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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thanael" data-source="post: 4595703" data-attributes="member: 22734">Core, plus Complete Fighter,Thief, Wizard. Optional: The Complete Race books (Elf, Dwarf, Gnomes & Halflings, Humanoids) are also interesting, I'm nost sure how to rank them though. Complete Humanoids is similar to Savage Species, and is probably the weakest of the bunch. There's a Complete Half-Elf article in Dragon magazine somewhere, but it only has the character kits. The background ecology stuff is what made C.Dwarves, and C. Gnomes & Halflings great. Complete Ranger is not bad, as is the Paladin and Bard. Perhaps Complete Cleric for guidelines on making your own specialty priests. Specialty priests are way cooler than the generic core clerics imho, so either this or a setting specific book, which the OP ruled out. (Though I would still consider buying the FR Demihuman Deities and/or Faith's and Avatars, they are that good. Or you could get Legends & Lore for some real world pantheons' specialty priests. The Greyhawk pantheons specialty priests are spread far and wide between many books and Dragon/Polyhedron articles unfortunately, though they are my favorite pantheons.)  Two must haves imho are the <a href="http://gctm.free.fr/add/necromant/index.html" target="_blank">Complete Book of Necromancers</a> (awesome book, includes mini island campaign), and Monster Mythology (the non-setting-specific core D&D gods). Outstanding books both. The first was written by Steve Kurtz who put a Clark Ashton Smith lens on the specialist Necromancer and included the whole loosely into Al Qadim. The book is quite generic though. Monster Mythology was written by Carl Sargent who gives a face to all those generic staple D&D Deities, like the demihuman pantheons, the monster gods (from goblinoids and orcs to giants to beholders and lycanthropes),  some Demon Lords and more. I also liked the follwoing 2.5 Option books very much: Combat & Tactics (for the critical hit system, more detailed weapons and weapon proficiencies), and Spells & Magic (new spells, critical hits for spells, alternate spell systems). I did not like the Epic Option book very much, nor the other one that breaks open the class features.But 2E's best books are the setting books. Check out Al'Qadim and Planescape, or Birthright. Get the free stuff from WotC for previews: <a href="http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/downloads" target="_blank">Previous Edition Dungeons & Dragons Downloads</a>.Check out the two Al Qadim downloads for a glimpse of that settings production quality and flavour goodness.There's more fee stuff out there. If you're  interested in Greyhawk check out the unpublished <a href="http://www.io.com/~wmallman/ivid.html" target="_blank">WGRX Ivid the Undying pdf</a>Oh and get some old issues of Dungeon. Emirikols complete Dungeon index should help.</blockquote>

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