Mongoose or Wizards..........

[philreed]

All Mongoose materials are pre-banned in my games.

"They'll have to wait outside."

"What?"

"Your Mongoose books. We don't use their kind here."

 

[S'mon]

Hm, I like Mongoose's style & fluff much better. I prefer their art too. Crunch balance is often poor, but I'm not sure it's worse than WoTC's (outside the PHB). I would go with whichever you prefer style-wise.

 

[Sammael]

"They'll have to wait outside."

"What?"

"Your Mongoose books. We don't use their kind here."

lolz.

If a player REALLY wanted to use something out of a Mongoose book and his sole reason wasn't munchkinism, I'd probably let them. But it's much easier this way.

 

[johnsemlak]

IIRC, all Mongoose 'quintessential' books are 3.0, but you better check this because they might have switched to 3.5 before the end of the series. The are also a couple of 'quintessential II' books but I know nothing about them. Quintessential books are one for each class (and one for each race), so the cost of the whole series is definitely higher.

There are quite a few 'quintessential II books, and they're mostly 3.5. Also, Mongoose done 3.5 updates for several of their Quintessiential books--theve' been printed in their in house mag Signs and Portents and they can be bought separately for a few bucks each at RPGNow.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Part of it dependso n who you play with. For example, many groups I've played in don't use anything unofficial.

Anotherp art depends on if you're looking for 3.5 or 3.0 material. All the Complete books by WoTC are 3.5. Most of the Quint are 3.0 with a few upgrades available. A bummer for the Psychic Warrior and Psion and Monk as they went through some changes in the 3.5 upgrade.

 

[DragonLancer]

I like Mongoose but their D&D books leave me rather cold. My recommendation is to go with the WotC sourcebooks, whose books are a lot more balanced and designed to fit in with the rules.

Whichever you go with, have fun.

 

[Li Shenron]

My experience with Mongoose books is such that I can never, ever recommend them to anyone. The ones I've seen are poorly written, poorly balanced, poorly edited, and poorly illustrated. All Mongoose materials are pre-banned in my games.

I agree about some editing and writing.

About balance, it really depends on the specific book. I thought Quint books were generally better than some Encyclopaedia Arcane for example.

About illustrations, it's hard to say. I don't remember the artwork of the Quints, but EA has a mix of very nice and very bad illos, but so has WotC (and when WotC picked the wrong main artist for a book, it really went bad...).

 

[Stormborn]

I have to say the Complete series. As another poster stated, the errors in the Mongoose books, especially the early ones, are just too egregious to recommend. The Complete books also provide additional classes that have seen support in other WotC material.

Although I would strongly recommend digging up Dragons #310-312 for class realted stuff, and subsequent issues.

 

[Psion]

Which WotC books are you talking about?

If I had to pick one series over the other:

WotC's Races series has the most fluff.

WotC's Complete series, though it has it's weaknesses, outshine the quintessential series when it comes to general balance,

buuuut

I don't beleive in series and company buying, and beleive that you would do well picking out specific Quint books. Quint Sorcerer, Monk, Wizard, and Rogue are all good books. Others have neat subsystems that you might find useful.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

The subsystems are what sell me on the Quints. I have not bothered with the Completes. For flavor I will take Mongoose, with all its editing problems, over the WotC class books. From the Quints I have gotten a lot of use out of the Rogue organization rules, the Wizard library rules, and the Open Mass Combat system in Fighter, and the Congregation rules in Cleric - enough to make me glad of the purchases, even if I never used any of the other crunch. (But I do use it, so...)

And weird as it sounds I find the lack of polish rather endearing in some ways, taking me back to the way I felt reading Judge's Guild supplements in the early 1980s.

The Auld Grump