Finding the books, which are essential

[Shadowscale]

Unrelated to the site which shall not be named, as I am myself against illicit activity, what would be my best way to track down the 3.5 books including the obscure ones, I own the 3 core and draconomicon, which books are essential to have? I'd assume all the complete series, players handbook 2, but I'm not sure what else.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Very few books contain a lot of meaty stuff and you will often find golden bits in every book. It is better just to mention some things to avoid:
Avoid setting specific books unless you know your DM won't mind (I love Unapproachable East if those are on the table)
Avoid Complete Psionic. IMHO it has one cool class, some stuff to make that class work, and a massive pile of disappointment and bad editing. (One PrC ends up not having its only major class feature, and it randomly nerfs Astral Construct).

Dragon Magazine Compendium has a number of fun classes in it, so I would recommend that.

[Zweisteine]

I would suggest you remove everything up to the second comma in that post. It's not relevant to your question.

As for books, I'll assume you don't need anything in the SRD (http://d20srd.org).

If you like asters, the Spell Compendium is a must.
The Magic Item Compendium has lots of grey stuff, and especially helps non-casters keep up (utility magics are worlds of help to fighters).
I personally would recommend the Tome of Battle as a good way to give noncasters a nice power boost, but many DMs don't like the book, and it might be of limited use for related reasons (and because you'd need to learn a new subsystem).

If you want fluff in your books, buying world-books (i.e. campaign settings and their series), as one might call them, is the best path to take. But the fluff they'll gain may be of limited use elsewhere. (But they do have some cool rules.)
I always recommend Eberron.

The Complete series is nice, but I don't care for it as much as many other books, so I couldn't say which books in it to take first.

The "environment" books (Sandstorm, Frostfell, Cityscape, Dungeonscape) are some of my favorites. Thu have cool rules, and seem a lot more cohesive than the more diverse Complete series.


And, of course, I always recommend looking up other people's requests for books. They pop up every so often, and you'll find valuable information in each one.


And to anyone else reading this, I had the idea to make a thread along the lines of "the D&D 3.5e shopping list," losing the books, what's good about each one, and giving a general order in which they should be obtained. I don't have the time to do something like this, but I feel like t could greatly benefit the forum and new fans of the game.


EDIT:
I generally agree with Zamiel. CPsi isn't great. The Dragon Compendium is really cool, and has some amazing game concepts, but some of the stuff in there is of extremely debatable balance.

I do agree that setting-specific books are very DM-dependent, but they are very cool, even as a player, and some of them aren't entirely restricted by setting (and in my experience (Eberron, mostly), the material they contain has a great balance between game rules balance and flavor.
If you have a good DM (who can work any setting in, which really takes no effort, so it's more of "not a bad DM"), setting-specific books are no worse than any others.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Oooh. I forgot the Environment books. Those are very handy to have.

[Chronos]

Ultimately, it depends on what kind of character you want, and whether you want things for an existing character, or a new character. A book of spells won't help you much if you're playing a fighter, and a book of new base classes won't help much for an already-existing character.

[Seclora]

I would add the following to the existing list which is to say: Core, Complete, Enviroment, Tome of Battle, PHB 2, the Spell and Magic Item Compendiums(Dragon is nice, but again, debatable balance).

Monster Manual II-V
Libris Mortis, Lords of Madness(Darkstalker is imperative for stealth), and the Draconomicon
Races of Ebberron, Faerun, Stone, Wilds, Destiny, and Dragon
Heroes of Battle and Heroes of Horror(Archivist, yeah!)
also, the Fiend Folio with Errata(same for MM II)

[Zweisteine]

Se lira mentioned a lot that I left out.

I would also recommend the Races series, especially Stone and Dragon. The series is nice, and each boom has something for Europe, but a huge chunk of them will be useless to non-[race] characters.

I didn't mention solo books, either. Lords of Madness is great. It has ons of flavor, and is a fun read. It isn't super-full of rules, though.

Overall, here's a general order I might recommend, treating series as single books, and leaving some stuff out.

Core books
Other SRD books
SpC, MIC
Tome of Battle,* PH2
Environment books, Complete series
Setting-specific books
Races series, Lords of Madness, (many other books fall at this rank)
Dragon Comp, Monster Manuals (rank varies depending on what you want to do)

Special: Tome of Magic
Special: Magic of Incarnum
Those last two are very special. Incarnum is one of my favorite books, and a really neat, if not powerful, subsystem.
The Tome has the binder, which has great flavor, cool mechanics, and good balance. However, the rest of the book isn't as great. Shadow Magic is kind of weird (I never read it thoroughly, but it doesn't feel so special at a glance), and truenaming is broken (in the doesn't work properly sort of way).
*The same things about flavor and mechanics apply to bothe Tomes.

[Extra Anchovies]

I recommend Tome of Magic, Magic of Incarnum, and Dragon Magic. The first two introduce some fun, very usable alternate magic systems, and Dragon Magic is my favorite splatbook of them all. Why? Because it's got support for just about everything. New spells for a number of classes, new stuff for the Warlock, new classes to use the Dragon Shaman's auras, a new vestige, some new soulmelds... dang near everything but utterances, maneuvers, and shadow mysteries. It's great fun, and if I'm ever in a game where we're allowed "core plus three other books" or some such, Dragon Magic is probably going to be one of the non-core books I pick.

[Shadowscale]

I recommend Tome of Magic, Magic of Incarnum, and Dragon Magic. The first two introduce some fun, very usable alternate magic systems, and Dragon Magic is my favorite splatbook of them all. Why? Because it's got support for just about everything. New spells for a number of classes, new stuff for the Warlock, new classes to use the Dragon Shaman's auras, a new vestige, some new soulmelds... dang near everything but utterances, maneuvers, and shadow mysteries. It's great fun, and if I'm ever in a game where we're allowed "core plus three other books" or some such, Dragon Magic is probably going to be one of the non-core books I pick.
I actually saw dragon magic on sale at my local used bookstore for 30 dollars the other day, worth it?

