What 3.5 Core Books Do I Need to Buy

smootrk, I often find myself agreeing with you and today (well, yesterday according to your posttime, but hey who's counting) is no different. Your list is a perfect line-up of what I'd suggest; my comments in red.

smootrk said:
The SRD covers much of what you need, especially when you use a computer and the www.D20srd.org website (even monster pics are linked there). As far as books, I would suggest (for the player):
1. PHB2
2. Spell Compendium
3. Complete "whatever" matches their character, or Races of "whatever" matches.

For the DM:
1. DMG2 and/or Uneatherd Arcana
2. Monster Manual 3 or Tome of Horrors
3. Environmental Book that matches the DM's concept of where most activity will occur or a Campaign Setting, although the enviroment books are great
That helps sum-up the goodness that is 3.5e. Also, if you note the poll for the non-core classes, Complete Adventurer's Scout, Complete Arcane's Warlock and PHBII's Duskblade are leading the polls ATM, so all those books are great choices :)
 

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A heads-up on what you don't, technically, need to buy thanks to the SRD --

The SRD contains all the crunch (though not the cool flavor text) from:

PHB
DMG
MM
Expanded Psionics Handbook
Epic Level Handbook (converted to 3.5)
Deities and Demigods
Unearthed Arcana

There are exceptions -- you need the real PHB for the character creation and advancement rules, the real DMG for the CR and XP-awarding rules, and the real MM for the "product identity" monsters (beholders, carrion crawlers, displacer beasts, gith, kuo-toa, illithids, slaadi, umber hulks, yuan-ti).

The latter four books, though, have *all* their basic crunch in the SRD, excepting that the actual statted-out example pantheons from Deities and Demigods are missing. They're still very nice to have, but you really don't need them at all in order to play a psionic PC, run a god as an NPC, go into epic levels, or use all of UA's variant rules.

PHB2 and SC are the two great general-purpose books that you can easily pick up and adapt for use in any campaign -- stuff from the Completes, the environment books, and so on tend to be more intensive and require more thought to balance. (Deciding whether a spell is unbalanced or not is easier and less of a big deal than deciding whether a whole PrC or feat chain is unbalanced or not.)
 

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