Good 3.x Books

[TempusCCK]

I suddenly find myself in a position to obtain one or more 3.x books, but the multitude of choices leads me to think that perhaps you fine folks here on the GitP Forums might streamline the process for me and let me know what's worth picking up.

No limit on what you can suggest, I'll sort through all that stuff, just some books with their pros and cons that you like the best. Eventually I hope to amass a large portion of them.

I already have Core, the PHBII, as well as most of the Completes, Psionics and Expanded Psionics and the Tome of Battle. After that, the skies the limit.

Thanks for any help.

[FinalJustice]

PhB II:
Great base classes (Beguiler and Duskblade)
Cool substitution levels for further customization on your class
REALLY Cool feats =D
Really good spell-list, cheese included (Celerity series comes to mind).

[blue_fenix]

I second PHBII as a very reliable book for good crunch. It even has a variant for toning down druids a bit (the popular shapeshift variant).

Another recommendation that I want to give, which is actually somewhat unpopular is Tome of Magic. Awesome awesome fluff in that book, although all three of the classes it presents are underpowered (binder not so much, but it requires a lot of intelligent optimization to bring out its good points.) The reason I suggest ToM despite its flaws is that some very simple fixes can be found to make Truenamer and especially Shadowcaster into perfectly usable and wonderful classes.

[TheOOB]

I third the PHB II, the crunch alone is worth it, some of the best base classes, varient classes. feats, and spells in 3.5 came from PHB II, plus it has many great materials for creating interesting characters is pretty cool too. A book packed with value.

I personally like the books heroes of battle and heroes of horror, which explain how to run a warfare campaign and a horror campaign respectivly. Apart from having some nice classes and spells and what not(heroes of horror has the archivist and dread necromancers, two well known classes), but provide lots of varient rules on running new types of games.

Finally unearthed arcana is a great book for anyone. Yes most of it is on the SRD, but in the book you are sure to find at least a few rules to improve your game/

[Sstoopidtallkid]

If you plan to DM, BoVD is good, if you are a player you'll never use it. PHBII is awesome, get it just for the beguiler.

[TempusCCK]

Forgot to mention that I do have the PHBII, going to edit it into OP. Yes, it is very good.

[RTGoodman]

I'll lend another voice for support of PHBII - all in all, it's one of my favorite 3.x books that I own.

If you DM at all, you should look at Monster Manual III - of all the MMs, I think it's probably the best (except for the regular ol' MM).

For a player or DM, I highly suggest the Races series, or at least some of them. Races of Stone and Races of the Wild are some of my favorites, but Races of the Dragon is cool. (Races of Destiny isn't that great, but it does have a few cool things, and I like the Illumians.)

Also, the environment series of books is pretty good - I only have two (Frostburn and Dungeonscape), but those two and the others (Stormwrack, Sandstorm, and Cityscape) are great for DMs and have neat goodies for players also.

From a pure fluff standpoint, I love the Fiendish Codices. I can sit down and just read through them for fun, not even worrying about the actual crunch (though I now want to play a Hellbred something or other).

EDIT: Gah! Ninja'd by the OP.

[skywalker]

How about the Magic Item Compendium, or MIC for short. In my not-so-humble-opinion, it has a lot of rather useful items in a wide range of prices for the adventurer on any budget. I'm surprised it took this many posts for someone to mention it, actually. I'd also like to know which completes you have, exactly, if you don't mind.

[Danin]

I'll throw in a vote for Heros of Horror, Dungeonscape if you plan on DMing at all and Tome of Magic. All give exactally what they promise and all three introduce new base classes (Or in Dungeonscape's case, 1 really cool base class).

[FinalJustice]

Spell-Compendium. A pure crunch Jack-of-all-chees..trades. If you're a player, you will use it, if you DM, you may use it too. Spells enough to have a long-term source of novelty.

I second MIC too, compendiums are just this good.

If you DM, DM II is fun. It has lots of REAL GOOD tips and directions for DMs, plus some cool Magic Items. Even I, who mostly plays, enjoy reading the 'DMing science' in there.

In case you are into Draconic stuff, Draconomicon is a great book. I really enjoy reading most of its fluff and crunch-wise it is ok, some cools spells (although SC owns that part) and cool PrCs like the Dracolyte (Clericzilla now has dragon friend ¬¬') and the Dragonsong Lyrist (I sing and they fly). If you DM, beware, Dragons tend to get kinda overpowered with all those spells and metabreaths.

