Books : Complete Divine: A Player's Guide to Divine Magic for all Classes (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying Supplement)
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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 793
EAN num: 9780786932726
ISBN number: 0786932724
Label: Wizards of the Coast
Manufacturer: Wizards of the Coast
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 192
Printing Date: May 14, 2004
Publishing house: Wizards of the Coast
Release Date: May 01, 2004
Sale Popularity Level: 25900
Studio: Wizards of the Coast
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Product Description:
The most detailed resource ever released on accessing divine power and divine favor in the D&D world.
Complete Divine provides Dungeons & Dragons® players with an in-depth look at how to gain the favor of the gods and use that power to a character's advantage. There is a rundown of new gods in the D&D pantheon, in addition to new feats, spells, prestige classes, and magic items. In addition, this title adds new and revised base classes to a player's character choices, and clerics in particular are provided with many new and updated spell domains and spells.
This title also contains a wealth of material for non-cleric characters, so the tips and data provided will assist all class types, including those classes not typically associated with garnering divine power.
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Rated by buyers 
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Like so many of the other "Complete" books from Wizards of the Coast, Complete Divine seems to have a galvanizing affect on it's readers and reviewers. In other words, either they love it or they hate it. The reason is probably because, while the book includes a number of extremely good ideas and useful new features, it also has some potentially game-breaking mechanics if used to their fullest extent (such as Divine Metamagic).
Chapter 1 starts with a few pages of interesting flavor text about answering the call of the divine and why certain characters might serve as clerics or other classes of faith. It is followed by the introduction of three new base classes: The Favored Soul (a spontaneous divine magic user, sort of like a sorcerer but with cleric spells), the Shugenja (an oriental based spirit magician) and the Spirit Shaman (a more nature oriented spontaneous caster similar to a druid with some interesting abilities). Nothing to out of the ordinary in the very first chapter, though some interpretations of the Spirit Shaman can get interesting at higher levels. Still, the very first chapter has some good stuff for both players and dungeon masters.
Chapter 2 covers 24 separate prestige class possibilities, including some "good guys", some "bad guys" and a whole slew of other guys from melee types to even an arcane spellcaster. I haven't seen a whole lot of game-breaking material here either, but some of it seems pretty ridiculously underpowered compared to straight cleric characters I've seen. All in all, Chapter 2 provides a few really interesting ideas and quite a few other fairly good ideas as well. Well worth a look.
Chapter 3 covers a lot of ground in only a few pages. The Supplemental Rules section is where most of the craziness comes from as it applies to supposedly over-powered character creation. Many of the feats are good as written, but some have potential mechanic exploits that can create some very powerful characters. Most of the anti-sentiment towards Complete Divine comes from the section, but I think most of the chapter is perfectly usable as is.
Chapter 4 didn't impress me much, to be honest. It covers magic items, including relics, that can be included into a game. Most of them were sort of take them or leave them, in my opinion.
Chapter 5 covers deities, how to read the deity "stat block" and goes over some new deities you might want to include in you campaign. I didn't find this section helpful because I typically used pre-published campaign settings or simply homebrew my own. That being said, this section might prove valuable to people who have a hard time with the deities presented in the core rule books.
Chapter 6 was very interesting to me for the flavor text alone. Most of the chapter covered the various views of the divine and the afterlife as espoused by the deities and their followers. Very little in the way of rules or mechanics, but still interesting from a game-philosophy standpoint.
Chapter 7 gives a whole heap of intersting spells to outfit characters. Useful if the dungeon master or players find the core selection limiting.
All in all, I found this book useful for cherry picking feats and spells that I thought would add to the game while leaving behind things I felt detracted. I highly recommend that anyone who is seriously into playing D&D give this book a look-see.
Rated by buyers 
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Me, the guy who always plays the Cleric or Druid, could'nt resist picking this up, and it was worth every penny. Lets start with the beginning:
Chapter 1: The Favored Soul, Shunenja, and Spirit Shaman are all nice classes, though I have to say I'll probably only use the very first two.
Chapter 2: The best part in my opinion. Every type of Divine spellcaster, and even some arcane spellcasters, has a class here. My favorites are the Pious Templar, Warpriest, and Divine Oracle (all of whitch I hope to become in the near future.)
Chapter 3: The feats of the book where pretty good, but I'll probably only use the Wild Feats, whitch are mostly variations of other feats but with lower prequisites. Some of the divine feats are nice, like Spontanous Healer/Inflict/summoner if your not the apropriate class. It also touched on Epic Divine spellcasters, but all the feats are in Epic Level Handbook, but its good if you dont have it.
Chapter 4: The Relics where a nice touch to the book, and although its exclusive to the core Greyhawk Dieties, It gave me some ideas on artifacts for my campiagn, as well as that of my freind's.
Chapter 5: This chapter gives a synopsis of the rites, worship, temples, and practices of the core dieties as well as others, such as Bahamut and Lolth. It also touches on other minor Greyhawk deities.
Chapter 6: The descriptions of what happens after death in these chapters has silenced many arguements at the table, such as intricacy's in resurrection and how the soul reacts to its new home (Or old one if its devoted to Fharlangh or Vecna. It also decribes Religous groups, though I knew all this stuff already.
Chapter 7: 5 pages of new domains. If thats not enough, alot of new Cleric and Druid spells (As well as Blackguard, Ranger, And Paladin, though not nearly as many of them.) Though most are useful to me, some I'll never even think of agian. But there are always those spells that seem as if they were put there to address something that almost never comes up.
I really like this book, and it ranks with my top 5 most used/useful supplements at #4. I use this book whenever I'm making a Cleric, Paladin, Blackguard, or Druid. If your Pcs don't play these (Why?) then consider other books, but otherwise, read this and I believe you'll find something to make you Diviner's the best they can be.
Rated by buyers -
This book is great for anyone playing a divine spell caster. Providing good feats and prestige classes.
Rated by buyers -
So I've been back and forth over this book a few times, especially once I very first got it. After running through it a few times, I've come to the conclusion that it is pretty useful for bits and pieces of using Divine casters in a game.
Like most recent Wizards releases, there's lots of extra material I as a player and DM never use and don't intend on. Too many Prestige Classes. Lots of them take hits on caster level for a special ability, or some other small bonus. It can be hard enough to run a caster at its full casting level without having taking an extra hit.
Most of the magic items or artifacts presented aren't necessarily worth putting into a game without a specific use. Some of the regular magic items I wouldn't want to put in as part of a hoard or random treasure. They seem to be either overpowering or underwhelming, no happy medium.
Feats were hit or miss, either you can use them in a multitude of places and on many types of characters or they were built for one class only. However some of the one class only feats, such as the Wild feats are helpful if you run a Druid to some of the middle and higher levels. Augment Healing was a nice one, a little help with healing every time doesn't hurt, until you get Heal and works good after run out of Heals too.
When it came to classes, I've only be able to get into the Favored Soul. It's a pretty straight forward Divine casting sorcerer. It's got a d8 hit die, weapon focus as a bonus feat and 3 energy resistances through its level progression. Spell casting is a little slow compared to the Cleric, but you can do pretty well with bonus spells per day and a good Charisma score. Plus, you don't prepare spells, you spontaneous cast, which comes in handy when you need to act fast as both the healer and small tank. Wings in the late levels seem more as add on flavor text than as an actual perk of the class.
It's not a bad book overall, I'd suggest snagging a copy if Divine casters are your thing, or borrowing one to make you subsequent cleric, druid or other divine caster.
Rated by buyers 
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The complete divine is a decent book, but by no means anything great. Roleplaying is gone over very briefly, and is mostly common sense stuff. There are decent classes that might be fun to roleplay, but don't bring much to the table in terms of originallity. Also, the new spells that are introduced aren't worth too much.
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