Splatbooks for a campaign

[atadsp]

Hello, This is my first post here but I've come here for advice before.

Anywho, onto the meat of the post. Right now my friends and I are in a campaign that I am DMing, our next campaign after this one is over another of my friends is DMing. He's described it as a dragon in its twilight years getting a group of adventuresses to do its bucket list for it. He's DMing but I always wanted to try a game without the use of the core classes. So were going to talk about limiting class selection to a few splat books. So far my selection is Expanded Psionic Handbook, Complete Psionic, Magic of Incarnum, Tome of Magic, Tome of Battle, and Dungeonscape.

Is that a good selection, should I add or remove books? I'm just looking for advice on how to build the allowed books. I want to make use of new subsystems of D&D really. Expand all our knowledge of D&D.

[Curmudgeon]

If you want different subsystems, you've got to include Complete Scoundrel for skill tricks. It's a very easy subsystem to add, and doesn't break anything.

[atadsp]

We've used skill tricks before, but it might be fun if more than one character uses them. (right now we have a charger in the party with a couple tricks), I'll look through scoundrel again since the last time I use a class out of it was way a few years ago when I ran the monte bank class (fantastically fun at RP, couldn't do jack in combat twas so much fun). Thank you for the suggestion!

[Sagetim]

I think you have a pretty solid list there, and am happy to see that psionics is at the front of that list. If you need a little extra variety, complete arcane, warrior, and divine should round things out for warlocks, and shugenja, and so on. If you want binders to be the only kind of pact magic in town though, don't use complete arcane.

You might want to consider allowing Mind's Eye article material on a case by case basis, to help round out avenues of healing available to the party. Because while Binding Beur can let someone heal infinity times per day, it's really weak healing and best used as a handwave between combats for getting hp back.

[(Un)Inspired]

You've got psionic, times of both magic and battle and dungeonscape; I think you've got a great list.

As has previously been said, the minds eye articles have some pretty awesome psionic stuff you may want to toss in

[atadsp]

Thank you all for your suggestions. I talk with the DM tomorrow, so we'll discuss what we want and I'll bring these suggestions up. I'll post a response tomorrow about what our final book selection is for the game. Is there a compilation of the mind's eye material anywhere?

[Sagetim]

http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/arch/psi

Yes. The full archive is presented there, in website format. You can also find them on the wizards archives as a...I want to say trio of pdfs. Some of the articles are for 3.0, but there's a number of them that were for 3.5 or updated the 3.0 articles for 3.5.

[PrismCat21]

I waited years to get my group on board with a non-core game. They were dead set against it, but eventually gave in. They still talk about it as one of the best campaigns they ever played in.

I banned all Core classes and most of the player options. Complete series was somewhat limited. I wanted them to focus on the classes and abilities they usually shied away from.

The main books that were used was Magic of Incarnun, Expanded Psionics Handbook, Lords of Madness, Liberis Mortis, Heroes of Horror, all the Races of X, Dragon Compendium, Complete Arcane, Psionics, and Divine, and the Tomes of Battle and Magic. (Wow. That's actually quite a few) I suggest adding the Undead books if you have access to them.

Once i got them to invest in the characters and care about them, they loved all the options they had ignored before. In general it's fairly rare for them to go back to Core for more than a dip here and there. Good luck on your campaign. Please don't forget to tell us how everything goes. I'm super excited to here about it. :D

[Jallorn]

If you want different subsystems, you've got to include Complete Scoundrel for skill tricks. It's a very easy subsystem to add, and doesn't break anything.

Gonna have to say I disagree with you there. Some classes have so few skill points that Skill Tricks feel more limiting of anyone who doesn't use them. If you say, "I have skill in X, and I want to do Y cool thing," and someone goes, "You can't. I had to buy a skill trick to do that," when Y cool thing would make sense as a skill check alone, it kinda sucks.

However, I will recommend Complete Arcane as having one of my favorite base classes, the Warlock, as well as some rather nice PRCs.

[Sagetim]

Gonna have to say I disagree with you there. Some classes have so few skill points that Skill Tricks feel more limiting of anyone who doesn't use them. If you say, "I have skill in X, and I want to do Y cool thing," and someone goes, "You can't. I had to buy a skill trick to do that," when Y cool thing would make sense as a skill check alone, it kinda sucks.

