Blackman thought this was a stronger book than Book of Vile Darkness due to the inclusion of more usable material, but he warned that it "may not integrate well into your established D&D cosmology." He also noted the "tendency towards powerful abilities that may not be properly balanced by the role-playing restrictions. He was less enthused about new equipment, new magic spells and new monsters. Reviewer Merric Blackman thought there was good material in the book, particularly about the nature of good, variant rules for good characters, new feats and prestige classes.Without goals, it may be hard for a DM to use them as anything other than stage dressing when the player characters start traveling the planes." DeMorris concluded that the book had "some rough spots that could have been better developed", and that it was "a good book, but not a great one." While reviewer Alex DeMorris thought that the book had some "great new material", he noted that the new "paragon" class of creatures lacked any obvious motive or purpose, saying, "Their descriptions come across more as creature statistics than a character portrait.The artifact has subsequently appeared in every new edition of D&D, although with varying powers. The original item raised the Wisdom ability score of good clerics who spent a week reading it, and also granted them a new level of experience. Not to be confused with the WotC book, Gary Gygax described a powerful magical artifact of the same name in the original Dungeon Master's Guide in 1979. The book was written by James Wyatt, Darrin Drader and Christopher Perkins, with cover art by Henry Higginbotham, and interior art by Tom Baxa, Steve Belladin, Matt Cavotta, Brent Chumley, Rebecca Guay-Mitchell, Jeremy Jarvis, Doug Kovacs, Ginger Kubic, David Martin, Mark Nelson, Wayne Reynolds, Ron Spencer, Arnie Swekel, and Ben Thompson. It included "ethical questions that most players might not be comfortable with including in their game" and "also dealt with aspects of real-world religion and tried to use them in the context of Dungeons & Dragons, such as stigmata". The Book of Exalted Deeds was the flip side of the Book of Vile Darkness and dealt with "the extreme elements of the good alignment". The following year, WotC released the Book of Exalted Deeds, also with a "Mature Content" warning. Wizards of the Coast had published the controversial Book of Vile Darkness in 2002, a game supplement that explored evil themes and raised the ire of some with its "Mature Content" sticker, sexualized imagery and graphic details. Monsters: This chapter contains good-aligned monsters, featuring the Deathless type, as well as templates to create customized monsters.It also discusses the Upper Planes to an extent. Celestial Paragons: This chapter discusses (and provides NPC stat blocks for) celestial paragons, rulers of the Upper planes so overwhelmingly powerful that they are revered as a god would be, even on the Material Plane.Magic: This chapter provides spells almost exclusively for good characters, as well as magical items, weapon and armor enhancements, and artifacts appropriate to such a campaign.
Prestige Classes: This chapter introduces prestige classes appropriate for an exalted campaign.Feats: This chapter includes several new feats, the vast majority of which are exalted feats, meant specifically for good-aligned characters and usable only by such.Exalted Equipment: This talks about the weapons (sometimes special) used by exalted characters.Variant Rules: This simply adds additional rules for a campaign featuring good-aligned characters that allows such characters to become exalted characters.