[Jeff the Green]

Heroes of Battle and Heroes of Horror(Archivist, yeah!)

While I certainly like both of those volumes, Archivist is not a reason to get HoH as it is available legally for free here (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20051007a&page=3). (Actually, there's a number of things that are available for free, legally, so check the guide (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=513.0) before purchasing.)


I actually saw dragon magic on sale at my local used bookstore for 30 dollars the other day, worth it?

Not unless you really want the hard copy. The PDF is available here (http://www.dndclassics.com/product/51634/Dragon-Magic-35?filters=0_0_44702) for half that.

[Chronos]

Tome of Magic is kind of a tricky case: It contains my favorite class in the game, with great flavor and mechanics, but to get it, you have to get the other two thirds of the book as well, and it's hard to justify paying full-book price for a third of a book.

And while I really do appreciate that Dragon Magic added support for all sorts of quirky subsystems, the support it gave for binders was completely useless. I mean, really, a maximum-level vestige, and all it gives you is Fear every five rounds?

[Blackhawk748]

Tome of Magic is kind of a tricky case: It contains my favorite class in the game, with great flavor and mechanics, but to get it, you have to get the other two thirds of the book as well, and it's hard to justify paying full-book price for a third of a book.

And while I really do appreciate that Dragon Magic added support for all sorts of quirky subsystems, the support it gave for binders was completely useless. I mean, really, a maximum-level vestige, and all it gives you is Fear every five rounds?

Well the DR is nice, but ya i kinda agree, youd think that Ashadarlon would be more awesome than that.

Back on topic, i own both MoI and ToM and i am glad that i have both of them. While i have never actually used MoI for its classes or feats i do swipe monsters and area hazards out of it. Dungeonscape is also good as well as the Completes (as those have a bunch of good PrCs as well as some nice feats) the Races of books are also pretty nice.

[Petrocorus]

As pointed out, DriveThruRPG has actually a lot of books available in PDF. I've lurked on it recently and there are all the Completes, the Races, the Environments, a big part of Eberron, a lot of FR, the ToB, ToM, MoI, the Rules Compendium and some few others, as the aforementioned Dragon Magic.
It painfully lacks the core books however, and the MIC and the SpC.

As a related question, is there anything in the core books i cannot find in the SRD + Rules Compendium?


(One PrC ends up not having its only major class feature, and it randomly nerfs Astral Construct).

Huh...which one?



Dragon Magazine Compendium has a number of fun classes in it, so I would recommend that.

Yep, it has one of my personal favourite, the Sha'Ir. The Battle Dancer can also be a nice dip.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Huh...which one?

Illithisspawn Psychic. It gets an augmentable mindblast 5 times per day, but the augment is never defined. The mention somewhere that they can augment dc, but it is a passing reference with no rules text. So you end up with a mindblast that requires you to burn focus (and something else I think, maybe its a Full-Round action?)


Yep, it has one of my personal favourite, the Sha'Ir. The Battle Dancer can also be a nice dip.

Other good ones include Death Master, Savant, and Urban Druid are also fun and not too shabby. Several of the PrCs aren't bad and the feats run the gamut from atrocious to broken and it has some new monsters.

[JusticeZero]

That's actually the reason I switched to Pathfinder. I don't think PF is strictly better - a lot of things about it are improved, but the improvements create their own issues elsewhere, so it all sort've washes out in the end - but the materials are MUCH more accessible to me. It doesn't make me prowl through dusty bookstores in search of rare and out of print dusty tomes to replace the same rare and out of print dusty tomes that I lost in one of my many moves or other misadventures, after a long day of prowling around for rare and out of print dusty tomes for work.

[Troacctid]

There are parts of the core books that are not in the SRD. Several monsters such as Illithids and Yuan-Ti are omitted for intellectual property reasons, and some stuff like wealth by level and xp tables are missing.

[Petrocorus]

There are parts of the core books that are not in the SRD. Several monsters such as Illithids and Yuan-Ti are omitted for intellectual property reasons, and some stuff like wealth by level and xp tables are missing.
I'm considering buying some books in PDF on DriveThru, but i'd like to know of hard it may be to use the SRD + the RC instead of the 3 core books.


That's actually the reason I switched to Pathfinder. I don't think PF is strictly better - a lot of things about it are improved, but the improvements create their own issues elsewhere, so it all sort've washes out in the end - but the materials are MUCH more accessible to me. It doesn't make me prowl through dusty bookstores in search of rare and out of print dusty tomes to replace the same rare and out of print dusty tomes that I lost in one of my many moves or other misadventures, after a long day of prowling around for rare and out of print dusty tomes for work.

This is certainly a point. Especially for me, given were i live.
I just went to the Païzo website, every book is available in PDF. And for a fair price.
I can have everything on a 1,2 kg netbook along with my Excel homemade game help, and pdf-printed and JPGed threads and helps.
Compare to the cost of a hardcopy of 5E shipped to my remote location. That's certainly a big advantage.

[Jeff the Green]

There are parts of the core books that are not in the SRD. Several monsters such as Illithids and Yuan-Ti are omitted for intellectual property reasons, and some stuff like wealth by level and xp tables are missing.

Of course, if you can figure out triangular numbers you can figure out XP. Why they bothered to leave out a table that consists entirely of the results of y=500x(x+1) escapes me.

[atemu1234]

In essence, all are essential.