What WOTC book should I buy?

[Alhazred]

I own Complete Warrior and Complete Divine, Book of Vile Darkness and Book of Exalted Deeds, Fiend Folio and MMII. CW and CD were both very good, although I found CW to be of greater use, both as a player and a DM. BoVD and BoED are quite good, though the former is best left in the hands of a DM, and the latter is best left unopened around munchkins. Fiend Folio and MMII were both hit and miss affairs althought, as Nightfall wrote, MMII does have the Death Knight template.

I have no desire to purchase Eberron. From what friends have told me, Draconomicon is excellent. ToHII sounds excellent, but I have yet to see it.

 

[Thanee]

Complete Warrior
Complete Divine

One of these, if you play 3.5 and like more options. Probably both then.

Eberron

If you are looking for a new campaign setting or like to read through those.

Draconomicon

I heard this is pretty good. I only gave it a quick glance, but couldn't find what I was hoping for (that is, some rules about what parts of dragons could be used in magical rituals, item crafting and so on ).

Bye
Thanee

 

[Buttercup]

I own all of the books on your list except Draconomicon and Eberron, and the one I like best is Unearthed Arcana, by a long shot.

However, if you can only afford to buy one book, I don't think you should spend your money on a WotC product. Instead, I'd recommend that you take a serious look at some of the 3rd party stuff out there.

Do you want a campaign setting? Check out Dawnforge or Midnight, or hold onto your cash for another week or so, and get the Iron Kingdoms book.
Are you looking for monsters? Check out Monsternomicon, or as you say, ToH2.
Do you want a class book? I like Path of The Sword, Path of Faith, Path of Shadow and Path of Magic better than any splatbook WotC has ever put out.
Are you into world building? Then you really want Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe or Magical Society: Ecology & Culture.

There are a lot of talented people writing D&D books out there, and most of them don't work for WotC. Don't cheat yourself by ignoring all that good stuff!

 

[Pants]

Complete Warrior
Complete Divine

These two books didn't really interest me all that much. Complete Warrior had some neat concepts, but was dragged down by an overabundance of boring 'weapon-based' PrC's. Complete Divine failed to interest me in any significant way. Plus, its editing is pretty atrocious.
Then again, I've disliked nearly every classbook that I've bought... except for Tome and Blood.

Book of Vile Darkness
Book of Exalted Deeds

I like both quite a bit as they gave me great ideas for homebrewing my world. I can see how someone wouldn't like them (BoED has some broken and questionable rules implementation and BoVD is kinda childish mature, if you catch my drift), but I really enjoy both.

Unearthed Arcana

Best book purchase I've made, bar none. Absolutely essential for spicing up your campaign with new rules without most of the work. Heartily recommended if you DM regularly, but this will probably absolutely useless to you if you're a player.

Draconomicon

Excellent book. It has great art, great content, cool monsters, awesome ideas for dragons, and most importantly, it makes me want to run a dragon themed campaign. Recommended if you're either a DM or a player.

Fiend Folio
MM 2

The Fiend Folio has some great ideas for monsters. It also has fiendish PrC's, and rules for grafts and symbionts. Great book.
The MMII is less even. It has some really cool monsters and some really crappy monsters. It also has some seriously wonky CR's. It does have some good stuff and despite my love of the FF, I've used the MMII much more.

 

[haiiro]

With nothing to go on? I think you should pick up Eberron -- it's one of the most enjoyable and engaging D&D books I've ever read, and it's full of good stuff.

Second choice would be the Fiend Folio, which is hands-down my favorite WotC-produced creature book.

 

[Belegbeth]

Eberron is *absurdly* overrated, IMO. Essentially a DnD version of the 1920s (with Dune-like "Houses" and magical sentient robots thrown in). I mean, it has some nice stuff (changeling and shifter races; a cool cosmology), but some real crap as well (any class with "Extreme" in its name is simply beyond the pale). Not really sure why people are falling all over it...

For monster books, I have to say that Necro's two Tomes of Horrors are hands-down better than the WotC monster books (aside from the essential MM, of course).

The Complete splat-books are boring (again, IMO)...

But UA is GREAT. Lots of fun options and variants. Even if you only use 10 percent of them, thinking about how you might design campaigns to use the other rules can make for some fun day-dreaming.

I would also recommend Monte Cook's *Complete Book of Eldritch Might*.

Just my two coppers...

 

[Olive]

It's actuall hard to judge without knowing what sort of game you run etc. but here's what I think.

Complete Warrior
Complete Divine

I liked CW, and it's got some cool useful stuff in it. It's not amazing but it's solid, and it doesn't matter what kind of character you play, you'll find soemthig useful probably. CD is less good - only really good for spellcasters, and nothing that interesting in there.

