The material in this book is excellent for a DM. You can pick and choose your favourite rules and variations to make your own monstrous classes, or just flip to the appendix at the back and take information straight from the book. The magic items vary from the silly to the useful, the spells are well-written and the feats seem suitably tailored to monstrous playing.

The templates are what really make this book sing, along with a long appendix full of examples of monstrous classes that should empower any DM to turn a monster into a playable character.

This is, however, a book in serious need of one more working draft. The writers and editors took on a mighty task with this book, so I'm willing to forgive a lot, but references to incorrect pages, tables that don't exist and simple proofreading errors hamper the Savage Species experience. Also, there are numerous glaring examples of critters that bust wide open the abilities that a PC should be permitted at 1st level. This happens mostly with the advanced monsters, but many of them start with no attribute penalties, no serious drawbacks and numerous magical abilities. A little more scaling was needed for these, I think.

Still, now I can have that troll/barbarian I always dreamed of . . . and with more complete information that the "Complete" Book of Humanoids.

(edited in)

I've now read through the book cover to cover and, as a result, must downgrade my rating from 4 to 3 stars. The editing is more than just inconsistent, in parts its deeply confusing. Numerous feat and spell entries are extremely contradictory. For example, the spell "Earth Reaver" calls for no saving throw, but the last line of the spell description says that those who fail the saving throw will be made prone. I can guess what kind of saving throw is necessary, but, honestly, this is the sort of thing that should've been easy to spot in the editing process.

The excellence of the appendices, the prestige classes and the suggested rules are the saving graces of this book.

One might think that it is common sense to take monster stats, scale them back and then balance them along the same power levels as PC's...and they would be right. The thing is, i never thought of it myself, and Savage Species takes several hundred pages with full examples to show some ways it might be done. The book is not perfect, such as mistakes and a complete lack of creature background, history, culture, etc...everyting that the 2nd ed. book had. Still, this is much better than the earlier book (which wouldn't even let you play a troll as it was too powerful; not anymore).
It has lots of monstrous feats, some better than others, great magic items with art, wonderful illustrations, some good templates and some so-so templates, but mostly just text that gets you thinking, "hey, i want to make my own special class." The rules are set down, the options are there, and if anyone wants to take the time to craft their own beasties it's not too difficult. Plus, it lets a DM scale down monsters for lower level parties, and easily boost them for higher level.
Ideally, if a DM were starting his own campaign in a monster-dominated world, you can't do without this book. SCrap the standard races of humans and elves and leave in the minotaurs and troglodytes, celestials and djinn.
Lastly, the book says that a monster class should be taken completely from 1st level to whatever level it maxes out at before one can add on regular character classes. The reasoning is that someone can take the powers of a 1st level monster and tack on character levels from there on out. I'm bending this rule myself; if players wanted to take several levels of mindflayer and go rogue the rest of the way, fine, but they can never go back to mind flayer. Besides, a mind flayer at 3rd level would not have the abilities of say, a 3rd level dwarf cleric, and far from the lethal mindblast talent.
A great resource, it just takes some determined reading to fully implement the usefulness.

And that's something you'll never, ever have heard a PC utter before, but you might now.

Savage Species is, as the notes say, the D&D 3e sourcebook on playing monster characters. Not necessarily hideously evil psychopaths (that's where Book of Vile Darkness comes in), but non-standard races...anything from the bugbear up to a stone giant.

Monster PCs have two things to concern themselves about...hit dice (i.e. how many hit dice they naturally start with) and level adjustment (having abilities that are worth a class level or two on their own). For example, our umber hulk friend has eight hit dice and a level adjustment of +6, for an ECL of 14...so an umber hulk is theoretically equivalent to a 14th-level Player's Handbook character.

So, the authors go through and list a chart of almost every existing monster in the game that has an ECL of 20 or below, along with official level adjustments for templates (lycanthrope, celestial, half-dragon, etc.) They also discuss letting a player start as a first-level monster, which must get to its base statistics before multiclassing...there's no using a minotaur's base stats at 1 HD, because they don't get them until they reach their final hit die. There's a 52-page appendix of sample monsters' ECL broken out into class levels, which is fairly nice.

You'll also find feats suited to monsters, new prestige classes, new gear, a lot of new templates (my favorite's Gelatinous...a semi-ooze creature), and new and/or reprinted creatures, including a long list of anthropomorphic races, such as dog-men and wolverine-people, the desmodu and loxo from MM2, and the half-ogre starting race. There are also rules for transforming characters between races and adding templates.

