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[Aesmael]

Hey all. I'm someone who has been fascinated by D&D for ages - right from listening in on the games the other kids played in high school to lurking here a couple of years ago - and what with 4th Edition being announced and all I've got the itch it seems high time to get around to picking up those v.3.5 sourcebooks while they are still available.

Seems WotC has been pretty busy though; I have the page on their site listing all their D&D products open and it is huge (I was only around for the period between Complete Divine being new and the first Fiendish Codex being announced). So, I am asking for input from people. What books have you found to be the best, most useful or interesting? Indispensable, even (so to speak)?

The books that most caught my attention while I was around earlier were the type-focused monster books, the Complete X series and the environment/races books. I'm not much one for settings except Spelljammer and Planescape, which I'd devour in an instant and take apart to use for building my own worlds given half a chance (Yes, I know those are unsupported 2ed settings), but if a setting-specific book introduces something especially exciting or interesting I'd love to hear about it.

So, what's out there? What do I 'need' but not know about yet?

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

4E's been announced? I must have been sleeping.

 

[Aesmael]

Heh, whoops. It hasn't? Coming back and seeing this site with a section for 4E news on the front page I thought it must have been. Just went and checked the page itself and it says nothing of the sort, bad assumption on my part. Oh well, 'tis a relief. I am rather attached to what I have read of the current edition.

 

[Obergnom]

Okay, here is what I find most useful in our games: (Being DM most of the times)


Character Generation/Players Stuff:

Magic Item Compendium (reinveted a whole part of character generation for my group. We used to mostly use +x items, now it is like you can give every character cool abilities)

Spell Compendium (we use only PHB and this book for spells)

PrCls and Feats: IMO there is no single good resource for these in Wotcs sortiment, and the entry into options here is pretty expansive. To me it allways felt like the Completes 1-4 (Warrior, Divine, Arcane, Adventurer) are like the first step in adding stuff (4 books = lots of money). Using only 1 or 2 of them would make certain classes heve less choices. Then there is PHB2, which complements those nicely. The Races of Series, agins is a huge investment. (Only 3 books, but still...). Then there are the new completes, use them once the old ones start boring you.
My group has all these books, but there might be much better recources using d20 stuff, which would not make you buy so many books out of which you most likely will only use the feats and PrCls chapters. (Netbook of Feats is a good free recource of feats, for example)

Campaign/DM Stuff:

You might like the 3.0 Manual of the Planes and the Planar Handbook, but why not just grab the free 3.5 planescape conversion at planewalker.com and get some 2nd ed. resources? Those are mostly fluff, anyway.

I like to use templates. Advanced Beastiary from Green Ronin and the Book of Templates Deluxe by Silverthorn Games have been invaluable resources to me.

The Monster Manuals are good, but I do not think those to be as usefull as the templates books, because my players like to at least have a clue what they are fighting. (A Vrock Possessed Hill Giants Leader works better in my group than some new and wierd monster they can't relay to at all.)

All the "Monsters" Books (Draconomicon, Lords of Madness, Drow of the Underdark, Libris Mortis, Fiendish Codex 1+2) are great if you want something to read to get ideas for a new adventure. They help fleshing out encounters and background and so on... I really like those.

In short: Get Magic Item Comp, Spell Comp, something with a lot of options for players*, Advanced Beastiary from Green Ronin (IMO the better of the 2 Templates Books) and something that will help you with your campaign. (A Monster Book or some Planar Stuff)


*(As we have the Wizards stuff, I do not know what might be good 3rd Party recources, but there should be a way to save some money. If you would like to play a Core Game, at least get "Fantasy Player’s Companion: Higher Level Feats for the Fighting Man" by Patrick Younts, this will help the martial classes a lot. It is a small pdf (7 pages, incl the ogl license))

 

[freyar]

I also think the MIC is a huge help, especially for DMing. As far as the most fun, though, I'd have to go with the monster books like Draconomicon and Lords of Madness. Have fun!

 

[Aesmael]

Thanks for that. The Magic Item Compendium is something I would have ignored otherwise. Is the Drow of the Underdark very similar to the other monster books? Most importantly, does it cover something other than Drow?

Some other questions if anyone sees this: Are there other environment books than Sandstorm, Stormwrack and Frostburn? Those don't have nice easy-to-tell titles. The new races and classes for Eberron seem pretty interesting too, are they reprinted in any other books? If this information is on the Wizards' site I haven't found it yet (and I have nothing against Eberron, I just expect that if I were to buy one of the books for it, it would go mostly unused).

Can't believe I hadn't bookmarked Planewalker before - thanks for reminding me it exists! Noting the other books mentioned for future research.

This is... long term purchasing. If I bought all those books at once I'd feel sick with overload. Plus I'd be broke. Over a year or so, though...

 

[Obergnom]

There are two more enviromental books. Cityscape and Dungeonscape. I don't know if those are good though.

Drow of the Underdark covers Drow in detail. There are a few non drow Monsters in there, but it's only worth it if you build some adventures using drow. Something thats true for all the "ecology" books, imo.

The eberron races are reprinted in the Monster Manual 3, I don't think the artificer is available anywhere outside the Eberron Campaign Setting.

 

[Asmor]

IMHO, Dungeonscape rocks and Cityscape is crap.

I can't believe noone's suggested the PHB 2 yet. Easily worth its weight in gold to both DMs and players... The latter find lots of options for every character type, and the former finds invaluable tables for quickly statting out classed NPCs of almost any class and level.

 

[Obergnom]

I can't believe noone's suggested the PHB 2 yet. Easily worth its weight in gold to both DMs and players... The latter find lots of options for every character type, and the former finds invaluable tables for quickly statting out classed NPCs of almost any class and level.

I have But you need the 4 old completes to fully benefit from it. And the feat tables for quick NPC generation are full of errors. Besides that, it is a fantastic book.

 

[Asmor]

I have But you need the 4 old completes to fully benefit from it. And the feat tables for quick NPC generation are full of errors. Besides that, it is a fantastic book.

Oh, I didn't see it buried in that paragraph on feats and prestige classes.