Your favorite 3rd party rules

[infax]

My definetly preferred take on Monks would be that of "Beyond Monks" by chainmail bikini.

I greatly appreciated Mindscapes but for a totally different, and very compelling, take on psionics you could try Kenneth Hood's skills-and-feats variant. Its at http://www.darkshire.org/~jhkim/rpg/srd/sleepingimperium/ and is not really a third party but really nice rules.

 

[Pants]

True Ritual rules from S&S. I'm not too fond of Relics and Rituals, but the True Rituals? Those should've been incorporated into the core books.

 

[Wormwood]

Psionic Power Scaling from If Thoughts Could Kill.
Alt.Bard/Spellsongs from Eldritch Might 2
Reputation from Star Wars (not 3rd party, but it should count).

 

[Conner@Home]

This is slightly archaic, but my favorite third-party rule comes from Mongoose's Demonology: They tell you, clearly, that evil outsiders of 6 hit dice or more who die off-plane (from their native plane) are reborn on their native plane. That's something D&D has been hinting at forever, but we never once got a ruling on that. I'm glad somebody did give us one, and so well at that.

Interesting. So do you use this rule? If so, are all outsiders over 6HD subject to the same rules? It seems that what is good for the devil is good for the celestial...

 

[Dinkeldog]

Badaxe Games crafting breakdowns from Dwarves and the spell breakdowns from Elves. (I'm kind of biased there, though).

Mindscapes for psionics, with Mind's Eye added in.

 

[Nightfall]

True rituals and definately the ritual magic section of R&R plus the Tattoo Magic Item Creation feat. A lot better than FR's if you ask me.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm not a huge fan of the XP-for-powers schtick because it throws out of whack the EL/CR/party level formula a bit...and the Demonology thing takes away a lot of the risk factor for evil critters going away from home, so I'd wonder why the planes aren't rife with 'em. By the book, they don't reform, so that makes them stay at home more often...

The truly unique things from 3rd party (excepting feats, prc's, races, etc.) that I {heart} are:

1) Things I've devellopped. Deities, Final Fantasy classes, the Philosopher class....all fill a niche I like filled in my games!

2) Elements of Magic. The only way it could be more perfect was if it didn't basically destroy the role of the Sorcerer.

3) The new Mindscapes psionics...mmm, nummy...

4) The Arcana Unearthed 'spell proficiencies'....basically a feat-based spell system...delicious.

Those are about all the 3rd party stuff I use in my games.