MV: Threats to the Nentir Vale in my hands

Erren · Jun 9, 2011

Just picked this up from my FLGS a few minutes ago. Happy to answer questions as I'm available.

The product comes in a sleeve of similar cardstock as the Shadowfell Box set. There's 8 sheets of tokens printed like the Shadowfell set (bloodied on one side with the name of the creature). There's a single poster map and the book itself is softcover (same binding as the Shadowfell book) and clocks in at 128 pages.

Dannager · Jun 9, 2011

I realize you've had it for a very short time, but what is your opinion on it? Is it worth the purchase if we liked the first Monster Vault?

Erren · Jun 9, 2011

I've barely flipped through it at this point. So far, I'm happy. The biggest drawback to me so far is the binding (hope you liked the Shadowfell book's binding), which I already complained about in another thread. That said, my Shadowfell book hasn't fallen apart yet, so I don't know that I really have any grounds there for being upset.

It looks like this is a fantastic product is you are looking for well-designed mid-late range heroic monsters. The highest level monster is 20, but support in general drops off after level 10. That said, the flavor/story elements are even more beefed up than they were in the original MV, which is a big plus for me. There's lots of gangs of various monsters (and humanoids) that are ripe for reskinning if your campaign isn't in the Nentir Vale.

I'm happy with my purchase.

Dannager · Jun 9, 2011

Oh, I know! What level and role is the peryton?

dangerous jack · Jun 9, 2011

How is the poster map?

Erren · Jun 9, 2011

Dannager said:
Oh, I know! What level and role is the peryton?

The Peryton entry has two monsters and is two pages (one page all fluff and the other page is mostly stat blocks). The "Peryton" is a level 4 skirmisher and the "Elder Peryton" is a level 6 elite soldier.

Both have the ability to pull creatures grabbed by them (no OAs), attack and grab at the same time (recharge ability), and mark a single enemy as their "prey", which gives them a bonus to damage that enemy.

They also both have an ability called "Feast" as an encounter power that targets an adjacent dying humanoid, kills it, and the Peryton gains HP. Very, very nasty!

Dannager · Jun 9, 2011

erren said:
the peryton entry has two monsters and is two pages (one page all fluff and the other page is mostly stat blocks). The "peryton" is a level 4 skirmisher and the "elder peryton" is a level 6 elite soldier.

Both have the ability to pull creatures grabbed by them (no oas), attack and grab at the same time (recharge ability), and mark a single enemy as their "prey", which gives them a bonus to damage that enemy.

They also both have an ability called "feast" as an encounter power that targets an adjacent dying humanoid, kills it, and the peryton gains hp. Very, very nasty!

Rad.

Erren · Jun 9, 2011

dangerous jack said:
How is the poster map?

Love it! Each side has two "areas" that look to me like new art. One is a large generic building that still shows about 3 squares of street around it, so your PCs won't feel constrained to stay inside neccessarily.

One is a generic outdoor wooded area with some hills and rocks.

One is an underground area with a small lake.

One is a marshy area with a few trees and small buildings.

The artwork on all four is top notch. Much more visually exciting than a similar size area made up of dungeon tiles in my opinion, though I'm a big fan of poster maps. Especially outdoor ones, as I like to use Hirst Arts stuff for my dungeons.

Aegeri · Jun 10, 2011

Wow, nothing in epic whatsoever. Minding I totally saw that coming so there is no point complaining about it. Either way the thing that interests me most is I am wondering if there is any published changes to the maths of monsters in the book. The three-headed dragon for example has 120 HP more than it should. When Matt who wrote the monster was quizzed on this he responses simply with "NDA", implying it might not be an error. So are there any updates to monster design guidelines in the book that might explain the maths differences?

What stand out monsters are there?

I'm getting a distinct feeling I'm not going to like this answer from your OP, but I'll ask anyway: What number of monsters are joining the already incredibly crowded heroic tier and how many are in paragon? From your previous description, I get this real impression the book has a heavy heroic tier (sigh) focus.

Colmarr · Jun 10, 2011

Erren said:
They also both have an ability called "Feast" as an encounter power that targets an adjacent dying humanoid, kills it, and the Peryton gains HP. Very, very nasty!

Now if that doesn't signify a change in design direction, nothing does.