|
Okay gang - here's the challenge:
I'd like to get more into some 3.5 materials to perhaps broaden my gaming scope. So, I am looking for some recommended adventure materials, sourcebooks and the like that you have found to be pretty much "Must-haves" on your gaming shelves.
A tad about me - since I've started WAY back in 1974, I usually tend to the "core" rules of PHB, DMG and MM. Liked 1st Dieties and Demigods, didn't care for 1st Unearthed Arcana. Add in Greyhawk boxed set. Wasn't too enthused about 2d Edition at all, so stuck with PHB, DMG and MM, and got the FRealms boxed sets. Didn't do much with 2d at all. Got 3d/3.5 PHB, MM,DMG (recognize a pattern here?)
Basically, I stick with the three "core rule books." For 3.5 I added Expanded Psionics (love it) and Elder Evils (interesting). As a player, I really favor paladins. I've been looking at a few things that seem kind of interesting:
- Expedition to the Ruins of Castle Greyhawk
- Drow of the Underdark
- Expedition to the Demonweb Pits
- Complete Divine
- Complete Warrior
I liked Complete Warrior a fair bit, Complete Divine less so (but then I rarely play Divine characters ...)
If you like Paladins, I'd personally recommend Complete Champion.
If you like alternative power systems, the Tome of Magic or the Tome of Battle both introduce some pretty nifty new systems to the game. Same for Magic of Incarnum, but not everyone can get over the attached fluff of that one.
I'd comment on the other three you listed, but I don't own any of those either, sorry. :)
PHB II and Unearthed Arcana, from what I've seen, are two of the most used splatbooks available.
PHB II, in the back, is a real useful section for quickly statting up classed npc's.
I'm also really partial to the Libris Mortis. It always hooks me up proper,
Tome of Magic is an absolute must. The binder is awesome. Great fluff and great mechanics. The shadowcaster is cool too, although I don't know how well the mechanics work. The Truenamer, while not stunning, is a decent class.
The Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells is a great book. While it's not heavy on crunch, it's a fun read. It gives a lot of interesting informaiton on the devils, how to use them, and few interesting PrCs, spells, and monsters.
The Complete Scoundrel and the Complete Mage are really good books too.
|
Re Demonweb Pits I had high hopes for it and grabbed shortly after it came out. Despite the planescape vibe,it was pretty weak. The plot is lacklustre as the party is
|
Definitely Tome of Magic, Libris Mortis and Magic Item compendium , if only for the tables.
For non-Wizards books, I recommend Tome of Horrors, The Kobold's Guide to Game Design, and finally a lesser known book called Monster Compendium II: Dark Bestiary by Mongoose publishing (It's got a planet eater).
I recommend Unearthed Arcana for the sheer ammount of optional rules to help spice up a game. Beyond that I don't use much for splat books so they aren't much use to me. Monster Manual II-V are worth the additional critters to throw at your party and the campaign building material found in the monster themed books of The Draconomicon, Liber Mortis: The Book of Undead, Lords of Madness: The Book of Abberations, Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss, Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells, and Drow of the Underdark are worth picking up if you want something to help with a themed game and Heroes of Battle had some slick rules for running a war themed game and battles if you like that sort of thing like I do.
For straight up adventures I have been quite impressed with the Expedition to... books. Expedition to Undermountain and Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk were more straight up dungeon crawl than I like but I loved Expedition to Castle Ravenloft and especially loved Expedition to the Demonweb Pits because it is a fun mega-module and is perhaps the only official Planscape material you're likely to find from Wizards of the Coast.
Hope this helps.
|
A lot of you like the PHBII. To be honest, when it came out I flipped through it and didn't have much want to purchase it. (I was pretty overwhelmed with sourcebooks by that time.) Now you have my curiousity aroused.
Question - Rules Compendium? Like the PHBII, I did a glance through. It looks handy, but with the Pathfinder RPG coming out, I'm wondering how much of it will become irrelevant.
A lot of you like the PHBII. Now you have my curiosity aroused.
I wasn't really very impressed with it at all. It's all crunch and when it comes to rules I keep it simple with not allowing much of anything from outside the core rules so the book was virtually worthless to me. DMGII was pretty similar. Outside of the writeup on Saltmarsh there wasn't much of use to anyone who had been playing or running a game for any length of time.
