Critter Cache #1: Big Bugs

One of the twists that 4e took that that went down a path I personally dislike, is the gimping of the Monster Manual. It’s not just in the core monsters like the Frost Giant that were left out. It’s in the nature of many of the monsters in the book that makes running low fantasy sword and sorcery more difficult than it needs to be.

One area this is especially true in is giant insects. In the previous edition, we have vermin. Now it wasn’t a huge section but it had giant ants, beetles, mantis, wasp, centipedes, scorpions, and spiders of various sizes. The new edition didn’t go quite that route. Instead of getting different sizes of scorpions, we got stormclaw and hellstinger scorpions. When some people scratch their head at the comparisons between 4e and video games, this is one thing I point them to. In this instance, D&D went from being a near all purpose game to a very specific game, more so than any previous edition.

In previous editions, if you didn’t like having mundane giant versions of vermin, you had dozens of templates and numerous expansions to work with. In 4e, templates have been vastly reduced in number and scope. In addition, the game, without expansions, is suffering in the number of monsters it has determined by encounter level.

Finally, another publisher has embraced the 4e game license to bring us monsters. While it’s not a hardcover bursting with full color images and awesome graphic design, it’s something more than that. It’s immediately useful and fills out a number of niches that were left by the design decisions in 4th edition.

The PDF is 17 pages but once you take out the cover, interior cover (table of contents and credits list), you’re down to 15. The last page, monsters by level, isn’t quite a waste as it’s useful information, but is definitely spaced out to fill the page. You also get that awesome logo of the official “Dungeons & Dragons” so that those few poor confused souls who couldn’t run say Sellswords of Punjar can take heart that this isn’t some weird OGL product but a full blown 4e product.

The art, by Jesse Mohn and Hunter McFalls, reminds me of the black and white line work common in the first edition games. It’s clean but detailed. I can tell what’s going on without being overwhelmed. My only wish would be that the monsters would have the illustrations with the stats as opposed to the ‘scene’ route that was taken. If you like the cover, by Jesse Mohn, you’ll enjoy the art of the book.

I’m not a PDF master but even I check for bookmarks. We get bookmarks to the main entry, bookmarks to specific entries. On my old 24 inch dell monitor, resolution is still clean at full screen capacity.

Graphic design is crisp and clean. Stat blocks look nice and tidy. The use the same color coding as the Monster Manual and the title lettering is very similar to the official font used for the official products. We get the name of the creature, the general overview, the specific gaming details, tactics, lore and encounter groups. Like in the core Monster Manual 4e, some of these groups make me smirk wondering how they got together. For example, you need some centipedes to challenge your 6th level group? How about some troglodytes with a few stenchcloud centipedes?

At seventeen pages, what do we get? The following; ant, beetle, centipede, crustacean, mantis, slug, wasp, and a monster by level breakdown. This translates into twenty monsters with a wide range of encounter levels, ranging from the deathstep centipede, a 1st level lurker, to the 15th level elite butcher beetle soldier.

Those names sound familiar? Yup, apparently, lots of inspiration taken from various sources like that old 3.5 book. Now mind you, I’d have loved to seen more bugs. Where are the spiders and scorpions? Where are the ‘weird’ ones like the ant lion and other favorites from the glory days of the 1st edition Monster Manual II?

My personal favorites here tend to be the giant sized versions of the mundane. Things like the giant slug and the giant praying mantis make nice breaks from some of the overly fantastic elements that have come to dominate the game. That doesn’t mean the author, Aeryn “Blackdirge” Rudel, feels the same however as we get some interesting beasties like the hellvenom hornet and the incubator wasp. The nice thing about that last one? We get a new ‘disease’ where you get jammed with some young and have to make some saves or suffer the old “Aliens” effect.

If you’re like me and want more monsters, and perhaps more importantly, less magical way out there ‘stormvenonblackfist’ style monsters, Big Bugs is hopefully the first of many such products to fill that need.