New to 3.5, need help building a reading list.

[SpacemonkeyDM]

So I skipped 3.5. I went from 2e to 4e ( very briefly) and then back to 2e/1e. My closest experience with 3e was pathfinder which I played barely.
3.5 always interested me and reading through the 5e Eberron book, got me reading the 3.5 version of Eberron and that got me thinking I want to run a 3.5 game.

Sorry for so many numbers and a badly formed introduction. I am looking for advice on what books to get pass the core books to run a 3.5 game. What are some fun or unique books for 3.5 that really shine? I know things like the tome of battle look really good and of course the complete series. What beyond that?

[Allanimal]

After core and completes, I would say

Most important:
PHB2
Spell Compendium
Magic Item Compendium
Races of ... books.

Then I’d look at:
Lords of Madness,
Libra’s mortis
And stormwrack/sandstorm/frostburn/dungeonscape/cityscape

BovD and BoeD are mentioned a lot, but aren’t super high on my list.
I’m sure others will have their opinions as well...

[Asmotherion]

if you're new to 3.5 I recomend to stick to core and gradually read the completes and then anything else. Accesing everything too fast will leave you confused.

Iif you're a player, I suggest starting with a fighter and then get a solid understanding of the wizard. Once you know how to play a caster, everything else will feel easy mechanics in compareson.

[Elves]

Rules Compendium is slim enough that you can probably just read through it. After learning the post-Core rules, like swift and immediate actions, you'll probably want to learn the different subsystems like psionics, invocations, incarnum, initiating and binding.

I wouldn't get physicals of Spell Compendium or Magic Item Compendium since you'll want to be ctrl-f'ing through those.

[tstewt1921]

I always say look at the extended monster manuals for extra ideas, Monster Manual 1 - 5 and then if you are wanting to run it in Ebberron, read that book and you are set for starting, then if you want to include the complete/races of books go there.

[Fizban]

I would also recommend starting with the core books before branching out. You can allow this or that from some other book, but don't let anyone strongarm you into allowing a pile of stuff you aren't sure about yet.

Once you're comfortable with the base rules, remember that there were two "waves" of Complete books: Complete Warrior, Adventurer, Divine, and Arcane are all a lower power level than Complete Champion and Mage- or rather, there seems to have been an "eh screw it" mentality that happened at some point and half the designers starting paring things back while others just wrote more and more OP stuff, even in the same book. Even PHB2, which is in-between those waves, has both reasonable stuff (Melee Weapon Mastery), and underpowered stuff (the entire Dragon Shaman, several of the Knight's abilities doing less than the spells they're obviously based on), and overpowered stuff (the Beguiler, though people will fight you to the death on it). If you consider the books in roughly their published order, it's really easy to see how one person wrote X, which another used to justify X+1 for the same cost, and so on.

So, once you're good with the PHB, you can look over Complete Warrior, Adventurer, Divine, and Arcane. Then I'd take a look at PHB2, and note when things start looking off. Then you can move on to Complete Champion and Complete Mage. When in doubt, if a spellcaster prestige class (or spell, or really anything, and a few particular non-spellcaster things even) sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Tome of Battle should fit in well after PHB2, but still before Champion and Mage. The Races of X books introduce some radical elements (races that eventually get flight for free, kobold supremacy, prestige classes and feats of wildly varying power levels, etc), but mostly I'd say they're like anything else- use what you want, ignore the rest.

Two books you will see recommended a lot are Spell Compendium and Magic Item Compendium. I say, this is a trap. Spell Compendium takes a ton of spells from a ton of books, some of which are reprinted as-is, some of which are updated, and some of which are "updated." For every problematic spell nerfed or fixed there seems to be at least two more spells that were buffed for no reason. Except we know the reason, given in Magic Item Compendium: they wanted to make stuff people weren't using "more attractive." Magic Item Compendium takes a bunch of items and just cuts the cost, sometimes also making it weaker, sometimes not, and also adds a ton of items that are so obviously underpriced that no one would ever not want them (essentially the main definition of overpowered in the DMG). As before, if something you read in MiC or SpC sounds too good to be true- it probably is, and you should remember that the DM has no obligation to use it just because it was published. You decide what power level your game should be, not writers trying to appease optimization forums. There's plenty of good stuff, and there's plenty of bad.

Furthermore, you'll also want to watch out for the Monster Manuals, because they did the same thing. MM1 works just fine alongside the PHB, though a few monsters can do things the Cleric can't quite handle at the given level, as long as the party is allowed to run away they should be fine (and remember that the DMG clearly states outside difficulty factors are worth extra xp, and being trapped is obviously an increase in difficulty). MM2 has a bunch of monsters with at-will spells way higher than their CR should indicate, and also others that do hardly anything- it's very chaotic. Fiend Folio is similar. MM3 is written around the same time as the Eberron books (having a couple of their monsters) and is just a flat out higher power level than before, you can directly compare some monsters from MM3 to those in MM1 with the same CR and see how much more powerful the MM3s are. MM4 starts dialing it back a bit, and brings in more gimmicky and family monsters, and MM5 continues in that direction, but they're still fairly stiff in making sure everything can always dish out damage- there's actually a change in monster statblock format that gives another easy clue about when a book was written, which happens in MM4.

