AdmundfortGeographer
Getting lost in fantasy maps
Ruins of Symbaroum. A lower magic 5e system for the Symbaroum setting.
D&D 5E (2014) What's on your 5E 3rd Party Essential List?
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
Ahems,
A5E Adventurer's Guide, Monstrous Menagerie and Trials and Treasures
Griffon's Saddlebag I & II
(I got this in before Micah I think, w00t!)
Edit: Looking forward to Monstrous Menagerie II
DrJawaPhD
Hero
There's a first! I don't think I actually even interpreted literally, I was thinking you meant something like "what 3pp do you incorporate into your base rules or use routinely in adventures", which for me would still be none.
I mostly use 3pp content to supply snippets here and there - so I'll cherry pick 3pp monsters or magic items that I like, modify NPCs based on something I liked, or (most commonly) pull in entire 3pp adventure segments to fill gaps in a campaign. But nothing really that sticks around past that moment that it gets used
Weiley31
Legend
Ruins of Symbaroum
TwoSix
The Year of the TwoSix
I'm a fan of several of their new classes, especially Savant, Psion, and Vessel. Their Magus is really solid, but I prefer Kibbles' Spellblade as an arcane gish.And can be found on GM Binder.Right now my favorite LL classes would have to be the Magus and the Ranger. The Magus because it is a pretty good take on a Gish IMO. The Ranger because 1) this version is a prepared half-caster, 2) it gets a Fighting style at 1st level instead of 2nd, 3) its' Knacks feature allows for more customization and 4) it's Quarry feature.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Among many, many others:
Level Up's entire line of products (the core of my 5e game)
Valda's Spire of Secrets from Mage Hand Press
Monster Manuals I-III by Nixlord
The Tal'Dorai book from Darrington Press
Lots of individual products from Mage Hamd and elsewhere focusing on play options
There's a lot more, but I can't look at my library at the moment. Most of it is compiled into my homebrew document, the Micahnomicon.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
I saw the thread last night but got distracted before I could post!
Shardstone
Hero
Ok I'm going to back-up some of these opinions.
First off, Ruins of Symbaroum is amazing. The classes are light weight and most of your identity will come from the feats you pick, of which these classes get more of. That mirrors Symbaroum's original classless design. The classes are balanced, simple, low magic, and interesting. They also convey ideas of the setting very well, which IMO is why I actually prefer the 5E rules to the original Symbaroum rules. Furthermore, a lot of stuff in here is usable outside of Symbaroum; corruption rules, magic items, feats, monsters, and so on are all ready to be planted into any setting, fully compatible with normal 5E. Not the classes, but everything else. Also, their bespoke bestiary book is way better in RoS then in original Symbaroum; the original Symbaroum monsters are communicated through feat and come off as boring. The RoS versions are much more interestingly designed and require little overhead to run.
Next, we have the Deadmen's Guide of Dragongrin, by Absolute Tabletop. This is my favorite dark fantasy but not too dark setting book in 3PP atm. It is called by Abtab an "Altas of Inspiration;" it is a setting guide where you get some fluff but mainly you get a huge amount of roll tables to customize each region to your own liking. This includes generating antagonists, locations, history, big events, direction, and more. The book is huge, with lots of moddable monsters in the back, as well as a really sick premise. Essentially, a former hero learned of a great disaster in the future. He became evil to stop that disaster, and has become a Chronolich who manipulates time and the future in order to forever stave off that disaster. This hero named himself the Dismembered Lord, defeated all the heroes in the setting, and now has his own tyrannical empire that he controls via time-manipulation, all dedicated to preventing an extinction that he himself may very well be. Compelling stuff, and the roll tables can make anyone's game richer for using them.
There's a lot more I could talk about. I've read now probably over 200+ books for 5E from the 3PP sphere in the last decade. There's so much good, so I'll start going through my stash and collecting more names of stuff.
First off, Ruins of Symbaroum is amazing. The classes are light weight and most of your identity will come from the feats you pick, of which these classes get more of. That mirrors Symbaroum's original classless design. The classes are balanced, simple, low magic, and interesting. They also convey ideas of the setting very well, which IMO is why I actually prefer the 5E rules to the original Symbaroum rules. Furthermore, a lot of stuff in here is usable outside of Symbaroum; corruption rules, magic items, feats, monsters, and so on are all ready to be planted into any setting, fully compatible with normal 5E. Not the classes, but everything else. Also, their bespoke bestiary book is way better in RoS then in original Symbaroum; the original Symbaroum monsters are communicated through feat and come off as boring. The RoS versions are much more interestingly designed and require little overhead to run.
Next, we have the Deadmen's Guide of Dragongrin, by Absolute Tabletop. This is my favorite dark fantasy but not too dark setting book in 3PP atm. It is called by Abtab an "Altas of Inspiration;" it is a setting guide where you get some fluff but mainly you get a huge amount of roll tables to customize each region to your own liking. This includes generating antagonists, locations, history, big events, direction, and more. The book is huge, with lots of moddable monsters in the back, as well as a really sick premise. Essentially, a former hero learned of a great disaster in the future. He became evil to stop that disaster, and has become a Chronolich who manipulates time and the future in order to forever stave off that disaster. This hero named himself the Dismembered Lord, defeated all the heroes in the setting, and now has his own tyrannical empire that he controls via time-manipulation, all dedicated to preventing an extinction that he himself may very well be. Compelling stuff, and the roll tables can make anyone's game richer for using them.
There's a lot more I could talk about. I've read now probably over 200+ books for 5E from the 3PP sphere in the last decade. There's so much good, so I'll start going through my stash and collecting more names of stuff.
Bae'zel
Hero
These are the books that I regularly use the most during prep and even at the table during a session:
Monster Overhaul by Skerples
For world building, fleshing out NPCs and monsters and adding variety to encounters.
Dangerous Uncharted Journeys by Cubicle 7
Took one of my favorite parts from Adventures in Middle Earth and made it more generic; the in depth journey/exploration rules. The tables of random encounters and discoveries are fantastic.
A Life Well Lived by Cubicle 7
Basically took inspiration from Beyond the Wall to create a life-path character generation system. Even if I don't use it 100%, I still use it to quickly generate backstories for PCs at session zero. The book also has some great added downtime activities and other tools that are still a bit lacking in the DMG 2024 book.
Brancalonia books by Acheron
Mostly for the mercenary guild ideas, world building, bar room brawl rules and tavern games. Plenty of witty little adventures too, easy to drop into any setting.
Dark Souls by Steamforged Games
Mostly for the piles of neat, unique magic items and weapons, as well as really terrifying boss monster encounters.
Monster Overhaul by Skerples
For world building, fleshing out NPCs and monsters and adding variety to encounters.
Took one of my favorite parts from Adventures in Middle Earth and made it more generic; the in depth journey/exploration rules. The tables of random encounters and discoveries are fantastic.
A Life Well Lived by Cubicle 7
Basically took inspiration from Beyond the Wall to create a life-path character generation system. Even if I don't use it 100%, I still use it to quickly generate backstories for PCs at session zero. The book also has some great added downtime activities and other tools that are still a bit lacking in the DMG 2024 book.
Brancalonia books by Acheron
Mostly for the mercenary guild ideas, world building, bar room brawl rules and tavern games. Plenty of witty little adventures too, easy to drop into any setting.
Dark Souls by Steamforged Games
Mostly for the piles of neat, unique magic items and weapons, as well as really terrifying boss monster encounters.
Last edited:
Reynard
aka Ian Eller
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