D&D 5E (2014) What's on your 5E 3rd Party Essential List?

[Libertad]

I primarily make heavy use of the Monster Manual Expanded series and OUTCLASSED for monsters and NPCs. I use the Griffon's Saddlebag Books 1 and 2, along with All the Weapons/Armor for various kinds of treasures. Home-Field Advantage: A Compendium of Lair Actions is for giving NPCs and monsters lair actions for climactic battles. I mean to start using Vault 5e: Uncharted Journeys and the Bloodied & Bruised series. The Wanderer's Guide to Merchants & Magic is my standard for pricing magic items.

I've offered some classes written by Indesctructoboy in Anthology of Heroes and the Pugilist as options in a prior campaign I ran, and they're still on the table, but most players go for what's familiar.

 

[aiouh]

I honestly don't know if I could've ever stomached DMing any 5th Edition Fantasy Roleplaying game without the many resources on slyflourish.com and Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master.

Monstrous Menagerie is a straight upgrade from the Vanilla MM. I appreciate how it is truly compatible with WotC bones (unlike a certain first party product).

Otherwise I don't use much. I feel like one of the big draws of (2014) 5E is this big shared (and janky!) experience within its playing community so I never felt drawn to playing or introducing any new class options. This is not limited to 3P mind you, I even feel this way about the new 2024 PHB class options. The inofficial Adventurer's League in my city also still uses 2014+XGE+TCE.

 

[Thraic Ogmund]

Way late to the party here, I realize, but here are my top 10 picks:

Tome of Heroes (Kobold Press)
Deep Magic (Kobold Press)
Xanathar's Lost Notes to Everything Else (DMs Guild, if this counts - I use it for the crit tables)
Game Master's Handbook of Random Encounters
Deck of Conditions (Fate Forge)
Vault of Magic (Kobold Press)
ToV Monster Vault (Kobold Press)
Tome of Beasts 1 & 2 (Kobold Press)
Creature Codex (Kobold Press)
Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master (Sly Flourish)

I haven't included any setting-specific stuff. I use a buttload of that as well.

Yes, I realize that I am a bit of a Kobold Press whore. I have tried to diversify a bit, and have a bunch of Ghostfire, Nord, and even a few Frog God books. I didn't list those because I haven't gotten around to using them yet - though I really look forward to doing so.

 

[Steampunkette]

The A5e books.
Purple Martin Publishing's books.
My own books.

And most other stuff if it's provided for me to go over.