Libris Mortis, Lords of Madness, and Draconomicon are also definitely written with a higher power/optimizer mindset. They're most appropriate to read around the same time as MM3, after the first-wave Completes and before the late-wave books. The include player material, but much of it also very DM-ish, use discretion.

In short: read your monsters before using them, wherever you got them from, same as everything else.

Finally, there's the setting and environment books. Frostburn, Sandstorm, and Stormwrack are useful if you're running a game featuring those environments heavily, but aren't really important otherwise- read if it you're doing that, or it sounds cool and you want to see what they've got for it. Setting books are where a lot of broken stuff and power creep shows up (not the only place though), and then bleeds back through as those bits are reprinted in other books, so remember that just because it's From the Setting doesn't mean any more than being printed in any other book. Forgotten Realms has a ton of books ranging all the way from early 3.0 to the end of 3.5, with power levels to match. Eberron's Artificer in the base setting book ranges from acceptably really powerful to completely bonkers broken depending on who you ask, even though the dragonmark and shifter material is all pretty weak. Eberron content is harder to force to match your game's power level because it's meant to be foundational to the setting (even if the setting doesn't actually reflect those mechanics), so you have to edit it, while problematic FR content can just be ignored.

Planar Handbook is weird but generally inoffensive. Manual of the Planes is almost all just DM info, same with Deities and Demigods. Heroes of Battle gives a few useful things for mass battles, but not really any sort of mass battle system, and Mini's Handbook's best stuff was reprinted. Heroes of Horror has a couple things you'll see mentioned a lot (Dread Necro and Archivist), but they don't do anything you wouldn't already have opinions on most likely, so easy to evaluate. Oriental Adventures and Ghostwalk have little use unless you're using them for a setting. Savage Species has a whole lot of ideas about what's worth a Level Adjustment, half of which are wrong one way and the other half probably wrong the other way, as well as some broken OP and broken doesn't work material. Any of these are read if/when you're using it.

Book of Exalted Deeds and Book of Vile Darkness fit in around the first wave (BoVD is actually 3.0), and have all three of DM information, monsters and NPC stuff, and player material. Both books can be problematic for any number of reasons, so don't feel obligated to use any of it if you don't want to. Read if/when you feel like using something.

Expanded Psionics Handbook is pretty foundational, but also completely ignorable if you're not using it (sensing a pattern yet?) There are infinite loops to discover and ignore, and it absolutely has a higher power level than PHB. Just a bit, but psionics have no somatic/verbal/material components to ever worry about, the damage powers do more damage than normal spells, and many powers are worth multiple spells known because they have scaling built-in. Psions make Sorcerers cry, so make note of that, and make your own decisions about Soulknives. Read if/when someone wants to use it.

Magic of Incarnum is an interesting but inherently flawed system most people eventually find very underwhelming. It's cool, but I once read a handbook claiming it was super strong- which quite amusingly completely failed to read the limitations that stopped it from doing what it said to do. Read it if/when you feel like it.

Tome of Magic has three base classes, and one could say they're all deliberately weaker than normal magic, for whatever reason they did that. Binders are interesting but extremely limited don't really use anything like spells at all, Shadowcasters have some cool unique progression mechanics and are worse than a normal caster in every way, and Truenamers are the most notorious class in the game for simply not working (in addition to several incomplete utterance descriptions IIRC). Read it if/when you feel like it.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

I'm actually going to go a different route than the posts so far, mostly because I find casting to be annoying at best (I suffer enough from choice paralysis when not reliving it every 24 in-game hours, thank you kindly). As always, the Player's Handbook is a vital starting point for learning the mechanics, and the Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual are pretty important if you're the DM.

I recommend checking out the weirder magic subsystems instead of delving into even the PHB's spell lists. Magic of Incarnum is cool, flavorful, and fun. Tome of Battle is likewise very good. The Warlock class from Complete Arcane is essentially caster-lite; feels like a caster, but with none of the bookkeeping. The Tome of Magic has the Binder, but while the other two classes (Truenamer and Shadowcaster) are very flavorful, they're not very well-balanced (and Truenamer in particular suffers from poor writing and design), so overall I wouldn't consider it one of my must-at-least-skim reads.

