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Just asking for an opinion on the above mentioned topic. Anyone bought any of this series? Thoughts or opinion? I know a lot of the D20 Material Mongoose publish was rather poorly rated so trying to gauge if it's worth tracking down a couple of these books to rob ideas from.
Where all the books 3.0 or 3.5? Any book that stands out? Any book to stay away from?
I've only browsed through them, but the ranger 1 & 2 books were both well done. Good prestige classes, fun archery material. Not overpowered as some wotc splatbook classes were, but solid. I don't recall if they were 3 or 3.5
The first 17 were 3.0, but after that, they were 3.5 (another 15 or so).
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I bought a few of these at an auction held by my old college gaming club a few years ago, although in all honestly, I did so mostly to help out the club rather than out of any desire to own them. That said, I did read them, and the bad reputation of the series is probably well deserved, at least from a mechanical standpoint. I don't recall ever incorporating anything from these books into my own games in the 5+ years I have owned them, although a few have some interesting flavor text and ideas. Granted, I may be missing some hidden gem in the series beyond those that I have read, so I can only speak for the eight titles that I own (listed below). It is also notable that some of the authors in this series also worked for WotC on official D&D products at some point in their careers, notably Mike Mearls (Quintessential Wizard) and Robert J. Schwalb (Q. Witch), so if you are a fan of their work, they might be worth having on that basis.
The books I actually own/have an informed opinion on are...
Book # - Class Focus
3. Cleric
4. Wizard (does have some amusing random mishap tables if that is your style)
6. Dwarf
7. Monk
8. Witch (Includes their version of the class)
9. Psychic Warrior (I think this is the 3.0 version, published 2002)
10. Druid
11. Samurai (Includes their version of the class)
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I own most of them.
They are interesting to read, and have plenty of imaginative ideas. The mechanics were mostly overpowered for the time - I'm not sure how they'd stack up after umpteen WotC 3.5 splatbooks raised the power level; possibly they don't look so bad today.
They used "balancing" techniques such as requiring Charisma 17+ before you could take the overpowered sorcerer feats, which annoyed me as it gave even more encouragement to maxing out your casting stat.
The rules content is available on the Grand OGL Wiki if you wanted to have a look.