What expansions?

[flare X2]

I have the core books for 3.5 but have heard of a few expansions which people often use.
A. which should I look for?
B. what do they add?
C. where could I get them?
I have heard of pathfinder and have had a look at the srd. I had heard somewhere that paizo provide a free pdf of the core book is this true? because if so I couldn't find it.

Many thanks x n in advance.

[Hawkfrost000]

Tomb of Battle and the Completes series would be first. after that i would recommend races of

DM

[Lateral]

Yeah, in general, the Completes series and Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords are the best books for you to get after Core. Complete Warrior is... not all that great, but the rest are pretty well-made splats.

Do you have the Expanded Psionics Handbook? If not, I would recommend it; psionics is actually a pretty balanced and overall well-thought out system in 3.5, as long as you ignore most of the Complete Psionics errata. (The book had some great stuff! WHY DID THEY RUIN IT WITH THOSE POINTLESS NERFS!)

Beyond that, the Players' Handbook 2 is a nice and well-thought out book. There are some Races Of... books with nice fluff and crunch (personally, I like Races of Stone, but your mileage may vary.) Some settings have some nice flavor; Eberron in particular is really cool. Halflings on dinosaurs and barbarian elf hordes, you know.

[Particle_Man]

I have the core books for 3.5 but have heard of a few expansions which people often use.
A. which should I look for?

Answered above. What is your budget like?


B. what do they add?

The completes tend to add classes, both base and prestige, feats, spells and magic items. Warlock can be found in complete Arcane, for example. Many of them have a progression, so take Complete Arcane before Complete Mage, or Complete Adventurer before Complete Scoundrel. Complete Champion is more on the fluff/descriptive side. Complete Warrior and PHB II add helpful feats for fighters, and Tome of Battle adds nice alternatives to Fighters, Paladins and Monks (but has a new system of "maneuvers" to use in combat that refresh each encounter).

The Races of books add spells, prestige classes, and often class level substitutions for some races, plus a lot of details on races and some new races.

There are other books out there that do totally new things with magic, like Magic of Incarnum. But that depends on personal tastes.


C. where could I get them?

The stuff in expanded psionics handbook is already in the srd.

For that in dead tree form (and the rest) try Ebay, abes books, etc.

Pathfinder stuff in is in FLGS in dead tree form and online as pdfs you buy. You can't get a free pdf AFAIK, but the free Prd or psrd is remarkably generous.

[flare X2]

meh budget is between 20-70 pounds. so i'm expecting to get the books one at a time.

[Eldan]

It depends on what you want. For rules, you can't really beat the Expanded Psionics Handbook and Tome of Battle. Far more balanced than the core books, actually (even though I prefer Vancian over Psionic for flavour reasons).

On the other hand, there's books like the Draconomicon and Lords of Madness, which have great fluff.

[Bang!]

Just for background: I DM more than I play, and I haven't gotten huge thrills from character-building for a long time. The Complete X and Races of X series are generally most useful from a character-building standpoint, and haven't been particularly useful for me outside of internet character-building puzzles.

I've found the most useful book series is Sandstorm, Frostburn and Stormwrack. They give solid support for playing in Desert, Arctic and Seafaring environments, respectively. This is in terms of important environment-specific rules calls, flavor text and the various stuff (classes, equipment, monsters, spells, other modular game items) that goes along with the settings.

There's a similarly-themed Cityscape, but I don't think I've used anything from it except the two pages about mobs.

[Cog]

Complete Champion is more on the fluff/descriptive side.
Complete Champion has some very strong options, actually. It's very melee-friendly.

[Squiggles]

Alderac's Ultimate Toolbox has always been a huge help when I find myself with little time during the week to come up with NPC details on the fly for a campaign. It contains hundreds of pages of charts for fleshing out both PC's and NPC's alike.

I've had similar experience with Frostburn and Stormwrack in that they're great for developing new landscapes and providing interesting new magics and monsters.

I'm not sure about availability but Dragon Compendium Volume 1 is always a fun go to as it contains various feats, PrC's and the articles in the back pertaining to traps, riddles, and the various dungeon fluff are inspirational, at the very least.

Those would be a handful I would look into from a DM standpoint.