From there start checking out Completes and setting books that sound interesting to you. Like sailing, pirates, and/or weird aquatic races and monsters? Stormwrack. The idea of playing a skillful character appeal to you? Complete Adventurer. Think Eberron is an awesome campaign setting? Eberron Campaign Setting and Player's Guide to Eberron. Etc.. Most of the books work fine with just that book and the PHB (and maybe the Dungeon Master's Guide), so just going with what interests you should be plenty to create a functional character.

[Elves]

Checking out all the subsystems is good so that none of them feel like "foreign territory", because that creates mental blockades.

[Biggus]

Two books you will see recommended a lot are Spell Compendium and Magic Item Compendium. I say, this is a trap. Spell Compendium takes a ton of spells from a ton of books, some of which are reprinted as-is, some of which are updated, and some of which are "updated." For every problematic spell nerfed or fixed there seems to be at least two more spells that were buffed for no reason. Except we know the reason, given in Magic Item Compendium: they wanted to make stuff people weren't using "more attractive." Magic Item Compendium takes a bunch of items and just cuts the cost, sometimes also making it weaker, sometimes not, and also adds a ton of items that are so obviously underpriced that no one would ever not want them (essentially the main definition of overpowered in the DMG).


This is very much a matter of taste. Fizban has a particular dislike of the changes made in the MiC and SpC (he's posted on the subject several times recently) but personally I like the great majority of them. There are a couple of horribly broken spells in the SpC, and a few definitely underpriced items in the MiC, but pretty much every book in 3.5 has some seriously under- or over-powered material in it (in fact, the PHB and DMG contain far more unbalanced spells and items than the SpC and MiC as far as I can see). I use these two books far more in my games than anything outside the three core ones (and while I like my characters to be good at what they do, I'm very much not a hardcore powergamer).

[SpacemonkeyDM]

I would also recommend starting with the core books before branching out. You can allow this or that from some other book, but don't let anyone strongarm you into allowing a pile of stuff you aren't sure about yet.

Once you're comfortable with the base rules, remember that there were two "waves" of Complete books: Complete Warrior, Adventurer, Divine, and Arcane are all a lower power level than Complete Champion and Mage- or rather, there seems to have been an "eh screw it" mentality that happened at some point and half the designers starting paring things back while others just wrote more and more OP stuff, even in the same book. Even PHB2, which is in-between those waves, has both reasonable stuff (Melee Weapon Mastery), and underpowered stuff (the entire Dragon Shaman, several of the Knight's abilities doing less than the spells they're obviously based on), and overpowered stuff (the Beguiler, though people will fight you to the death on it). If you consider the books in roughly their published order, it's really easy to see how one person wrote X, which another used to justify X+1 for the same cost, and so on.

So, once you're good with the PHB, you can look over Complete Warrior, Adventurer, Divine, and Arcane. Then I'd take a look at PHB2, and note when things start looking off. Then you can move on to Complete Champion and Complete Mage. When in doubt, if a spellcaster prestige class (or spell, or really anything, and a few particular non-spellcaster things even) sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Tome of Battle should fit in well after PHB2, but still before Champion and Mage. The Races of X books introduce some radical elements (races that eventually get flight for free, kobold supremacy, prestige classes and feats of wildly varying power levels, etc), but mostly I'd say they're like anything else- use what you want, ignore the rest.

Two books you will see recommended a lot are Spell Compendium and Magic Item Compendium. I say, this is a trap. Spell Compendium takes a ton of spells from a ton of books, some of which are reprinted as-is, some of which are updated, and some of which are "updated." For every problematic spell nerfed or fixed there seems to be at least two more spells that were buffed for no reason. Except we know the reason, given in Magic Item Compendium: they wanted to make stuff people weren't using "more attractive." Magic Item Compendium takes a bunch of items and just cuts the cost, sometimes also making it weaker, sometimes not, and also adds a ton of items that are so obviously underpriced that no one would ever not want them (essentially the main definition of overpowered in the DMG). As before, if something you read in MiC or SpC sounds too good to be true- it probably is, and you should remember that the DM has no obligation to use it just because it was published. You decide what power level your game should be, not writers trying to appease optimization forums. There's plenty of good stuff, and there's plenty of bad.

Furthermore, you'll also want to watch out for the Monster Manuals, because they did the same thing. MM1 works just fine alongside the PHB, though a few monsters can do things the Cleric can't quite handle at the given level, as long as the party is allowed to run away they should be fine (and remember that the DMG clearly states outside difficulty factors are worth extra xp, and being trapped is obviously an increase in difficulty). MM2 has a bunch of monsters with at-will spells way higher than their CR should indicate, and also others that do hardly anything- it's very chaotic. Fiend Folio is similar. MM3 is written around the same time as the Eberron books (having a couple of their monsters) and is just a flat out higher power level than before, you can directly compare some monsters from MM3 to those in MM1 with the same CR and see how much more powerful the MM3s are. MM4 starts dialing it back a bit, and brings in more gimmicky and family monsters, and MM5 continues in that direction, but they're still fairly stiff in making sure everything can always dish out damage- there's actually a change in monster statblock format that gives another easy clue about when a book was written, which happens in MM4.

