Thomas Shey
Legend
3rd edition did have a lot of unbalanced stuff but the stated design goal of the developers was they were just throwing stuff out there and the DMs were expected to manage thier own games and it's balance. It wasn't until 4e and PF that this idea of the game balancing itself came into being
They sure didn't state it in the game, and frankly, with some of the material the only balance possible would have been to outright discard it. And frankly, I'm not sure I believe everyone was on the same page there or bothering with the CR system and Level Adjustment seems perverse.