Something like this has been needed for a long time. Not only does it follow in the footsteps of AD&D2's Complete Book of Humanoids, but it answers rules questions that have popped up ever since the first PC got infected by lycanthropy. Some creatures will be less-playable than others, simply because their level adjustment is so high that they won't have the hit points to survive combat at their ECL. And there are a few questions, too...for dragons, do they require XP to gain hit dice, since they grow by aging? After all, 10 years can go by in a game fairly quickly, and that young dragon can become a juvenile and get stat and HD bonuses...

This is a great supplement, and I highly recommend it. It's probably most useful if you're going to start a new game, but it'll be useful for everybody at some point.

Easy readers from Ohio. Not everyone has the same opinion on books! I read it, I liked it. Some of the information is right on, but most of it is way off. I have read several books on relationships and astrology, this one is ok. It's not better than "Astrology for lovers, by Olivia" or " Seduction by the stars", but it's ok. I strongly feel that people need to read several books before they find the one that really appeals to them. As for me, this one was alright, but it didn't quite do the job.

Reading this book was a pleasant experience. I read the customer reviews prior to adding my own comments... I thought it was interesting. It pretty much covered my past and present relationships with accuracy ( I did feel it was a little inacurate in some parts. The book does have it's weaknesses and I have read some books on astrology and personal relationships that were better than this one, but this book is not bad at all. I do recommend it to readers, especially those who are not very familiar with Astrology. If I could recommend other good books to read, they would be " Seduction by the stars" and "The Astrology of Sexuality". This second book" gives accurate interpretations, which are all about a page and a half long.

I had an internet romance going and wondered what the guy was really like. I looked his birthdate up in this darling little book and learned he was as wonderful as his emails. I've used it for a lot of information about the people I work with too. I just bought the author's new book ASTROLOGY ON THE JOB.

I bought this book expecting a real debate between the three views mentioned, namely, Young Earth Creation, Old Earth Creation, and Theistic Evolution. The reason I found it disappointing is for two main reasons. None of the contributors really talk about the evidences for their position, but instead ramble on about their philosophy of science. Van Till spends most of his time trying to convince people to call his perspective the "fully-gifted creation perspective" instead of theistic evolution. To me, it really was just playing with words in order to avoid the negative Christian response to evolution. Does Van Till believe in Darwinian evolution or not? He says he does, so why not Theistic evolution? His view, as he expresses it, is really Deism, although he protests that it isn't. Read what he says and decide for yourself. My other major complaint with the book was that instead of the proponent of each view responding to the other two views, the responses were made by a third party "panel". I found this to be extremely unsatisfying.
The book wasn't totally without merit, and all three perspectives had some good things to say - but it got lost in a lot of wordiness about "words" which really took away from the book as a whole.

This book consists of essays by proponents of each of the three views (Young Earth Creationism, Old Earth Creationism, and Theistic Evolution) and commentaries by practitioners of four disciplines: Biblical studies, theology, philosophy, and science. The entire discussion is concluded by summaries by Philip Johnson, an advocate of intelligent design, and Richard Bube, an advocate of theistic evolution.

The result is only partially successful. I am particularly impressed with the essays by Paul Nelson and John Mark Reynolds (Young Earth Creationism) and Howard J. Van Till (Theistic Evolution). Both give lucid and reasoned presentations of their views. I was pleasantly surprised to see Nelson and Reynolds, neither of whom I have read before, forego some of the more common but already discredited scientific arguments for a young Earth. Van Till presents a well thought-out and challenging integration of science and theology.

I am very disappointed by the commentaries, however. My first complaint is that the commentators sometimes seem unwilling to critique the essays primarily within their own expertises. For instance, John Jefferson Davis spends much of his space discussing the fossil record. On the one hand, none of the other commentators talk about this important piece of evidence. On the other hand, I wish the editors could have found someone other than a theologian to do this.

My second, more serious complaint is that each of the four commentators speaks entirely from an Old Earth Creationist perspective. In fact, Walter Bradley (who is supposed to provide criticism from a scientific perspective) uses the space allotted for commentary on the Old Earth Creationist perspective to attack the positions later presented in the Theistic Evolution essay. The reader is deprived of any scientific critique of the Old Earth Creationist view and instead finds a philosophical objection to a view not even presented yet. I find that entirely inappropriate.

