Hello all,
My group and I are firmly entrenched in 3.5, and not planning on moving to 4e. At this point I have almost all of the 3.5 WotC books that I could ever want, and recently have turned my attention to Third Party materials published under the OGL.
What are the great must-have gems out there? I have the Advanced line from Green Ronin which I like a lot. I also picked up a couple of Penumbra titles I really like on the cheap ("Dynasties and Demagogues" and "Crime and Punishment" specifically). I am intrigued by the Book of Templates (or something like that - not sure of the publisher).
Anyway, keeping in mind that we run mostly in Eberron, what products would you suggest I take a look at.
Thanks everyone!
One of my favourites is Hyperconscious, if you're into psionics; it might be out of print, though. I've also heard good things about Untapped Potential, another psionic book from Dreamscarred Press.
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If you've got all the 3.5 wotc books, including all the monster books I-V, including the forgotten realms books (the content is fabulous for repurposing), then I must suggest, and wholeheartedly endorse Tome of Horrors I, II, and III. These were produced by Necromancer Games. Note: Book I is 3.0, unless you buy the online revised version for 3.5, but whichever you get hold of will do.
The other series I might look into is the Gygaxian Fantasy series such as worldbuilder, or Insidae by Cross.
Good luck.
3.5 Never Dies
I'll echo the vote for Necro's "Tome of Horrors" titles (you can never have enough monsters!). Personally, I'm a fan of adventures like Goodman's DCCs because, while I almost exclusively write my own modules, I do tend to steal NPC stat blocks and nice pre-made maps from other places. Goodman and Necro modules have come in extremely handy for these. Green Ronin's "Dungeon's of Doom" map book also sees extensive use by me.
[blatant plug]And for Eberron, there's always some juicy/quirky new magics to introduce so why not pick up the Behind the Spells: Compendium right here at Paizo (or in print through Lulu).[/blatant plug] :)
[blatant plug]And for Eberron, there's always some juicy/quirky new magics to introduce so why not pick up the Behind the Spells: Compendium right here at Paizo (or in print through Lulu).[/blatant plug] :)
Don't do it! It is a TRICK!!!
[blatant plug]And for Eberron, there's always some juicy/quirky new magics to introduce so why not pick up the Behind the Spells: Compendium right here at Paizo (or in print through Lulu).[/blatant plug] :)Don't do it! It is a TRICK!!!
As a quick aside to this discussion, Sharoth, we're putting the Compendium on sale here for the Black Friday weekend. We'll probably discount the print edition as well.
WOOT!!! ~My wallet BITES my rear end HARD, drawling blood~ OUCH!!! It appears that someone does not aprove!
The Template book by Goodman Games is really cool (get it while its still on sale and in print)
I will add more as I can think of them
Airships, by Sam Witt, just for the art. :)
Plus BCD and the other Malhavoc titles, and Green Ronin. Tome of Horrors and Eldritch Sorcery from Necromancer Games.
For the steam technology mixed with fantasy magic kind of thing, you cannot beat The Iron Kingdoms from Privateer Press. Its the setting that Eberon was largely ripped-off from.
Also from Green Ronin, "Advanced Bestiary".
But especially "Beyond Countless Doorways", a great great great Planescape book.
Beat me to it. These are just about the most useful 3PP books I own. I use them even in my 4E game for inspiration.
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For the steam technology mixed with fantasy magic kind of thing, you cannot beat The Iron Kingdoms from Privateer Press. Its the setting that Eberon was largely ripped-off from.
Alas, out of print (the World Book and Player's Guide, etc) and apparently unlikely to go back into print or get sold as official .pdfs; meanwhile, they're really expensive on ebay.
Many people have no idea what Privateer are up to, regarding the rpg stuff.
Thanks for all the suggestions!
I was very intrigued by Iron Kingdoms, but I never got around to picking it up. I'll have to redouble my search on eBay and such.
I actually picked up the Advanced Bestiary (along with the Advanced Players Guide and the Advanced GM Guide) when Green Ronin was having it's Apocalypse Sale last year. They are all really good, but the Bestiary is particularly good.
I have Tome of Horrors I (the eBook 3.5 update), but I'll have to keep an eye out for the other volumes.
I had never heard of the Psionic stuff from Dreamscarred - I'll definitely be looking out for that. Any other cool Psionic stuff out there?
I love the fact I have more stuff than I could ever hope to use, and yet, for some reason, I'm compelled to collect more stuff to add to it.
I'm a sick, sick man.
You can get all the Iron Kingdoms books, some new, some used, on Amazon.com.
The problem is that a lot of the used books are crazy expensive. Some are cover priced, but none are cheap.
