 Trenton Webb of the British RPG magazine "Arcane" asserts that the shaman class from this book consists of "pilfered priests spells and mumbo jumbo".An article by James Wyatt in "Dragon" #250 (August 1998) presented rules for playing various aquatic races, including crabmen, koalinth, locathah, malenti, merfolk, pahari, selkies, and vodyanoi in the same format used in "The Complete Book of Humanoids".Wyatt acknowledged that ""The Complete Book of Humanoids" broke a long-standing barrier in the AD&D game by allowing players to make characters of nearly any humanoid race," and noted that the book carefully balanced such advantages such as great physical strength against substantial disadvantages, mostly in the form of prejudice and superstition from the more common races.