It's a find example of the absurd style of this book. It emphasizes bland topics that focus on the rules rather than the story.
I found about 10% of the book useful. Among the useful parts were the equipment lists and dungeonbred sub-type. You can get all this from a short read in the book store.
 Dungeonscape July 28, 2007
The Matman (NJ, USA)
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
One of the most useable of the 'scape' series books, because it's applications are found in more situations overall.
Interesting June 30, 2007
Jym (Salt Lake City)
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Overall, I enjoy this book and find it useful. In particular, the mundane equipment I found cool, as well as some of the alternative class features. I agree with some of the other reviews: the factotum is too powerful, especially for a base class - heck, it's overpowered for a prestige class. No class should have every skill as a class skill: that's patently ridiculous, and cuts against the grain of so many other asects of 3.5, where distinctions between class and cross-class skills are important.
 An excellent primer on dungeon design. May 28, 2007
Colin J. Sullivan (Los Angeles, CA United States)
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
The tactical design of dungeon encounters is excellent- it provides a template that you can expand upon and really lets you think out your encounters with the bad guys. After all, the players don't want to fight a bunch of punching bags, either.
To answer the comments of the Factotum class being "unbalanced":
Whenever I see a class, I compare it to the Cleric: combat progression, saves, relative importance of each ability score, spells, healing, and special abilities. The Factotum doesn't even come close. While it matches the cleric in hit points, combat, and ability score requisites (replacing intelligence for wisdom), it seriously lags in spellcasting ability (access to at most a handful of spells a day), healing, and turning abilities. In fact, the only thing that gives Factotums any edge at all is precisely having all class skills and a ridiculous amount of skill points due to high Intelligence scores. It is interesting to see that the ideal ability score stats for a Factotum apply perfectly to a Duskblade (in the excellent Players Handbook II), which is a much more powerful class across the board.
Just because a "jack of all trades" class actually has access to most core class abilities (eventually) doesn't automatically make it unbalanced. If you don't buff up the Factotum's combat abilities with every spare feat you have, you'll find he is weaker than the bard, who is still a superior spellcaster with Bardic Knowledge and the same rogue abilities as the Factotum. Speaking of which, Bards are now truly bards in 3.5E- if they ever were jacks-of-all-trades, they are no longer. The most the two classes have in common is being excellent "fifth party members".
Okay reading, somewhat useful May 6, 2007
Brian G. (San Diego, CA USA)
3 out of 8 found this review helpful
Mostly interesting reading, but I don't expect I'll use much from this book.
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