New books

[Godna]

My friend recently quit playing DnD and dumped me with all his books. I never had a chance to look through most of these so my question falls unto you. What are your opinion on the following list of books

The list of books given to me:

Masters of the Wild
Player’s Handbook V3.5
Arm’s and Equipment Guide
Book of Exalted Deeds
Complete Warrior
Complete Divine
Miniatures Handbook
Expanded Psionics Handbook
Tome and Blood
Song and Silence
Dungeon Master’s Guide3.5
Oriental Adventures
Savage Species
Draconomicron
Planar Handbook
Magic of Faerun
Unearthed Arcana
Sword and Fist
Defenders of the Faith
Fiend Folio Monster Manual II
Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting
Unapproachable East
Races of Faerun Monster Compendium: Monsters of Faerun
Epic Level Handbook

edit: i am aware the core books are in there but what the heck lets see what people think of them too.

edit2: feel free to correct the list if i've messed it up. The best of typists i am not.

[Kizara]

My friend recently quit playing DnD and dumped me with all his books. I never had a chance to look through most of these so my question falls unto you. What are your opinion on the following list of books


Masters of the Wild
Player’s Handbook V3.5
Arm’s and Equipment Guide
Book of Exalted Deeds
Complete Warrior
Complete Divine
Miniatures Handbook
Expanded Psionics Handbook
Tome and Blood
Song and Silence
Dungeon Master’s Guide3.5
Oriental Adventures
Savage Species
Draconomicron
Planar Handbook
Magic of Faerun
Unearthed
Arcana Sword
Unearthed Arcana
Sword and Fist
Defenders of the Faith
Fiend Folio Monster Manual II
Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting
Unapproachable East
Races of Faerun Monster Compendium: Monsters of Faerun
Epic Level Handbook

For your reference, the following are 3.0 Books. Not to say there might not be something of use in them, but they are outdated:


Masters of the Wild
Arm’s and Equipment Guide
Tome and Blood
Song and Silence
Oriental Adventures
Savage Species
Sword and Fist
Defenders of the Faith
Epic Level Handbook

Of those, I find that I refer back to the AnEG, DotF, SS and ELH the most often. Those none of those particularly often.

[Azerian Kelimon]

Core: Most broken set.

Completes: Nice, if lackluster.

3.0 books: Hasta la vista, baby. No need for you.

XPH: This. This is the big thing. Best of the books by a long shot.

The rest are a mish mash of good and bad. Magic of Faerun houses the incantatrix, so watch out, though.

[Godna]

I wasnt aware that the epic-level handbook was out of date. I kinda figured some of the books were because of the list i knew for a fact that sword and fist were 3.0 but i have a player that loves being a monk and he'll read it regardless.

edit: got it watch out for magic of faerun/ incantatrix (why?) anymore broken stuff i need to watch out for?

[Kizara]

Unearthed
Arcana Sword
Unearthed Arcana
Sword and Fist

I believe should read:

Unearthed Arcana
Sword and Fist

Might want to fix that.

Unearthed Arcana has alot of interesting variants in it, wroth a look through.

[Azerian Kelimon]

Well, if you remember that you can only spend up to your manifester level on psionic powers, you should be safe from another massive cheese.

Then, there's divine metamagic from the Comp divine. Watch out for that, a cleric with persisted Divine Favor will b0rk your game quicko.

I think that's it though. Not much more to break.

[Lord Tataraus]

Unearthed Arcana is a must to look through, it has a bunch of neat variants.
Completes are all pretty good.
Arm’s and Equipment Guide is the most used book in our games purely for the awesome equipment and tools, all sorts of neat random stuff in there.
Draconomicron is one of my favorite books, you can never go wrong with dragons in D&D.
EPH is awesome, just replace arcane magic with psionic for a more balanced game, you can even do the same with divine.

[AslanCross]

I wasnt aware that the epic-level handbook was out of date. I kinda figured some of the books were because of the list i knew for a fact that sword and fist were 3.0 but i have a player that loves being a monk and he'll read it regardless.

edit: got it watch out for magic of faerun/ incantatrix (why?) anymore broken stuff i need to watch out for?

d20srd.org has somewhat updated material from the Epic Level Handbook. Most of the changes are just the skills that were folded in together and some feat effects.

Actually, the Incantatrix from Magic of Faerun is very different from the Incantatrix from Player's Guide to Faerun (which is a 3.5 book.)
They still share the most broken of their abilities, though: Instant Metamagic.
To put it briefly, the Incantatrix is the easiest way to see massive metamagic feat stacking. They also have the ability to gain control of other casters' duration spells.

The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, Magic of Faerun and Monsters of Faerun are all 3.0 too, but they contain stuff worth using. Player's Guide to Faerun is the update to the FRCS.

[Dr Bwaa]

I'm not sure if Masters of the Wild has been updated at all, but it's the only decent book of druid PrC's I know of (Planar Shepard doesn't count). Who wouldn't want to be...

An OOZEMASTER???! :)

[Kizara]

I'm not sure if Masters of the Wild has been updated at all, but it's the only decent book of druid PrC's I know of (Planar Shepard doesn't count). Who wouldn't want to be...

An OOZEMASTER???! :)

There are quite a few good druid PrCs in the Cdiv, IMO.

[Godna]

so with a little char and a bit of house ruling the 3.0 books might be usable?

[Maerok]

At the very least for inspiration (fluff, edible or otherwise, never seems to go bad). If you wanted to you could use them as a diving board for updated 3.5 things.

[AslanCross]

so with a little char and a bit of house ruling the 3.0 books might be usable?

There might still be salvageable content, yes.

Some stuff would be a bit tricky, though. For example, Complete Warrior (3.5) has a Samurai base class. Oriental Adventures (3.0) has a Samurai class that works in a totally different (better) way. Sword and Fist (3.0) has a Master Samurai Prestige Class. Complete Warrior also has a Kensai Prestige Class that sort of works like the Oriental Adventures Samurai.

Using all of those classes in your game would lead to some interesting (and unnecessary) confusion. In some cases, 3.5 material does not mean it's better than 3.0---the 3.5 Complete Warrior Samurai, for example, is decried as one of the worst classes in the game. Of course, including all of these at the same time is in no way game-breaking (since most of these are far from the best classes anyway), but my point is you need to decide wisely what to do with material in general.

[Godna]

got it rename the 3.5 samurai class into the noob class and let 3.0's keep its name. I'll think more about what to do with the kensai afterwords

[LoneGamer]

Complete Adventurer also has a couple prestige classes for Druids. Master of Many Forms (Shifter in 3.0), for one.