Libris Mortis, Lords of Madness, and Draconomicon are also definitely written with a higher power/optimizer mindset. They're most appropriate to read around the same time as MM3, after the first-wave Completes and before the late-wave books. The include player material, but much of it also very DM-ish, use discretion.

In short: read your monsters before using them, wherever you got them from, same as everything else.

Finally, there's the setting and environment books. Frostburn, Sandstorm, and Stormwrack are useful if you're running a game featuring those environments heavily, but aren't really important otherwise- read if it you're doing that, or it sounds cool and you want to see what they've got for it. Setting books are where a lot of broken stuff and power creep shows up (not the only place though), and then bleeds back through as those bits are reprinted in other books, so remember that just because it's From the Setting doesn't mean any more than being printed in any other book. Forgotten Realms has a ton of books ranging all the way from early 3.0 to the end of 3.5, with power levels to match. Eberron's Artificer in the base setting book ranges from acceptably really powerful to completely bonkers broken depending on who you ask, even though the dragonmark and shifter material is all pretty weak. Eberron content is harder to force to match your game's power level because it's meant to be foundational to the setting (even if the setting doesn't actually reflect those mechanics), so you have to edit it, while problematic FR content can just be ignored.

Planar Handbook is weird but generally inoffensive. Manual of the Planes is almost all just DM info, same with Deities and Demigods. Heroes of Battle gives a few useful things for mass battles, but not really any sort of mass battle system, and Mini's Handbook's best stuff was reprinted. Heroes of Horror has a couple things you'll see mentioned a lot (Dread Necro and Archivist), but they don't do anything you wouldn't already have opinions on most likely, so easy to evaluate. Oriental Adventures and Ghostwalk have little use unless you're using them for a setting. Savage Species has a whole lot of ideas about what's worth a Level Adjustment, half of which are wrong one way and the other half probably wrong the other way, as well as some broken OP and broken doesn't work material. Any of these are read if/when you're using it.

Book of Exalted Deeds and Book of Vile Darkness fit in around the first wave (BoVD is actually 3.0), and have all three of DM information, monsters and NPC stuff, and player material. Both books can be problematic for any number of reasons, so don't feel obligated to use any of it if you don't want to. Read if/when you feel like using something.

Expanded Psionics Handbook is pretty foundational, but also completely ignorable if you're not using it (sensing a pattern yet?) There are infinite loops to discover and ignore, and it absolutely has a higher power level than PHB. Just a bit, but psionics have no somatic/verbal/material components to ever worry about, the damage powers do more damage than normal spells, and many powers are worth multiple spells known because they have scaling built-in. Psions make Sorcerers cry, so make note of that, and make your own decisions about Soulknives. Read if/when someone wants to use it.

Magic of Incarnum is an interesting but inherently flawed system most people eventually find very underwhelming. It's cool, but I once read a handbook claiming it was super strong- which quite amusingly completely failed to read the limitations that stopped it from doing what it said to do. Read it if/when you feel like it.

Tome of Magic has three base classes, and one could say they're all deliberately weaker than normal magic, for whatever reason they did that. Binders are interesting but extremely limited don't really use anything like spells at all, Shadowcasters have some cool unique progression mechanics and are worse than a normal caster in every way, and Truenamers are the most notorious class in the game for simply not working (in addition to several incomplete utterance descriptions IIRC). Read it if/when you feel like it.

That is so much good info and now I feel more over my head. A lot to digest and slowly to sift through. Good places to start.

[tiercel]

One of the things to remember when looking at books is that they all give you, well, options — and you should be wary of what exactly will wind up in your game, especially if you’re trying to run one. Core has plenty of problematic options (polymorph being only one, and a moderately lower-level one), and even “lesser” Completes contain humdingers like Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil and Sublime Chord. (Admittedly, Complete Champion does ding my holycrapometer more than most.)

In my experience, “Core Plus” often means something like Core + Completes + Spell Compendium + Magic Item Compendium.

The latter two have a zillion options of their respective types, collated in one book each, which makes them useful and also means, with so many options, that caveat lector is going to be in effect in places. For the most part I like them, not least because (A) Spell Compendium gives some pretty nice help to “lesser” casters (notably, bard, ranger, paladin) as well as showering fullcasters with more options they will ever need and (B) Magic Item Compendium gives you a lot more low-cost useful items to look forward to at low levels than “yay, my first weapon +1 and item of stat +2.”

