Monster Manual: How Much Cut?

I have a crazy thought when it comes to the Monster Manuals. What about releasing them by challenge? WotC says that things are different, so it will be easier to just start from level 1. Well, release the first MM with lower level creatures, and throw in the iconics. You now have a lot of stuff to pull from for quite a while. Next year's MM could have a new chunk of more powerful monsters.
If the first MM has stuff for the first 10 levels, that would be a lot of stuff that people could use for quite a while. The next MM could be for levels 10-20. It just a crazy idea. The alternative involves looking at the 3.5 MMs. Few of those books had any sort of theme. Random monsters thrown about. Some were CR 1 while others were about CR 20. If you wanted to use certain monsters for 15th level characters, you had to have all of those books at the ready. Heaven help you if you wanted a group of goblins to include some dragonlings. Shenanigans, I say.

Wormwood said:

I wonder---are the Umber Hulk and Beholder classics because they've been played for 30 years, or have they been played for 30 years because they are classics?

Click to expand...

I would obviously say the latter. They both have remarkable and interesting abilities, and don't really just seem to be a "rip-off" of any mythological monster. Indeed, they're so together that they kind of develop their own mythology. Not every random aberration does this. Even if Yrthaks were in the original 1E MM, I don't think we'd say "Cool, a Yrthak!". They're not threatening or exciting or bizarre in a good way, they're just ODD.

Ehren37 - Pretty pointless arguing specifics, as I've said quite a few times now. I would keep Chaos Beasts and Aranea and a few others myself. I list them because I don't think lots of people would. I'm sure we'd all keep a handful of the monsters I listed. I just think that handful varies wildly, and we can't keep all of them in MM1 and do them justice.

As for "why a bear", well, if we're going for that level of "extreme", Dark Sun-style fantasy where normal creatures don't exist, sure, cut animals and replace them, but that's all you're really doing, replacing them with something less familiar.

I don't think it's sensible myself. A Bulette needs a lot more explanation than a bear or other animal, and most GMs will use it's statistics less often. I'm all for putting the animals in a big block, or using semi-generic stats, like Lizard suggests.

I do tend to agree with the suggestion from Engilbrand that later MMs might want to be higher average "level", but that's always been the way in D&D, pretty much.

Lizard said:

When a sorcerer in the game had a cat familiar that she constantly sent out to spy and otherwise engage in the kind of activities where hide, move silently, and balance needed to be rolled?[1]

When a druid shapeshifts into a cat? (Or any other mundane animal?)

Etc?

Click to expand...

If the reason for most animals to be in the MM is because they are or could be useful as reference to class abilities, well, THAT'S a reason for them to NOT be in the MM, but in the PHB or DMG.

I want the MM full with useful and cool interesting monsters.

Wormwood said:

I wonder---are the Umber Hulk and Beholder classics because they've been played for 30 years, or have they been played for 30 years because they are classics?

Click to expand...

The latter; otherwise, flumphs and other 1e creations would now be classic. Beholders, etc, survived the culling process which claimed the flumph, the piercer, and white apes of Mars because they had a Cool Factor which other monsters did not.

(I do miss the various "evolved for graph paper " monsters like piercers, trappers, etc, but I also acknowledge the game has moved beyond "things which exist to screw the players" and don't mind seeing them in third party books or online supplements for us grognards.)

We have no reason to believe that dragons have 12 different age categories anymore, do we?

Voss said:

I want to see the cheesy stuff go, particularly the aberrations. acid spitting thing, flying sonic thing, weird flesh pulling off the skull cat thing. Things of that nature.

They're just... silly.

Click to expand...

LOL, the krenshar was the first thing to enter my mind as cutting room fodder as well.

IanB said:

We have no reason to believe that dragons have 12 different age categories anymore, do we?

Click to expand...

I don't know if WotC has made a specific statement regarding it, but I'd be pleased as punch if there were Large, Huge, Gargantuan, and Colossal versions of each dragon, conveniently aligned with age categories, and that was it.

ainatan said:

Maybe they'll cut dinosaurs, vermim, lycanthropes, animals and dire animals, or just simplificate them a lot.
I wouldn't care neither way.
Animals and vermim always felt to me as the boring necessary part of MM.

I want dragons, goblinoids, undeads, demons/devils, aberrations and other unique and colored creatures.

Click to expand...

This is what I want to see:

Animals: 2 pages. Table containing HP/attacks/damage/defenses/XP/etc. Table with selectable abilities (rend, trip, hug, etc.) followed by descriptions. Build your own animals in 30 seconds or less. Dire animals no longer exist because they're built using the same table than animals are and it's up to the DM to determine whether he just built a regular bear or a dire wombat. Dinosaurs use the same table.

Vermin: 1 page. Table with stats as above. Table with poison. Maybe a second page containing swarm rules and a few special attacks.

Hell, in either case you might not even need the base table if you just use the basic Brute/Skirmisher/etc. tables that they're supposed to be providing. Just classify animals in terms of the special attacks they get, and leave it at that.

The name of the game: eliminate redundancy, especially in places where you have multiple-page blocks of creatures without unique flavour. Just tell me how it differs from a table-generated Brute, and let me build it. Maybe give a couple examples for convenience.

Dr. Awkward said:

The name of the game: eliminate redundancy, especially in places where you have multiple-page blocks of creatures without unique flavour.

Click to expand...

That's what I'm talking about.
Rulewise, a tiger is just a bigger cat, with higher level. Do we really need different stats for house cats, tigers, lions, panthers, etc, wasting space in MM?

Real world animals are simple creatures comparing to most monsters in D&D, I believe we'll be able to make up stats for them using the same guidelines for the other monsters real easy.

Ruin Explorer said:

Ehren37 - Pretty pointless arguing specifics, as I've said quite a few times now. I would keep Chaos Beasts and Aranea and a few others myself. I list them because I don't think lots of people would. I'm sure we'd all keep a handful of the monsters I listed. I just think that handful varies wildly, and we can't keep all of them in MM1 and do them justice.

Click to expand...

My point was the list ditches the fantastic to keep the bland. I view most of the humanoids as needless. Gnolls for instance, may as well be called "+1 orcs" and bugbears "+2 orcs". Create an entry for medium humanoids thats easily scalable and call it a day.

As for "why a bear", well, if we're going for that level of "extreme", Dark Sun-style fantasy where normal creatures don't exist, sure, cut animals and replace them, but that's all you're really doing, replacing them with something less familiar.

Click to expand...

I'm talking a basic, thought out fantasy world. Not a sham fantasy like Greyhawk, which is basically europe with fantasy elements slopped in without thought. If monsters are half as common as the material would have you believe, then no, I'm not sure what the hell a lion's niche is on plains filled with wyverns, ankhegs, etc.

Most animals can be boiled down dramatically. Do we really need entries for both hawks AND eagles, or tigers AND lions? Not really. Hell, I'll take a tojanida entry over a deer entry.

I guess my issue is that anytime someone suggests cutting something, its always a fantasy creature, to make room for the most bland crap. I coudl care less that the frost giant wont be in the monster manual. It was just a palette swapped fire giant, who was just a reskinned stone giant, who was just a hill giant in drag. As goofy as the krenshar is, at least it DOES something.