D&D 5E Starter Set: Except 7

[SigmaOne]

Question: how long did it take the ogre to close those tiny buckles on his wrists?

I think they have nimble-fingered goblin slaves for that.

 

[Hussar]

It was mentioned that these are probably from the Bestiary, hence extra monsters. Monsters appearing in the adventure will probably have descriptions in the adventure. This leaves more room for more monsters.

Also, it only takes a Google search to see pictures.

Also, imagination. That was all we had back in the day. It's still the best tool we have today.

I'm not sure that asking for a couple of sentences to explain what the creature looks like when it's a completely made up monster with no actual mythical background is too much to ask. I mean, "Nasty, beastie with a giant eye for a face" isn't exactly breaking word count. And, as you say, these are extra monsters from the bestiary, so a new DM (or an old DM like me) has absolutely no idea what this thing is or what it looks like and no way to find out outside of starting to do some google searches.

I'm not saying we need page long monster descriptions, but, hey, throw me a bone here. Give me a sentence or two as to what the critter looks ike.

 

[Agamon]

I'm not sure that asking for a couple of sentences to explain what the creature looks like when it's a completely made up monster with no actual mythical background is too much to ask. I mean, "Nasty, beastie with a giant eye for a face" isn't exactly breaking word count. And, as you say, these are extra monsters from the bestiary, so a new DM (or an old DM like me) has absolutely no idea what this thing is or what it looks like and no way to find out outside of starting to do some google searches.

I'm not saying we need page long monster descriptions, but, hey, throw me a bone here. Give me a sentence or two as to what the critter looks ike.

It's in the adventure. Enjoy your bone.

 

[Sadras]

Question: how long did it take the ogre to close those tiny buckles on his wrists?

Damnit Halivar, you missed the opportunity.
The correction question is "How many ogres does it take to close those tiny buckles on his wrists?"

 

[Thaumaturge]

Yeah, I thought of it because of the character sheet where this is "fixed". It's just a minor detail though.

They mentioned in the Starter Set unboxing video that they deliberately didn't label the ability score boxes on the sheet for those of us who may want the ability score more prominent than the bonus.

Thaumaturge.

 

[Lord Vangarel]

I'm not saying we need page long monster descriptions, but, hey, throw me a bone here. Give me a sentence or two as to what the critter looks ike.

I agree, would someone know to google it? Short descriptions wouldn't have killed them.

As a starter set if this is a sign of what the MM will do then it's a tick against it. Hope I'm wrong on this one.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

As a starter set if this is a sign of what the MM will do then it's a tick against it. Hope I'm wrong on this one.

In the unboxing video for the Starter Set, Mike Mearls kind of goes on about how they had to trim the monster section for space because they wanted to keep the Starter Set very small. They said they mostly cut a bunch of art. He mentions a couple of times that the amount of art in the Starter Set is extremely low compared to something like the PHB since they were trying to bring it in under a page count.

I anticipate that the descriptions of the monsters will be longer in the actual MM and many will have pictures.

 

[Remathilis]

We also haven't read the remaining 63 pages in the module; it is entirely possible the nothic's description is in some flavor text in the adventure itself.

 

[Halivar]

Damnit Halivar, you missed the opportunity.
The correction question is "How many ogres does it take to close those tiny buckles on his wrists?"

In order to satisfy my requirement for consistent verisimilitude, the ogre should always come either with a pack of goblins, or with two other ogres wielding tweezers.

 

[delericho]

I agree, would someone know to google it?

Well, in fairness, people know to google all sorts of stuff. That said, relying on people using google to cover a weakness of your product isn't really a good policy.

As a starter set if this is a sign of what the MM will do then it's a tick against it. Hope I'm wrong on this one.

Actually, if anything it's more important that the Starter Set includes things that a new DM won't know. It's quite possible that many people picking up an MM know what all these monsters are already, and so descriptions and images are actually somewhat redundant; that's much less true for the Starter Set, for obvious reasons.

And having said that...

We also haven't read the remaining 63 pages in the module; it is entirely possible the nothic's description is in some flavor text in the adventure itself.

This is also true. The 'missing' image and/or description on that one page doesn't mean it's missing entirely. At this point, it's a cause for some concern, but not yet an indication of an actual problem.