The number of different suggestions your likely to get is simply staggering. I'm honestly not sure how much stuff there is out there that we would all agree is mission critical and I'd think you might be suprised at how many products one person feels is the greatest thing since sliced bread that others feel are not necessary or even downright detrimental to the game. I won't touch the Spell Compendium with a 10' pole myself. I simply feel its unbalanced. Tomb of Magic adds different kinds of magic to the mix. Kind of interesting but between Psionics and traditional D&D magic I'm fine thank you very much. I don't really want or need even more variations.
Unearthed Arcana has a lot of interesting rule variations, but, even though most are available free with the SRD, I use very few of them. PHB and DMG works fine for me thanks.
The books I did like were the first 4 in the Complete series, Complete Arcane, Complete Divine, Complete Warrior and Complete Adventurer since I liked the added depth and breadth to the various classes and some of the new classes on offer in these books where pretty good.
Otherwise I like PHBII a lot. Mainly I feel that this book does a very good job of making the core classes better balanced for higher levels. I've used these two examples before but, without PHBII sorcerers and fighters face some serous issues as classes at higher levels.
The problem with the sorcerer is your essentially trading more spells per day compared to the wizard for a much more restricted spell list. The problem is that a 15th level wizard has, like, 40+ spells. Does it really matter if the Sorcerer has 60? I mean what are the chances that the wizard is going to use up anything close to 40 spells in the average day? Pretty remote really hence the wizard simply becomes the better class in a situation where neither could possibly use all their spells but the wizard has many more options for which spells to take at the start of the day. PHBII introduces swift and immediate action spells making it possible for the high level sorcerer to compete with the breadth of the wizards options by allowing him to burn through spell power faster. This is also important to keeping the Sorcerer balanced against the Psion since the Psion can go nuts by putting max PSPs into every 'spell' every round. Reality is - once we get to high levels only the Psion can use all its 'spell' power in a day since maxing its PSP use means eventually running out of juice. Wizard competes through sheer breadth of spells but the Sorcerer can't compete unless he has some way to actually make use of more of his spells in a day.
For the fighter the PHB intoduces feats - a lot of feats, most importantly there are a whole slew of feats with high level prereqs. The problem with the core book fighter is that you begin to actually run out of cool feats for your main schtick of wacking people after 10th level or so. You'll literally have picked up all the 'make weapon better' feats and, just as your getting into higher levels, you'll find that there are nothing but sub par feats left. You've already taken all the best ones. That makes it a real bummer to play a fighter - fighters need a lot of good feats in the game in order to be a good class because their class is really all about feats and they get a lot of them.
Otherwise I like the Magic Item Compendium. In general I think they simply did a good job of making a lot of interesting magical items that were generally well balanced against each other. My house rules stipulate that magic items can only come from this book and the DMG since the Magic Item Compendium redid a great many magic items from other splat books and redid them with a focus on making them well balanced and cleaning up any rule loop holes.
As for high quality fluff...Fiendish Codex I and II were both excellent.
For Monsters I liked the Fiend Folio and Monster Manual III.
Question - Rules Compendium? Like the PHBII, I did a glance through. It looks handy, but with the Pathfinder RPG coming out, I'm wondering how much of it will become irrelevant.
My feeling is a lot PRPG appears to be making a priority of increasing the power level of the basic classes beyond that found just in core. Essentially it appears to me that PRPG will incorporate the 'solutions' located in PHBII into the core rules. Classes that are weak at higher levels will get a large 'boost' in PRPG then classes that are strong hence equalling teh playing field and solving the problem that PHBII addresses when playing the traditional core game.
PHB2.
Complete Adventurer.
Magic Item Compendium.
Races of Eberron.
Any spellcaster should not be without Spell Compendium; for GMs, the Rules Compendium.
PHB II is also a must have.
I agree these are great books
I'd have to say I get the most use out of all of the Compendium books. (Including the Dragon Compendium)
They do exactly what a book of their type should, consolidate knowledge from a bunch of diverse sources into one easy to digest book.
Whats not to like?
-roth
I'd say if you plan to run.
Player's Handbook
Dungeon Masters's Guide
Monster Manual
Spell Compendium
Rules Compendium
Magic Item Compendium
Tome of Battle:Book of nine swords
as a player cut it down to
Player's Handbook
Spell Compendium
Rules Compendium
Tome of Battle:Book of nine swords
As a retailer I just tried to place orders for
Player's Handbook
Dungeon Masters's Guide
Monster Manual
Spell Compendium
Rules Compendium
Magic Item Compendium
Tome of Battle:Book of nine swords
Most were out of stock and no one is planning to restock these.
So if you are gonna buy these or stock your store with them now is really to late to get em. But good luck.