Gotta have books

[Shinizak]

So we all know that there are the 3 core books, then there are wizard supplements, and after that there is an ocean of 3rd party open game content books. What I want to know is apart from the 3 core books which of the "extra" books do you feel are almost (if not just as) an absolute necessity?

For me, I personally like the MM 2&3

[Eldariel]

Ah, it's this time of the month again.

I contest the necessity of the Core 3 books - SRD has all the necessary material and most of it is pretty bad anyways. That said, it's still what most play off, so I digress.

As for the books to get:
-Tome of Battle: Everything melee could ever want.
-Spell Compendium: Boost up half-casters (Rangers, Paladins, etc.) into actual usefulness with unique spells, and give your full casters a healthy dose of variety.
-Complete Scoundrel: Best mechanics ever given to skilled characters.
-Player's Handbook II: Something for everybody.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

A few months ago, someone made a thread for people's top 5 books. IIRC, ToB was one of the best. I'll see if I can find it.

[Dublock]

and I'll argue that unless you have some come experienced, you do need the core books, at least the PHB. In the SRD, how many levels before you get a feat? Small things like that aren't in the SRD which could be lost if people that are brand new to the game would miss if they didn't have the SRD.

[Samb]

ToB, CDiv, XPH, MIC, PH2, CScoundrel, and CPsi are the books I find myself flipping through the most.

[TaintedLight]

Ah, it's this time of the month again.

I contest the necessity of the Core 3 books - SRD has all the necessary material and most of it is pretty bad anyways. That said, it's still what most play off, so I digress.

As for the books to get:
-Tome of Battle: Everything melee could ever want.
-Spell Compendium: Boost up half-casters (Rangers, Paladins, etc.) into actual usefulness with unique spells, and give your full casters a healthy dose of variety.
-Complete Scoundrel: Best mechanics ever given to skilled characters.
-Player's Handbook II: Something for everybody.

I'm not sure I agree with your statement about PHB2. The vast majority of the fun feats are for 15+ level fighters and the like, and the alternate class features they present don't really do anything for me except the shapeshifting variant for the druid.

As for me, I very much enjoyed Complete Divine's selection of prestige classes. BoVD and BoED are good together, but make sure to keep a rein on your players if they come up with any really cheesy combos. Also, Words of Creation is far and away better than Dark Speech :p.

[streakster]

Tome of Battle - It's been explained, so I shall merely reiterate. The best book ever published for 3.5 DnD.

Tome of Magic - You just want it for the Binder, and it is so worth it.

Complete Arcane - Warlock. "nuff said.

Races of Eberron - Warforged. Again, 'nuff said.

Dragon Magic - Dragonfire Adept - nuff 'said, part three.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

As always, I support Heroes of Horror. Just so many good ideas in there!

[Eldariel]

I'm not sure I agree with your statement about PHB2. The vast majority of the fun feats are for 15+ level fighters and the like, and the alternate class features they present don't really do anything for me except the shapeshifting variant for the druid.

Knight, Duskblade and Beguiler are all fine classes though. Duskblade is probably the worst out of the bunch, but it serves a role that traditionally requires heavy multiclassing to pull off so it's not that bad.

Not only that, but the Fighter ACFs are very usable too, and of course the specialist Wizard ones (then there's Abrupt Jaunt *shivers*). Also, all the spells are pretty good (save again for the Celerity-line). And then there's a bunch of solid feats, everything from the Fighter-ones (including Weapon Masteries for actually worthwhile Weapon Specialization, and Robilar's Gambit) to Smiting Spell, a very usable Gish-feat.

Also a bunch of style-feats for things that aren't well-supported outside PHBII and some attempts at Poison Use feats along with actual rules for retraining and all that. And all the character ideas for easy creation (they're actually useful for new players).


It just has so much usable stuff that I find it worth it.

[monty]

The Races Of and Complete series are pretty solid overall. It's Cold Outside, It's Wet Outside, and the other environment books are good if you're doing a campaign in the appropriate environment. PHB2 has all kinds of nice stuff, especially beguilers.

And of course, Tome of Battle.

[AslanCross]

Tome of Battle - It's been explained, so I shall merely reiterate. The best book ever published for 3.5 DnD.

Tome of Magic - You just want it for the Binder, and it is so worth it.

Complete Arcane - Warlock. "nuff said.

Races of Eberron - Warforged. Again, 'nuff said.

Dragon Magic - Dragonfire Adept - nuff 'said, part three.

Amen.

The stats for all the Eberron-specific races are in Monster Manual 3, though, but Races of Eberron gives some feat and racial substitution features as well.

[alchemyprime]

The best book for DMs is, in my opinion, the Advanced Bestiary. It essentially gives you 200 times the monsters you had. Its a book of simple to use templates. Sure it Green Ronin, but to me, that means its good.

[The Glyphstone]

I've heard Hyperconscious lauded as the best psionics-related supplement out there, almost as good as the XPH itself, and far, far better than The Supplement That Shall Not Be Named. Complete Psionic

[Dixieboy]

I've heard Hyperconscious lauded as the best psionics-related supplement out there, almost as good as the XPH itself, and far, far better than The Supplement That Shall Not Be Named. Complete Psionic

Complete psionic?

