How many books do you use?

[Arnwyn]

For NPCs, I almost always stick to the core books. It's a waste of my (limited and precious) time to go elsewhere.

 

[kmdietri]

Books used, is directly proportional to the starting level of the character.

 

[Li Shenron]

For NPCs, I almost always stick to the core books. It's a waste of my (limited and precious) time to go elsewhere.

I agree, with NPC it's a different job. I do prefer to make them complicated, using templates and prestige classes e.g., but they live so short that the effort isn't truly worth

Probably the most effective design procedure for NPCs is to pick ONE or TWO non-core bits (such as feats, spells, items or eventually even classes) and actually USE THEM a lot, making them the centre of the NPC's strategy. This way, the new bit is going to be in the spotlight and will make the character unique in the story, without necessarily require days to write it up.

 

[JoeGKushner]

For NPCs, most will be standard. A few that are PrCs, tend to stand out in player's memories preceisely because they were not standard. Nothing like seeing the player's reaction when one guy they're fighting expalins his own style of combat and the player's realize that he's a warmain as opposed to a fighter. Not a lot of difference but enough to make the player's change tactics a little to more hit & run.

In terms of PCs, heck, anything that I feel fits my character concept. For most, I don't have to worry about it as there are so many feats, skills, PrCs, etc... that I tend to find one I'm interested in and stick with it, but for other aspects, like say spells for a spellcaster, the more the merrier.

 

[CronoDekar]

When making a PC, I pretty much go searching through almost all the relevant books I have for stuff (particularly feats, prestiges, and spells) for stuff that will help the character. Most of the time though, I end up settling on stuff that's core.

 

[KB9JMQ]

For NPCs - I just use the core books.
For my characters - I mostly use core books. But honestly since I only play 5 percent of the time compared to DMing, I really havent even got to try all the core classes out yet. Let alone tweaking them with other supplements.

 

[Kalendraf]

I mostly DM, so my character creation is largely limited to NPCs I develop for my games. I mostly just use the PHB/SRD for this. However, I also sprinkle in some feats or spells from Complete Warrior, Complete Divine and/or Miniatures Handbook. Some typical examples would be: Improved Toughness, Zen Archery, Sudden Meta-feats, etc.