Best 3rd party sourcebooks

[willpell]

Just a little crowdsourcing here for my next Ebay shopping spree. Which non-Wotco 3E/d20/OGL products are highly regarded?

One I wondered about was called "Beyond Monks: the Art of the Fight" (or maybe the subtitle was Way of the Fist or something, not sure, but the main title I'm certain of). It claimed to have better martial arts rules, and we all know the monk could use some help.

My interest in campaign settings, such as Kingdoms of Kalamar, is minimal, unless they're very filled with adaptable ideas and not just geography/history crap that's useless to other settings. I'm looking more for stuff you can drop into any D&D game to shore up weak spots, and am not very interested in more spells or magic items unless they fill an extremely visible need. Normal items would be better, as would very basic "how did Wotco never think of this" kinds of feats, and anything else that's usable to round out the less well-fleshed-out archetypes that D&D main only hints at.

[gorfnab]

BoEF is interesting...

Secrets of Pact Magic (http://www.pactmagic.com/home.htm) is kinda cool. It gives a lot more options for Binding (Tome of Magic).

Dragonmech by Goodman games was a fun read.

Hyperconscious by Malhavoc Press is just great for Psionic characters.

[eggs]

I probably use the Tomes of Horror (old-school monster books) and Green Ronin's Advanced Bestiary more than any other monster books, and I'd second gorfnab on Hyperconscious/the pactmagic.com books being worth your time. I would add Dreamscarred Press's materials to that list, but you can check out their SRD and make the call for yourself. I'd call "interesting" generous for BoED though.

Of the more niche books that I give a lot of use, Fantasy Flight's "[whatever] Lore" books are solid monster spotlights (I especially like Twisted for the aberrations); Bastion's "Into the Green" covers jungle and woodland environments largely neglected by WotC's support; and White Wolf's Creature Collections aren't as great as the Tomes of Horror or Monster Manuals, but extra big monster collections are always useful.

[Othesemo]

Beyond Monk is wonderful. I highly recommend it.

I'm also fond of most of the AEG sourcebooks (Mercenaries springs to mind), though that might just be nostalgia.

[eggs]

I'm also fond of most of the AEG sourcebooks (Mercenaries springs to mind), though that might just be nostalgia.
Those are awesome. Magic is also great, but it needs enough tweaking that it should probably come with a warning tag.

[Prime32]

Seconding Hyperconscious + Dreamscarred Press.
Note that Hyperconscious was written by the creator of the XPH while Complete Psionic wasn't.

[Yora]

It was, but that doesn't change that Hyperconscious is still the second best psionics book, after the XPH.

[willpell]

Thanks for the advice, all, and feel free to keep it coming.

One thing I've definitely noticed in the course of my ebaying - the Drow appear to have more sourcebooks devoted to them than the rest of D&D put together. I counted not fewer than twelve different Drow-specific books during about five minutes of trawling.

[Psyren]

Note that the 3.5 DSP stuff is online for free (http://dsp-d20-srd.wikidot.com/) (legally) if you're on a budget. Hyperconscious doesn't seem to be, but my copy says it's OGL anyway.

[Tyndmyr]

My interest in campaign settings, such as Kingdoms of Kalamar, is minimal, unless they're very filled with adaptable ideas and not just geography/history crap that's useless to other settings.

Kingdoms of Kalamar is worthless. I own it, and wish I didn't.

Age of Mortals has some interesting stuff. It's not an especially good book, but it IS a cheap book. Paid $2 for my copy new. I feel like I got my money's worth out of it.

Mongoose books vary quite a bit. Some of the Essentials have fascinating ideas, and even some lovely mechanics. Some of them are drek. I suggest paging through them at a local game shop before buying, if possible.

There's an "Epic Monsters" book that I'd have to look up the publisher of. It's sadly a really generic name, but the actual book itself is pretty decent, and it has a lot of stuff that's not well covered in standard D&D(hell, epic monsters themselves are rare in D&D).

[Giegue]

While it is 3.0 and not 3.5e, the Encyclopedia Arcana series has some excelent content that really adds a lot of flavor to specialist wizards and other arcane casting classes where they would otherwise just feel generic. These books actually mannage to make specialist wizards seem mechanically unique without actually altering the class at all. Instead it just gives new feats, skills and options for arcane characters(not just wizards all the time) that makes them far less vanilla. With this seires two specialist wizards will play VERY different from one another based on specialty. My personal favorite ones where the books on Necromancy, Enchantment and a whole new style of magic based on Dragons(I forget the name of this one) but all entries in the seires are good.

If you like oriental D&D content then I HIGHLY sugjest looking into the D20 Rokugan seires and a little gem of a book called the Kitsunemori campaign setting. The former has lots of new options for the underloved classes of OA like the Shugenja, as well as a SLIGHTLY better(but still not great) ninja class and a fun class based on social skills/diplomancy called the Courtier.

The latter, Kitsunemori, However, is one of the most beautiful peices of 3rd party work I've seen in a while. Unlike standard 3.5e OA and Rokugan which kinda throws Japan, China and sterotypical oriental cliche's in a blender to create it's own setting Kitsunemori is actually VERY accurate to Japanese mythology and is probally the best take I've seen on an Oriental setting for 3.5e D&D. It has great rules for the Kitsune and their brand of magic and does very well at slightly tweaking the mechanics of exsisting D&D classes to make them conform to the Japan-inspired setting of the book. It's a difficult thing to do an OA setting accuarly and Kitsunemori mannages to capture the mythology and magic of fantasical Japan better then pretty much every other OA-type book. Well worth the price it fetches if your into oriental D&D.