What book should I get? Suggestions, please.

[Voadam]

You don't need the DMG. It has advice and xp charts and lots of magic items, but the items are in the srd if you want your own advancement system then you don't need the charts and you can do without the advice.

The MM is nice to have for use at the table top. I use my 3.0 one at the table for instant use monsters in my 3.5 game and use the 3.5 srd when creating unique ones or playing by e-mail.

The srd does not have some D&D creatures from the MM, mind flayers, carrion crawlers, umber hulks, kuo toa, yuan ti, beholders, slaad, and displacer beasts I believe are the whole list, but there are plenty of others to fill the same types of encounter/adventure niches.

For art for these creatures go to the WotC D&D website and the art gallery for the MM. I use that all the time for my e-mail game.

MMIV will have lots of basic monsters advanced with class levels, lots of dragon themed monsters, and a few completely new ones. It is a good mix of familiar and new, all useable out of the book at the table.

MMIII I don't have but understand it has a bunch of new 3.5 monsters (including some playable PC races), with a few stat issues here and there.

If it was me I'd go with big adventures like Red Hand of Doom or Expedition to Castle Ravenloft.

Some DMs don't use adventure modules, if so then go for stuff that looks interesting to you. If you want in depth abberration stuff then Lords of Madness should be a good buy, if you want class mechanic options then PHII I'd say PHII is a great buy.

 

[xrpsuzi]

If you are into crunch with a limited budget, have you considered investing in PDFs? You can get a lot of bang for your buck, and it sounds like you are a homebrewer at heart just looking for a little mechanics.

While many good suggestions have been said, for monsters I'd like to add Denizens of Avadnu from Inner Circle (in print and PDF). They also have a PDF supplement with higher level creatures, which is not as easy as you would think to find.

Best of luck book hunting,
Suzi

 

[Joshua Randall]

By the way, you don't have to listen just to the people posting in this thread.

Check out the reviews section.

Here's a link directly to the WotC-published books.

 

[Nightfall]

There should be a review by Psion on Advanced Game Master's Guide. That plus DMG II.

 

[Valesin]

While many good suggestions have been said, for monsters I'd like to add Denizens of Avadnu from Inner Circle (in print and PDF).
Suzi

Not to derail the thread, but Denizens of Avadnu is not available in pdf. I know, because I have been waiting for a downloadable version of it since I first heard about it (I have a rule against buying 3rd-party hardbacks).

 

[Festivus]

I suggest Spell Compendium and PHB2. Both of those books see the most use by me of any of the dozen or so books I bought over the past 12 months. So much so that I regularly take the SC with me to the game table.

I myself have a $20 gift card and am debating what to get next. I was waiting to see what the Magic Item Compendium looked like, seeing how much I enjoyed the Spell Compendium, but beyond that I am leaning towards MM2.