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

[Pbartender]

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.

I'm always surprised how many people forget how to do this...

 

[Nebulous]

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.

I have to heap on the dislike for the 4e MM as well. Sorry. I like 4e in general, it does some stuff really, really well i think, but since monsters have ALWAYS been my favorite part of D&D since 1st edition, i wasn't pleased with how the 4e MM was handled. A lot of the art is totally crappy, and the lack of descriptive flavor text is nothing less than sickening. But, YMMV, as many people think that the 4e MM is impeccable.

Anyway, i've fiddled with a few homebrew monsters as well. We fought a retooled Inquisitor a few sessions back and it was quite fun. Use it if you want, i'll post it here. Note that he needs MANY minions to be fully effective. Our encounter used between twenty and thirty zombies.

 

[Drkfathr1]

I don't think it was a bad book, but it did leave me feeling slightly disappointed in what was missing. However, given how easy it is to create monsters in this edition, I feel pretty good about statting up whatever I need now. Like an earlier poster said, its very easy to re-skin most of the monsters to make them whatever you need them to be.

In a way though, its kind of sad for me, that the MM's will probably be less needed in this edition than they ever have been in any previous edition. They were always my favorite books in previous iterations of the game.

 

[Dausuul]

I wouldn't call the 4E Monster Manual a "bucket of fail." I think it's a big improvement over previous versions, in fact; just having out-of-the-box dragons is a major selling point to me. Still, I do want more monsters. I've been fleshing out my encounters with a lot of homebrew critters. I had similar problems with the Monster Manual in every previous edition; one MM is just not enough.

Fortunately, the DMG now contains a very solid toolkit for monster homebrewing, making the process relatively quick and easy. And I like homebrewing, so I don't mind for the most part. Even so, a third-party monster book would definitely get my attention.

 

[timbannock]

The lack of flavor and even - gasp! - basic descriptions of the monsters is easily the worst part. They spent all that time between 3.0 and 3.5 adding the italicized descriptions, only to take out. They included more ecology info by the end of 3.5 and a "MOnster X in Faerun" and "in Eberron" and all that, only to axe any and all of that stuff for 4e.

Very sad.

I do think the layout works, and the monsters are very versatile and easy to build on your own, but the 4E MM definitely took a step forward in those places, but two steps back in a few other areas.

 

[Nebulous]

The lack of flavor and even - gasp! - basic descriptions of the monsters is easily the worst part. They spent all that time between 3.0 and 3.5 adding the italicized descriptions, only to take out. They included more ecology info by the end of 3.5 and a "MOnster X in Faerun" and "in Eberron" and all that, only to axe any and all of that stuff for 4e.

Very sad.

I do think the layout works, and the monsters are very versatile and easy to build on your own, but the 4E MM definitely took a step forward in those places, but two steps back in a few other areas.

I know! The book made some advances, and for reasons i can't fathom, it stepped back a few notches as well. I don't see the need for any sacrifice. The font size in the book could have been dropped, and there is plenty of white space that annoys me to no end. And those Encounter Tables...I think they're worthless. Examples should have been in the DMG with the monster building stuff if they wanted to add that.

But yeah, making new monsters is easy. And reskinning, like others mentioned.

 

[ExploderWizard]

My name is Kamikaze Midget, and I endorse this message.


The 4e MM is a bucket of fail. I understand that 3PP's aren't happy with the GSL at the moment, and I can't blame them, so I'll just blame WotC for making a sucktastic MM and then making it very very difficult for high-quality 3PP's to fill the sucking chest wound at the heart of this edition for me.

(I'm not sure it needs to be pointed out, but, of course, YMMV -- some people love the 4e MM. I am not one of those people).

Yeah. Pretty much. The lack of variety is pretty dissappointing. Hey at least with fewer monsters you get more description and flavor with each one.....................oh wait, no you don't. OK so I just get the combat crunch, no problem these guys are just here to be killed anyway. Dragonshields? Cool. Lets see how those pesky players like being marked............hmmm what does it do?................flip.........flip............index.............flip. Hmmm. Whats this? Someone wrote in pencil "please see KOTS for effects".

Yeah, bucket of fail is dead on.

 

[Greg K]

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

This is the same problem that I had with the 95%+ of the new monsters that WOTC introduced in 3e and why I do not own MM3-MM5.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

MM is easily the lowest quality book of the three Core ones in 4e, and by far, as well. I'm pretty sure someone did a little poll regarding the three books and those showed the same results - even many of the big 4e fans admitted that the MM was the weakest.

 

[JeffB]

Yeah. I have my disappointments in the MM, and I feel it's the weakest of the corebooks by a large margin.

I really love the varied types of Orcs, Hobbos, Gobbos, Gnolls, etc. I use those types of creatures alot. But there is a serious lack of lowest level threats, some classics that were dropped, and alot of "silliness" I'll never use.

What is there that I would use, I really like, there is just very little of it in the book. Not sure I'd say "fail". I'd give it a D.

I don't mind the few pieces of recycled art, I notice some of them are the better Wayne Reynolds stuff- I really like his early 3.0/3.5 work- much better than the stuff I've seen recently from him.