The Character Guide starts at $73, and the World Guide starts at $125! You can still get the Monsternomicon I for $30, and the Monsternomicon II for $40. Liber Mechanika goes for $75, Five Fingers for $22, and The Witchfire Trilogy for $30.
I've never seen Lock and Load for sale anywhere.
Scrounging around FLGSs may find a new book at the cover price.
None of it is available on pdf. Except there are two short adventures in the Witchfire Trilogy that take place between the three main chapters; both of those are available on RPGNow, but they're in the book if you buy it.
For me, Fantasy Flight are a must have. Traps and Treachery are awesome. Dungeoncraft was a bit of a let down but generally their books are very good.
Airships, by Sam Witt, just for the art. :)
2nded! Airships is a great book. Also, I'd like to suggest Oathbound by Bastion Press. It's a setting book, so it won't be all immediately usable in Eberron, but it is damn fine. There are a lot of good fluffy bits that help you tackle the age old problem of "What happens when the city is above a dungeon?", and a lot of inspirational NPCs and story hooks. The mechanics are fun too - mutations, baby! Mutations! w00t!
Peace,
tfad
In no particular order:
Bad Axe Games:
Grim Tales
Green Ronin:
Book of the Righteous
Cavalier's Handbook
Unholy Warrior's Handbook
Pirate's Guide to Freeport
Eden Studios:
Fields of Blood
Fantasy Flight Games:
Midnight
Cityworks
Traps & Treachery
Necromancer Games:
Tome of Horrors Revised (PDF)
Sword&Sorcery Studios/White Wolf:
Scarred Lands (assorted stuff)
Mongoose Publishing:
Strongholds & Dynasties
and of course...all things Pathfinder.
Less plug-n-play with standard D&D 3.5 but definite must-haves:
Conan OGL (Buy the Atlantean Edition or 2nd Edition RIGHT NOW!)
Arcana Evolved
A Game of Thrones
Dragonmech. Provides all sorts of options for expanding the warforged concept...And the PDFs are on sale cheap right now.
In no particular order:
Mongoose Publishing:
Strongholds & Dynasties
Whoa....whoa...strongholds and dynasties? I've been trying to find someone who's read that book. What did you think? Have you implemented the rules in any of your campaigns? I've been thinking about buying it....
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I only have two third party books, but I like both of them. Necromancer's Raise the Dead(I should have a linke to a review of it in my profile) is an excellent source to give a low level party a way to bring a fallen party member back to life, and give them a side-adventure while they're at it. There are adventures for good, neutral(and/or Druids), and evil characters who need to be raised.
There is also Malhavoc's Cry Havoc, which has rules for turning D&D back into a wargame simulation. Kinda a step backwards in a way, I know, but it works well, and if you want to run a campaign which has an epic battle between armies where the players are commanders within it, then its an excellent find.
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Interesting!
There were some titles which I didn't pay much attention to before.
My recommendations sorted by book type:
Monster books:
- Tome of Horror Revised (PDF) by Necromancer Games: recommended if you look for old edition monster conversions. Tome II and III add more of old edition inspired critters.
- Creature Collection Revised by Swords & Sorcery (aka White Wolf): Scarred Lands setting, but generic enough to be implemented in other settings. Nicely flavoured monsters. Also followed by two more tomes with more specialized critters.
- Fantasy Bestiary by Atlas Games (Penumbra label): Very thick tome, lots of monsters of varying quality, best referenced.
Other Monster Books:
- Complete Guide to Fey, Complete Guide to Treants, Complete Guide to Beholders (yes, the only non WotC treatment of this non OGL monsters) by Goodman Games: really good treatments of classical monsters
- Advanced Bestiary by Green Ronin
- Book of Templates Deluxe by Goodman Games
Both template books offer a comparable huge number of templates for existing monsters plus application examples.
Magic and other special topics:
- Book of Eldritch Might/ Book of Hallowed Might I and II by Malhavoc Press: Creates some nice additional spice for arcane/ clerical magic.
- Book of the Righteous by Green Ronin: Really big, offers the most content for any religously inspired campaigns, ranging from PrC over feats, completely worked out pantheon.
- Book of fiends by Green Ronin: Easily the equivalent to the Fiendish Codices of WotC, covers also daemons.
- Cavaliers Handbook: A really nice turn on the 1e cavalier class
- Unholy Warrior's Handbook: An interesting new class, e.g. usable for depicting Hell Knights of Golarion
- Relics & Rituals by Swords & Sorcery: Additional cleric rules, tied somewhat to the Scarred Lands setting, but easily usable in every setting.
Setting books:
- Ptolus by Malhavoc Press: *The* city setting book. Unfortunately very pricy.
- Necropolis by Gary Gygax one of the creators of the game: medium to high level, dungeon crawling inspired egyptian campaign and setting
- City State of the Invincible Overlord by Necromancer Games (Judges Guild label): one of the oldest city settings, offers good dungeon crawl possibilities, easy to insert in other settings.
