Must have 3.5 supplements. . .

[freyar]

I like cityscape also, but I'm not sure if it's a must have. Then again, my party hasn't been back to the city since I got it, really. Also, I think it's probably better for adventure planning than use at the table.

I'd have to recommend Magic Item Compendium. I've only had it about a week and not anywhere nearly through reading the magic items, but I've seen some nice things already. What makes it so useful, though, are the treasure generation tables. It may be my most useful book already. If you generate encounters/treasures on the fly, it's absolutely a must have.

 

[Edheldur]

There are a lot of suggestions on THIS thread.

 

[Agamon]

I actually like the Magic Item Compendium even more than the Spell Compendium. MIC is the best book I've bought since the cores.

But I'd add the SpC, MIC, and PHBII, all good books that add material to the core.

 

[Teflon Billy]

PHB II
Unearthed Arcana

Those two definitely.



Cityscape? Really? I was really excited when that came out, but after flipping through it and then reading some reviews on it, I thought it looked pretty terrible.

Was I wrong? (If so, that'd be great to know, because I really want my next campaign to be heavily urban.)

It wasn't terrible at all.

Folks seemed to be expecting a bunch of city-specific feats, prestige classes and rules...and what they got was a fairly rules-light book on how fantasy cities function.

I liked it a lot.

 

[smootrk]

My 'core' consists of:
Main Three
PHB2
DMG2
Spell Compendium
Heroes of Horror (classes, critters, and other bits)
Fiendish Codex 1,2
Monster Books (any, including Tome of Horrors 1,2,3)
Magic Item Compendium (seen it, although I have not acquired a copy yet)

These are all great, but in addition, I plan to run an all Unorthodox Campaign soon where all the TheLe stuff will be 'core'.

 

[Odhanan]

I'd go with:

Unearthed Arcana
PHB2
Spell Compendium
Magic Item Compendium

With that stuff you'll have a LOT of really cool stuff to chew on, my friend!

 

[blargney the second]

Incidentally, the reason I mentioned Advanced Bestiary is that there's a handy little feature that lets you know how difficult a given template is to apply on a scale of 1-3. Anything with a 1 generally can be done on the fly at the table with neither fuss nor muss. The best part is that you can then very easily take a regular MM1 monster and surprise the heck out of your players!

 

[Prophet2b]

I like cityscape also, but I'm not sure if it's a must have. Then again, my party hasn't been back to the city since I got it, really. Also, I think it's probably better for adventure planning than use at the table.

I'd have to recommend Magic Item Compendium. I've only had it about a week and not anywhere nearly through reading the magic items, but I've seen some nice things already. What makes it so useful, though, are the treasure generation tables. It may be my most useful book already. If you generate encounters/treasures on the fly, it's absolutely a must have.

Huh... Actually, that sounds like what I was looking for. But I never got a chance to really flip through it and after reading a lot of really bad reviews on it, I thought it must be worthless.

I shall now have to get my hands on it, again...

 

[Remathilis]

Spell Compendium, Magic Item Compendium, DMG 2, PHB 2. I personally loved Complete Mage for the MASTER SPECIALIST PrC as well.

 

[jdrakeh]

Thanks, folks. I ended up going with the Spell Compendium and Unearthed Arcana for this pay period (and, man, I wish I would have picked up UA earlier -- this is all the stuff that I was hoping would be core in 3e!).