D&D General Best D&D product of any edition (non-core book)

[Rabulias]

I'll go for a real oddball. 3rd editions Stronghold Builder's guidebook.

Now the stronghold section, eh...its alright. But the character background generator in the book is solid gold. For a dirt cheap price, I can't tell you how many amazing backgrounds were generated at our table by people just rolling on the table and dedicating themselves to make the background pieces fit.

It has been awhile since I have seen a copy of the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook, but I think you mean the Hero Builder's Guidebook?

 

[Stalker0]

It has been awhile since I have seen a copy of the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook, but I think you mean the Hero Builder's Guidebook?

I believe you are correct! I will update my post

 

[Voadam]

The Dragon CD archive (issues 1-250 plus the TSRs). I still use it fairly regularly and find the search function to go across all the issues in the collection really useful. I have a couple dozen of these in hardcopy inherited from friends when they were downsizing their collections but I find it so much more convenient to search stuff on my computer with one search. It was $25 well spent.

The CD archive is great but some might consider it over 250 products instead of a single one.

My favorite single product would be the 2e Faiths & Avatars. A great mix of flavor and crunch. It sets out information on the main FR gods with breakdowns on the gods themselves and their areas of influence, their avatars, their religious organizations and practices and an individual specialty priest class for each god. I like that it includes myths/histories of the gods themselves including for a large number what happened to them and what they did during the Avatar crisis. It was fun to read, gave a ton of information for using the various aspects of the gods in a campaign (I used them as the "New Gods" pantheon in my homebrew mashup setting and used one of the religious organizations for a PC in my 3e game), fleshed out a bunch of FR for me, and has some neat generic priest classes in the back you can apply to lots of FR gods or your own pantheons. I still use the lore for part of my setting in 5e.

I have liked the FR gods since seeing the Greenwood article in a friend's early Dragon magazine, and I have had an interest in mythology and god stories from things like Daulaire's books since before I started in D&D at age 8. 1e Deities & Demigods was fantastic with evocative art but very light on descriptions, 2e was the high point in all of D&D god books for both crunch and lore and I'd say Faiths & Avatars was the best of the series, although I really like most all of them in the 2e era, with more lore and details than the excellent Legends and Lore, more core stuff to FR than Powers & Pantheons or Demihuman Deities and the specificity of the FR context beats out the generic D&D monster mythology or Complete Priest's Handbook.

 

[Aldarc]

4e D&D: Monster Vault: Threats of the Nentir Vale

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

1E's Fiend Folio. The Dragon magazine CD-ROM. 3E's Manual of the Planes, Draconomicon, Libris Mortis and Unearthed Arcana.

If adventures are fair game, Lost Mine of Phandelver.

 

[cbwjm]

It's been mentioned in this thread, and I've mentioned it before in other threads, but one of the books I consider gold standard is the 3e forgotten realms book. As a setting guide it brilliant.