Author Topic: 3.5 Books Recommendations  (Read 5226 times)

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Prime32

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3.5 Books Recommendations
« on: June 16, 2008, 04:21:42 PM »
Have any?

Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords and Player's Handbook 2 are popular choices.
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Tier 2: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything, or the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.
Tier 1: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything and the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.[/spoiler]

Cyrocloud

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Re: 3.5 Books Recommendations
« Reply #1 on: June 16, 2008, 04:29:49 PM »
Magic of Incarnum is a very interesting book.  The people I've talked to though went throught the same phases of it as me though (It is amazing, to ehh it blows, to ooooohhhh it's kinda neat, I think CO went through simmilar phases.).

ToM has some very interesting stuff under Binder which has some free online support too which is nice, the shadow magic part has some neat stuff in it and Truename magic has good...fluff.

Stratovarius

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Re: 3.5 Books Recommendations
« Reply #2 on: June 16, 2008, 04:33:15 PM »
Magic of Incarnum, Unapproachable East, Expanded Psionics Handbook, and Races of Stone are all ones I'd recommend as being really fun.
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Re: 3.5 Books Recommendations
« Reply #3 on: June 16, 2008, 04:51:42 PM »
I really love Heroes of Horror.  Most of it is the flavor and advice in the book.  The nice thing about this, is the concepts in there are compatable with older/newer editions of D&D (or other games for that matter).  It's hard to explian, but I really like that book.

I'm also a fan of most of the "complete" books.  There are a lot of good feats and PrCs in those books.
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Ieniemienie

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Re: 3.5 Books Recommendations
« Reply #4 on: June 16, 2008, 04:52:27 PM »
I really love Heroes of Horror.  Most of it is the flavor and advice in the book.  The nice thing about this, is the concepts in there are compatable with older/newer editions of D&D (or other games for that matter).  It's hard to explian, but I really like that book.

I'm also a fan of most of the "complete" books.  There are a lot of good feats and PrCs in those books.
+1 and PHBII and Races of Stone
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Re: 3.5 Books Recommendations
« Reply #5 on: June 16, 2008, 05:05:13 PM »
Magic of Incarnum is a very interesting book.  The people I've talked to though went throught the same phases of it as me though (It is amazing, to ehh it blows, to ooooohhhh it's kinda neat, I think CO went through simmilar phases.).

ToM has some very interesting stuff under Binder which has some free online support too which is nice, the shadow magic part has some neat stuff in it and Truename magic has good...fluff.

Truenaming is ok if you allow a tweaked version of the Item Familiar feat to boost the skill checks with. MoI is simply godly when you figure out how it works. I think a 1/2 BAB class that can replace most of the Core Full BAB classes without using spells has some serious shit going for it, don't you?


[spoiler][/spoiler]

Prime32

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Re: 3.5 Books Recommendations
« Reply #6 on: June 16, 2008, 05:23:44 PM »
I only have Races of Stone and Races of Eberron, so I can't say much about their quality in relation to the rest of the series, but...

Get Races of Stone if you want to wear heavy armour. Or wield large weapons. Or cast illusion spells. Or cast illusion spells while wielding a large weapon in heavy armour.


The first wave of Completes were good, but as for the second...
I liked Complete Mage, but some people didn't. I believe that Complete Psionic was regarded as hit-and-miss. I managed to read some of Complete Champion, but there is a lot of (not fully usable) fluff and little crunch. I haven't heard much about Complete Scoundrel - the main reason people seem to pick it up is the skill tricks.


I liked Magic of Incarnum - I don't know how often I would use an incarnum class as the base of a build, but almost any character can benefit from it.
My work
The tier system in a nutshell:
[spoiler]Tier 6: A cartographer.
Tier 5: An expert cartographer or a decent marksman.
Tier 4: An expert marksman.
Tier 3: An expert marksman, cartographer and chef who can tie strong knots and is trained in hostage negotiation or a marksman so good he can shoot down every bullet fired by a minigun while armed with a rusted single-shot pistol that veers to the left.
Tier 2: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything, or the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.
Tier 1: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything and the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.[/spoiler]

Stratovarius

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Re: 3.5 Books Recommendations
« Reply #7 on: June 16, 2008, 05:29:04 PM »
Complete Psionic was "miss, missed more, and a few scattered hits." It may be the worst book in the entire 3.5 series.