As a brief introduction to the thinking in the three perspectives on creation and evolution, the primary essays in this book are very good. They each present some of the strengths and weaknesses of their own positions. These are not explored fully, but each essay is well referenced for further reading. The commentaries could have benefited by a better selection of commentators, however.

i've read in the field of creation-evolution for nearly 30 years now, from the _genesis flood_ to _darwin's dangerous idea_. that certainly doesn't make me an expert, only a concerned layman. this book is addressed by christian's to christian's, not that anyone outside of that community won't get a great deal out of the discussion only that the emotional desire/impetus to seek answers pushes christian's with a high view of scripture to try to reconcile the two biggies in their lives: science looking at general revelation and theology looking at scriptures. if you're not part of this community it is much easier just to ask "so what?" and not to understand why this is such a personal topic.

this is a first book, that is suitable for educated people to delve into a topic where many of the other books in this field/topic presume a background in either science or theology, or where the books are so stridently biased as to be "preaching to the choir" and put off 'newbies' with their presentation.

the issues are presented well enough that i think if someone finishes the book they will have a reasonable idea of what the problems are and where the different parts are most concerned in the discussion. it is not a scientific or theologically based book but rather philosophic. it presents concerns from each viewpoint, thus showing relative priorities in what each person discusses first and critisies as lacking emphasis in the other viewpoints. this is one value in a debate type of format, it can leave you with a prioritized idea of what people find important in the issues.

one problem however with this debate framework is that each person reading the book who already have committments to issues or positions tend to cheer for their side and boo down the opposing sides. this is evident from the reviews posted here, the young earth creation team is not the big names in the field, so it looks like in suffers from lack of heroes. nay, the two philosophers defend the position well given the page constraints they faced.

there is one issue running through the book i wished everyone had addressed in a more explicit matter, that is the difference in accepting the functional materialism of science versus the uncritical acceptance of a materialist world and life view of scientism. there is much confusion between the two, you can see it in much YEC criticism, in this book as well, of both progressive creationism and theistic evolution. naturalism is the idea that what we see is what we get, no god's behind the curtain, no skyhooks to come down and rescue us. there must be a distinction between how science uses this idea as a working hypothesis, as a functional means to an end, versus how a philosophy uses it as an axiom. of the 3 viewpoints, only vantil talks to the separation of the two. the YEC's fault the other two positions as if they accepted the materialism/naturalism as a deep committment in their systems. which as christian's is simply unacceptable from the beginning.

i liked the book. i think if you need a place to start it supplies one. however if you are already committed to a position you would be better off served by jumping straight to one of the major works in each viewpoint. and interact with that author without the polemics that form the debate structure of the book.

Quite frankly, this book is more about negating the idea of the executive recruiters' three martini lunches rather than providing good job search tips.

After seeing an interview of Ms. Reynolds on CNN's "The Neil Cavuto Show" I was interested in learning more about her. I searched the web and found her book on the Amazon.com site, with your reviews & excerpts. After reading the excerpts, and almost falling out of my chair laughing about "The Week of a Recruiter", I pondered about the last twenty years I have spent as a HEADHUNTER. Ms. Reynolds and I must have worked on two different planets - in the same profession.
I have and still read many books about career searching, the recruiting industry, etc. There are some damn good how to do it books on the market - not this one. Who needs someone to give us a minute-by-minute account of her personal and professional life - who cares! Can you help me find a good recruiter, can you help me find a good job, can you help me find an industry that won't fall apart this or next year? If you need help, buy a book by the name of "What Color Is My Parachute", I believe that is the correct title. This book gives you clear and concise information, not some obtuse opinions.
The main, and only, objective for executive search firms is to find the best candidate for their clients, not to find people jobs who want more money, bigger titles, or easyier commutes. In our twenty year history, and the many placements that we have to our credit - the best candidates that we have found for our clients are people who are happily employed at their present positions and not even thinking about looking at other opportunities. The best way to find a job is to be the very best you can at your present position, be active in your industry associations and organizations, write articles for your industry websites, magazines, etc. Be visible. Be the best you can be and the executive search industry will find you. There I just wrote my first book!
If you do happen to find yourself out of work, call a few friends and ask for any recommendations they would share with you about executive search firms that are industry related and that they have had experience with. Best of all check industry, and specific company websites, there are a chuck full of companies looking for people. Ms. Reynolds is correct in pointing out that there are differences in the types of executive search firms. It boils down to two main differences; retained & contingency. Try to work with retained search firms that have a retainer from a specific company for a specific position, as opposed to contingency firms. This will at least assure you that they are not just collecting resumes. That is what most contingency search firms send most of their time doing.
Ms. Reynolds is correct again about being open and honest with a recruiter that you trust. But you have to be very careful with whom you trust personal information. When I ask a potential candidate about their martial status, their remuneration package, whom do they report to, etc. and the answer is "I will not divulge that information", I simply thank them and hung-up. Be firm not stupid. You could be passing up that knock on the door that only comes around once, and you will never know what you missed out on.
Ms. Reynolds' book is nice but I don't think it will get you a job. When an executive search consultant does call you, be polite, be honest, and remember it is a very small world.

