What Third Party Content Do You Use?

[Astofel]

Thread title says it all. I've done some poking around and it looks like there's far more 3rd party content made for 5e than I expected. I'm wondering what content, if any, you guys use so I can give it a look over and see if it would work in my own campaign.

Personally I've only used the Tome of Beasts by Kobold Press. I've found it to be useful for flicking through to find something that can spice up an encounter, or even be the centrepiece of one, especially if I'm looking for something the player's are unlikely to be familiar with. Unfortunately a lot of the book's monsters don't mesh well with my setting, and a lot of them have nonsense-word names that make them impossible to remember for me, even if they would work.

[Davrix]

Thread title says it all. I've done some poking around and it looks like there's far more 3rd party content made for 5e than I expected. I'm wondering what content, if any, you guys use so I can give it a look over and see if it would work in my own campaign.

Personally I've only used the Tome of Beasts by Kobold Press. I've found it to be useful for flicking through to find something that can spice up an encounter, or even be the centrepiece of one, especially if I'm looking for something the player's are unlikely to be familiar with. Unfortunately a lot of the book's monsters don't mesh well with my setting, and a lot of them have nonsense-word names that make them impossible to remember for me, even if they would work.

Anything from Kobold Press is "usually" fairly balanced. Frog god games though... less so but it has lots of good ideas if your willing to tweak what they give.

[Asmotherion]

Nothing but personal homebrew really. I really like giving Monsters Class Levels and/or feats, making them more interesting. Give a Ghast 3 levels of Undying Warlock (and the Mask of Many Faces Invocation), and you have yourself a great CR 5 monster. He stabilises dying oponents so he can see the panic in their eyes when he eats them.

Or a Mephit who advances as a Sorcerer to eventually "evolve" into a larger elemental, and even Genie of it's element, even able to cast Wish. It is first encountered as a lesser Mephit at the start of the campain, but, should it survive the encounter, it grows stronger and stronger through a series of events, which leads it to eventually become the "King" of it's own Elemental Plane, and then trapped into a Bottle, becoming a hookpoint in an adventure at level 15-16 (Evil Mage bound him to the Bottle, Neutral Faction stole the Bottle and fought the Party, Bottle ends up in the Party's hands).

[vexedart]

There's a PDF online called strongholds 5e, it's my favorite non-official material for 5e, I also use the tome of beasts.

[Ventruenox]

Kobold press has a lot of great options, but unless there is a character archetype that WoTC material cannot accomplish, I'd stick to Tome of Beasts from them. Some of the character options need refinement depending on the campaign. The Blood and Doom supplement is fantastic for villainous creations.

Matt Mercer's Blood Hunter class is one of my favorites. Definitely viable 3rd party material.

Frog God's Book of Lost Spells gets a fair bit of use, but each spell is on a case by case basis for game balance.

Xanathars Lost Notes to Everything Else and Sylgar's Guide are fun books to read, but like Kobold Press, are not my go-to's for character options. Great for NPC ideas, though.

The one 3rd party creation I am most excited to use is Army of the Damned.

[KorvinStarmast]

Nothing. There's enough material in what's published to suffice for a long while.

My nephew had some nifty homebrew animals and humanoids in his home brew world, but we don't play in that campaign anymore.

[Submortimer]

I happen to be partial to Middle Finger of Vecna/Mage Hand Press.

But then again, I'm biased.

[JakOfAllTirades]

I've tried out the Blood Hunter class, but only a couple of its archetypes. For my purposes, WOTC is adding new material at about the right pace (after a painfully slow start) so I don't have a pressing need for more "stuff" to run my games.

[Laserlight]

I used the Thule campaign setting, which is great for a "Conan+Lovecraft" atmosphere. A couple of the monsters needed a bit of fixing-- forex there was one fairly low CR humanoid who, as written, got four attacks per turn and added Sneak Attack damage to all four....yeah, let's maybe verify the CR on that one, shall we?

[suplee215]

I use Matt Mercer's Gunslinger class because I began with Critical Role and also one of the reasons I made the campaign was a discovery of guns fueling a miners rebellion.

[gloryblaze]

Most of the third party stuff I use comes from Middle Finger of Vecna, but I also have a handful of my own homebrew classes that I make available to my players.

[kardar233]

My DM uses Tome of Beasts, which is rich in options but sometimes questionably balanced. Their monsters are overall much tougher than comparable CR official ones (higher AC, HP, save proficiencies) and tend to have low hit chances but deal a lot of damage. Usable, but be careful.