Which Edition to Buy

[StreamOfTheSky]

The Completes are mostly good, though Divine was kinda meh, Champion has some very big (how do you feel about everyone who wants it having Pounce as early as level 1, for example?) power boosts, and Psionic is a blight upon existence and should never be read. My favorite Completes are probably Adventurer, Mage, and Warrior.

Magic Item Compendium is an amazing book. A few items you might want to nerf or ban (the 3000 gp amulet to hit touch AC on the next attack as a swift action 3/day comes to mind...), but overall very balanced and I really like the redefined body slots and such rules included. It also has extensive treasure tables incorporating the DMG items for ease of reference / random rolls.

Spell Compendium has lots of great new spells and again, despite the plethora of new options, few are unbalanced compared to core (a few are very unbalanced though, like Wraithstrike). It could be argued that just giving casters more options is a big power boost, though, if class imbalance is a major issue for you.

Tome of Battle does wonderful things to allow for skirmisher and mobile type combatants and to accomplish fancy sword fighting / cinematic wire fu / crazy anime stuff. Its best parts are the things to broaden the scope and abilities of what a warrior can do, like turning anything into a lethal weapon, shrug off status effects, hadoken things, and manipulate the battlespace around you. Its worst parts are where its just boringly ramping up the damage you can dish out, to the point where it makes non-ToB melee classes feel pretty worthless. All IMO. Overall a great book well worth buying.

The Races books are alright, not essential. I think Races of Stone is the most interesting of the lot. Destiny has some cool bits but a lot of vanilla. I wanted to love Races of the Wild, but much like the Elf race I also want to like, they made it suck mechanically, overall. Races of the Dragon has probably the most amount of broken/overpowered crap of any 3.5 splat book. It's not all like that, but if you buy it, be VERY wary of crap like Power Word Pain, Wings of Cover, Wings of Flurry, etc... Races of Eberron is solid also, albeit setting-specific.

Dungeonscape is a fun book with a cool new base class, worth it for $10, IMO.

For monster books, Lords of Madness is bar none my favorite. Great rules crunch, and also an enjoyable read.

The environmental books (Sandstorm, Stormwrack, Frostburn) are all decent but you can definitely live without them.

I hope I didn't make the books sound bad by mentioning that they have some bad parts. A lot of the books are still very much worth it (except C.Psionic, seriously, don't touch that with a 10 ft pole held by a mind controlled human puppet). Nothing's perfect, I'm just trying to give a balanced (though brief) review.

 

[Visigani]

"Free" if you don't mind stealing...

The books are no longer in print. 4.0? Yeah, I would be hesitant to start gobbling up 4.0 via pdf format. Nor would I advocate stealing Paizo's work.

But 3.5? My conscience wouldn't make a great deal of noise over that, especially considering the massive investment I've made into the books already.

It's a defunct system no longer supported. They're not going to make much more (and really, any) money from it.

On the whole I don't advocate piracy but I'm like Chris Rock on this.

 

[GreyLord]

For 3.5 I would say the PHB, DMG, and MM. I would then add in the PHB2, and UA along with the MM2 if you can get it.

Get others according to your taste and preference. Mine was more towards the Complete series of books and Dungeonscape, though for a new DM you may also want the DMG 2.

If you want a different approach to a magic like ability called Psionics, you may look at books with that moniker, or if you like Asian or Oriental stuff you may also look at the Oriental/Rokugan books if they have any.

 

[Dykstrav]

For 3.5 supplements, I'd assume that you get the core rulebooks.

I'd also pick up Spell Compendium. There's some stuff in it that you should carefully consider or disallow (depending on your preferred style of play and all that), but overall, I feel that there's enough wheat amongst the chaff to make it worthwhile.

I personally enjoy the binder class from Tome of Magic. There's also a shadow-based caster and a caster that uses true names, so that might interest you if you dig alternative magic systems. I'd avoid Tome of Battle, since it gets very 4E-esque in how it handles martial-type characters and there's some definite power creep.

Monster Manual II and III are worth checking out, I'd probably pick both of those up. Monster Manual IV and V have some interesting monsters, but there's definitely strangeness there. You can probably live without them, especially since IV and V devote considerable space to re-hashing existing monsters. If your campaign focuses on a particular monster type, there are several source books dealing with them: Draconomicon for dragons, Libris Mortis for undead, and Lords of Madness for aberrations. Whether or not these would be useful to you depends on how much you like/use those monster types.

I found Unearthed Arcana to be awesome because I enjoy tinkering with the system. If you enjoy reading gaming books for the sake of reading them and modifying the game and/or rules, it's worth a serious look.

I don't know if I would really worry too much about the character-focused books (Complete Warrior, Complete Divine, et cetera). If you're the DM, chances are that you're not going to be making a whole lot of characters. I'd leave the responsibility for getting player-oriented resources on your players.

All that being said, here's my own personal must-have list for being a 3.5 DM:

Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual: For obvious reasons.
Unearthed Arcana: Because I like to house rule and tinker with things.
Tome of Magic: Because I like binders and occasionally shadowcasters.
Monster Manual II:I like many of the classic D&D monsters here, although this is actually for 3E.
Spell Compendium: Tons of new spells, even if some of them need nerfing.
Draconomicon, Libris Mortis, Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells: Because I like dragons, undead, and devils.