In my experience, the Races of X and environmental books (Frostburn, Sandstorm, Stormwrack, Cityscape) are much more spottily used outside of specific cherry-picking or highly themed campaigns, and campaign-specific books (Forgotten Realms, Eberron, etc.) make more sense for those campaign worlds (though FR has a reputation for Big Powa).

In terms of add-on systems, Tome of Battle is the one that stands out most to me as the one that adds the most overall (gasp, melee gets nice things without being an arcane gish or CoDzilla!). Psionics tends to produce love/hate reactions; it seems fine to me, but I haven’t seen it nearly as much in tables myself. Personally, I’m underwhelmed by pact magic, soulmelds, shadowcasting, and truenaming, especially considering (A) the arguably limited payoff for the effort of trying to understand making them generally useful, outside of (or even including) dips in the first two and (B) I’ve seen less table interest in all of them combined than in psi.

Admittedly, there’s a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy in the whole “I’m not going to learn oddment subsystems because many people don’t care, but many people don’t care/play with them because the DM doesn’t have/like/grok those books and so doesn’t use/allow them” thing, but as much as I find the idea of, e.g., soulmelds interesting, personally I just don’t have much interest in trying to make an Incarnate or Binder character. *shrugs* YMMV, and if you can readily check out all the books it is of course a good idea to form your own opinion, but in my experience “Core Plus” (plus possibly Tome of Battle) is a lot to digest in itself, seems to be most common, and if you really grok that, anything else you haven’t read can be dealt with individually later.

[NigelWalmsley]

There are a lot of books that are good character-building resources that I would not particularly recommend starting out with. There's a bunch of stuff you'll probably eventually use in the Spell Compendium, but reading through 200 pages of spells is not particularly enjoyable. The Magic Item Compendium is similar.

For the Completes, the ones you want to focus on are the first round (Warrior, Arcane, Divine, and Adventurer). While there's some good stuff in later ones, the quality has gone down and it's turned into bloatware.

Reading monster books is a core part of the D&D experience. For 3e, the best ones are Fiend Folio, Monster Manual II, and Monster Manual III. The Book of Vile Darkness and some of the earlier monster type books (Libris Mortis and maybe Draconomicon) are also good.

Frostburn, Sandstorm, and Stormwrack are all good. Cityscape and Dungeonscape not so much.


Rules Compendium is slim enough that you can probably just read through it.

Don't do this. Starting out with the Rules Compendium is like starting your fantasy experience by reading the collected notes of a beloved author that were published posthumously. I would recommend basically every other rulebook before that one. Its only real purpose is to one-up people in forum arguments about obscure charop points.

[Fizban]

That is so much good info and now I feel more over my head. A lot to digest and slowly to sift through. Good places to start.
Glad to be of service :smallbiggrin:

One of the things to remember when looking at books is that they all give you, well, options — and you should be wary of what exactly will wind up in your game, especially if you’re trying to run one. Core has plenty of problematic options (polymorph being only one, and a moderately lower-level one), and even “lesser” Completes contain humdingers like Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil and Sublime Chord. (Admittedly, Complete Champion does ding my holycrapometer more than most.)
True. I tend to think of the problematic core spells as pretty polarized, either they're working fine or they're obviously not, but there are some too good to be true options in even the early Completes to watch out for. On the non-caster side, I'll just spoil it and say Leap Attack+Shock Trooper, which again is likely to obviously work fine or obviously be too much once you see it in action.

For the most part I like them, not least because (A) Spell Compendium gives some pretty nice help to “lesser” casters (notably, bard, ranger, paladin)
Also a good point to remember. Many of the Paladin and Ranger spells in SpC read more like combat maneuvers, and if Tome of Battle is going to be in play then those spells are an important bridge between the two.

(B) Magic Item Compendium gives you a lot more low-cost useful items to look forward to at low levels than “yay, my first weapon +1 and item of stat +2.”
True, the increased variety in early items is nice, as long as you're okay drawing the line between useful and too useful (plenty of good). But it does make a significant change from core regarding spellcasters in that core was originally written with few useful caster items, especially at low levels (metamagic rods came from the 3.0 Tome and Blood splatbook, and their prices were slashed going into the 3.5 DMG, and later books have the occasional version cut even lower). One of the less noticeable power creep influences is the shift from an expectation that the party casters will do X, to the idea that everyone should have an item that does X- which leads to price slashes both general and "short duration daily use," the latter of which requires everyone to think like a caster. It's unsurprising then that with items doing more of the lifting, spellcasters end up with significantly more offense than the game expects of them, and all the other classes that don't have the option of doing X themselves look worse. They weren't supposed to do X themselves, but attitudes changed while the core classes couldn't, and a blanket increase in item power actually results in the concentration of power in the two most variable party members.


