John Cooper reviews MMIII, and finds loads of mistakes

The legendary John Cooper has given a lengthy review pointing out a surprising amount of errors in Monster Manual III. CHeck it out. It can make a useful list of errata

http://www.enworld.org/reviews/index.php?sub=yes&where=active&reviewer=John+Cooper&product=MMI

Wow, that mass of errors is quite amazing. After years of D&D 3.x, it still seems that WotC is not checking its products *sigh*

At least the list may speed up publication of a MMIII errata.

Wow, just wow. Reading that review, I am simultaneously filled with great respect and appreciation for John Cooper's rigorous reviews, and deep disappointment with WotC sloppy editing.

I was already on the fence about whether or not I should buy this book -- and that was based largely on the monster concepts shown in the previews: hey, more banal variants on existing monsters! More retreads of silly old 1st edition monsters that the Tome of Horrors does better anyway!

Add in a shoddy editing job, and I think I'll pass. Thanks, John -- I would have been pretty disappointed if I had bought this book.

For some reason I can't log in the reviews section, so I will make my one comment here.

The fact that phoelarches and phoeras always leave behind an egg after death (which becomes a brand-new phoera after 24 hours) means that the phoera population will always be rising and cannot normally ever decrease in numbers. Eventually, the world will be filled with these creatures...

Click to expand...

All you have to kill them permanently is destroy the egg. It is not like the firebats of 2nd ed. that were difficult to destroy and could take over the plane of fire.

I found some of his criticisms a bit nitpicky. For example, he's complaining that the gorilla-drider thingy has a bellybutton when it's supposed to lay eggs, or how the arrow demon is holding it's bows wrong. I dunno. I let that stuff slide.

...Although now that I look at his actual collection of stat errors, I'm a little disappointed. Then again, I have to put everything manually into E-tools for my games now, so it doesn't hurt me much.

Eh. I still like MM III, warts and all.

I'm keeping this short... and i am NOT flaming anyone, and not meaning in any way to start a flame war.


Just...

I have MM III myself. I read through it a couple times.
And sincerely, with all due respect for the effort put into the review, i cannot share at ALL the thought that finding all stat mistakes was
A) worth the effort
B) worth the attention.

Perhaps I value stats too little. But when I use a resource, like a Monster book, I use it for ideas. And I don't care if hit points are wrong by 2 or BAB is 1 lower than correct.

Am I alone on this....?

again, NO FLAME MEANT. If any of this was offensive, I kindly ask any moderator to delete this message and let me know at fabioghirelli@virgilio.it .

You were certainly not offensive; it's okay to differ. In fact, I agree with you on this. I like my monster books to be accurate, but I don't worry much about errors that don't affect my game one whit.

Anyways, excellent review.

I kinda agree with Naathez. It would be nice to be perfect, but none of these supposed mistakes are anything I would ever notice much during play. This is slide rule stuff.

Naathez said:

Perhaps I value stats too little. But when I use a resource, like a Monster book, I use it for ideas. And I don't care if hit points are wrong by 2 or BAB is 1 lower than correct.

Am I alone on this....?

Click to expand...

Well, you are and you aren't.

John Cooper is well known for giving rigorous but thorough and fair reviews. He certainly doesn't rank the book as bad. He gives it a solid 3/5. However, I suspect it would have been a 4/5, had WotC done their work.

Two things are at work, here. Yes, the editing mistakes are, for the most part, fairly minor. But there are a LOT of them. Far more than previous such books. When one considers that WotC has a history of bad editing on their products and that they took steps to correct it this comes as a dissappointment. Some of the mistakes are minor and silly, like forgetting to put the extraplanar subtype on a creature that obviously requires it. Some are minor, like a few missing hit points. Some are important, like miscalculating the DC for a creature's attack by 1 and messing up a creature's AC by 3 or even by 10 (Salt Mummy). That affects their use in the game, and some just weren't thought out too well.

That knowledge didn't stop me from buying it, and it won't stop me from using it. But WotC is the 800 lb. gorilla, and it can and should be held to a higher standard than a start-up with two small products to its name.