Is anybody else out there annoyed that Wizards of the Coast decided to change the rules from 3E to 3.5 for no apparent reason? Like killing off the "Beast" type, making "Shapeshifter" a subtype instead of a type, and a bunch of other similarly pointless rules changes! What in the name of the Nine Hells was wrong with the rules as they stood? I say, if it ain't broke - don't FIX it!!! I was so annoyed, in fact, that I have stopped buying new D&D books... why should I buy books that are only SEMI-compatible with what I own? And the quality of the material has gone down, too... The Book of Exalted Deeds got the names of the Guardinal leaders all wrong except for Talsid, and changed a bunch of stuff... The Abbysal lord statistics in Fiendish Codex 1: Hordes of the Abyss are pitiful; I could SNEEZE and kill some of these guys! The Book of Vile Darkness gave them DECENT stats, so why the whimpification? Likewise with Codex 2: Tyrants of the Nine Hells! If the Lords of the Nine were REALLY this weak, Baator would've been cleaned out by paladins a LONG time ago... Am I wrong?
3.5 vs. 3E
I think the switch was a bit of a nusance and not entirely nescesary, but the two systems are baisicly compatible with each other. I use both 3.5 and (some) 3e material without many problems.
We combine both 3.0, 3.5, Planewalker feats ^_^ and some common races we've converted from 2nd edition so that their level adjustment is never higher as one and so they resemble races from second edition.
For example: bariaur females favored class is wizard, male's is ranger ; females have intellectual racial bonuses, males have brawny racial bonuses.
Stuff like this is also changed: githzerai aren't intelligence impaired and aren't scaly monsters from Babilon 9, but have a small magical/psionic resistance.
A lot of 3.0 rules benefited with some changing. At least with 3.5 damage reduction means something, and it isn't the race to get the biggest magical bonus which I didn't like.
Beast was a useless type, vague in it's definition, I hated the distinction that an animal is a beast, if it isn't currently alive in our world. Of course they should have gotten rid of the giant type while they were at it, because what is a giant but a big humanoid...
Now yes there is a bunch of things about PS races that I don't like what they did in 3.5e. Some like the bariaur I don't care too much about, others like tieflings with charisma penalties and githzerai with intelligence penalties, I end up dividing them into subraces.
There's the Hralar/High Githzerai who are:
+1 level adjustment
medium humanoids
+2 int, +2 dex, -2 str, -2 wis
PR 5+level
Psi-like abilities 3/day: far hand, catfall, minor creation. 1/day at 10th level Plane Shift
2 bonus power points
Darkvision 30
Favoured class: Wizard or Psion
And there's the Mra'Lai'eth/Monastic Githzerai who are the ones described in the XPH. They're a separate 'caste' of Githzerai created by psionic manipulation from Githzerai geneticist to be good warriors.
The tiefling from the MM are simply Infernal Tieflings, there are Abyssal Tielflings and Gloom Tieflings.
To give the folks who wrote F.Codex I some credit (as they are Planescape friendly authors themselves) they had intended for the stats presented in the book to be *avatar* stats, not the actual Abyssal Lords. Apparently in the course of editing those lines were removed. As far as they're concerned... the actual Lords should be much more powerful or neigh un-statable.
As for the switch from 3.0 to 3.5 - I can see some of the argument for it, but I think the flaws in 3.0 are fairly small, and not worthwhile of the switch.
Re: the BoED - apparently the author for that section just found it to hard to "get hold of the old planescape books to read through them", as admitted in his chat room QnA sessions. Nevermind that as a WotC writer he had access to the product library, or that you know - he could have just *asked*.