[Samb]

I've heard Hyperconscious lauded as the best psionics-related supplement out there, almost as good as the XPH itself, and far, far better than The Supplement That Shall Not Be Named. Complete Psionic

Hyperconsious is the best way to make psionics and magic unique. The additions of dream travel and combat as well reintroducing psionic combat in an easy and easy to understand fashion. However, it is only good if you incorperate everything as much of the feats and PrCs use dreams and mental combat. That being said it has cool metapsi feats like permanent tattoos and persistant power(!). The dreamstained items are cheap and powerful but they have some side effects that may prevent widespread use.

The supplument you mentioned, what is it?

[Eldariel]

Hyperconsious is the best way to make psionics and magic unique. The additions of dream travel and combat as well reintroducing psionic combat in an easy and easy to understand fashion. However, it is only good if you incorperate everything as much of the feats and PrCs use dreams and mental combat. That being said it has cool metapsi feats like permanent tattoos and persistant power(!). The dreamstained items are cheap and powerful but they have some side effects that may prevent widespread use.

The supplument you mentioned, what is it?

Your predecessor already guessed it. His fate is an example to the too inquisitive (you will BLUSH).

[Samb]

Hmm I suspected as much. Complete psionics is actually really good. I think i'll start another thread as to why so many people dislike it so much.

[Dacia Brabant]

But Complete Psionic has Soulbow, I mean come on, PEW PEW LAZER BEEMS!

[Archpaladin Zousha]

What exactly is the problem with Complete Psionic anyway? I never used psionics when I played, so I never bought any psionic-related supplements, but everyone says its supposedly the worst thing since Soylent Green.

[Xenogears]

Personally I really like the Fiend Folio. Its got a bunch of cool monsters and some of the grafts are cool.

[Drascin]

What exactly is the problem with Complete Psionic anyway? I never used psionics when I played, so I never bought any psionic-related supplements, but everyone says its supposedly the worst thing since Soylent Green.

Want me to give you a detailed account, or a summation will suffice? Anyway, Cliff Notes version:

Basically, it doesn't sit well with most people for both fluff and crunch reasons.

Fluff, there's the fact that most people dislike the concept of psionic summons and such - psionics is supposed to be the power of the self, not the power of invoking other creatures from elsewhere to give you their power. Astral Construct always was unique in that you built it yourself, fittingly for the theme, but Complete Psionic has you summoning "psionic elementals" (which are just normal elementals but smaller, uglier and suckier), creating Positive and Negative energy like a cleric, using "planar" based spells that basically turn you into celestials of infernals, and, and this is probably the biggest one, asking gods for psionic power (Divine Mind). So much for "power of the self" .

Then, there's the prestige classes. The Storm Disciple makes absolutely zero sense as a psionic class (seriously, replace all instances of "manifester" with "divine caster" and you'll see it suddenly makes heaps more sense. Not to mention the picture showing a crusader of a Lawful deity for a class that can't be Lawful, but hey, who's counting?), as does the Flayerspawn Psychic unless you reflavor the class to something more fitting (you can't be a descendant of an illithid! Illithids are asexual, for Suwako's sake! ). Anarchic Initiate is a prestige class explicitly made for Wilders that Wilders can't even enter until around level 13 due to requirements (and is in fact best for Psions, where it's near broken). Etcetera.

Crunch... hooo, boy. To begin with, you can't use the Flayerspawn Psychic because nobody bothered to tell you how you pump power points into its main class feature. Powers that were perfectly fine were nerfed, while the few actually broken ones were left completely alone. All the (only 8, by the way) prestige classes, excepting the Soulbow and maybe the Ebon dude, mechanically suck, anyway, including one whose capstone ability (and you lose caster levels for it) is to partially undo one of the previously mentioned unneeded nerfs, and another who has really awesome and psionic flavor but can only use any of its abilities 1/day and it comes from Monk anyway, so it does nothing. The Erudite is a rerint from Dragon of a class nobody cared much for, anyway, and which is probably the closest a psionic class has ever got to overpowered. The feats section is filled to the brim with utterly redundant stuff (like eight to ten different feats for different exotic mind blade shapes, where a simple "exotic mind blade" one would have sufficed, and a different feat improving it for every single racial of every psionic race ever). And I actually could go on.

Now, it's not all bad. The Lurk is a perfectly fun class if a bit underpowered, as is the Ardent, and the Soulbow is great. Synad can be a nice race. But three classes, a race, and a handful of powers aren't exactly worth a buy. I have a pretty high crap tolerance, and don't tend to take the game too seriously, but even I felt it was a total rip off.

Personally, I will always keep this sentence in mind - I think I heard it in the Wizards forums. "Complete Psionic is what happens when a hobby writer rolls a natural 1 in his Profession(Writer) check".

If you want psionics, you buy XPH, Hyperconscious, and Untapped Potential, and you're set.

[Xenogears]

the Flayerspawn Psychic unless you reflavor the class to something more fitting (you can't be a descendant of an illithid! Illithids are asexual, for Suwako's sake! )

Well there is the half Ilithid. What if an Ilithid made say an elf into a half-illithid which then bred with humans until you got a perfectly normal human who has Illithid ancestry? It doesn't say wether half-illithids are asexual and since the transformation is incomplete it might work. Still a rather silly thing though....

[Thurbane]

As I always say in these threads, here are the one I (and my group) have gotten the most use from:

1. PHBII, no question
2. Magic Item Compendium
3. Spell Compendium

[The Rose Dragon]

Well, I like Exalted 2nd Edition, Witchcraft, Tri-Stat dX, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Spirit of the Century, Mutants & Masterminds and all three Blue Rose books.

You should definitely get Exalted 2nd Edition, all Books of Sorcery, Scroll of the Monk and Storyteller's Companion. You never mentioned which game.