Unhappy w/4E monster manual..3PP pls. publish monster books pronto!!

[Blair Goatsblood]

Scorpions that shoot lightning from their claws ...

Why not give them a surfboard and sunglasses as well...

 

[Kunimatyu]

Why not give them a surfboard and sunglasses as well...

Were they wearing loafers?

 

[Jack Colby]

Kruthiks? Banshrae? Swordwings? To me they're the Tojanada/Ravid/Phantom Fungi of 4E. They got no "traction" in my imagination.

Where's the frogs? apes? carnivorous dinosaurs? Less "unique snowflakes" and more meat and potatoes archetypical swords & sorcery beasties please.

This. Very disappointing selection in the MM. But I don't trust the current WotC to understand what fantasy really is all about, and am just waiting on 3rd party books at this point. I don't think WotC is capable of understanding, considering what's been done so far. Lame, lame, lame.

 

[jensun]

4e monsters are ridiculously easy to reskin into different forms. Simply decide what sort of monster type and level you want, pick an equivalent one out of the book, reflavour its powers and away you go.

Personally I would have been just as happy if the MM had a handful of example monsters in it and instead provided more detail on the monster creation process.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

There are definitely things I think are missing, but I actually really like that nonthreatening animals, or animals that just do not attack groups of adult humans, aren't present in the MM.

If anything, it seems more "real-world"...ohgodsimulationism

More real world?

Have you seen what one boar can do to a person? Forget orcs, an enraged boar that's half your height and twice your weight is horrifyingly scary, especially when you consider they've got armor in the head specifically to make sure you can't hurt it when it tries to gore you. And when you do hurt it, it doesn't back away, it just gets more pissed off.

People who talk about how fighting, say, bears, isn't scary, have never seen a bear. Those suckers hit nine hundred pounds, EASY. Nine hundred pounds! Those aren't even the biggest ones! They can bite through your skull and snap your neck with a paw.

And these are the normal, everyday, mundane Earth ones...

 

[Callowbran]

All this vitriol heaped against the MM is misguided. The book is awesome. The place it really shines is in the different varieties of the same type of monster -- you can easily "customize" the encounter by adding monsters with different jobs (i.e. strikers, artillery, minions, etc.)

I personally have no desire whatsoever to fight farm animals in my campaign and, thanks to the MM, I don't have to. (If I want to kill farm animals I can just go to the local petting zoo.)

 

[Draksila]

I'm personally hoping that the second MM has a greater selection of 'normal' animals. After all, they need data on the druid's usual woodland pals once that class becomes available, right?

 

[Pinotage]

Goodman Games has the answer:

Blackdirge's Dungeon Denizens.

It's probably not entirely what the OP was looking for, but it has some good conversions of a few older monsters. I wouldn't call most of these normal, though. You won't get the typical stable fantasy creatures in here, but it's a good start to getting more monsters. Aren't they bringing out a monster generator as well?

Pinotage

 

[Henry]

More real world?

Have you seen what one boar can do to a person?...

People who talk about how fighting, say, bears, isn't scary, have never seen a bear....

I do find it kind of funny that regular grizzlies aren't in the MM, nor regular boars, but regular hyenas are! I suppose a "cave bear" could be considered a regular grizzly (brown) bear, but they probably mean something a bit larger.

Either one could be easily modified to smaller bears -- say a grizzly or a boar could be level 3 instead of 6? Those things would still inflict horrific damage; the bear itself at level 3 still does 2d8+4 on a claw attack. (Errata pushed cave bears to 2d8 + 5 on an attack). Two or three swipes, and the fighter is going DOWN.

 

[Shemeska]

All this vitriol heaped against the MM is misguided. The book is awesome.

Yep. What with the recycled art, poor layout, and wasteland of flavor text, how could anyone find fault in its design? Hmm... yeah. Somewhere around page 1, the book derailed from what I would want in a MM, the selection of monsters being another quality that doesn't exactly fill me with a pressing need to buy the book and convert them back to 3.x.

The 4e MM dropped the ball on numerous points, but YMMV depending on what you're looking for I suppose.