Dungeons & Dragons: Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide Review

Review copy courtesy of Wizards of the Coast.

Pros:

• Lots of full colour art (as we have come to expect of this edition)
• Lots of maps
• Lots of fluff and descriptions about the different areas and people there
• The mechanical stuff doesn't break the game
• New backgrounds with setting ties that are easy to adopt to other settings are provided

Could Go Either Way:

• It's focuses on the Forgotten Realms (if you like the forgotten realms, this is a major plus and if not it's a con)
• New paths for classes are provided (if you don't like creep, you may not like this) though they are not game breaking and will be too few for some to justify the purchase just for mechanics

Cons:

• For the list price, it's a bit short
• No PDF*

* Denotes nitpicking.

The front cover of Sword Coast's Adventurer's Guide.

Introduction

Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide has been released for the 5^th edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Inside its 159 pages is information about races, options, backgrounds and locations for use with the Forgotten Realms. Personally, I think those who are interested in the Forgotten Realms will appreciate this book. Being no stranger to the Forgotten Realms myself, I enjoyed reading this book. Still, I had a couple of issues. For more depth, just read below or jump to the conclusion for a high level overview. Table of contents is here.

The Internals

New Mechanics and Rules

Inside this book are different mechanical options for players. At least one (deep gnomes) of these have already been featured in other adventures though I didn't notice much reuse beyond that. It's nice to have everything together in one book and yes, they did seem to be consistent with the previously published material. Most of it, however, is new. Anything I didn't like seemed to be easy to house rule as well and it mostly had to do with fluff (I'm looking at you, spiked armour).

Going in no particular order, we have some new backgrounds. Now, personally, I feel like backgrounds are probably some of the easiest things for a Dungeon Master to create in this edition. Still, it's nice to have some new ones written down and they generally seemed to be in line with the previously published ones (I'm a bit scared of power creep so this is important to me). They also tend to have links to the Sword Coast world which is nice to see (this will take some slight house ruling for other settings but it will be only slight).

We had some new material provided for the classes. There weren't any completely new classes, but some new options where provided (by options I mean domains for clerics, martial archetypes for fighters, etc.). Many different classes get attention here (strangely rangers don't) and I didn't have any concerns for almost all of the paths provided. There's one or two which make me a bit nervous (bladesinger is one of them) but if they are a little bit better than the rest, it isn't by much. The exception is Way of the Long Death but it's easy to increase the number of ki points needed to make it in line with the rest. I find myself occasionally making NPCs by following the character creation rules so any of them I feel may be too good for the players I could always use for my NPCs anyway (and adjusting the encounter to be fair, of course) but it's still nice to see that my players get some new options too.

Finally, we have a big list of races that exist within the forgotten realms. Mechanically, there isn't too much here. Some races get a couple of new variations which are in line with what we have seen so far. However, while I am breaking my format a bit here, there is far more for the races than mechanics. Many of them have fairly long explanations of their place in the world, histories, and unique features. There are even Forgotten Realms scripts provided for races such as humans, elves and dwarves (which means we are missing the exotic scripts Celestial, Infernal and Draconic, though we still have the Draconic script from the Player's Handbook).

Overall, it's rather light on the mechanics which honestly I tend to prefer at this point (lots of mechanics across many books scares me). I could see how some might be disappointed with how few there are, though. 

The Writing

If you are getting this book, it is probably for the writing. Lists of gods are given for the players (those Forgotten Realms veterans already know that there are quite a few gods in the Forgotten Realms), and histories of the world are provided. I knew most of what was in the book due to playing in the Forgotten Realms, but I still enjoyed reading it. Even when new options aren't given to a class or race, information on their roles in the world are provided.

Ever wonder how they measure time? It's covered. What about holidays and festivals? It's covered. Systems of government along the Sword Coast? Check. There's quite a nice range of topics covered and I found them to be a good read. It seems like it would work as a fairly decent reference. It does feel a bit short though. Almost like we could easily have 50 pages or even twice the content in exchange for a bigger price. Still, there were some pretty good deals out there that should help make the book tempting. 

The majority of the writing is good, but the part where this book really stood out for me was the descriptions of the locations through the Sword Coast. There is an emphasis that this is your Forgotten Realms and you should change it to be what you want it to be. Even when describing a location, the book does not speak from a position of authority. Instead, that portion of the book is written as a collection of accounts from informants and it really makes it seem stronger for me. It's evocative but not completely authoritative. It's how I feel that kind of section should be done.

The Art and Book Build Quality

One of the maps inside Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. There are others, and they also look good. They are also in a similar style. 

I found the art throughout this book to be quite nice, though it probably has my least favourite cover so far. The maps and objects are done really nicely in this book, though scaling is missing on the maps. Out of all of the Faerun gods mentioned in the list, almost all of them have an illustration of their symbol (I only counted 3 without illustrations) and they look great (my personal favourite is Jergal's symbol though I can't think of one that looked bad). I tend to be quite picky when it comes to depictions of people and prefer a realistic art style. Even so, there were quite a few pieces of art involving people that I liked in this book.

The book itself is in the same style as the rest in this edition. Everything from the pages to the spine makes it fit perfectly when standing on the book shelf. The pages themselves are in a style that makes them look like they are from an in-game book, complete with fake creases close to the edge of the page. It's nice, and I generally appreciate these kinds of details (they also blend really well with the style of the maps, which look like they are lifted straight out of Faerun).

Defects

The good news is that the pages in my copy were straight. The bad news is that out of all of the books I have of this edition, the binding is the worst. This is especially true for the first page and last page (look at the picture below to see what I mean). Still, I've been reading it and it seems to be staying together securely though it has been worrying me a bit. It also looks like two of the pages in my copy were stuck together with glue and when separated caused a small part of the surface of the page to be ripped out. It's barely noticeable but I feel it's worth noting and looking out for. I'm also not sure how common those kinds of things are for this run of the book.

The binding on the last page of the book. 

Price

The best prices I could find doing a quick search were $23.77 at Barnes and Noble in the US (Amazon has the same price) and $31.94 at Chapters in Canada. 

What I felt was Missing

Again, we are missing a PDF. A reference like this would have made a perfect candidate for a PDF. Also, I would have liked to see all of the script types mentioned in the Player's Handbook (including exotic) included in the book. Fonts being provided would have also been nice so that we Dungeon Masters could use the ones that are here in our handouts. This wasn't done for the Player's Handbook either, but I still feel it's worth mentioning. 

Summary

Overall, this is a resource and reference for Dungeon Masters who will be running games on the Sword Coast. It does what you would expect with its 159 pages. It has generally good art, a lot of good information describing the Sword Coast and is a bit light on mechanics. If you don't like the Forgotten Realms, you might still be tempted to buy the book just for the extra player options though as mentioned, it's a bit light on them. However, I'd say the main reasons to get the book are for the art and writing. It may be hard to justify buying this book if you already have a lot of old Forgotten Realms stuff. It's also not a must own book, especially if you prefer your own setting. Still, it's a good addition to this edition, and Forgotten Realms fans as well as new people to the game who want to learn more about the world they have been playing in through the adventures should be happy (especially if you find a lower price online and prefer description over mechanics since it is shorter and mostly descriptions). If you heard that there was going to be a Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide and thought, “Cool”, you will be happy. Just be on the lookout for that binding if you can.

Other Stuff

• Reading over this book, I don't remember many typos