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Ffoh
2011-01-29, 03:26 PM
A question from a newbie attempting not to remain a newbie: I've got a reasonable knowledge of the material in the 3.5 core books, but don't know where to look to find out about the many popular non-core classes and races played here (warlock, swordsage, etc etc). From the reviews I've seen, it seems like PHB2 is a waste of time. So what is the logical next source for me to look at if I want to learn more about the world of 3.5? And is any of it freely available?

Greenish
2011-01-29, 03:31 PM
PHBII isn't that bad. The base classes are (mostly) pretty good, the feats useful, and so forth.

What to look for after that depends on your interests, and of course if you play in a published setting, the setting specific books are not a bad investment.

Here (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=1109.0) you can find a guide to the 3.5 content that's freely (and legally) available from the internet, and SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/index.htm) has most of the crunchy contents of Expanded Psionics Handbook, the basic book for Psionics in 3.5. Many people swear by the system, above and beyond vancian casting (ie. that of the PHB classes).

[Edit]: Warlock is from Complete Arcane, Swordsages from Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords.

The latter is considered the holy grail of playing a melee character by some, and an unholy abomination of "weeaboo fightan magics" by some. I'm a fan, personally.

Waker
2011-01-29, 03:32 PM
Well, after you finish reading the three core books, I would suggest moving on to the Complete series. Then the Races series. I suggest those series since most DMs usually have no problem with them in their campaigns. After that you can wrap it up with Psionics, Incarnum and Tome of Battle.

Psyborg
2011-01-29, 03:36 PM
A question from a newbie attempting not to remain a newbie: I've got a reasonable knowledge of the material in the 3.5 core books, but don't know where to look to find out about the many popular non-core classes and races played here (warlock, swordsage, etc etc). From the reviews I've seen, it seems like PHB2 is a waste of time. So what is the logical next source for me to look at if I want to learn more about the world of 3.5?
Tome of Battle for warblade/swordsage/crusader.
Complete Arcane for warlock. Actually, most of the Completes are good. I'd recommend Arcane, Warrior, and Adventurer first. Avoid Psionic, unless you really want the Ardent.
Expanded Psionics Handbook for (duh) psionics, if they interest you at all.
Races of Stone is generally excellent, and the other Races of X books are decent.
Avoid Magic of Incarnum for a while. It's neat, it's reasonably balanced (barring the Soulborn), and it's a lot of fun to play with. But it's complicated and highly, highly non-intuitive.
Dungeonscape is extremely useful if you DM and worth buying for most players as well.
Pick up a campaign setting, or flip through it in your FLGS, to see if you're interested in more stuff from that setting. Eberron and Faerun are the big two here, though there are dozens more (mostly from older editions, but updateable) if you ask around a bit.


And is any of it freely available?
Absolutely. Legally? Not so much. Granted, certain things are out of print and near-impossible to track down, but in general, your FLGS could probably use the support.

Ernir
2011-01-29, 03:36 PM
Warlock is in Complete Arcane, the Swordsage is in the Tome of Battle.

There is the guide to free D&D (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=1109.0) that has... pretty much all of the online-available stuff. Probably easiest to start with that, in particular the classes.

But honestly? Once you have the core down, you can... pretty much go whereever you want. Read the books on the subjects you find interesting (want to play a caster? Go Complete Arcane + Complete Mage! Want a barbarian? Tome of Battle + Complete Warrior!), and hop between as your interests take you to new places.

Kobold-Bard
2011-01-29, 03:41 PM
Core
Tome of Battle
"Complete X" Series
Expanded Psionics Handbook
Tome of Magic
Magic of Incarnum
GitP Homebrew Forum

In no particular order.

Hammerhead
2011-01-29, 03:51 PM
Psionics is neat. It's common in stock settings, it comes up often in monster manuals and supplements, it's more intuitive than the basic casting mechanics and very little of it is either brokenly powerful or cripplingly weak (Soulknife excluded).

And almost all of its base and supplementary materials are free.

The base rules are in the SRD (most readable here (http://www.d20srd.org/)).
Dreamscarred Press has some very nice revisions/supplementary material, available here (http://dsp-d20-srd.wikidot.com/).
Most of WotC's support for the system is on its web site here (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/arch/psi) (just keep an eye out for the shift from 3.0 psionics to 3.5 psionics; the systems are different and 3.0's mechanics were rather ugly and convoluted).

Combat Reflexes
2011-01-29, 06:40 PM
the Races of X series for fluff as well as crunch.
the Complete X series for completeness a LOT of cool options

don't bother with Tome of X though (except Tome of Battle).

Greenish
2011-01-29, 06:42 PM
don't bother with Tome of X though (except Tome of Battle).Tome of Magic has great fluff, the binder is an awesome class, and the shadowcaster is… salvageable.

And, well, ToB and ToM are the only "Tome of Foo" books for 3.5, aren't they?

Kobold-Bard
2011-01-29, 06:43 PM
the Races of X series for fluff as well as crunch.
the Complete X series for completeness a LOT of cool options

don't bother with Tome of X though (except Tome of Battle).

