My group's been playing CRB only for the past year or so and now want to expand our ruleset.
I've seen reference to the "core 4" books. What are they?
CRB
Advanced Players Guide
Ultimate Combat
Ultimate Magic
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I would suggest going with only CRB and APG. This will give you access to lots of variety without overloading you with tons of extra stuff, most of which you will a) disallow, b) never use. APG really fills in the gaps in the CRB without overdoing it.
The word "core" is thrown around arbitrarily by different people. The definition I've always gone by is that "core" is shorthand for "Core Rulebook" and refers exclusively to that.
Advanced Players Guide is definitely your first stop for new classes and options, and remains to this day one of the most solid titles in the Pathfinder lineup. After that, there are three books I'd recommend roughly equally: Ultimate Magic, Ultimate Combat, and Ultimate Psionics (that last one is third party, but extremely well-done).
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If people are referring to a "Core 4", it's probably the CRB, APG, UC, and UM.
The PRD is about 17 books in total so far, but less than half are "Core" for players:
Core Rulebook, Advanced Player's Guide, Advanced Race Guide, Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, Advanced Class Guide. The CRB, APG, UC, and UM formed the backbone of most options for almost 4 years, until the ARG came about. The ACG upped it to 6, and Ultimate Intrigue will up it to 7.
Ultimate Equipment sits somewhere firmly between "Player-focused books" and "DM-focused books". The Technology Guide also rests fairly in-between there, though it is much more up to DM-scrutiny than the UE is - UE is generally considered a universally-used rulebook like the CRB, APG, UM, and UC are.
The rest are mostly "DM" books, focused on the world-builder, rather than on the players themselves:
Ultimate Campaign, GameMastery Guide, NPC Codex, Monster Codex, Bestiary 1-4
Pathfinder Unchained is a giant book of variant rules, and while it has options for players (like Stamina and the Unchained Classes), it's largely a DM-only book used to alter the basic game.
Finally, there are the "Adventures" books, which add entirely-new rules based around a genre-specific settings.
Mythic Adventures, Occult Adventures
The Strategy Guide may or may not be a PRD book, but while it's very handy for new players, it adds literally no new content to the game itself, so it can be counted as "not present".
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Core Rulebook+Bestiary. These really should have been one book--you can't use one without the other.
The spine on the CRB alone self-destructs. If they were to combine both it and the bestiary into one "book" then they might as well save time and money and sell it as loose-leaf paper rather than an actual book.
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I would suggest going with only CRB and APG. This will give you access to lots of variety without overloading you with tons of extra stuff, most of which you will a) disallow, b) never use. APG really fills in the gaps in the CRB without overdoing it.
Yes. The APG is good, and you won't even need to use all of it. Some character options, some feats some spells - not all of them. Less is better.
Your DM/GM will want to take a look at some subsystems in Ultimate Campaign and the Gamemastery Guide, as they will be a fun addition to spice up adventures or give a thematic atmosphere to a campaign.
But even in this case, the less you use, the better off your game will be.
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My group's been playing CRB only for the past year or so and now want to expand our ruleset.
I've seen reference to the "core 4" books. What are they?
Path of War
Path of War Expanded
Psionics Unleashed
Psionics Expanded
Reference the PRD [or CRB if you have it] for core mechanics.
these arent even paizo books... they are all 3rd party...
I personally like and what my group use the most besides the Core Rule book and bestiaries are:
Ultimate Equipment
Ultimate Combat
Ultimate Magic
Advanced Players Guide
Core is a term thrown around loosely and everyone's is going to be different, you will find neat things in every book and you will find things you never want to use at all in each book, its all a matter of what you like in your setting.
The PRD, d20psrd, archives of nethys, and the pathfinder app for phones and tablets are by far the best resources for information you can use, my group primarily use those to find information or build things for the game and i own most of the paizo published books and some 3rd party books. All my books mostly just sit on my book shelf looking pretty next to all my other DnD books and only get looked at every once in awhile.
so if your group has internet and a laptop or 2 and a tablet or 2 then you dont even need books once you have the "core" mechanics of the game down, all the basics that are in the core rule book, and have been playing for a little while.
Opening up the PFSRD in its entirety would not be a bad option. Your group has been playing long enough to get a basic understanding of the game at the very least. Nothing released after the CRB is more broken than what's in the CRB, so you're only expanding options.
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Yes, and your point is?these arent even paizo books... they are all 3rd party...My group's been playing CRB only for the past year or so and now want to expand our ruleset.
I've seen reference to the "core 4" books. What are they?
Path of War
Path of War Expanded
Psionics Unleashed
Psionics Expanded
Reference the PRD [or CRB if you have it] for core mechanics.
That when some one is asking for "core" books they are looking for paizo published and authorized books for home games and or society play. while thouse books might be "core" for you and your group and they might have some great material in them, it is a far stretch to calling them core for a group just moving on from The Core Rule Book and looking for more books from paizo. And what other people consider paizos published core books.
I have some great 3rd party books, but if i was joining another group who said they were using only the core pathfinder books i would in no way think to bring my 3rd party books and say "these are core"...
If I heard someone refer to the core 4 books I would assume they meant this:
CRB (except no Leadership, possibly no crafting feats)
APG (except no hero points, possibly no summoners)
UM (except no words of power or anything except familiars from chapter 2)
UC (just ignore chapters 4 and 5, possibly no gunslingers)
Bestiary 1 (we assume this even though we never state it, possibly no feats from here for PCs)
UE (we assume this stuff is cool unless the GM dislikes it, most of the mundane gear is assumed to be on limits though for whatever reason)
ARG (you can't use the other races but many people will let options from here slide for whatever reason)
I assume they would say CRB, APG, UM, UC though and then I would ask about all the exceptions because I assume there will be a list of them.
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There's really only a core 2, the CRB and Bestiary.
Although it was really only with the APG that Pathfinder really became it's own game, instead of just a slightly tweaked 3.5. I mean, it's still basically just a slightly tweaked 3.5, but until the APG there really wasn't anything substantial that was actually new.