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Old 06-29-2012, 12:00 AM   #1158
Abe Sargent
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Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Catonsville, MD
Where to go next? What books are next important and useful? You don’t want to waste money and time with a book that’s chaff, and there are a lot of sourcebooks during this era. In order of value I have found in many campaigns as a layer and DM, this is how I would list stuff:


1. Monstrous Manual – 2nd Edition screwed up early with the Monstrous Compendium, which was a three ring binder with alphabetized pages of monsters that you could add later pages to from modules, appendixes, and magazines. The problem is that these pages were beat up fast, and got out of order as the front page and back page of one supplement in out of order with another. This avoided all of that, and is the best monster supplement around. The older ones from 1st Edition have lots of idiotic and stupid monsters that you never use. Some Manuals don’t include all of the essentials in order to force you to buy later books, but this plays no games. It has few stupid and useless monsters (but there are a few, such as Gaff). It has every essential and important creature in the game – all of the humanoids, undead, mythological creatures and essential D&D guys like Mind Flayers and Beholders and Yuan-Ti. It has all of the elementals, their kin, a ton of golems, animals such as wolves and sharks, intelligent plants, scores of dragons and giants, creatures such as giant scorpions and giant spiders, all of the major lycanthropes, and more. This is the best monster supplement in 1st or 2nd Edition, and the only major miss is demons and devils and other such creatures virtually non-existent.
2. Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide – If you are a new DM, this is vital to running a campaign. This books is divided into two parts. The first gives you, the Dm, instead of lots of rules, gives the DM guidelines and info on how to run the best campaigns, create the best worlds, and so forth. Then it actually has runs and tricks on how to create your own world, followed by information about creating maps and stuff. In some ways, it is a better DM’s Guide than the actual DM’s Guide. It’s amazing, and has info from everything from ordering snacks and cleaning up after a gaming session to world building tips. This is an essential DM Tome, especially for new DMs.
3. Encylopedia Magica, Vol 1-4 – This is a four volume set that was published in the 90s. It includes every single magical item printed before its publication in every module, rulebook, supplement and magazine article. You can play without it, no question. But I don’t know why you’d want to. This includes every artifact in publication as well. That means it has all of the items from tons of other supplements that you might want, such as Tome of Magic, Book of Artifacts, Pages from the Mages, and more. Everything from those is in here.
4. Wizards Spell Compendium, Vol 1-4 – Just like the above resource has every magic item ever printed, this has every mage spell ever printed. Wizards make lots of spells, and this has them all. Again, it has the parts of books like the other half of Tome of Magic, some of the best of Complete Wizard’s Handbook, and more. It also gives a serious shot of usefulness to many of the specialist mages that are not based on schools, such as Water Elementalists, Alchemists, Shadow Mages, and more.
5. The Complete Fighter’s Handbook – The problem with this book is that most of it’s best innovations to combat, weapons and proficiencies are done better in Combat and Tactics. It introduced us to the world of Kits ,and it has some great ones, such as gladiator, myrmidon, swashbuckler and amazon. Kits in Option are neutered and watered down versions of those in the Handbook series. It has rules on upkeeping armor and weapons, combat rules such as horse archery, mixing different types of armor and more; plus it introduces many new weapons. If you are not playing with the Option series, move this up to #2, it’s that essential to fighters. All of the other classes get love in new spells, items, and so forth, but this is where your grunt guys shine.
6. The Complete Book of Humanoids – In AD&D or D&D, there are only a few races you can choose to play, but the world is rife with many other intelligent species. This book allows you to play many of them. 45 pages of it allow you to be anything from a centaur or satyr to an ogre mage or goblin. You can be big (two types of giant-kin are in the book) or small (such as a pixie). Then the book has kits for humanoid adventurers, and a new set of 25 non-weapon proficiencies for everything from winemaking to hiding to fast-talking. As someone who has played races from this book, it’s very useful.
7. The Complete Psionicist’s Handbook –
Psionics were a confusing set of rules that were removed from the mainline rules in 2nd Edition and are added in this optional supplement. I am including it here for completeness sake, because if you want Psionics, this is your baby. There is no better supplement for it. But the rules are still clunky, and Psionics just duplicates existing magic, and doesn’t seem to be interesting to me, so I’ve never bothered. If you want Psionics, then bump this up above 7, but if not, don’t even bother getting it.
8. Volo’s Guide to All Things Magical – Published just after the Spell Compendiums and Encyclopedias, it has many magic items and spells for your campaign. It also has very realistic and intricate rules for making magical items and a ton of woods, metals, gems and such to make magic items out of. This is the highest charting sourcebook for an individual campaign world to make my list, and it’s essential. The old 1st Edition or Book or Artifacts way of making magical items felt very fake (cast Enchant an Item, cast Enchanted Weapon or whatever spells it will use, cast Permanency and call it a day). This has the best rules for making items ever, and I want Alzar to make an item through this, to demonstrate the process, so you can see how it works.
9. Priests’s Spell Compendium, Vol 1-2 – I don’t like adding Priests spells to my campaign, because it’s hard to justify how a deity suddenly allows its priests to use new spells. You can’t get away from that very often Plus, the more spells you have in existence, the more powerful all priests are, because they all gain access to it. Priests pray for spells from a sphere they have access to, so a new healing spell can be acquired by every priest who can learn healing spells. I can control the rate at which my mages and NPCs get spells or items from the other compendiums, but this is different. Everyone in my world at all is immediately accessible by every priest. So use this with care, but your clerics want it badly.
10. The Complete Bard’s Handbook – The Priest and Wizard ones have their best parts taken up later by Spells and Magic and the Compendiums. The Thief book is good and the next book on our list. This book takes the concept of the bard as entertainer and spins it into many different conclusions. Now you can play Bards who don’t play magic but are actors or gymnasts or clowns and so forth. The kits push bards in massively different directions and change the abilities they have – it’s almost like they are a bunch of sub-classes, rather than little ol’ kits. The 12 new kits include some high favorites, such as Blade, a entertainer who spins weapons about at a very fast clip, They are the ones who are expert at knife throwing at a carnival and so forth. You can be a Herald, a Skald, a Gypsy or a Jester. That gives this book more punch than the others when considering kits.
11. The Complete Thief’s Handbook – The best part of this book is the 20 new proficiencies, 18 pages of equipment for thieves, 18 kits and 25 pages of info on thieves’ guilds and bringing it into your campaign. This is the only bone you can really throw at your thieves but it’s a big one.
12. The Castle Guide – This is a book you may find really valuable or really junky, depending on your campaign needs. This is the only place you’ll find rules on making castles, including cost. Like many of these books, it has a lot of intro work on the history of castles, the types of them, feudal settings and history, and so forth. If that helps to spark some ideas – great! It also has rules on sieges, equipment, and resolving battle s- but it’s very simple – not turning it into a miniature game, like Battlesystem does.
13. The Complete Book of Necromancers – This DM supplement includes a lot of surprises for an NPC Necromancer. The kits for them are few but very interesting, and Salient Gifts is the price of admission. It’s a great way to make NPC and enemy necromancers something truly villainous. It has a few new non-weapon proficiencies from dark gifts, weaknesses, salient powers, to a map and dungeon at the end was great. I only wish we had continued this series with Conjurers and then moved to others. This book led to Alzar and his campaign.
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Last edited by Abe Sargent : 06-29-2012 at 12:47 AM.
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