Yeah I know that making lists can be considered bad form by some, but they do serve a purpose. They are perfect for a 500 word Mini-post!!! (Italics included)
Oh and if I can get 2 comments on this we hit the 800 comments mark!
With D&D 3.5 nearing the end of its useful shelf-life, I found myself pondering on the books I liked or used the most. Being a Crunch Overlord, here’s my annotated Top 5 (in no particular order) list of books whose DM-focused crunchiness brought me happiness.
Quite possibly the best environmental book out there. While it’s not filled to the brim with game mechanics crunch, it brings a lot to DMs who like to re-think the Dungeon as an adventure locale.
It features a great essay on building cool encounters by mixing monsters and terrain features to create cool combos like a Grimlocks+ Medusas. It also features interactive complex traps (called encounter traps). An all around great book!
While somewhat flawed in it’s writing (with broken parts) and the source of some very lively discussions, this low-magic alternate Player’s Handbook has remade many things in the d20 system in cool ways. So cool that you can ignore the new classes and the feat systems and transpose this in D&D to make it a better game…. (which we have done). Awesome combat-use of skills, easier AoO, saner Save or Die rules, Autoflaking, etc. Its all extremely cool.
This jewel brings together cleaned-up 3.5 versions of all magic items published in all official D&D books and provides a ton of tables for easy reference (items per type, per categories, per price range, etc). It also provides ways to equip PC/NPCs quicker and provides updated, faster to use Treasure Generating tables that I actually use! Best time-saving buy for Bling loving DMs!
Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss:
While it does feature a lot of rehashed material from the Book of Vile Darkness, this is my favorite Monster book by far. The Codex features a lot of cool demons, it provides 2 new demon types other than the Tanari and has absolutely wonderful Demonic Possession rules! One of the best examples of perfectly harmonized Crunch and Fluff. This book will feature in my top 5 fluff list.
I’m perfectly aware that I bought that one just a few weeks ago, but it is being used every sessions and is a lot more useful than what my friend Yax says about it! If you have 25$ lying around and think you are going to play until 4e’s release, Buy it!
Some special mentions that are often too specific to be used often:
- Chaositech (See, I don’t just use WotC books) : Mutants and Chaospunk!
- Requiem for a God: Covers the death of a god in your game.
- Libris Mortis: Undead Baby!
- Draconimicon: I Heart dragons!
What’s your favorite DM themed Crunch books… D&D or otherwise?
Actually, most of the items are new to the MIC. They only brought the good items from other books, losing the poorly-concieved ones, and rebalancing some poorly-realised ones.
799!!!
(By the way, I think comment numbers include deleted comments. So deleted spam would count towards this. But there’s no way to look for only active comments, so this works.)
EDIT: Never mind, as this comment is actually numbered 821.
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799!!!!!!
The magic items compendium makes me regret playing 3.0 instead of 3.5. I don’t trust my new-dm-self with evaluating crunch balance yet, so I stick close to the core all the time, but the time saving random generation charts sound so tempting…
800 and
FIRST POST!!!!
Ha ha ha!
iponly: Yeah well with 4.0 just around the corner I believe that you might want to wait before upgrading if you are a new DM.
At the table, I just use the three core books, PHB, MMI, and sometimes the DMG. But as far as my current campaign goes, these are the books I keep returning to: Fiendish Codex I+II, Manual of the Planes, Planar Handbook, Beyond Countless Doorways (Malhavoc Press). That would be five. I also keep looking at The Complete Guide to Beholders (Goodman Games) and the Planes of Law boxed set (TSR).
I love cities and I always browse Cityscape for city fluff. I highly recommend it.
And by the way… Right after I ranted about the Rules Compendium, my buddy PeO bought it and even found a way to use it in our game!
Woot Yax: Pnwed by your player!
Alex, I need to ‘sit down’ with you and talk about Planscape… I need heeeeelp!
Feel free to contact me anytime. 🙂
If you want to look at how I work these days, check out my campaign wiki. This wiki is for the DM only and different from the campaign journal I also keep.