In many ways this is kind of an off kilter book - Reynolds seems to want to be aiming at the executive, but in reality I think her book is applicable to just below that level, who are just starting out in higher managerial searches. Taken from that starting point, the book is a very good overview and advice book. Much of what she says is common sense, but sometimes it's nice to have it reiterated so that we don't forget it. As someone who is going to eventually be looking for new employment and to move on up, I found it in some ways reassuring to be led step by step through things. I don't believe I learned much new, there was certainly no "ah ha!" moments. But it did assure me that the path I've been looking at is correct, and what I know is valuable. She is not afraid to touch upon those areas a lot of people are uncomfortable with - such as compensation negotiation. Reading this book is like a comfortable session with a career counselor who's there to calm you down and help you through the next step. While currently job hunting has slowed a bit, it will rebound. And anything that helps us get a leg up on the competition is appreciated.

sorry folks but this was Asprin's worst work to date. He came off a long hiatis and wrote what appeared to me to be woman hating drivel. Im left asking what happened? and if that wasn't bad enough he went back on hiatis right after publishing this one. well one can only hope that the next one will redeem him.

Not as much action in this one in that it all takes place in the bazaar as opposed to Skeeve being chased through alternate dimensions. It wasn't as funny as the others but it was still good. For it's length it was worth it. I don't think I would have enjoyed it if it was a lot longer.

Asprin has created the most unforgettable set of characters I can think of. I feel like I have lived with these characters all my life (but I guess I almost have considering I started reading them years ago).

Even now (years after my first reading of this book), I still pick it up every once in a while for fun. I love the "Myth" series (I still futilely hope Asprin will write another one!), and I think this one is the best of them all. I appear to be in the minority, but I like "Little Myth Marker". It reveals an interesting depth to the characters, particularly Aahz and Massha. And its take on parenthood is alternately funny and touching.

When I began this course, I felt lucky that I had already had a lot of experience in the world of e-commerce, just because I had problems paying attention to the book when I was reading it. I found myself doing two things at the same time in order to retain any of the information in it. It has a lot of information - but it's presented in an extremely boring manner. I put off reading quite a few chapters until the day before my final exam. The only thing of any interest were the case studies at the beginning of each chapter.

mmm... If I didn't have to have this book as a course text, I would have soon discarded it. Maybe I'm missing the point of what PRINCIPLES of Information Systems are all about, but I get the distinct impression from this particular book that Principles of Information Systems is simply an exercise in 'reading someone's watch, then telling them the time'. The authors formalize with great diagrams, case histories and explanations, how Information Systems are structured in business today. However they only lightly touch on what principles (good logic if you wish), should be employed in designing a 'quality' Information System. The closest they really get to this is sometimes posing the issue in the question sections (answers not provided!). I know Information Systems is a lot more than simply knowing how existing ones structured but if you want to know more beyond this, don't expect to find answers in this book.

It was an informational book, discussing the importance of information systems.

I just finished Lead to Succeed this a.m and I'm back at amazon to order 3 more for my key employees. This book had common sense ideas that can be related to any business in the growth mode. I'm not a big basketball fan, but I certainly am a fan of the wisdom of Mr. Pitino. The book was a wealth of knowledge and information,very entertaining and a book that I could not put down till I finished. Pass it on, it will encourage anyone to strive to become the best.

Coach Pitino's latest book does a good job combining his ideas on leadership and his realities as a basketball coach. While his tenure in Boston was not as successful as he (or the loyal Celtics fans) wished it to be, his thoughts on coaching there are a good read (too bad this book was published before he decided to leave, I would like to know what his current thoughts are). Of course most of this book repeats much of the motivational talk of business gurus, but how much new material has been there every been in this field? I just felt good reading it and in the end that is really what matters (it has been a long time since any boss has inspired me). Good luck in Louisville, Coach.