Book of Vile Darkness
Book of Exalted Deeds

I like these both, especially BoVD, btu neither are going to be that useful if you don't use the outer planes and their inhabitants a fair bit. If you're going to DM, then the BoVD has been extremely important to my campaign, and not because I'm a purient child, but because evil fiend worshiping cults are improtant to my campaign. I'd ignore sparxmith's comments unless the poster is goign to actually say something about why they don't like the book, rather than rant about it. BoED has more questionable rules stuff, but some cool ideas and elements.

Unearthed Arcana

Cool book, nice ideas but i've used very little from it. If you're looking for rules options to let you break away from a standard DnD campaign, then get this.

Eberron

Don't have it, so can't say. Sounds interesting for soem rules, but the feel of it doesn't really appeal.

Draconomicon

Using dragons? Get it.

Fiend Folio
MM 2
[Tome of Horrors II]

I've got both WotC books. I like MM2, but i'd get most stuff on here first. FF isa great great monster book, but only if you use planar stuff a fair bit. If you use fiends a lot, it's worth it just for the fiendish PrCs and graft/symbiot rules. ToH2 I don't have, but I was disappointed with ToH1. This looks better tho.

Hope this helps.

 

[devoblue]

Having all of the books except TOH2, I would have to say that Draconomicon was the best read of all of them and kept my intrest enough for me to read every paragraph of it. Admitedly dragons are themselves hard to use and so in terms of usefulness, this book is lacking. If I could only keep one of the books in this list, it would be this one though.

Eberron looks promising although I havent finished it yet.

UA was good, but you will only use 10% maximum, and be careful as some of the rules sound better on paper than in practice.

CW and CD are ok to read and have a lot of nice stuff in them, but if you are only getting one you may wish you were getting all of them.

BoED and BoVD were interesting enough but I couldn't read them cover to cover and have little use for any of their content.

MM2 is inconsistent and only for those interested in completness of collection these days.

I found FF boring - too many demons and devils to be useful to me. That and I picked up ToH at the same time.

edit: spleling

 

[Ed Cha]

Complete Warrior
Complete Divine
Book of Vile Darkness
Book of Exalted Deeds
Unearthed Arcana
Eberron
Draconomicon
Fiend Folio
MM 2
[Tome of Horrors II]

I guess it depends on what you need. Are you usually the DM or a player?

I would imagine Unearthed Arcana to be the best bet overall as either a DM or a player could use it.

As a DM, I'd probably consider going with Tome of Horrors II by Necromancer Games which I haven't picked up myself yet, but I know it looks really good. Monster Manual 2 and Fiend Folio are also decent buys for a DM. I've heard good things about the Book of Exalted Deeds, too, and it's useful for both DMs and players. I was impressed with Draconomicon, but its focus is much more specific than the other books. So it depends on what your priority is.

Eberron looks interesting, but it's just not my style at all.

 

[Li Shenron]

Complete Warrior
Complete Divine
Book of Vile Darkness
Book of Exalted Deeds
Unearthed Arcana
Eberron
Draconomicon
Fiend Folio
MM 2

As everyone pointed out, it depends a lot if you are going to use the book as a player or DM, if you want quantity material or something to give a striking renovation to your character or campaign, and if you actually want to use the book or just read it

1) Book of Exalted Deeds

This book gives really a new edge IMHO. Playing characters who don't want to kill or destroy is much more difficult than one can think, and BoED provides very goo material. An exalted campaign is much more different from typical D&D than a vile campaign is, so this is the book to buy if you want to seriously try something new, although you can also cherrypick the book as any other player supplement if you don't want to fully embrace the exalted concept

2) Unearthed Arcana

As I wrote in my review, this is the most long-term investment book around. Some variants are so strong that they can change the game completely (especially the magic variants). Again, this is a great book if you are looking for something very new, although it will require a good effort from the DM and the players to get used to the changes.

However, this book also has a lot of charater material which you can just pick for your PC. It is completely amazing how many people say "don't buy UA because you are not going to use it... buy Complete X instead" . It's just plain wrong. UA has for example very many class variants, just as the Complete books have many prestige classes, definitely it doesn't have as many, but on the other hand the character material in UA easily generates many more combinations, while PrCls for example are very static.
There is absolutely no reason why a DM should allow the Complete Warrior/Divine base and prestige classes and disallow the UA variant classes!

3) Eberron

I am not going to buy this setting, but from what I have heard it is quite an innovative setting. If you are the DM and you are looking for something "new, but not too much new", take a look at the many preview on the Wizard's site and decide if this setting appeals you.

4) Draconomicon

This book is definitely for the DM. Yes, it also has character material but not much and not versatile. To the DM it provides different kind of aids when using dragons in your adventures, not just new material but also charts and samples of existing material.
However, the best thing of the Draconomicon is that is it a pleasure to read even if you decide not to use much of it.