Monte has updated his review for the reasons he mentions here:
http://www.montecook.com/arch_review26_add.html
The change is mainly an expansion of the positive comments Monte made. I pasted them here for ease of reference:
The Good Things
I'll start with the things I really liked. Some of these might cross the line I discussed above regarding the differences between revisions and editions, but let's move past that and take them on their own merits.
In no particular order:
* It now costs half as much for wizards to scribe spells into their spellbooks. The cost in 3.0 unfairly penalized the wizard for adding new spells to his repertoire. The 3.5 price allows the wizard to more adequately dwell on his strength, which is having a huge list of spells to draw upon. It took a lot of play to realize this, and I wish we had realized it earlier.
* Rangers and barbarians have more interesting abilities at higher levels. It comes as no surprise to regulars at montecook.com that I regret that we didn't spend more time in particular on the ranger. I've created two variant rangers myself. The 3.5 ranger shares a few things in common with my variant rangers, but also does some interesting new things. Basically, the 3.5 ranger can go off on two tracks-one for archers and one for two-weapon wielders.
* Bards have more of their own unique spells (and are a better class to play in general). Much like with rangers, I have felt in the past that the bard is somewhat underpowered. I don't think the bard was as bad off as the ranger, but he needed a bit of a boost. When I did a variant bard in Book of Eldritch Might II, I created a whole new subsystem for magical music. I said back then, though, that of course the Player's Handbook had no room for such a thing, even had I thought to do it way back when. The 3.5 designers did the next best thing, though, and gave the bard more spells unique to him such as glibness, song of discord, and sympathetic vibration.
* There are rules for special familiars like pseudo dragons. This is the kind of really interesting thing that makes D&D so great, and is, in my opinion, great DMG material.
* Sorcerers can change out their known spells when they become useless (or simply were bad choices). Not much more to say about this. It's just good.
* Druid animal companions advance as the druid does. While the druid could always get better companions, it's a better flavor issue to have the same ones advance, so that you can grow attached to them. It's more personal, and it synchs up better with the leadership/cohort rules.
* Githyanki and githzerai are in the Monster Manual. I'd wanted them in there in the first place, but they were saved for the Psionics Handbook. They're very interesting monsters and deserve to be right there in the D&D spotlight.
* Demons and devils are tougher. The big problem with fiends in 3.0 was that they had a lot of cool powers but didn't last long enough in the fight to use them. Now they are truly formidable foes.
* Monster skills and feats are more standardized. There were methods for generating monster skills and feats in 3.0, but they didn't work like characters and they all worked differently from each other, based on monster type. Now, I'm certain that the change was made to help facilitate monster characters -- monsters with classes -- but I like it more because it's more cohesive.
* Harm and heal are more balanced. Harm being the more broken of the two -- a real dragon-killer -- these spells now have level-based limits on how much they harm or heal.
* Blade barrier is now playable. It was a messed-up spell before, something that simply slipped through the 3.0 cracks. A clear goof on our part. And now it works nicely.
* Some potions are now oils, helping the logic of what can and can't be a potion. Again, clearly one of those things I would have liked to go back and do myself, this is all handled quite elegantly now. I was never satisfied with the fact that flavor issues -- based on what had and hadn't been a potion in 1st Edition and 2nd Edition -- unnecessarily narrowed the options for what spells could be made into potions. (Here's a "behind the curtain" secret about potions-nothing about the limiting of potions, price-wise, has anything to do with balance. It's all flavor. There's nothing unbalancing even if you wanted to make potions of magic missile. It's just weird.)
* The glossaries and indexes are even better. They just are. The glossary explanations can get a little wordy, but most of the additional verbiage is really helpful.
Now, you'll notice three things when reading the above points. First, these are some big issues, and they're all good. These good points not only outnumber my criticisms, but they are far more significant issues. Second, each of them points out a shortcoming of 3.0, which I worked on. They fix mistakes we made-that I made. Third, some of these good points contradict much of what I said above about the changes of 3.5 being too great and too pervasive. I still believe that to be true, but once you get past that matter of principle and simply look at each change on its own merit (as in, if they'd come about a few years down the road in a new edition rather than in a revision), they are demonstrably good.