 

[Grunker]

Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual: For obvious reasons.
Unearthed Arcana: Because I like to house rule and tinker with things.
Tome of Magic: Because I like binders and occasionally shadowcasters.
Monster Manual II:I like many of the classic D&D monsters here, although this is actually for 3E.
Spell Compendium: Tons of new spells, even if some of them need nerfing.
Draconomicon, Libris Mortis, Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells: Because I like dragons, undead, and devils.

Mine would probably be -Fiendish Codex, -Spell Compendium, +Tome of Battle - The Book of Nine Swords, +Magic Item Compendium but otherwise that's a pretty good list.

 

[Arrowhawk]

But 3.5? My conscience wouldn't make a great deal of noise over that, especially considering the massive investment I've made into the books already.

It's a defunct system no longer supported. They're not going to make much more (and really, any) money from it.

On the whole I don't advocate piracy but I'm like Chris Rock on this.

As you point out, the system is no longer supported by WotC and most if not all of the books are out of print. Which means WotC isn't going to litigate over someone downloading a bunch of PDFs. At this point, it's unlikely WotC would make a dime off of someone buying the books, unless you bought the books directly from WotC, assuming you even can. WotC has far more to gain by people having free access to 3.5 stuff than they do by enforcing their copyright. It'll cost them tens of thousands of dollars to litgate someone for downloading a $10-15 book. At most they'll get statutory damages which is $750 at the low end, and that might not even cover the cost of a cease and desist letter at a major law firm.

If WotC were even remotely concerned about protecting the copyright from PDF downloads, there wouldn't be half a dozen sites where someone can obtain this material. The only reason WotC would start to take notice is if you start selling the books.

WotC would love for hundreds of thousands of people to start playing 3.5 in the hopes that some of those people will eventually "upgrade" to 4e. People playing 3.5 means they might buy dice, they might buy maps, figurines, related novels, and other RPGs. Game stores benefit. It's easily the best of both worlds for WotC that that these books are available freely without them having to give up their copyright protection.

If there is a group who might be motivated to act it would be the distributors. But most of them don't have any right to bring a suit and even if they did contractually, it still wouldn't be worth it. And since most of these books are written by a team, it is unlikely that any royalties are involved for the authors.

Is it technically illegal to download copyprotected material? Yes. But it's technically illegale to speed. And speeding endangers people's lives...not their pocketbooks.

Just to be 100% clear, I am not advocating piracy or the infringment of anyone's rights.

 

[kitcik]

As you point out, the system is no longer supported by WotC and most if not all of the books are out of print. Which means WotC isn't going to litigate over someone downloading a bunch of PDFs. At this point, it's unlikely WotC would make a dime off of someone buying the books, unless you bought the books directly from WotC, assuming you even can. WotC has far more to gain by people having free access to 3.5 stuff than they do by enforcing their copyright. It'll cost them tens of thousands of dollars to litgate someone for downloading a $10-15 book. At most they'll get statutory damages which is $750 at the low end, and that might not even cover the cost of a cease and desist letter at a major law firm.

If WotC were even remotely concerned about protecting the copyright from PDF downloads, there wouldn't be half a dozen sites where someone can obtain this material. The only reason WotC would start to take notice is if you start selling the books.

WotC would love for hundreds of thousands of people to start playing 3.5 in the hopes that some of those people will eventually "upgrade" to 4e. People playing 3.5 means they might buy dice, they might buy maps, figurines, related novels, and other RPGs. Game stores benefit. It's easily the best of both worlds for WotC that that these books are available freely without them having to give up their copyright protection.

If there is a group who might be motivated to act it would be the distributors. But most of them don't have any right to bring a suit and even if they did contractually, it still wouldn't be worth it. And since most of these books are written by a team, it is unlikely that any royalties are involved for the authors.

Is it technically illegal to download copyprotected material? Yes. But it's technically illegale to speed. And speeding endangers people's lives...not their pocketbooks.

Just to be 100% clear, I am not advocating piracy or the infringment of anyone's rights.

Based on the last sentence, I don't think you have any point or purpose in making this post... unless the last sentence really reads "moderators, please disregard the above due to this lame disclaimer."

You seem to be saying that as long as no one will prosecute, it is ok to pirate. You also seem to be saying that WOTC wants you to pirate.

If the latter were the case, why don't they have all of 3.5 as free downloads on their site? Hmmm... I'm guessing you're wrong.

Forget WOTC, how do you think the authors or illustrators would feel about this?

And on your final point about speeding - WTF? Is the point "since you endanger people's lives when you speed, might as well steal from them too?"

Seems like the whole post is trolling, offensive and pointless.

Just to be 100% clear, this is not a personal attack. LOL.

 

[RedTonic]

The 3.5e Rules Compendium is also worthwhile if you can get your hands on it!

 

[was]

I'd stick w/ 3.5 over 3.0

 

[kitcik]

My serious take on illegal pdf's

If you go to a bookstore, you are allowed to browse the books. Even on Amazon, they give you a preview.

IMHO, there is nothing wrong with downloading a pirate pdf IFF you do one of the following:
- browse it, then delete it
- browse it, then immediately buy a hardcopy

The first is the same as browsing a book in a bookstore, but deciding not to buy it.

In the second case, I believe once you own a physical copy, you are allowed to reproduce it (i.e. own it in digital format) so long as you do not distribute it in any way.

In this way, you could browse the various books suggested above, come to your own conclusions on which are worthy of purchase, purchase them, and delete the rest.

I am not sure where this falls out from a legal technical standpoint, but it seems to go along with the copyright principles and the practice in the book industry.