Best books to get for getting into 4th Ed?

[Festivus]

For DDI, can I make one suggestion, just buy one month (and perhaps hold off till they put the Dark Sun stuff into CB). It never goes away and you will find that the Character Builder and Monster Builder are very nice tools to have. It will cost you less than any of the books and last forever.

I'll also suggest the Rules Compendium as a must get. Everything you need to run the game is in there.

 

[Herschel]

One thing I don't understand is the "buy one month" of DDi. What a pain in the butt.

[rant] It's $5/month for the regular subscription and it's much more convenient than messing around with the update treadmill. When the updates hit, you have them. If you're too cheap/can't affford $5/month there may be some bigger life issues than gaming you should look at. It's a freakin' latte or value meal. [/rant]

As for the OP, the Dark Sun books, rules compendium and ddi would set you up nicely. I like having the hardcover books to peruse myself, but for initial cost for an experienced gamer in a scpecific setting like Dark Sun I think ddi is a better choice.

 

[Gradine]

yeah, for the price of the three PHBs you can get DDi for well over a year. The downside to DDi, especially for the casual group, is that there's a LOT of options and it can be kind of overwhelming, for instance, deciding which feat to take at first level. When all you've got are one or two PHBs in front of you (I couldn't imagine running Dark Sun without the PHB 3 at least), those choices become a lot easier to make.

 

[Festivus]

One thing I don't understand is the "buy one month" of DDi. What a pain in the butt.

[rant] It's $5/month for the regular subscription and it's much more convenient than messing around with the update treadmill. When the updates hit, you have them. If you're too cheap/can't affford $5/month there may be some bigger life issues than gaming you should look at. It's a freakin' latte or value meal. [/rant]

As for the OP, the Dark Sun books, rules compendium and ddi would set you up nicely. I like having the hardcover books to peruse myself, but for initial cost for an experienced gamer in a scpecific setting like Dark Sun I think ddi is a better choice.

Nitpicking, but it's $5.95, not $5.00

I suggested one month because it's only a one time commitment of $9.95, if you don't like it, don't buy more. If you do... buy a year after that. But buying one month gets you all the content up to that point for a very low cost. So it's a good thing if you are unsure, rather than commiting $71.40 as you seem to suggest they do.

They didn't seem sold on the whole DDI thing, I was just trying to point out a low cost way to try out the full product before dismissing it out of hand for a very small monetary commitment.

 

[Herschel]

Don't get me wrong, I can see the one-time trial in this case, but we see it all over the board where people play the whole subscription game to save $20 - $30/year. The time saved not messing around is worth more than that.

 

[Pickles JG]

Truth to tell I thought the Essentials line would save me this kinda headache but I can still see their value.

Well for fairly casual players you can go with essentials books plus campaign specific books (HOTF insterad of PHB1).
PHB3 covering psionics is sort of campaign specific...

If you do go for the DM kit you should hold off on the RC till last as it's marginal benefit is lowest, something more "fun" may take your eye later (it is my favourite Essentials book though the Tile Boxes look like being my favourite products)

 

[Andramelech]

Don't get me wrong, I can see the one-time trial in this case, but we see it all over the board where people play the whole subscription game to save $20 - $30/year. The time saved not messing around is worth more than that.

I disagree. I think saving $60 is worth a little messing around. We are not all rich and famous, and the desire to save a couple bucks does not mean we have bigger problems than d&d or whatever you had said earlier.

 

[teach]

As someone who owns both the DM's Kit and the Rules Compendium, go with the rules compedium. It's half the price, and has all the rules to play d&d 4e in them, and some of the DM's Kit is just reprinted Rules Compendium fluff. DM's kit is nice for the tokens, but I might recommend just waiting for the Monster Vault to come out, as that will have many more tokens for you to use to represent monsters in your game.

 

[Hackmaster]

Rules Compendium is a great book. Small size and handy to have at the table to look up any rules.

I'd personally go with PHB 1+3 for a Dark Sun game. With Heroes of the Fallen Lands being the only essentials player book out now, the 4 classes (5 if you count the two different fighters) might seem a bit limited. Still, just going with HotFL is a very viable option.

I love DMG 1 and 2. I'm normally not a fan of DMGs in general, and feel them to be mostly superfluous but these two are awesome. Worth picking up down the road if not right now.