[Wordmiser]

I might finish off the Completes list--that whole set is pretty handy.

After that, I'd say Tome of Magic. Almost all of it is interesting--the creatures, the classes, the prestige classes and the fluff behind it all.

But I tend to homebrew most of the game around the ideas I pick up from the books, rather than taking them as written. The mechanics are a bit weak unless you're playing with groups who use straight Swashbucklers or Paladins. (But players do like you more if you boost weak classes than if you nerf strong classes, so that's a plus. And it's self-contained, so nobody tries to bring the likes of Celerity into my game when I use it in place of standard casting styles.)

As a Player, the book I seem to use the most beside the Completes* is the Spell Compendium.
*Even CPsi--The Ardent has replaced Clerics in my games.

[CASTLEMIKE]

No limit on what you can suggest, I'll sort through all that stuff, just some books with their pros and cons that you like the best. Eventually I hope to amass a large portion of them.

I already have Core, the PHBII, as well as most of the Completes, Psionics and Expanded Psionics and the Tome of Battle. After that, the skies the limit.

Thanks for any help.

I like Unearthed Arcana although a lot of it is on the SRD for all the variants and having a hard copy on hand.

Magic Item Compendium in a wealth by level or crafting game. Finally some cost to utility and lots of items.

Spellcompendium is pretty good for casters although I had hoped it would be a little more comprehensive.

I like the heavy duty source books like FRCS and ECS for the things you can cannibalize from them if not using the setting.

Tyrants of the 9 Hells and Hordes of the Abyss are pretty interesting and pretty well done.

[TempusCCK]

As far as completes, the only thing I don't have (I think) is Complete Mage, I have the Divine, the other arcane, adventurer, scoundrel, and warrior.

[AKA_Bait]

Others:

Lords of Madness, MMV (fantastic imho), Rules Compendium (I've found this useful for speedy errattad look ups) and Book of Exhalted Deeds.

Ones Mentioned that I wholeheartedly support:

Dungeonscape, MMIII, ToM, DMGII, MIC, BOVD.

[Hyrael]

It depends if you're a player or DM

For a DM, you get the most use out of Flavor, Enviromental Supplements, or Monster Tomes

Libris Mortis is really, really good, if you like campaigns built around undead, using undead monsters in general, or necromancy. players can get alot of use out of it, too.

Lords of Madness is really, really good if you like Heroic Lovecraftian (ie: hellboy-style monster fighting/investigation). If creepy, tentacled things from beyond reality get your creativity on, it's a great book.

If you're a complete goober for demonic stuff, (like Savage Tide AP), or liked Dragon's Demonomicon articles, want to build demonic characters, or that sort of thing, the feindish codexes are fairly, good, I moreso than II

Heroes of Horror is very good if you want to create a horror-themed campaign, or even inject a bit of horror into some of your encounters. these encounters tend to be very memorable, and I've both played and DMd these sessions.

MMIII is chock-full of great stuff, including several LA +0 monster races, many from eberron (changelings [fit in anywhere, by definition], warforged [some say cheese, I say fun], and Shifters [::shnink:: Who're you looking at, bub?]) plus Kenkus (raven-people who can mimic any sound).

Tome of Magic, while obviousy more usefull to players, is good for a DM to have if they want their players to use it.

For players, obviously the Spell Compendium is good. however, as a DM, i sometimes find it...irritating and game-breaking. My advice is to treat spells from the spell compendium as the rarest of rare magics, the sort of stuff a wizard will kill other wizards for just to root through thir spellbook.

Complete and Races of, is, for a player, quite nice. however, there's a good chance you can obtain PDFs of these, since you dont often need to refer to them in the middle of a session, more for character creation. Look, WotC's stuff is expensive.

[Wraithy]

MIC all the way, for the reasons stated by previous posters.
Its just good.
For players it offers brilliant items. For DMs it offers wonderous plothooks and the random generation tables in the back are pure magic.

[AKA_Bait]

Complete and Races of, is, for a player, quite nice. however, there's a good chance you can obtain PDFs of these, since you dont often need to refer to them in the middle of a session, more for character creation. Look, WotC's stuff is expensive.

And by that of course you mean a legal .pdf from a place such as this. Right?

[Hyrael]

And by that of course you mean a legal .pdf from a place such as this. Right?

