What do you want from the Monster Manual?

[Arlough]

1) Art. Good art. New art. Not rehashed.

2) Fluff. Good fluff. Maybe some new/revised fluff. But yeah, not on the "classic" monsters. Change for change's sake is NEVER desirable.

3) Included in the fluff, a few tidbits that I might be able to hook an adventure off of. This includes things like eating habits/preferred diet, culture (if any, human-/goblinoids mostly, obviously), preferred environment or terrain, attack patterns/tactics (if any). None of it has to be lengthy or overly detailed. But enough that if I don't want to customize it (for those times one just needs a "polar-snow-owlbear" or "desert-dwelling camel-satyrs"), I don't have to.

4) I would ESPECIALLY like one of those silhuoetted "size" charts like I've seen in the pages of someone's bestiary/menagerie book. Show me what the creature actually looks like beside a human figure. Telling me something is "large/huge/colossal" means different things to different people. Being able to show the players "This is the behemoth....and thiiiis itty bitty bit here, is you." Even things like "7' gnolls or 9' ogres" take on a totally different slant when you can see what that actually looks like beside an average human (esp. for everyone playing smaller than human races!) It automatically gives the combat/encounter a drama and urgency that even my best verbal descriptions can't evoke.

5) The crunch. The "stat block." As bare minimum as I need to play the game...What's its HD, AC, number of and damage from attacks, perhaps a "number appearing" i.e. whether it is a social/solitary/herding/swarming/etc. creature, Special Abilities and/or Defenses (Magic Resistance would obviously be necessary for certain things)...I think that's about it. Optional/module rule extras tacked on the side/sidebars will, I imagine, be necessary...for whatever modules they offer out of the gate.

Aside from the art, which I have had no problem with since 3.x, I agree with all of this.

I'd like to see some of D&D history worked thru the book. I'd love to have each monster with a "First appeared in. . . " line. Some things I'd really like to see recycled art - particularly if an edition really nailed it. When I close my eyes and thing goblin, I get the 1e MM line drawing in my head. It would be cool if there was a bit of retrospective in the book.

I'd also like to see a batch of free standing powers/abilities/attacks you could add to any monster. Just a couple pages that you could use to spice things up.

PS

The history I would rather see as a supplement for those interested. I already feel I have to buy a lot of stuff I don't want in my RPG publications, I would rather D&D not go back to that.
As for the add-on powers & the such, I would like to see that with thematic groupings and power evaluations (so you could flip to the "battle enhancement" section and add a an ability to make your Orc an Orc Shaman, or the "heavy assault" section and make my Kobold into a Kobold Berserker) and know about how much more difficult the fight should become as a result.

Fast and quick monsters are fine but to actually get the most out of a Monster Manual it would be easier to have a basic mold of each creature along with a long list of options to customize that single into other types.

Let's say you have 10 creatures in a MM. Now let's say there are 5 ways to customize each one, suddenly you have 50 different creatures etc etc....

This would be similar to my preference. A cookie cutter monster for demonstration, but then a stat block that has the math in it so you can make it whatever level you want, and a list of abilities you can add so you can make it whatever variant you want.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I personally have rather controversial views on the subject. I've got a PDF of a quick mock-up of what I might like an MM entry to look like attached to the post.

I think it's time we get rid of the idea of "an alphabetical compendium of a random assortment of things to fight in combat," and focus on making a book that is about varied use at the table, rather than statblocks.

To do this, I would first say that we need to get several antagonist groups to serve as the main entries for the MM. So we might have Kobolds, and Goblins, and Drow, and Orcs, and The Assassin's Guild and The Lich-King, and whatever else. You might have monster groups, antagonist groups, even environments: "The Spiderwood," "The Church of Asmodeus," or "The Volcanoes of the Red Dragon." The assumption must be, however, that these are creatures and organizations and villains and settings that can anchor an entire adventure, an entire night of gaming. Thus, we don't need an entry for "Bears" or "Rats" or "Fly, Giant" or "Mammal." These creatures (and their stats) can be part of the MM, still, they just should be in support of a creature that has more....adventure juice. Don't make an entry for "spiders," put spiders in with the Drow entry, or in with the Spiderwood entry (or subtly different spiders in both!).

An Index would be useful in this format if you just wanted to quickly look something up at the table, but overall this makes the book much more useful: you don't have to flip between Spiders and Drow and Elf and Drider, and the Poison rules, and the Webbing rules...you have it all, right there, as part of the "Drow" entry.

This MM basically says to you, "Hey. We see you like to use Monster X. Here's all the support you may ever need in one place for Monster X. Have fun."

Each entry might, with some illustration, and a map, and several stat blocks for creatures and hazards and traps and environmental dangers, clock in at about 5-10 pages -- each "anchor" might be an entire chapter. But those 5-10 pages, I think, will be a lot more useful to a DM at the table than 5-10 pages of random mating information about a random alphabetical assortment of haphazardly arranged creatures.

It is essential that this kind of MM include support for all three pillars for each "chapter." Kobolds should not just be a stat block, they should be a usable in combat, in exploration, and in interaction.

The views are controversial because people are very wedded to the "Encyclopedia of Random Critters" format. It's just not a tremendously useful layout for the playing of the game, when linked creatures and threats that I need in running the adventure are stretched out over three books and twelve random pages.

