If You Could Have Only One Pathfinder Book...

[Palanan]

...apart from the CRB, what would it be?

I'm really interested in Pathfinder, and I'd like to dip my toe in the water and incorporate a few elements into my next campaign. But there are a lot of Pathfinder books, it seems, and I don't have money or time enough for all of them.

So, what one sourcebook would have the most to offer to a 3.5 campaign?

[Malroth]

the online sources

[Daftendirekt]

the online sources

Not a book.

I'll take Ultimate Magic, as it gave us the Magus and it's just such a cool class.

[137beth]

Based on the playtest, I would say Ultimate Mythic, since there are essentially no 3.5 sourcebooks with good support for high-powered play...

The Advanced Player's Guide has some good classes, though.

[navar100]

Advanced Player's Guide

It adds several new base classes, more good feats to choose, nice new spells, and the optional rule of Traits to help round out characters. They're quite useful to make skills class skills for those characters who need/want them. You may need to refluff flavor text, but the mechanics work well.

Advanced Player's Guide offers other optional rules - alternative favored class bonuses and the popular archetype system where classes can trade class features for other abilities. Barbarians get more rage power options. Rogues get more talent options. There are new sorcerer bloodlines. There is something for everyone.

[BWR]

Tough call, but I'd have to go with the Bestiary.

All the others have a lot of fun stuff, but a good list of the basic monsters is a necessity in my games.

[HylianKnight]

The best 2nd purchase to make for Pathfinder is the Advanced Players Guide. Whereas the CRB is entirely about adapting the PhB and DMG into the Pathfinder system, the APG is when they start to show their stuff in unique ways. You get the usual feats, spells, items, PrCs etc.

Beyond that you get a sampling of all the things that are uniquely Pathfinder. You get the only new classes they added to the game (with the exception of the two they added in the Ultimate books) which are a nicely thought out and not just there for the sake of having new classes like a lot of 3rd books (did we really need dozens upon dozens of new base classes?). Things like a divine spontaneous caster, a craft oriented class, a pet class, etc. You have the introduction of the trait system GURPs-esq RPing traits you pick up at character creation, worth about half a feat) and alternative and expanded Racial trait options for characters.

You also get Pathfinder's best innovation in my opinion (it honestly is the thing that won me over to the system). The archetype system. It substantially expands on the core classes by giving them more options or needed fixes (New sub-domains, sorcerer bloodlines, wizard sub-schools, ranger combat style). The archetype system, is where things really shine though. In essence, take all of the variant class options, classes that were really just modified old ones, and prestige classes that only existed for a specific class to enter into to capture a specific flavor that were found in 3.5, and replace it when a unified, balanced, and easy to understand system that does the job better.

Now instead of having the Scout class fill the same exact role as the Rogue, you're a Rogue with the Scout archetype (replaces the Uncanny Dodges with skirmish ability)http://http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/rogue/archetypes/paizo---rogue-archetypes/scout. Instead of having to be a Monk for 5 levels before awkwardly becoming a Drunken Master in order to play the character concept you want, you just start out as one http://http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/monk/archetypes/paizo---monk-archetypes/drunken-master.

Essentially, the most important things that Pathfinder adds to 3rd edition are introduced in that book.

[Palanan]

Thanks for the suggestions that've been made so far. Looks like the Advanced Player's Guide is the only one with more than one vote.

Any other recommendations? In particular, for a non-ToB game, is Ultimate Combat worth a look?

[ArqArturo]

Well, since I already have Core... Advanced Player's.


Thanks for the suggestions that've been made so far. Looks like the Advanced Player's Guide is the only one with more than one vote.

Any other recommendations? In particular, for a non-ToB game, is Ultimate Combat worth a look?

UC is pretty good, and can give you ideas (indirectly) to play a Steampunk game, or better yet, adapt it to Iron Kingdoms :D.

[Palanan]

So, I've been going back and forth among the options, trying to narrow it down...not quite successfully yet.

Ultimate Magic and Ultimate Combat don't seem all that essential--the magus is okay, but not worth a book, and Ultimate Combat just doesn't grab me. Ultimate Campaign covers a lot of topics that don't always come up, or that I have my own approaches to dealing with.

As for the campaign setting materials, I'm a little confused: the Inner Sea World Guide seems to focus on Golarion's equivalent of the Mediterranean, but there are also several gazetteers, and I'm not sure if any of these give the same sort of global coverage that we have in the FRCS or the Eberron Campaign Setting. And I'm really not sure I want to set my next campaign in Golarion anyhow.

So I'm looking at either the Advanced Player's Guide, the Advanced Race Guide, or Ultimate Equipment. Among these three, which one has the most useful material from a DM's perspective?

[Yora]

I say Advance Players Guide. It has some great classes and decent feats and spells. And people frequently call it one of the best RPG books in recent years.

Advance Race guide really is for making custom races, from what I can tell, and how often do you need that? And in those few cases, you really can get the parts you want from the SRD in 10 minutes.

Ultimate Combat and Ultimate Magic both have a rather doubtful reputation and don't seem to be particularly well recieved. Ultimate Combat being by far the lowest rated book on the Paizo website.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Yora
Ultimate Combat being by far the lowest rated book on the Paizo website.

That's interesting; it holds up much better on Amazon, which is where I'm looking. Probably a smaller sample size than on the Paizo site, though. All the disappointment seems to be with the emphasis on unarmed combat.


Originally Posted by Yora
Advance Race guide really is for making custom races, from what I can tell, and how often do you need that? And in those few cases, you really can get the parts you want from the SRD in 10 minutes.

True, true. Thanks for pointing that out. It looked cool, but I want cool and good DM support.

So, that leaves Advanced Player's Guide and Ultimate Equipment as the two final contenders. No one's really mentioned Ultimate Equipment, and it's the one Pathfinder book I haven't been able to find in the bookstore, so I don't have any sense of it. Does it have anything for the DM that would make it more worthwhile than the APG?

[Tetsubo 57]

The Ultimate Psionics book.