However, I will recommend Complete Arcane as having one of my favorite base classes, the Warlock, as well as some rather nice PRCs.

And if you're going to let in warlock, you should probably let in warlock prcs, like enlightened spirit, etc from complete arcane. I don't see letting hellfire warlock in as a good idea though, that way leads to madness.

[atadsp]

And if you're going to let in warlock, you should probably let in warlock prcs, like enlightened spirit, etc from complete arcane. I don't see letting hellfire warlock in as a good idea though, that way leads to madness.

As far as I was planning it was entire books. so if complete arcane was allowed, all of the content in it was allowed. The only exception being the PHB and DMG which you could take anything from except for classes. If it helps we have five players at the current party.

[Curmudgeon]

Gonna have to say I disagree with you there. Some classes have so few skill points that Skill Tricks feel more limiting of anyone who doesn't use them. If you say, "I have skill in X, and I want to do Y cool thing," and someone goes, "You can't. I had to buy a skill trick to do that," when Y cool thing would make sense as a skill check alone, it kinda sucks.
That argument isn't internally consistent. If you don't have enough skill points to matter, then not being able to afford a skill trick (which all have minimum requirements in terms of skill ranks) won't matter because your skill points wouldn't be enough to do anything cool. Let's take two examples: one where there's no skill trick, and one where there is.

You can use Sleight of Hand to grab something from an enemy as a free action — but only with a -20 penalty when the DC is already 20. How are you going to get 40 on your Sleight of Hand check if you have too few skill points?
The Acrobatic Backstab skill trick lets you render a foe flat-footed when you move through its space; it has a prerequisite of Tumble 12 ranks. To move through a foe's space you've got to make at least a DC 25 Tumble check (and that's if you're doing it at half speed). If you don't have enough Tumble skill to accomplish that part of the trick, not being able to make them flat-footed is the least of your worries: you've got to survive the enemy's AoO for your botched Tumble attempt.

[Sagetim]

Do skill tricks automatically open up, or do you have to invest skill points or feats or something to gain them?

[Curmudgeon]

Do skill tricks automatically open up, or do you have to invest skill points or feats or something to gain them?
Every skill trick costs 2 skill points.

[atadsp]

Do skill tricks automatically open up, or do you have to invest skill points or feats or something to gain them?

You have to pay 2 skill points per trick.

Also I found the complete archive on mind's eye in pdf format for those interested: http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20041029a

[Sagetim]

Oh, yeah, there it is. I knew it had a pdf format for them, I just couldn't remember how to find it with a quick search.

At 2 skill points per trick, some classes are just going to be SoL about trying to afford them. A low int fighter would have a hard enough time investing skill points into meaningful skills to open up the chance to buy them, let alone the 2 points necessary per trick. And yes, I know fighter and rogue aren't options here, they're just for the sake of example.

I'm just trying to say that rogue has a distinct advantage in getting skill tricks. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if any class is going to have a lot of skill points to play with for things like this, it's probably going to be a rogue-type. Or maybe a psion (4 base per level, int based caster type, with some flavorful skills based on what kind of psion you are).

I think skill tricks would help flavor things up, though skill monkies would likely have an advantage in having enough skill points to spend on them.

[atadsp]

We made our final desicion on books.

Books that are completely allowed are:
Expanded Psionic Handbook
Complete Psionic
Tome of Magic
Tome of Battle
Magic of Incarnum
Dungeonscape

Books that you can take other things from but not classes:
PHB
DMG
MM

Books monsters can come from:
Any book the GM wants

Other Books:
I am going to argue for the use of unearth arcana in the same capacity as the PHB so we have access to action points and decimal BAB values

We decided that if anyone wanted to run the soulborn class from Magic of Incarnum or the Soulknife class from Expanded Psionic Handbook we would gestalt the two classes together (not a strait gestalt some of the abilities were changed so it was strictly an incarnum class. so it lost both its psionic bonus feats)

Everyone so far has chosen a class from a different book. Our part consists of:
Warblade (Tome of Battle)
Soulborn/Soul Knife gestalt (Magic of incarnum/Expanded psionic handbook)
Factotum (Dungeonscape)
Truenamer (Tome of Magic) (<-This is me, because I am a masochist)
one player is undecided on what class they will be, but might be leaning psionic