Don't do this [read Rules Compendium First]. Starting out with the Rules Compendium is like starting your fantasy experience by reading the collected notes of a beloved author that were published posthumously. I would recommend basically every other rulebook before that one. Its only real purpose is to one-up people in forum arguments about obscure charop points.
Rules Compendium includes a lot of expanded skill uses that are otherwise annoying to find (though not all of them, some books printed later and I think some might have not made the cut :smallsigh:). In particular, the sections on Hide and Move Silently (under Movement) are really useful for figuring out how all that works, as the core description has a few holes, and it's easier to find the flying movement rules there than in the DMG (though parsing them is still on the reader: hint, the flying rules effectively track altitude separately, movement is all based on the horizontal with 1/2 if ascending or x2 descending) It's a useful place to check the final definitions of Change Shape and Alternate Form if you're not using an online srd, compiles tweaks to the activation and identification of magic items, etc. Convenient to copy the rule sections out of the DMG and MM, which have lots of other content, and combine them with a bunch of scattered bits from a dozen other books.

But in general yeah, there's no reason to read RC first- it's a reference.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Rules Compendium includes a lot of expanded skill uses that are otherwise annoying to find (though not all of them, some books printed later and I think some might have not made the cut :smallsigh:). In particular, the sections on Hide and Move Silently (under Movement) are really useful for figuring out how all that works, as the core description has a few holes, and it's easier to find the flying movement rules there than in the DMG (though parsing them is still on the reader: hint, the flying rules effectively track altitude separately, movement is all based on the horizontal with 1/2 if ascending or x2 descending) It's a useful place to check the final definitions of Change Shape and Alternate Form if you're not using an online srd, compiles tweaks to the activation and identification of magic items, etc. Convenient to copy the rule sections out of the DMG and MM, which have lots of other content, and combine them with a bunch of scattered bits from a dozen other books.

Posting for posterity a quick 3 notes on stealth:

Being hidden from an opponent makes them flat-footed against your attacks. Seems obvious, yes, but it was a serious pain the *** to actually track down this rule (it's in the Rules Compendium).

Total concealment means you are automatically hidden unless they can penetrate it somehow (for example, darkvision when in darkness).

Darkstalker is a vital feat for any stealth character. It makes it so most special senses don't automatically detect you, forcing monsters to actually roll against your stealth modifiers. Even if you've got limited books allowed, if you want to play a stealth character ask the DM if an exception can be made for this one, since it really does fill an essential niche. (Lords of Madness).

[Fizban]

Being hidden from an opponent makes them flat-footed against your attacks. Seems obvious, yes, but it was a serious pain the *** to actually track down this rule (it's in the Rules Compendium).
I won't call doubt on it being there, but there are only a few things which specifically call for flat-footed- most just want "denied dex," which is already covered by them not being able to see you from invisible/blind. More significant I find is that the RC entry makes it easier to realize that you don't need any special ability to sneak attack every turn: begin move action, move out of sight, turn around, make hide check as part of movement to peek around the corner/through the edge of fog/etc, then standard action to attack. Sure, they know perfectly well when you pull back that you're just going to pop out again, but you broke line of sight so you get to make the hide check. They know where you are, but they can't see you, and viola.

Once you understand that, and the fact that those scary dangerous grapple monsters take sneak attack damage whenever they're grabbing someone (or take a -20 on their grapple checks if they're just using their mouth/tentacle/etc, and you get sneak attack on the guts if you're swallowed), Rogues look better- without needing to TWF flanking blender/ultra rapidshot 10,000 invis items build. The game expects rogues to sneak attack, not every round but enough rounds, and it's not hard to do so. Stay next to a corner, carry a "smokebomb," and stab anything that tries to grab your buddies.

Speaking of Rules Compendium: I should point out that, even though grappling isn't as bad as it's often made out to be, RC isn't really any better at explaining it. There's still a significant constrict ruling that must be made for many monsters, even after you bounce through the three different entries RC will send you trying to figure it out. Could have done better there.

Total concealment means you are automatically hidden unless they can penetrate it somehow (for example, darkvision when in darkness).
Due to conflicting uses of the phrase "total concealment" in so many places, I'd say even if RC has a word on the matter it's iffy at best (because whoever wrote X thing might have thought differently). Lines like this are what make people think Blur lets you hide in the middle of an empty room- if your DM says so, sure, but I guarantee that is not the intent of the spell writer.

Darkstalker is a vital feat for any stealth character. It makes it so most special senses don't automatically detect you, forcing monsters to actually roll against your stealth modifiers. Even if you've got limited books allowed, if you want to play a stealth character ask the DM if an exception can be made for this one, since it really does fill an essential niche. (Lords of Madness).
Unless you take the other stance that Darkstalker is a completely overpowered mess that misses the entire point. Monsters have those abilities specifically because a character that can achieve perfect stealth against anything is a bad idea, for many reasons- and even then, the most common one is blindsense, which doesn't prevent sneak attack. But people want to ignore monster senses, and it's certainly annoying for a DM when splatbooks make it so easy for characters to get those sense abilities and mess with their monsters/NPCs, so the arms race continues (see what I mean about each wave of books one-upping the last? LoM is right in the middle, near the heights, before the weird divide of some weaker/some even stronger/interest testing of ideas for future products/all in the same book found in the last wave).