...yes, thats right, a PDF from RPGnet. I buy a few books, the ones that I'm going to be persuing at the gaming table or using for the fluff (libris mortis, Heroes of Horror, Lords of Madness, Tome of Magic), but the Complete series, I get that from...RPGnet. Yes. That is where I get them.

[AKA_Bait]

Yes. That is where I get them.

I'm glad we understand eachother.

[Azaul]

The Rules Compendium is one of the best resources a 3.5 player can ask for. Serious, I found rules for tripping a mounted character in under a minute.

You said you have most of the Complete series. If you don't have Complete Warrior or Complete Mage, these are my favourites of the two series. Complete Mage is especially useful even if you have the Spell Compendium.

[skywalker]

As far as completes, the only thing I don't have (I think) is Complete Mage, I have the Divine, the other arcane, adventurer, scoundrel, and warrior.

I would recommend Complete Champion, the newest(and last) complete book, which has some very good class variants(like actually useful animal totem barbarians) and feats. Complete Mage, in my eyes, is not as great.

[AKA_Bait]

I would recommend Complete Champion, the newest(and last) complete book, which has some very good class variants(like actually useful animal totem barbarians) and feats. Complete Mage, in my eyes, is not as great.

Honestly, I felt the exact oppposite was true. The reserve feats in CM and some of the PrC's were awesome, whereas I found Complete Champion to be extremely underwhelming.

[Kioran]

Honestly, I felt the exact oppposite was true. The reserve feats in CM and some of the PrC's were awesome, whereas I found Complete Champion to be extremely underwhelming.

Except for the Philadelphia Cheesesteak that is the Lion Totem Barbarian - which is what people are looking for. Cheese, not flavor or utility. Unearthed Arcane I think is great, but you won´t find too much obviously powerful stuff there. Still, it´s some of the best 3.5 game design available........

[TheThan]

Since you already have the PHBII I’ll go with stromwrack, sandstorm, Frostburn cityscape and dungeonscape. They are the “Terrain” books, they give you greater ability to run expanded encounters in and near water, deserts and cities cold weather. Dungeonscape gives you new options and advice for running dungeons (plus the giant had a large hand in writing it). Another book that’s a great boon is the spell compendium. It gives all the core spellcasters in the game more spells to choose from, which is totally awesome, however you might have to keep a strict eye on your players with this book.

[kjones]

I second the recommendations for the Magic Item Compendium and Dungeonscape - got both for Christmas, along with the Tome of Battle.

The MIC is useful for the same reason that the SC is useful; that is to say, sheer mass. But there's more to it than that. They've come up with a lot of little things to make treasure placement and the like simpler, more straightforward, and less likely to give an overpowered or underpowered item. For example, each item's cost is now listed along with its "Item Level", a number that approximates the level at which it would be reasonable for a character to have that item. You don't need to figure it as a percentage of WBL - they've already done that. Furthermore, equipping NPCs and quick, one-off PCs that start above level 1 is now much easier - you don't need to tally up GP costs for items, just use the item levels to get a quick-and-dirty approximation, and it'll be close enough for these rough purposes.

Dungeonscape, in addition to being co-authored by "our own" Rich Burlew, is a really solid book that looks at all aspects of dungeon adventuring, principles, and design. It's certainly useful for players; some of the class variants (mostly Fighter and Wizard) are really neat, and there's some cool items like Wand Bracers. However, you'll get the most out of it if you're a DM; there's a wealth of information on how to put together creative, interesting, and innovative dungeons. One of the most useful ideas in the book is the principle of "encounter templates", that is, generic ideas from which you can construct interesting encounters. The book breaks up most opponents and obstacles into categories, and then explains how the different ways in which you combine those categories can lead to different sorts of encounters. It seems really obvious once you've read it, but the idea is really neat. The book also has rules for "encounter traps", room-size traps that are more like all-out battles than simple matters of "the rogue finds it and disarms it/everybody make a reflex save". It's a very nifty mechanic, and one that I can't wait to implement in my own games.

So, if you want my opinion, pick up these books - hope these brief reviews helped. (I'm sure you can find more thorough reviews elsewhere.)

[TempusCCK]

This is great, you guys are really helpful, I'll definately be looking into this stuff.

Anymore suggestions are more than welcome, I just wanted to thank you all again for your help.

GitP'ers rock.