Tovec
Explorer
As far as the Monster Manuals and even other monsters found in the random splat books the biggest problem I have is a lot of weaker creatures (or NPCs) and not a great variety.
More rules on how to make them or variants within the creature is welcome but not when it cramps the book - looking at you MM4. I'd like to see less pre-created creatures and more how to make them. Create a base creature and give loads of options to boost. This is something that has taken years of DMing to learn.
Creatures I have exception with:
Some Dragons - All the extra dragons beyond those in the MM1. I reuse all the coloured ones (sadly yes only the chromatic and not metallic) over and over in different places with different breath weapons or looks than they were written. This comes back to what I said before on giving us a base creature and then giving us options instead of making 12 different variations of the same creature at different levels.
Most Fiends - I love the written variety that exists in DnD myth but I have found many of the stat blocks don't reflect this. How many brute force or smaller summoning friends do we need? The interesting ones are the minor spellcaster with special status effects or big big bad (pit fiends) or special ability. There never seems to be enough of this second group.
Celestials - Same goes for fiends above as MOST celestials. All angels are the same, (L)G creatures who do good and love life and blah blah blah. The interesting ones are the guardinals who actually exist as races and have personality (I love my Leonals and Avoreals) and certain Eladrin - who became too elfy and way too many in later books.
Elementals and Giants - I love using both but they have the same problems as everything else with so many variants. Elementals are excellent but with each new splat book we get six different variants instead of seeing base elementals do everything they are a new type. Giants are slightly different, I get having lesser ones, like the hill, to be used as brutes or random encounters. And having larger ones, like cloud, who rule. It's like having wyverns (or drakes) vs having full dragons.
Most UNDEAD - OMG this is my biggest pet peeve. There are so many different types (and half-types) of undead in the expansions. I understand having a few types but there are just too many. I think there should be only: zombies (reanimated, typically controlled, fleshies, some want brains), skeletons (reanimated, weaker, always controlled), ghosts (pick a name if ghost doesnt work for you, refuse to move on, some have powers, medium types, stronger ones could be higher level creatures. After this give a few unique types; like liches, vampires and banshees but I don't need all the dozens of ghosts/zombies/skeletons that do slightly different things. (UNLESS: they are variants intended to be used on the base creature)
More rules on how to make them or variants within the creature is welcome but not when it cramps the book - looking at you MM4. I'd like to see less pre-created creatures and more how to make them. Create a base creature and give loads of options to boost. This is something that has taken years of DMing to learn.
Creatures I have exception with:
Some Dragons - All the extra dragons beyond those in the MM1. I reuse all the coloured ones (sadly yes only the chromatic and not metallic) over and over in different places with different breath weapons or looks than they were written. This comes back to what I said before on giving us a base creature and then giving us options instead of making 12 different variations of the same creature at different levels.
Most Fiends - I love the written variety that exists in DnD myth but I have found many of the stat blocks don't reflect this. How many brute force or smaller summoning friends do we need? The interesting ones are the minor spellcaster with special status effects or big big bad (pit fiends) or special ability. There never seems to be enough of this second group.
Celestials - Same goes for fiends above as MOST celestials. All angels are the same, (L)G creatures who do good and love life and blah blah blah. The interesting ones are the guardinals who actually exist as races and have personality (I love my Leonals and Avoreals) and certain Eladrin - who became too elfy and way too many in later books.
Elementals and Giants - I love using both but they have the same problems as everything else with so many variants. Elementals are excellent but with each new splat book we get six different variants instead of seeing base elementals do everything they are a new type. Giants are slightly different, I get having lesser ones, like the hill, to be used as brutes or random encounters. And having larger ones, like cloud, who rule. It's like having wyverns (or drakes) vs having full dragons.
Most UNDEAD - OMG this is my biggest pet peeve. There are so many different types (and half-types) of undead in the expansions. I understand having a few types but there are just too many. I think there should be only: zombies (reanimated, typically controlled, fleshies, some want brains), skeletons (reanimated, weaker, always controlled), ghosts (pick a name if ghost doesnt work for you, refuse to move on, some have powers, medium types, stronger ones could be higher level creatures. After this give a few unique types; like liches, vampires and banshees but I don't need all the dozens of ghosts/zombies/skeletons that do slightly different things. (UNLESS: they are variants intended to be used on the base creature)