[Troacctid]

Rules Compendium is the book you open up when you need to look up the details of some rules mechanic or answer a bothersome rules question. Like, we're grappling now, what does that mean? How much damage do they take if they fall in lava? What's the difference between average, and good, and perfect maneuverability? What exactly are ethereal creatures immune to? Can a multiclass Cleric/Wizard use wizard slots to spontaneously cast cure spells? Rules Compendium has the answers. Most importantly, it has the answers a.) all in one place, b.) thoroughly indexed and c.) with all the updates and errata, making it a reliable and easy-to-use reference guide.

I wouldn't normally read all the way through it, but I think it's actually reasonable to at least skim it, in large part because there's some interesting commentary in the sidebars.

Here's my overview of all the 3.5 books (with a few key 3.0 books).


Book of Exalted Deeds: Lots of good-aligned material including good-aligned monsters and resources for good-aligned campaigns.
Book of Vile Darkness (3.0): Like BoED, but for evil.
Cityscape: For urban campaigns.
Complete Adventurer: Player resource for rogues, bards, and other skill-heavy characters.
Complete Arcane: Player resource for arcane casters.
Complete Champion: Player resource for religious characters (but not necessarily divine casters).
Complete Divine: Player resource for divine casters.
Complete Mage: Player resource for spellcasters in general.
Complete Psionic: Expansion of the Expanded Psionics Handbook.
Complete Scoundrel: Player resource for sneaky and underhanded characters.
Complete Warrior: Player resource for martial characters.
Deities & Demigods (3.0): Rules for running deities (if you want rules for them).
Draconomicon: All about dragons, for players and DMs.
Dragon Magic: Also all about dragons, but a higher proportion of player-facing content.
Drow of the Underdark: All about drow.
Dungeon Master's Guide: Self-explanatory.
Dungeon Master's Guide II: Expands the DMG with additional rules to improve your campaigns and a sample starting town (Saltmarsh).
Dungeonscape: For dungeon-crawling campaigns.
Elder Evils: DM resource for world-ending threats that provide climactic finales for high-level campaigns.
Epic Level Handbook (3.0): Expands the game beyond 20th level.
Exemplars of Evil: Tips and tools for creating interesting villains.
Expanded Psionics Handbook: Contains the psionic rules.
Fiend Folio (3.0): Basically just another Monster Manual.
Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss: Everything you need to know about demons and the Abyss.
Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells: Everything you need to know about devils and the Nine Hells.
Frostburn: For arctic campaigns.
Heroes of Battle: For war campaigns.
Heroes of Horror: For horror campaigns.
Libris Mortis: All about undead.
Lords of Madness: All about aberrations.
Magic Item Compendium: Contains all the magic items you will ever need. Also updates the random drop tables.
Magic of Incarnum: Introduces a new unique form of magic called incarnum.
Miniatures Handbook: Has some stuff inspired by the D&D tactical miniatures game. Uh, the one other than D&D itself, that is.
Monster Manual: Has monster stats.
Monster Manual II (3.0): Has more monster stats.
Monster Manual III: Even more monster stats.
Monster Manual IV: Yet more monster stats.
Monster Manual V: Because you can never have too many monsters.
Planar Handbook: For plane-hopping campaigns. Also updates Planescape to 3.5.
Player's Handbook: Core book for players.
Player's Handbook II: Introduces expanded player options. Also has rules for retraining and rebuilding characters.
Races of Destiny: Player resource for humans and human-descended characters.
Races of Stone: Player resource for dwarves, gnomes, and other mountain-dwelling races.
Races of the Dragon: Player resource for draconic races like kobolds and dragonborn.
Races of the Wild: Player resource for elves, halflings, and other wilderness-dwelling races.
Rules Compendium: See above.
Sandstorm: For desert campaigns.
Savage Species (3.0): All about monsters as player characters.
Spell Compendium: Collects and updates a bazillion spells from previous publications all into one book.
Stormwrack: For aquativ and naval campaigns.
Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords: Introduces a new system of martial maneuvers for melee weapon-users.
Tome of Magic: Introduces three new experimental types of magic: shadow magic, soul binding, and truenaming.
Unearthed Arcana: Contains lots of optional and variant rules to enhance and customize your game.


