The 3 Core Books plus THIS ONE BOOK are all you can use to game--What's the one book?

I am also going to have to vote for the PHB2 (4E), although the adventurers vault is almost as indispensable.

Despite my original misgivings, I am going to have to admit that WotC has so far succeded in their "yearly core books" strategy.

...and I feel that the PHB3 will also be indispensable in my games

Terramotus said:

Dude, I have to question your choice there. The Chosen of God Paragon Path / PrC is ridiculously overpowered, and like old-school Forgotten Realms, the NPCs are so powerful it makes you wonder why the problems haven't been solved by them already.

My group is also not very good at following rules set down by authority figures, so they usually run afoul of the Ten Commandments on multiple levels. All it usually takes is a visit to the tavern and they've violated three or four. My PCs think we should just hand-wave them away, but I think that you really lose the flavor of the setting that way.

I also am not fond of the level of deity intervention in that setting. I understand that in the later setting material it's not so blatant, but you did specifically mention the Bible here, so that's what I'm going off of.

The final nail in the coffin for me, though, is the lack of character options. Most of the races just aren't there, and everyone seems to want to play as Gods Chosen People which IMO are poorly balanced, with numerous benefits but mainly roleplaying restrictions to balance them out, like 2E drow. Also, I'm a big fan of arcane classes, and the way the setting is structured it's basically impossible to have a divine and arcane character in the same party, since the divine users won't suffer the arcane ones to live.

However, to each his own!

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Although my response was terse and didn't leave much to interpretation, I picked The Bible for it's potential as an adventure module/idea mill. Not for the rules therein.

Terramotus said:

Dude, I have to question your choice there. The Chosen of God Paragon Path / PrC is ridiculously overpowered, and like old-school Forgotten Realms, the NPCs are so powerful it makes you wonder why the problems haven't been solved by them already.

My group is also not very good at following rules set down by authority figures, so they usually run afoul of the Ten Commandments on multiple levels. All it usually takes is a visit to the tavern and they've violated three or four. My PCs think we should just hand-wave them away, but I think that you really lose the flavor of the setting that way.

I also am not fond of the level of deity intervention in that setting. I understand that in the later setting material it's not so blatant, but you did specifically mention the Bible here, so that's what I'm going off of.

The final nail in the coffin for me, though, is the lack of character options. Most of the races just aren't there, and everyone seems to want to play as Gods Chosen People which IMO are poorly balanced, with numerous benefits but mainly roleplaying restrictions to balance them out, like 2E drow. Also, I'm a big fan of arcane classes, and the way the setting is structured it's basically impossible to have a divine and arcane character in the same party, since the divine users won't suffer the arcane ones to live.

However, to each his own!

Click to expand...

Funnily enough the d20 supplement Testament by Green Ronin is one of my favorite books (it is 3.0 not 3.5). It is Old Testament, so you usually play the Israelites (ideally during the time of Judges, but also suitable for other time periods), although you can also play Egyptians, Babylonians, Canaanites and there is a pdf expansion for playing Hittites.

I got it for $2 during a Great Sale. It was and is an amazing book. They really did their homework on this one!