Oi! Tome of Magic has the Binder in it a truly magnificent class), and the Truenamer works perfectly well if you use Kyeudo's fix from the homebrew forum.

Combat Reflexes
2011-01-29, 06:46 PM
True, but the poor guy just read core. No need to bring up the rules-heavy Binder and Truespeaker yet. That is D&D for advanced players.

Greenish
2011-01-29, 07:39 PM
True, but the poor guy just read core. No need to bring up the rules-heavy Binder and Truespeaker yet. That is D&D for advanced players.Binder isn't particularly rules-heavy. It basically just has some at-will or X/day SLAs and some extra feats.

It's the selecting the binds part where system mastery gets to shine, to keep it all together, but the rules are the same as they are for the core.

Psyren
2011-01-29, 08:16 PM
True, but the poor guy just read core. No need to bring up the rules-heavy Binder and Truespeaker yet. That is D&D for advanced players.

Binder is easier than anything in ToB imo. (At least, to fight with.) Shadowcaster and Truenamer do have a learning curve I'll admit, though using the fixed versions helps with that.

ericgrau
2011-01-29, 08:22 PM
ToB and psionics seem popular, though I'm not a big fan. On the PC side I like things that add new classes, feats, etc. Ya PHB II is a good example. Magic Item Compendium and Spell Compendium are also big, though be wary of the 1% that appears a thousand times on optimization forums. On the DM side anything that adds to the setting is cool IMO, and the other posters already gave better examples than I'd be able to think up. I have a world building book by Gygax that seems cool but I haven't looked at it enough to know if it really is.

dsmiles
2011-01-29, 08:24 PM
My personal vote is for my favorite subsystem: Expanded Psionics Handbook.
Followed by ToB, and the Complete series.

Dienekes
2011-01-29, 08:51 PM
Well if you want to lose your noobiness take a look at this (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=1002.0). Maybe not the most up to date version but you'll get the jist of it. Follow that with a more in depth explanation with this (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5256.0).

For actual books, I cannot recommend Tome of Battle highly enough. It changes melee fighting in a fundamental and amazing way. If only they kept that going.

Havelock
2011-01-29, 08:56 PM
Staple supplements would be Spell Compendium and Magic Item Compendium IMO, gives a lot of options to everything in core.

Tome of Battle is good for the simple reason that Warblades are what Figters should have been, Crusaders are what Paladins should have been and Swordsages are what Monks should have been (unarmed sword sage variant if you really want to go with simple robe and a pair of sandals). Those three core classes needs to be brutally optimized to even hold a candle to spellcasters. The ToB classes offers nice and interesting alternatives to just hit things with a sword. To deal with Ranger I'd grab Prestige Ranger off the UA section on the SRD. This works for Paladin, too. Barbarians are left hanging, but you can go with Warblade for them, also. Rogues? Mix with Swordsage and you get that much more flexibility in combat. Although I sort of like rogues in general, so espescially in a more cloak and dagger, sneak, social and subterfuge setup, that class works wonders. D&D predominantly being about combat capabilities, mix in some swordsage there, though.

PHBII offers up Duskblade and Beguiler, which fill some nice niches.

Psionics are also pretty cool, you can grab most of it off the SRD, complete psionics does add quite a few extra tools for that, of course.

Completes and Races just adds a little more of practically everything.

But I'd go with MIC, SC, ToB and PHBII in that order for the first additions to the library.

AslanCross
2011-01-30, 01:28 AM
ToB, XPH, and PHBII are good. My opinion of PHBII is that it does have a lot of good crunch material--the classes are mostly good, Teamwork Benefits are awesome, some of the Alternate Class Features help some rather gimped extra-core classes like Hexblade and Warlock--but there was a lot of space devoted to rather useless info: character background and party dynamics, to name a couple.

Spell Compendium and Magic Item Compendium are easy ways to cover material that was printed in older/setting-specific books.

FMArthur
2011-01-30, 02:09 AM
One thing you should be aware of that you might not be is that, counterintuitively, the Expanded Psionics Handbook is the book that introduces psionics and contains the majority of psionic content, with other sources of psionic material all being dependent on it.

I read Complete Psionic first and didn't know much of what was being talked about. :smalltongue:
It's "Expanded" because there was a Psionics Handbook in 3.0, which was completely different and notoriously awful. Expanded Psionics Handbook starts fresh.

Vemynal
2011-01-30, 02:15 AM
Well, after you finish reading the three core books, I would suggest moving on to the Complete series. Then the Races series. I suggest those series since most DMs usually have no problem with them in their campaigns. After that you can wrap it up with Psionics, Incarnum and Tome of Battle.

I second this

dsmiles
2011-01-30, 09:09 AM
there was a Psionics Handbook in 3.0, which was completely different and notoriously awful. I'm not sure that "notoriously awful" is a strong enough term, here. But I suppose it's the best that will stay within the foul language rules. :smalltongue: