Review of The Mongoose Pocket Player's Handbook

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This volume in the Mongoose Core OGL series is a small format (trade paperback) version of the D&D Players Handbook. I've had my copy now since 2004 and it has held up to prolonged use pretty well with the binding still intact and what damage it has sustained due to being stuffed into overfull rucksacks.

The usefulness of this depends on two things: firstly do you own the 3.5 PHB in which case the main thing it has is portability and better layout; secondly do you play a straight D&D campaign or is it a setting with little use of the core rule. If neither applies it can be a more than adequate replacement containing all the actual content thats in the SRD (from the players side in a convenient format).

I like it a lot as it is easier to find things in than the PHB, with clearer layout and text. The format also makes it a lot easier to carry to games or if I want to have a rules reference where I can't use an electronic copy of the SRD. The lack of artwork is actually a plus for me as I don't really like Wizards preferred art style for D&D at the moment.The layout uses most of each page for rules and these are in a legible font with probably 95% of each page being used for rule content.

Content

Its the SRD elements of the Players Handbook, plus a bit more information in a nice clear layout. There are no sample characters for each class which I don't regard as a great loss, but means this is better for experienced players or DMs to replace the PHB or to use the book as a supplemental copy that is more portable. It does include rules for Epic level characters, but not the XP table for characters above 20th level though this is not a big loss with the XP progression being clear in the D20 rules.

The weak areas are a lack of diagrams in the combat section as it makes it easier to understand some areas of the rules, such as movement, attacks of opportunity and line of sight where diagrams are present. There are no example sequences of play which again would be useful for clarification. It would have been nice to have more tables with the content particularly in skills and feats sections. Equipment and spell list are done as tables which helps with usability.

As this uses the SRD version of the rules anything that constitutes product identity is removed making the spell lists subtly different with the names changed to remove things like Bigsby or Mordenkainen, but the actual spells are present with the same effects as in the D&D PHB.

There is an index and a contents page, though neither is especially great they are always a welcome addition to any gaming book.

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