Hmm... what books should I buy?

[Paradoxish]

Tommorow I'm taking a trip to the nearest "large" RPG store in the area with about $80 and two of my friends. This is the only store in the area that carries a fair variety of third party d20 products, so I want to buy a few while I'm up there. Right now I don't have any third party books besides Creature Collection II and The Seafarer's Handbook (which I picked up for a series of naval adventures I was running not too long ago).

Any suggestions on common 3rd party books that are pretty good? I'm not too concerned about what category they fit into other than that they stay in the realm of fantasy (not ready to pick up any d20 modern books just yet) since I don't really need anything. Just looking for general, useful stuff that might come in handy later. Thanks a lot.

 

[Crothian]

Book of the Rightious: A fully developed panthion filled with the myths and churches. Pretty much everything you need to know about the gods, and the clerics who worship them.

Monster's Handbook: Rules for taking all the routinue monsters in the MM (and any other monster really) and giving them new abilities and making them different.

There are quite a few top notch books, but it's hard to recomend them without some direction. So, I choose what I feel are two of the cream of the crop that are pretty universal in their appeal.

 

[megamania]

Was the Seafarer's book good? I am considering ordering it but was uncertain.

 

[Paradoxish]

Crothian, thanks for the advice - I'll be sure to look at those two. I know it's kind of hard without looking for anything specific, but I'm basically just looking for some of the better third party books so I don't spend hours browsing through each and every book that they have.

megamania, I liked it. You should check out the reviews on rpg.net for it, they're pretty accurate (both are good, I think one gave it 4/5 and one gave it 5/5 for substance). Seafarer's handbook suited me perfectly since I was using it to run a series of adventures set completely at sea. From what I understand, Seas of Blood is better suited if you're going to simply integrate sea travel into an existing land campaign. That said, I don't really see any reason that the Seafarer's handbook couldn't be used for this same purpose, you could easily ignore the extra information provided on nautical races and such.

 

[Crothian]

Crothian, thanks for the advice - I'll be sure to look at those two. I know it's kind of hard without looking for anything specific, but I'm basically just looking for some of the better third party books so I don't spend hours browsing through each and every book that they have.

I understand that fully. Have you thought about looking through the review sections and just looking at the books given 4/5 or 5/5? Or even click on the top 20 list and see what has gotten the best ratings?

 

[diaglo]

DM or playa?

as a DM: you might try some of the adventures, too.

as a Playa: the Quintessential series, the Slayers guides, and the Complete guides to class X or cool. also try the pocket guides by GreenRonin.

 

[Nightfall]

*can't help himself*

Relics and Rituals! Get them both! Great books!

Oh and uhm Creature Collection Revised.

 

[Darklone]

Kalamars Player Guide. Simply rocks for rules junkies.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

I like Bad Axe's Heroes of High Favor series a lot. And Tome of Horrors is really good, too.

Best,
tKL

 

[haiiro]

In no particular order, here are some of my favorites:

Book of the Righteous is excellent, as has been mentioned. A lot of thought went into this book.

Hammer & Helm is chock full of good ideas, balanced and thoughtful crunchy bits and absolutely amazing artwork. I recommend this book at the slightest provocation.

For monster books, I've really enjoyed both Liber Bestarius and the Monsternomicon. Both devote a lot of space to every creature, and include things like adventure hooks, bardic lore results, first person accounts, etc. Although the Monsternomicon is for Privateer's Iron Kingdoms setting, there are very few (less than 5) setting-specific monsters in it; Liber Bestarius is not tied to a setting.

I've gotten good use out of some of the spells in Monte Cook's Books of Righteous Might (I & II). Some of the non-spell stuff isn't so hot, IMO, but overall the books are quite good.

It may not technically be third party (as an OA licensed product, I believe), but AEG's Rokugan book is very good. It meshes well with OA and is estremely well put together.

Crothian's recommendation to check out the EN World reviews page (particularly the Top 20 list) is a good one.

Enjoy.