Must buys in this list?

[freyar]

Ok, so I have about $50-$75 in holiday gifts that my generous wife tells me to use to get some D&D stuff. But I'm a relative newbie and am not sure what to get. My background: My only campaign is a 1-on-1 I DM for my wife (we both have 2 PCs) in FR. Since we're trying to keep things relatively simple and are only 4th level, I doubt I'll be using any of the mechanics soon, so I'm looking for fun things to read and to keep in mind down the road. In terms of settings, I'm most interested in FR and Greyhawk. My list is

Player's Guide to Faerun
Cityscape
Complete Arcane and/or Mage
Lords of Madness: Book of Aberrations
Draconomicon
Complete Boook of Eldritch Might
PDFs of T1-4, A1-4, GDQ1-7

Are there any musts in this list, or do you have other recommendations? Or should I look for more older edition PDFs? Thanks!

 

[JoeGKushner]

The Player's Guide to Faerun isn't too useful if you don't have the Forgotten Realms Campaign setting.

If you're trying to keep things simple, almost all of these books should be removed. Complete Mage/Arcane and Complete Book of Eldrtich Might all add lots of interesting and useful options but certainly don't keep the game simple.

Draconomicon and Lords of Madness are good reads.

 

[Shade]

Of that list, I'd go with Lords of Madness. One of the top 5 books released in 3.5, IMHO.

 

[Psion]

Draconomicon is a simply great read and useful reference if you plan to (or would like to) use dragons in your game.

Libris Mortis is a decent book, with good material on existing creatures (principally mind flayers), but it sqanders space on the tsochar, a new creature which I am unlikely to use for any great period.

Complete Mage, Arcane, and Book of Eldritch might are all good magical splatbooks. CBoEM also has some good material for the GM. I, in particular, found the soul magic an intriguing tidbit to drop in the game, and most the mini-planes/sites of the nexus seem useful to me.

 

[edemaitre]

As a Forgotten Realms player, you'd probably find the Player's Guide to Faerun useful, but I've gotten more use out of the Draconomicon and Cityscape in my homebrew campaign.

 

[Shade]

From a "fun to read" standpoint, I've gotten the most enjoyment out of the following:

• Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss
• Lords of Madness
• Faiths and Pantheons
• Lost Empires of Faerun
• Serpent Kingdoms
• Dragon Compendium, Vol. 1
• Manual of the Planes

 

[Angel Tarragon]

The only must buys that I am seeing are CBoEM (if you are a Monte fanboy and love new stuff for arcane magic) and Draconomicon (after all, it is Dungeons & Dragons).

Cityscape is interesting, but if you are looking to complete your 'Environment' series books, this is not one of them, as Cityscape is done up in a new presentation.

 

[sckeener]

From a "fun to read" standpoint, I've gotten the most enjoyment out of the following:

• Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss
• Lords of Madness
• Faiths and Pantheons
• Lost Empires of Faerun
• Serpent Kingdoms
• Dragon Compendium, Vol. 1
• Manual of the Planes

most of my picks are on that list as well....I'll color my choices though I like them all.

 

[Voadam]

Older edition pdfs are $4 each at www.paizo.com.

I'd recommend the three 2e FR god books as pdfs, they are fantastic FR descriptive resources and I have used them in my 3e games.

 

[Xyanthon]

There certainly is a lot of good stuff out there from all of the editions. If you are not looking at mechanics and just want some interesting reading material I'd suggest the Draconomicon and Lords of Madness. The Book of Eldrich Might is good, but it does have a lot of mechanics in it. The older modules are always great (I'm pretty partial to the 1e stuff). If you are playing a 3.x campaign, they still have a lot of useful ideas that you can mine from them or you could just do a conversion. The PDFs are a good value but I personally prefer hard copies which tend to be more expensive (although you can catch some good deals on older stuff on ebay).

Again, for just some interesting reads, I'd go for the Draconomicon and Lords of Madness. If you want to expand the list a bit more, the Fiendish Codex books are pretty awesome as well.