Eberron books:

City of Stormreach: Deep dive into the city of Stormreach (also prominently featured in Dungeons & Dragons Online).
Dragonmarked: Deep dive into the dragonmarked houses.
Dragons of Eberron: DM resource for dragons in Eberron; also has info about the continent of Argonnessen.
Eberron Campaign Setting: Core setting book for Eberron.
Explorer's Handbook: DM resource containing an eclectic mix of adventure locations to add to your Eberron campaign.
Faiths of Eberron: Deep dive into the religions of Eberron.
Five Nations: Deep dive into the Five Nations of Galifar: Aundair, Breland, Karrnath, Cyre (now the Mournland), and Thrane.
Forge of War: Detailed timeline of the Last War, useful if your campaign takes place before the war ended (or if you time-travel to the past).
Magic of Eberron: Player resource with miscellaneous Eberron content.
Player's Guide to Eberron: Sort of an Eberron encyclopedia that touches a little on everything in the setting, with rules and other info.
Races of Eberron: Guide to the races of the Eberron setting.
Secrets of Sarlona: Deep dive into the continent of Sarlona.
Secrets of Xen'drik: Deep dive into the continent of Xen'drik.
Sharn: City of Towers: Deep dive into the city of Sharn.


Forgotten Realms books:

Champions of Ruin: Info about villains in FR.
Champions of Valor: Info about heroic organizations in FR.
City of Splendors: Waterdeep: Deep dive into the city of Waterdeep.
Dragons of Faerun: DM resource for dragons in FR.
Faiths & Pantheons (3.0): Deep dive on FR deities.
Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (3.0): Core setting book for FR.
Lords of Darkness: More info about villains in FR.
Lost Empires of Faerun: Info about ancient civilizations in FR.
Monster Compendium: Monsters of Faerun (3.0): Another Monster Manual, with monsters unique to or strongly associated with FR.
Mysteries of the Moonsea: Regional sourcebook covering the Moonsea. Mostly lore.
Player's Guide to Faerun: The 3.5 update for Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting.
Power of Faerun: Lore-heavy guide to power groups in FR.
Races of Faerun: Guide to the races of FR.
Serpent Kingdoms: All about snake and lizard races like yuan-ti and lizardfolk.
Shining South: Regional sourcebook covering southern Faerun.
Silver Marches: Regional sourcebook covering the Silver Marches. Mostly lore.
Unapproachable East: Regional sourcebook covering eastern Faerun.
Underdark (3.0): Regional sourcebook covering the Underdark.


Other settings:

D&D Gazetteer: Core setting book for Greyhawk.
Dragonlance Campaign Setting: Core setting book for Dragonlance.
Ghostwalk: Core setting book for Ghostwalk.
Living Greyhawk Gazetteer: Other core setting book for Greyhawk.
Oriental Adventures: Core setting book for Rokugan.

[Quertus]

So, I would suggest… hmmm… since you're into Eberron, reading up on, well, Eberron. Beyond that? Your first priority should be to read, hmmm, "cliff notes", but take any advice you read with a grain of salt.

For example, people on these forums will talk about how powerful Wizards are, because all they see is the ceiling. In real play, Wizards have a horrifically low floor, and you may find that you need to give the Wizard player a leg up, rather than the nerf bat most Playgrounders will shortsightedly suggest.

As an example of what you might find in a good set of cliff notes: Core is generally agreed to contain some of the worst balanced material in 3e. Initiators are "Fighters can have nice things, too", but is too "anime" for some people. Book diving generally helps muggles more than casters - and muggles generally need more help (at least, at higher-op play). It is entirely possible to accidentally create something that is totally OP, or totally UP. Different tables have different values, and measure "balance" differently. Natural 20 / natural 1 do not auto win/lose skill checks (exceptions like UMD notwithstanding). "Low magic" / "removing 'magic item Walmart'' is a trap - the game was balanced around WBL, and removing expected resources hurts muggles (who are generally considered disadvantaged compared skillful casters) a lot worse.

My personal gaming religion has a few nuggets, like "balance to the table", "be a fan of the PCs", and "don't be a ****".

"Balance to the table" means that it is each player's responsibility to bring a playing piece in line with what the table considers balanced. If they fail, it is their responsibility to fix their mistake. If they lack the skills to do so, they may ask the table for help.

Follow this, and "learning the rules" and "allowed content" aren't nearly such big issues.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

On the subject of grappling, Wizards realized that the rules are confusing and released an article that's supposed to help clear things up (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20050301a). Don't know how much it actually helps, but it helped me with a grappling character a while back, and I think it lays out the order you do things and exactly what happens at each step fairly well.

[SpacemonkeyDM]

Spent the last few days reading through books and getting ready to run a game today.
Books I am starting with
Core
Eberron Campaign setting
And the complete book of psionics. I was always a huge fan of psionics in 2e and I like the 3.5 book. No idea how it will work in play, but it seems like a lot of fun.

So many good suggestions on this page. Thanks