After the core, what is the "must have" 3.5 book?

[Garnfellow]

*checks glasses and rereads the entire thread again*

Nope. I was the first, the very first. Not a single mention of Unearthed Arcana above.

Do I have too many people on ignore?

There are at least 10 people on the first page of the thread suggesting UA; Turanil was the first with post #3.

 

[Nonlethal Force]

Do I have too many people on ignore?

Eh, you haven't yet put me on ignore ... so I'll vote "not yet."

Anyway, UA is a rock solid book for DMs. Not a must have for players. As a DM, if someone were to come in and force me to burn one of the following: UA, Draconomicon, XPH, or PHB II I'd have a rough time choosing. As a player, UA would go.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Not really. I mean its a lot of supplemental material that covers classes, races, characters, and then a whole bunch of misc material that covers a lot of mechanics. For me, I like tweaking the rules a lot and mechanically, this shows how to do it. DMG II was really good as well and was probably the first D&D book I actually read cover to cover. You did say you weren't looking for advice books though. I would also consider Monte Cook Presents The Year's Best d20. Lot of great material in that little book. What do you want specifically? Cool monsters, new classes, new subsystems, etc... If you can narrow it down, I can probably point you in the right direction.

I'm not the original poster. I'm still not sure about something, though - are you talking about Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed, which is, essentially, his rewrite of the PHB, and which was expanded into Arcana Evolved, or Unearthed Arcana, which is a book of options for tweaking a D&D game to one's taste? Your description could apply to either one. I have UA, and love it, and I've looked through Arcana Unearthed, and it's revision/expansion, Arcana Evolved, and wasn't all that atken with it.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

There are at least 10 people on the first page of the thread suggesting UA; Turanil was the first with post #3.

My guess is he was just being sarcastic.

 

[Greg K]

Anyway, UA is a rock solid book for DMs. Not a must have for players. As a DM, if someone were to come in and force me to burn one of the following: UA, Draconomicon, XPH, or PHB II I'd have a rough time choosing. As a player, UA would go.

As a player, I would keep UA over any other WOTC supplement just for the class variants- I have more use for the class variants in UA than any PrC, new base class or other class variant that we have received in other supplements.