What book to go through or read next?

[Kafana]

I've been DMing and palying D&D on and off for a year and a half now, and I've gone over through about a dozen books so far, incorporating some aspects of the books in my game. While I've read a fair amount of different books, most of them weren't from cover to cover and some of them I just skimmed over.

The books I have read from cover to cover are:
PHB 1 & 2, DMG 1, MM 1

The books I read for the most part, skipping what I considered less interesting at the time are:
DMG 2, MM 2 and 3, Complete Scoundrel, Tome of Battle.
I also read Stormwrack, Secrets of Xen'drik, Frostburn, Sandstorm and the Eberron campaign setting, though I used these books almost exclusively for world building ideas.

The books I partially read, looking only into some of the aspects:
Unearthed Arcana, Complete Warrior, Complete Adventurer, Heroes of Horror, Races of the Wild, Races of Stone, Races of Destiny (apart from Unearthed Arcana, I pretty much only read the non-prestige class and race entries in the other books).

I also use the Magic Item Compendium and Spell Compendium whenever I want to give my players an original treat, and the Weapons of Legacy as a guide when I want to create an artifact.

Apart from that I glanced at the 4th and 5th Monster Manual, as well as the Elder Evils and Cityscape book.

All of that being said, what do you think I should read next? Since I've avoided psionics, I thought Complete Psionic might be a good book to pick up, or perhaps Tome of Magic. I avoided reading Complete Divine, Complete Mage and similar books as I thought spellcasters already had quite enough toys.

As a DM primarily, which book do you think I ought to read next, or perhaps read a book I skimmed more thoroughly?

[Captnq]

Well...

I'm going to toot my own horn here. The 103 handbooks available in the Encyclopedia Vinculum Draconis would be my next recommendation. I tried very hard to condense the various subjects down to the basics so it's easier for both players and DMs to use.

See my sig for details.

[Isil]

If you're going for the psionics part, I think Expanded Psionics Handbook comes first with the basics. Complete Psionic comes after that.

[Thealtruistorc]

Eberron Campaign setting first. There is so much quality content in that book between the Artificer, the new spells, and the new races.

After that, the expanded psionics handbook. It contains several interesting races and classes, as well as explaining how psionics works.

Finally, Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords. If you like melee combat, this book is a must-have, offering tons of great options for melee characters.

I hope this helped.

[Kafana]

Eberron Campaign setting first. There is so much quality content in that book between the Artificer, the new spells, and the new races.

After that, the expanded psionics handbook. It contains several interesting races and classes, as well as explaining how psionics works.

Finally, Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords. If you like melee combat, this book is a must-have, offering tons of great options for melee characters.

I hope this helped.

As I said in the OP, I read both the eberron campaign setting and the tome of battle. Will check out psionics though.

[Kafana]

One thing I failed to ask but wanted to - is it worth adding psionics to my campaign world? As far as I can see, they are better suited for more oriental adventures perhaps, but how fun are these classes and the mechanics introduced with psionics?

[JusticeZero]

I use PF psionics as the ONLY magic system available. Other than a couple of annoying quirks at low level for downtime healing, it works great and is not at all "Eastern". The system is generally balanced, with only a couple of obnoxious quirks. The flavor is fine. People mostly just go "ZOMG sci-fi" because look, Greek word roots instead of Latin. The 3e stuff is pretty awful compared to the DSP stuff.

[mabriss lethe]

Magic of Incarnum is also a good one to dig through.

[boxfox]

Hey there.

Adding Psionics if you already have magic won't get you much. It's just a different type of magic with a few different tricks, but the same general uses.

Magic of Incarnum is so radically different that you'd need to really read it before even considering it, since it adds completely new content (and is written pretty terribly). That said, it seems fairly balanced according to everything I've learned of it. It would allow you as DM to throw in some NPCs that have special powers that might make things interesting, but other than fluff, all of it seems available via magic and magic items.

Stronghold Builder's Guidebook would give you rules to make huge and complex castles and stuff, which might help in certain encounters. If you add Book of Challenges and Dungeonscape, you're looking at a serious collection of books for making any type of lair.

Planar Handbook, Manual of the Planes, &/or Deities and Demigods for different settings. Allow your players to travel the planes or meet gods.

Lords of Madness, Libris Mortis, Fiendish Codex 1 (and 2), Drow of the Underdark, Dragon Magic, and Draconomicon are all good if you want to load your campaign with lots of one type of creature. Dragons are always a win.

I know you've read a lot of them, but consider really reading the entire "Complete" series and the entire "Races of" series. Lots of flavor and options. A lot of playgroups consider both of these sets as an extension of "Core".

Obviously, the Epic Level Handbook is helpful if you plan on getting your players up that high. It has 3.5 conversion rules for free on the WotC website.

Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Ravenloft, Oriental Adventures, etc. Grab a bunch of books from a specific campaign world and open up a portal to your players to check out an "alternate dimension".


With all that said, another option is to consider not reading more. It's not required. Reread what you've read and let it "sink in". You can make amazing things happen with just Core. Moving out from there can be really fun (I love it.), but it can also get confusing or frustrating. Some DM's feel as if they need to incorporate every single book they've read into their games. This is simply not the case.

Either way, enjoy. :)

[Graypairofsocks]

One thing I failed to ask but wanted to - is it worth adding psionics to my campaign world? As far as I can see, they are better suited for more oriental adventures perhaps, but how fun are these classes and the mechanics introduced with psionics?

I don't know about worth, but some of the creatures from core have psionics* like the Aboleth, Couatl, and Mindflayer.

Note that the Psionics handbook is the 3.0 version, don't confuse it with the Expanded Psionics Handbook(from 3.5).

You can find most of the material from the XPH in d20srd.org (http://www.d20srd.org).



*These are really just spell like abilities refluffed as psionics(which counts for giving them the subtype), but the Expanded psionics handbook gives actual psionic versions of them.

[Werephilosopher]

Well...

I'm going to toot my own horn here. The 103 handbooks available in the Encyclopedia Vinculum Draconis would be my next recommendation. I tried very hard to condense the various subjects down to the basics so it's easier for both players and DMs to use.

See my sig for details.

Indeed, I've been reading through it lately and you've done a very good job. It's definitely worth a read Kafana. The other environment-based books are also good choices. If you want to find more fluff than mechanics, I also suggest doing a more thorough read-through of some of the Races books- Races of Stone's segments on Dwarven and Gnomish life and outlook gave me lots of new ideas and were pretty interesting.