Which Should I Buy and Why?

[Mista Collins]

I would go with Complete Arcane.

Even though I run an Eberron game and love everything dealing with the setting. I just wasn't too impressed with the book overall. I felt there could have been more information on some of the races, or more prestige classes, or something else. I just walked away from that book not feeling fully satisfied. Then again, this might be due to my constant desire for more Eberron stuff.

Complete Arcane is a great book because it updates some of the 3.0 prestige classes (and other 3.0 stuff), and gives you some interesting base classes.Lords of Madness is a good book also because gives you great information on one of my favorite monsters (mindflayers). If you plan on giving your players a heart attack or just want to scare them in general, use Lords of Madness.

As for Sandstorm, never read it.. haven't even flipped through the art of it.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Thanks for the responses so far.

Some questions have come up about what type of game I'm running, where it is set, and so on. I'm not running an Eberron game, and currently the party is not in the desert. However, there is a desert fairly close, and I do plan on sending them into it at some point. As for the Eberron book, I often pull bits and pieces of race material from lots of different sources, and as there has not been a lot of interaction with races outside of individual NPCs so far, I may be able to make use of stuff from it (and soon). On the CA book, one of my players has it and I've read most of it, and I really liked it. And as for LoM, it's been on my want list, and I can probably use it fairly soon.

So all 4 books have the potential to see use in my game sooner or later, adn at some point I'll end up buying all of them. I just need to decide which to buy today.

 

[reveal]

So all 4 books have the potential to see use in my game sooner or later, adn at some point I'll end up buying all of them. I just need to decide which to buy today.

Go into Waldenbooks and have the store clerk secretly assign a random number to each book. Say a number out loud and, if it matches one of the numbers assigned to a book, buy that book. If it doesn't match, pick another number and so on.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Thanks for the responses so far.

Some questions have come up about what type of game I'm running, where it is set, and so on. I'm not running an Eberron game, and currently the party is not in the desert. However, there is a desert fairly close, and I do plan on sending them into it at some point. As for the Eberron book, I often pull bits and pieces of race material from lots of different sources, and as there has not been a lot of interaction with races outside of individual NPCs so far, I may be able to make use of stuff from it (and soon). On the CA book, one of my players has it and I've read most of it, and I really liked it. And as for LoM, it's been on my want list, and I can probably use it fairly soon.

So all 4 books have the potential to see use in my game sooner or later, adn at some point I'll end up buying all of them. I just need to decide which to buy today.

Based on this I would like to change my vote to: Complete Arcane, you get the fastest and greatest use from it from the get-go.

 

[Thanee]

On the CA book, one of my players has it and I've read most of it, and I really liked it. And as for LoM, it's been on my want list, and I can probably use it fairly soon.

So all 4 books have the potential to see use in my game sooner or later, adn at some point I'll end up buying all of them. I just need to decide which to buy today.

LoM then, since you already have access to CA.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

I have purchased and read the Lords of Madness and it is an absolutely sweet book. Though for as cool as it is, are you getting it because you run games or because you really enjoy reading the material? Obviously, if you are not a GM then the LoM will be of limited use.

 

[the Jester]

I wouldn't bother with RoE- I haven't bothered with any of the 'Races' books- but the other three are all very cool. I voted CA because it's the most universally useful.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

Races of Eberron is good, but will be of limited use unlesss you use the Eberron races (oviously). You've got access to CArc, eh? Sandstorm is a good book, and I enjoyed it. I don't have LoM.

I got one of those 30% off coupons from their e-mail program. With my Preferred Reader card, that was 40% off. Nice I got American Gods.

 

[Odysseus]

I really liked the monsters in Sandstorm. Theres some nice stuff in it, but you don't really need in to run a desert/wastelands scenario.
Complete arcane, i was a bit disappointed in. Complete adventurer had better spells in it.
Lords of madness & races of eberron I havn't seen.

 

[Desdichado]

Here's your grain of salt; I'm not really a big fan of the Complete books, and the environment books have just barely not quite managed to entice me to buy them yet. I love Lords of Madness, and I think Races of Eberron is pretty good, Eberron campaign or not (but especially for an Eberron campaign, or at least ones that use Eberron-specific races.)

Keep in mind, a big part of the reason I like Lords of Madness is that it's chock full of Cthulhu-esque flavor text.