I really don't like many of the Completes. There's a few scattered bits and pieces from each I would use, but the setting specific, as well as the other series (Setting, Races of), I find far better material.
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Re: 3.5 Books Recommendations
« Reply #8 on: June 16, 2008, 05:33:39 PM »
I don't think the OP was campaign specific so Im going to vote on players guide to faerun and heroes of horror

I really enjoyed the PGTF for its feats, prestiges and fluff and as for heroes of horror well it saved me the hassle of finding a copy of cuthulu d20 :)
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Re: 3.5 Books Recommendations
« Reply #9 on: June 16, 2008, 05:46:48 PM »
ToB, XPH, ToM in that order.  RoS is quite good as well.  HoH has some great stuff in it, but IMO is a "Complete" in disguise with the exception of dread necro.  PH2 is... a bunch of feats and ACFs.  Aside from the druid nerfs all you need can be found online.  CMage is better than CArc IMO.  RotW is almost as good as RoS.  RotD is about equal with RotW.
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Re: 3.5 Books Recommendations
« Reply #10 on: June 16, 2008, 06:17:43 PM »
I just recently got the Magic Item Compendium to share between me and my players. Its nice to have.
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Re: 3.5 Books Recommendations
« Reply #11 on: June 16, 2008, 06:23:12 PM »
Spell Compendium ;)
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Re: 3.5 Books Recommendations
« Reply #12 on: June 16, 2008, 06:32:49 PM »
Recommendations for..
- fun during play - Magic of Incarnum and Tome of Battle.
- easy reference - Spell Compendium. 
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Re: 3.5 Books Recommendations
« Reply #13 on: June 16, 2008, 08:25:00 PM »
The Rule Compendium is surprisingly useful, as over-priced as it might seem. Having one book with clearly written explanations for annoying rules really is a help at the gaming table. It's one of the books they squeezed out just before 4e was announced, so it was really just a repackaging of existing material, but still, useful.

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Re: 3.5 Books Recommendations
« Reply #14 on: June 16, 2008, 08:58:10 PM »
ToB, XPH, ToM in that order.  RoS is quite good as well.  HoH has some great stuff in it, but IMO is a "Complete" in disguise with the exception of dread necro.  PH2 is... a bunch of feats and ACFs.  Aside from the druid nerfs all you need can be found online.  CMage is better than CArc IMO.  RotW is almost as good as RoS.  RotD is about equal with RotW.

I mostly agree. Except for PHB2 which also has the great Beguiler. I'd put ToM in front of XPH but that's because I always use the SRD for psionics !
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Re: 3.5 Books Recommendations
« Reply #15 on: June 17, 2008, 07:55:44 PM »
+1 for Races of Stone, Dwarves rocks and so do gnomes and goliath, great fluff and solid crunch within :)

+1 for Heroes of Horror, I've been reading this book while I was working night-shift in a convenience store in the middle of an Industrial quarter. Yea, I locked the door. There is some really creepy stuff in it (What do you mean the horses ate our steaks ?) as well as the Dread Necromancer (personal favorite) and Archivist (everyone favorite "I can do it all" divine caster !)

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Re: 3.5 Books Recommendations
« Reply #16 on: June 17, 2008, 10:28:51 PM »
ToB, XPH, ToM in that order.  RoS is quite good as well.  HoH has some great stuff in it, but IMO is a "Complete" in disguise with the exception of dread necro.  PH2 is... a bunch of feats and ACFs.  Aside from the druid nerfs all you need can be found online.  CMage is better than CArc IMO.  RotW is almost as good as RoS.  RotD is about equal with RotW.

I mostly agree. Except for PHB2 which also has the great Beguiler. I'd put ToM in front of XPH but that's because I always use the SRD for psionics !
CM and CA are complementary : Melodic Casting + Sublime Chord for Bards, Master Specialist + Io7V...
Fair enough.
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Re: 3.5 Books Recommendations
« Reply #17 on: June 28, 2008, 02:47:42 PM »
I really liked PHB 2

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Re: 3.5 Books Recommendations
« Reply #18 on: July 03, 2008, 06:46:26 PM »
I recommend PHB 2, Magic of Incarnum, Expanded Psionic Handbook, any of the Races books, Spell Compendium and the Magic Item Compendium.

If you are interested in none core books I recommend OGL Steampunk.

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Re: 3.5 Books Recommendations
« Reply #19 on: July 03, 2008, 07:27:30 PM »
MoI is extremely fun. All the flexibility of a full caster, without all the infinite titan loops and Balck Tentacles Stinking Cloud stunlocks that the DM spends all his time balancing out. The XPH is widely regarded as the most balanced book in the whole of 3.5, although the Soulknife is a tad weak. And I can't reccomend the Tome of Battle highly enough. Swordsages, Warblades and Crusaders are made of win. And they make sure that the Incarnate doesn't obsolete your melee characters. ;)
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