- Scarred Lands by Swords & Sorcery: Harsh and interesting classic fantasy setting
- Midnight: new turn on the old cliched fantasy setting - evil won and the pcs try to survive in a harsh world.
- "Special topic books" by Atlas Games (Penumbra label): e.g. Dynasties & Demagogues for political campaigns, Crime & Punishment for criminal investigation inspired campaigns.
Adventures:
- Adventures by Paizo (of course!)
- Adventures by Necromancer Games: true to their motto "3rd edition rules, 1st edition feel"
- Adventurs by Goodman Games: true to 1st edition dungeon crawling. About 50 adventures all in all before their switch to 4e.
All books apart from the S&S ones above are/ were available for really interesting prices on this site during special sales.
Some of the more often mentioned books in this thread grew pretty much standard and e.g. Paizo uses Tome of Horrors I and Advanced Bestiary quite frequently.
Kind regards,
Günther
I might be biased, but I think SORD is a must-have. Fluff and all is fun, but the crunch that SORD provides will be beneficial at the game table each and every session. The best $2 you will spend. Ask Pax Veritas, or read the posts here Paizo's Thread.
Midnight: new turn on the old cliched fantasy setting - evil won and the pcs try to survive in a harsh world.
Who is that made by?
Fantasy Flight Games.
I'm a fan of Mongoose Publishing, especially the countless ideas presented in their 38 Quintessential I & II class & race books. I for one also enjoyed their Strongholds & Dynasties book, which I use mostly for their governmental simulator.
Sword&Sorcery Studios/White Wolf:
Ravenloft campaign setting (for the Cursing rules and some of the feats.)
What do you want? Crunchy books? Fluffy books? General stuff, campaign specific?
I assume you have all the Paizo stuff? Heavy on the fluff, of course, but still among the very best fluff out there.
Settings I can reccomend:
The stuff people have been preaching here is pretty spot on, too: Malhavoc Books are usually quite nice, too.
And may I suggest looking into Secrets of Pact Magic? A whole big book about pact magic (the kind of magic where you make pacts with spirits for a specific set of powers. When wotc did that in Tome of Magic, they called those spirits Vestiges). It has a number of base classes to deal with pact magic - some can be called full-time binders, while others combine existing concepts with spirit binding. There's a couple of variant class features for classes to turn them into binders (like bardic binders) and so on. There's PrCs, feats (including options for non-binder classes to get access to pact magic). Also, there's general information, and races of course.
The book also has about 50 spirits for your characters to bind, plus thirteen Anima Spirits (generic spirits who can be of any level you want) for those with the proper feat, and there are three prestige classes that let you use angels (all sorts), devils, or demons as spirits.
I'm playing a Spirit Binder/Devil Binder right now - though I have to say, it's in a Gestalt campaign, and he's also a fighter. Spirit Binders is the foremost binder class, exceptionally good at binding, but no other abilities.
Oh, and if you want to move away from D&D and go into other d20/OGL stuff, check out Monte Cook's World of Darkness. It has d20 rules for the World of Darkness and also a new take on the WoD (and a really cool one).
Once again - thanks for all the input. My birthday was last week, and my game group went in together and got me a nice sized Amazon gift card. Using this list as a guide I bought more gaming materials than you can shake a stick at :-)
I did want to follow up on Mongoose's Strongholds and Dynasties. It sounds like a good resource, but it's a bit hard to find. With some digging I can find it for about $40, or you can get it as an eBook for about $25. While I do own a few eBooks - and in some cases actually prefer the format - for big reference books like this one I tend to much prefer the actual paper kind of book.
My question to those who have actually used this book - is is worth the $40? Would I be able to use the eBook effectively, or is it one of those that really works much better as a physical, sittin' in front of you tome?
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There are a couple of resellers, I can't remember the names of them at the moment, soemthing castle I think, and another one that I bvought all my out of print Earthdawn books from.
Yeah Iron Kingdoms is pretty cool, If you want some cool alternate rules for magic and health, Theives World is great. Also Green Ronin.
Green Ronin is a great company.
I had never heard of the Psionic stuff from Dreamscarred - I'll definitely be looking out for that. Any other cool Psionic stuff out there?
Dreamscarred Press finally released their all-psionic, no-magic campaign setting, Third Dawn. It's even available in .pdf here at Paizo. I've been looking into just such a campaign for a while, but Dreamscarred did it for me--now, if I can get an adventure path out of them...
Thanks for the tip on the resellers - that's how I've gotten a lot of my stuff.
One other question on Strongholds and Dynasties - I can't find if this is 3.0 or 3.5. Any insight from the community?
Good point - I checked the date - published 2003, so prior to 3.5.
