What 5th edition books should I be buying?

jayoungr · Jun 3, 2019

I third [ETA: oops, fourth] the recommendation for Tome of Beasts, and its follow-up, Creature Codex, is equally good.

If you liked Xanathar's Guide to Everything, you should also check out Xanathar's Lost Notes to Everything Else. It's basically "More Xanathar's."

If you do any urban-based adventures with competing factions, you might find Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica useful, especially the tables for creating adventures based around faction conflict.

DND_Reborn · Jun 3, 2019

You can buy mine, but I own many that you weren't impressed by...

Swarmkeeper · Jun 3, 2019

S'mon said:
I get more use from Kobold Press's Tome of Beasts, which has a lot of distinctive and high-threat monsters that work well as 'specials'.

Azzy said:
Tome of Beast, as S'mon mentioned, is a great monster resource.

robus said:
More monsters? Tomb of Beasts and Creature Codex add a bunch of variety.

jayoungr said:
I third the recommendation for Tome of Beasts, and its follow-up, Creature Codex, is equally good.

Over here for a fifth!

Both enormous Kobold Press monster books are chock full of such a great variety of monsters that it is a challenge to not find something to fit your desired CR, environment, monster type, alignment, etc. The artwork in those books is quite nice as well.

Tony Vargas · Jun 3, 2019

der_kluge said:
I own the 3 core rulebooks,

You're good.
That's all you need - & more, really.
Complete game.

and I picked up Volo's Guide, which I really, really like, and I have Xanathar's, which I also really like.
I kind of like Mordenkainen's Guide,

I suppose those don't hurt, either.

I don't need any world books.

Judging by what you liked, above, SCAG has some content, but at a low crunch:fluff ratio.

But I'm left wondering if there are any really good 5e books from 3pp that I should be really checking out - PDF or book form.

Yeah, that's a minefield.

What am I missing?

If anything? Maybe that 5e calls back 1e in more than just feel and DM Empowerment, it also has very little official rules content added over time.

So, you're free to make up your own rules &c (you can't do worse than a lot of what's out there), even if you don't do great design, at least it's tailored to what you want.

Ralif Redhammer · Jun 3, 2019

All three of these products are ones I regularly use in my campaigns. Kobold Press knows their monsters, that's for sure. And Arcanis has some really cool magic items.

robus said:
More monsters? Tomb of Beasts and Creature Codex add a bunch of variety.

More treasure? Arcanis: Forged in Magic has some fun options.

der_kluge · Jun 3, 2019

robus said:
Instead of asking for what you're missing, perhaps tell us what you're looking for?

More monsters? Tomb of Beasts and Creature Codex add a bunch of variety.

More treasure? Arcanis: Forged in Magic has some fun options.

Meh - good books. lol

I added Tome of Beasts and Creature Codex to my wishlist. Those look like good options.
I'll go check out Arcanis next.

der_kluge · Jun 3, 2019

So yea, great suggestions. I've added both monster books, and Arcanis to my list. Those look like great resources.

Are there good resources around POIs? I've been wanting a good book that has generic places of interest that I can use to populate a city with. Like what Bluffside had (and I use a lot of those, honestly), but something a bit more generic. Like, here's a blacksmith, what he can make, his personality, and plot hooks around the blacksmith, etc. Something like that would be gold - otherwise, I'll go write the dang thing myself.

77IM · Jun 4, 2019

Even if you don't have (or want) the Tactical Maps, I highly recommend the Tactical Maps Adventure Atlas. I just really love the format. Each location is given about 2 pages worth of details, and then another page or two of "scenarios," which are in between large encounters and small adventures. It's very easy to run these as one-shots, or squeeze them in as side-quests for an ongoing campaign. I also think the Tactical Maps themselves are a good value, but, they are not books.

I second (third? fourth?) the recommendations for Tome of Foes and Creature Codex. Lots of very creative monsters and great art. (Some of the stat-blocks are a bit rough around the edges, but they are perfectly serviceable for an experienced DM.)

Li Shenron · Jun 4, 2019

der_kluge said:
I kind of like Mordenkainen's Guide, but I failed to see why I needed the stats for over a dozen demon and devil lords. So that was a huge waste of space. But I might pick it up eventually since there was some value in there.

If you liked Volo's for the monsters, I think you will also like Mordenkainen's, even tho it doesn't have the in-depth monsters ecology chapters as Volo's, it still has plenty of monsters to use (the demon princes of nearly-unusable CRs are just a few pages).

I think you can easily look at book previews just googling for them, so that you get a better idea at the page counts of different sections and get less "wasted space" feeling.

TwoSix · Jun 4, 2019

Out of curiosity, are you looking for books specifically, or are you looking for content? Because the amount of good electronic content dwarfs the amount of good physical content.