3.0 must have books

[dpmcalister]

A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe (Expeditious Retreat)
Quite simply the best resource around for helping to create your own medieval campaign.

Black Flags: Piracy in the Carribean (Avalanche Press)
Only 64 pages, but full of extremely detailed, and interesting, background material as well as game rules.

Seas of Blood: Fantasy on the High Seas (Mongoose Publishing)
Excellent mass trading and sea combat rules.

Seafarer's Handbook (Fantasy Flight Games)
Ship construction rules.

NPC Essentials (RPG Objects)
Extremely handy resource for putting together NPCs.

Hope that helps

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If you're into multi-genre settings, like RIFTS, check out Second World Sourcebook, from Second World Solutions. It lets you combine D&D & D20 Modern pretty well.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Mercenaries (AEG)
Traps & Treachery I and II (Fantasy Flight Games)
Path of ... (Faith, Magic, Shadow) books (Fantasy Flight Games)
Monster's Handbook (Fantasy Flight Games)
Books of Eldritch Might I-III (Malhavoc Press)

I would second all of these, and add R&R 2 (but I dunno if it is 3.0 or 3.5 I play a odd mix of the two). In particular the "Path" books. I have found those very usefull in my campaign.

WOTC
AEG
Feats (multi-publisher feat compendium + new feats)

Fast Forward Entertainment
Book of All Spells (Mutli-publisher spell compendium)

Dunno about the Book of all spells... I got burned by some very bad FFE books early on and avoided thier stuff, is it that good?

As to that subject, I know that Mongoose doesn't get a lot of love here, but Ulitmate Feats I find better and more useful that Feats by AEG (and hey I use both). I find the stuff in the AEG to be a little more unbalancing.

I also use the Ultimate Arcane and Ultimate Divine Spellbooks. Yeah they have problems, but they also have lots of spells in them. I think they were put out on the cusp of the 3.0/3.5 switchover so they may not be quite suitable for you.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Well, the thing about the Book of All Spells is that it isn't just FFE's work. I'm no real fan of FFE, but this thing covers the PHB and 31 other books. Mongoose and FFE comprise the bulk of the work, but AEG is a close 3rd, and Bastion, S&S Studios, Paradigm, and Sony all get in on the act.

The Spell lists use the standard PHB format, listing PHB spells in normal fonts, while the others are listed in bold. Furthermore, the NAMES of the spells use the same font protocol.

The text of each spell is listed in normal text.

This was, for me, a no brainer.