Books to gather!

[Gwachitallemall]

Alright, it's that time of year, my tax return has been finalized, I know what I'm getting, and I have a little bit extra money for getting some DND books. Only.. I need a little help on figuring out what I should get.

Here's what I have so far.
-Every Eberron Printed Book, No exceptions, including DM Screen, Character Sheet, the big map (Most of them are signed by Keith Baker, but that's just something that adds to them, I think.)
-Complete Warrior, Psionic, Arcane, Adventurer, Mage.
-PHB 1, PHB 2
-DMG
-MM1
-MIC
-SPC
-Expanded Psionics Handbook
-Unearthed Arcana
-Heroes of Horror

I finished my Eberron collection last year this time, so now I'm looking for some new books to collect.

Here's the stipulations.

I'm a DM currently, so I'm looking for books that will help my DMing.

My current party is a wizard and a sorcerer, level 6, both of whom do not have their own books, and will not use PDF's. So any books that will help them as well are accepted.

I don't really need any more subsystem books yet, they don't even want me opening the psionics books.

I'd prefer to keep the price under 40$, and I prefer to buy from Amazon. (You don't have to send me links, I have most of the books added to my save for later section.)

Just do your top 5, please.

Explain why the books are needed (Do they have good PRC's, good feats, good spells, good substitution levels, good traps/monsters/fluff, what?)

Thanks for your help!

[KingSmitty]

the loot tables in the magic item compendium and arms and equip guide are much better imo than the originals, you actually get nice things

[Gwachitallemall]

I have the MIC.

Actually, I have all new versions of the 5 books that were re-released. (MIC, SPC, MM1, DMG, PHB.)

Arms and Equipment guide is 3.0, is it not? That's another preference, trying to avoid 3.0 books. Don't really have the motivation to convert them to 3.5

[Cloaked_Warden]

A sorcerer and wizard in your party you said? You might want to look into Tome and Blood. Yes, its 3.0 (I don't know how much that matters to you), and yes you probably already have all of its spells in the Spell Compendium, but it does give a good perspective on sorcerers/wizards, and it also describes several guilds/organizations you could possibly use in your campaign (if you are into that). There are also a handful of prestige classes your players might find interesting, and information on researching new spells. Its about 8 bucks new or 3 used on Amazon, so even if you don't use the spells from it, and you don't want to convert the prestige classes to 3.5, its still a decent deal (seeing as both your PCs are magic users).

[Malimar]

In order, from highest quality to lowest:

Monster Manual 5
Monster Manual 4
Monster Manual 3
Fiend Folio
Monster Manual 2
OK, that list is a bit facetious -- well, it starts out serious and gets less serious. MM5, at least, has some really well-designed and interesting monsters in it. Any MM5 monster will blow any MM1 monster out of the water, interestingness-wise. Running out of MM4 and MM5 is so much more fun and refreshing an experience, IMO, than running out of MM1.

Other books I recommend for the DM side of the screen:

Lords of Madness, if you like aberrations
The Fiendish Codices (Hordes of the Abyss and Tyrants of the Nine Hells), if you like fiends
Libris Mortis, if you like undead
At first I was going to recommend Frostburn/Sandstorm/Stormwrack/Cityscape/Dungeonscape, but then I realized I use them a lot more as a player than I do as a DM
Book of Vile Darkness gets a lot of derision around these parts, but I like it. (Book of Exalted Deeds is less useful on both sides of the table -- you either need an evil party to use the good monsters (which are mostly lackluster anyway), or a super-good party to use the player options, neither of which is common.)


SERIOUS TIME: If you were me and I were making a 5-item shopping list for myself, I'd buy

Monster Manual 5
Monster Manual 4
Lords of Madness (I do love me some aberrations)
Libris Mortis
Book of Vile Darkness

[Honest Tiefling]

1. Complete Scoundrel. A bit surprised you don't have it, and since you have the others, it might be right up your alley.

2. More monster manuals. I suck at rules, but I have heard the second is quite...Strange with CR, but most monsters cannot hurt. Later ones (I think 4th?) have conversion rules for Eberron.

3. Sandstorm, Stormwrack and Forstburn. They have interesting rules for the extreme environments which I am certain would be present in Eberron (I don't know much of the setting, can't you tell?) so they would get you some use. I don't know if the classes could be converted easily, however.

4. Fiend Folio I think has some very iconic DnD beasties. I don't know how you feel about these things in Eberron, but I like some of them such as the half-fey template.

5. Races of Stone/Destiny/Wild. Yeah...Not helpful for fluff for you. But they do add in some interesting options, through refluffing is going to be necessary.

What I advise AGAINST:
1. Book of Vile Darkness, Book of Exalted Deeds. The alignment rules are bafflingly confusing or insane. There's some interesting options, but not...Balanced. If you don't mind a bit of elbow grease they could be interesting, but I'd pass otherwise.

2. The Fiendish Codexes. Unless Eberron has a lot of fiendish activity, skip it. I love these things, but they are a bit particular.

[theUnearther]

One more vote for the environment books, having read both Cityscape and Dungeonscape. Haven't read the other three, but I am led to believe Stormwrack is the least useful of them.

If you're ok with 3rd party, I quite liked Cry Havoc. It's rules for mass combat, which admittedly would not/should not come up all that often, but it was a good read nonetheless.

[Gwachitallemall]

Let's see, what to address..

Complete Scoundrel: I want it, I do. However, it falls under my "No books over 40$ rule." It's currently 45 on Amazon, or was last I checked. Also known as the "I'm a cheapskate" rule.

Monster Manuals. Thanks, I forgot about these. I really do need to get them, I like me some MM3, I had them on my phone but stopped using them.

Fiendish Codex. Well, the current part of the campaign is more a tournament in sharn, but higher levels may deal with raksha'sa. Also with going down into Khyber, which tends to be where all the evil creatures that go bump in the night ended up in the campaign setting.

Frostburn of the three environment books seems to be the only one I would likely see get use- Stormwrack could get use, but there's not a lot of water travel because of the airships.

Libris Mortis is another book I've been looking at getting, not really sure on it though.

As for Tome and Blood.. not sure I want to try and figure out the 3.0 stuff right now.

Based on what I see so far, my list seems to be:

1. MM5
2. MM4
3. MM3
4. Book of Bad Latin
5. Dungeonscape (On previous posts I was told this was a good one to get, to help my party out.)

[commander panda]

if it's just for the players, i would suggest dungeonscape just on the grounds that factotum is the most ebberon class ever.
(also, acid breathing sharks :smallbiggrin:)

[ZamielVanWeber]

One more vote for the environment books, having read both Cityscape and Dungeonscape. Haven't read the other three, but I am led to believe Stormwrack is the least useful of them.

Let me jump on the environment books train here. Stormwrack is cool buts its rules are useless outside water, as are many of its PrCs. Sandshaper, Walker in the Wastes, Frost Mage, Storm Singer, Winterhaunt of Iborighu (to name a few) are all perfectly useful outside of their native environments and sometimes far more dangerous outside of their native environments.

[Gwachitallemall]

Looked at the prices of books that were mentioned again this morning.

MM5 is out, it's 44$ on Amazon.
Stormwrack is out, it's 49$ on Amazon.

MM4 is running about 28, MM3 about 20, so both are still fine, dungeonscape barely scrapes in at 39, sandstorm and frostburn also are both okay at 32-36. Book of Bad Latin scrapes in at 39 as well.

Mass combat could actually come up fairly often depending on if the world turns to another "Last War" scenario. Which will completely depend on my party later on.