It is much better, IMO, to be able to say, "Tonight, the kobolds will steal some chickens!" and to turn to the Kobolds page, and have everything you need for dealing with kobolds and their chicken-stealing ways. Traps, creatures, allies, society, outlook, tactics, lair info, treasure, whatever. All in one place.

If you need help writing it, WotC, I can offer my services.

 

[Steely_Dan]

As for the orc issue, yes, give me Orc, I can go from there (even though I usually don't, unless I run a MIddle-Earth campaign).

I am not advocating 3rd Ed's laborious monster building process.

 

[AngryMojo]

Five pages of different kinds of orcs? Even 3 is too many. No. Noone needs that.

But plenty of people want that, and having multiple different types of orcs supports a larger number of playstyles.

Best I can tell, most people want three different things in their monsters; brief stats that are easy to incorporate, multiple versions of a given monster to grant variety or a full and robust system of monster crafting to customize to a given need. I see no reason why the Monster Manual can't support ease, variety and customization in the same book.

I'd like to see large categories of monsters, like orcs, have a basic "warrior" profile along with a few examples of "advanced" specimens and guidelines (not rules) for making your own variations. This way those who just want basic orcs have basic orcs, those who want multiple orcs have multiple orcs, and those who want to make their own orcs can make their own orcs.

While we're at it, go ahead and put in the orcs that instant die from fireballs and die by droves as a single, brief statblock. Add in a page of story-information with some evocative art and you'll cover everyone's bases. I'd rather WotC put in too much optional information about a monster than not nearly enough. The more information you have, the more playstyles you include, but assuming you only need a minimum of information takes more detail oriented players and leaves them out in the cold.

Granted this makes for a very long Monster Manual, but I don't think it's going to be feasable to make the "big tent" RPG WotC is aiming for without some very large books.

 

[GX.Sigma]

The "no. encountered" and "treasure" lines. I miss those.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I'd like information like what we used to see on the old "Ecology" articles in Dragon magazine. These gave things like psychology, culture, what they avoided, what they ate, maturation, how they hunted, what they feared, where they slept, and so on.

These gave me lots of ideas about how the PCs could interact with the monsters other than "kill, kill, kill!" and added a lot of depth to encounters. Frex, even for the stuff you did need to kill, it helped to know that Monster X would have it's egg in Y location and would move to defend that location if PCs moved between it and the egg even if that wasn't a tactically optimal move.

Those articles were fun to read too.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Let's say you have 10 creatures in a MM. Now let's say there are 5 ways to customize each one, suddenly you have 50 different creatures etc etc....

Certainly possible... a single kobold entry with a basic melee and basic ranged attack, followed by a list of 10 different special attack maneuvers you could add to it to make them different.

But the big issue comes with the numbers themselves. Should some kobolds have different HP amounts? Different defense numbers? Should an Elite kobold's attacks and damage be higher? Should adding a theme change any of those numbers?

If the answer is 'Yes'... then I for one want a whole stat block where all that math is done for me, rather than a list of modifiers underneath that single kobold entry that says 'to make the kobold a sorcerer, add the Burning Hands and Shield spells, subtract 5 hit points, raise Wisdom and Charisma defenses by 2 and increase Initiative by 3.' That just makes things MUCH too unwieldy than simply just making a second stat block and losing a couple paragraphs of "ecology"...

...especially considering most ecology ends up being exactly the same information that has been written in all previous monster manuals, thereby providing no new info that most players don't already actually have access to several times over.

 

[Stormonu]

The posts here have got me thinking a lot about what I'd like to see. Sadly, KamakazieMidget's ideal is everything I wouldn't want to see in a MM.

Beyond that, I'd like it to look like a cleaned-up, modernized version of the 2E Monster Manual. Monsters that don't have to be built as in 3E (so everyone can argue how the math or skill list is "wrong"). An entry for anything that you'd have to put more than a few minutes work (say, a template for humanoid chieftain, whole new block for a shaman).

Abilities shouldn't be restricted to only what the creature can do in combat, but I don't want to be buried under spell-like abilities for every little thing either. Likewise, I don't want to be hunting through paragraphs for rule tidbits. Put the rules stuff together in terse sentances near or in the statblock (this is aimed at 2E).

Also, I'd like to see an ecology and lore block where possible - preferably with short adventure hooks. Something I might like to see in a dinosaur entry might be "Bugbears sometime raise raptors for tracking an hunting prey. In combat, a bugbear beastmaster may unleash a team of raptors against a enemy to soften them up or spread dissent into an enemies ranks." Nothing fancy, nor the need for a special "beastmaster bugbear" statblock. Now, I can just use this tidbit to put together a bugbear warrior holding the leash to 4-5 raptors;perhaps making it part of a larger encounter.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

With luck the stat blocks will be small. If so, I want to see a default creature and rules for applying templates, but I would also like some of the more useful templates already applied.

So, there might be several orc stat blocks, but not every possible stat block. Perhaps an online tool could handle others.

I want a lot of fluff, hooks, and encounter examples. I don't mind fewer monsters if the ones that are there are more fleshed out.

Also, I have no problem whatsoever with the reuse of good art. Particularly if that allows for multiple images for some monsters without increasing the cost of the product.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Sadly, KamakazieMidget's ideal is everything I wouldn't want to see in a MM.

It is a controversial idea.

Is the objection systemic (e.g.: the entire format doesn't work for you for some reason) or specific (e.g.: you want to see the rules material called out a little more blatantly)? It's a pretty raw idea, so I'm interested in refining it, and finding out what its real weaknesses are.