This is an amazing book from cover to cover. I wouldn't know where to start giving compliments on it. I've read several books over the years on business, motivation, and leadership. This book is by far one of the top reads. I strongly recommend it to anyone looking to improve themselves as well as those around them.

...It represents a new fashion in book publishing, where one author approaches a series of artists to share one of their projects and how they did it... The publishers love it because these books are so easy to do. The authors love it because no one person has to do the work. The result is a badly thought out, mish-mash of techniques and one total worthless book.

Too bad Amazon.com does not have a way to give "0" stars or even a minus category, like "I give this book -5 stars for failing on the most basic of criteria." These people should be drummed out of the profession for such rank amateur...

This book is a weird one. on one hand it's inspiring & not at all like a AE manual which I appreciate. On the other it is also borderline useless. None [bar one] of the projects featured have a simple Quicktime or Windows movie of the final piece that you can view what it is the author actually did. They have AfterEffects working files of which you have to export the movies yourself, BUT each project also uses different third party filters [no demo's on the cd] which throw error's soon as you load the AE project so you STILL can't see the finished product. Just plain stupid if you ask me. Most of the projects seem to have between 100%-50% of the working files missing. in the case of renescant all you get is the finished movie & nothing else. seeing as you are paying for the oppurtunity to 'pick apart' the files & explore I think it's fair enough they hand them over.
Overall I kind of like the book, but it is really on the whole disapointing & frustrating. I doubt whether I will by another Friend of Ed book based on this one. it really feels like a stooge job in the end.
PS I visited the FofED site to try & find files of which I found some for one project. but nothing else.
My advice is steerclear unless you REALLY want this book. I am sure there are others out there that do what this one does ALOT better..

The book has some great examples, which the reader is talked through. Not all of them are great, but a lot of them are, and they're from the sort of projects that form the bulk of AE work. It beats most of the AE books out there hands down (most of the others are just a rehash of the manual). I noticed a few people on the list hated it, but if they're really that advanced, why would they be bothered reading "how to" books? My biggest gripe with the book is that there were not MORE examples in there (books are expensive these days) > but I could say the same for most books I see now. Anyway, the book helped speed up my AE learning time, which is the main thing I'm after - not just an illustrated rehash of the manual.

There are a zillion books about .NET. I was hoping this one would cover deployment as the title promises. DON'T BE FOOLED!
Where is the information about Strong Naming, about how to get things into the GAC, about the line item tools like sn.exe, gacutil.exe, resgen.exe, al.exe (come on!)
What about the classes in AssemblyInfo.vb ??

No wonder only two of the authors put their faces on it. POOR

I was looking for a good book on enterprise development in preparation for my first "big" enterprise project, so I got this book in the hope that I would learn something worthwhile.
Having already been involved in the development of stand-alone applications over the years, I was comfortable with the basics.
My, was I disappointed! The authors obviously knew what they were doing, but how to make themselves understood by mere mortals like myself was their greatest problem. It did not
take me long to begin to wonder why I could easily follow Fransesco Balena's advanced writings, and I could not follow these authors'. Tried as I may I could not get past the
first two chapters or so, before I looked for some other things to do.
This is the second book by Matt Reynold's that I have bought (the other was Beginning E-commerce with VB, MTS and ASP), and I have been unhappy with both books. I don't think I
will be going near his books anytime in the future.
If you really want to learn something about enterprise development, I suggest you scour Microsoft's MSDN website, or look for a more responsible book. This website has tons of lists you could also check out. This one is a waste of precious time.

I found the language in this book very difficult to follow. The WEO code is good, but following the examples in the book is a challenge. It is obviuos the book was put together quickly and that it is aimed at expert developers, who probably don't need a book like this. The downloadable code does not track the book examples very well. Only the final example in each 2 to 3 chapter group is included, the intermediate examples aimed at getting you familiar with the material are not included and expletives on buttons in the download code is so unprofessional.

This book's coverage of JavaScript is spotty at best. Not even close to being worth the trees it took to print this thing.

This book is a total waste of money if you are seriouly thinking about programming in JavaScript. It doesn't have good examples in fact not once in the book does it even give an example of how to do a roll-over. I thought complete meant complete. This is a waste of money look toward WROX Press or O'Reily.

This is definately a great choice for anyone trying to learn, continue to learn, or master JavaScript. This book can be considered a tool. With several examples in every chapter and definitions, this book has been real useful to me. As a webmaster on the net, and a person who has learned the programming on his own, I strongly would reccommend this book to all!