D&D 5E Volo's Guide to Monsters - Which monsters do you want to see?

[Demetrios1453]

I'm curious to see what the CRs for the archdruid and blackguard will be, especially the latter. A nice high CR blackguard would make for an interesting overall campaign villain.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Looking further on the Fantasy Grounds page:

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/store/product.xcp?id=WOTC5EVGM

The last picture shows various beholder types. I'm familiar with all of them other than the "gazer", and doing Google searches isn't coming up with anything more than showing homebrewed stuff and unhelpfully telling me that "beholder" and "gazer" are synonyms. An exhaustive list of beholder variants on Wikipedia doesn't include it either. Any idea what it may be? Perhaps they've renamed another of the variants, perhaps one of the higher CR ones like the Elder Eye or Hive Mother?

 

[Parmandur]

Street date has been broken, there is an AMA on Reddit with somebody who has the book, including a pic of the ToC; lots of interesting, old school weirdness going on. NPC seem to include one template for each Wizard subclass, and a "Warlord."

Xvsrt, Firenewts, Girallon, Vegepygmy, Meenlock, Mokroth, Darkling, Quickling, Spawn of Kyuss, Tlincalli, Korred seem particularly interesting...

 

[gyor]

Tlincalli are manscorpions, cool.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Ok, those last two posts have me overjoyed. Virtually all those monsters are ones I wanted in!

Quicklings and vegipygmies especially. And I am truly surprised and delighted that xvarts got in!

Do you have a link for that? I did a quick Google search as well as the Reddit dndnext page and didn't see it.

 

[Parmandur]

imgur.com/spXydR0 should do the trick; the link was removed from Reddit already, at WotC request.

 

[gyor]

Street date has been broken, there is an AMA on Reddit with somebody who has the book, including a pic of the ToC; lots of interesting, old school weirdness going on. NPC seem to include one template for each Wizard subclass, and a "Warlord."

Xvsrt, Firenewts, Girallon, Vegepygmy, Meenlock, Mokroth, Darkling, Quickling, Spawn of Kyuss, Tlincalli, Korred seem particularly interesting...

WotC cracked down on the AMA, stupid, its already too late.

 

[Demetrios1453]

imgur.com/spXydR0 should do the trick; the link was removed from Reddit already, at WotC request.

Thank you very much for that link.

As a result, I am fully hyped for this book now.

I am just shy of 100% happy with the monster line up. My only real complaint is that gibberlings are absent, but that's really minor compared to what did get in. I was pretty well resigned to no gem dragons or updates to the main outer planar races, especially celestials, but I know those are likely being reserved for future books of this type - the psionic and/or dragon one and the planes one respectively - and the inclusion of a few demons did placate me a bit on that front.

Quicklings got in. That alone gives the book a 50% bonus on my personal appreciation index.

The dinosaur selection is excellent! They filled in every niche that was missing in the MM, actually giving us both small predators I was wanting, and even threw in dimetrodon (though technically not a dinosaur) to boot.

Not only did xvarts get in, they get a variant, and one that references their deity. I wonder if they will be covered in the goblinoid section? One of the previews mentioned that they have a four-tier social system, so slotting them in as the fourth goblinoid race makes sense...

I'm really liking the number and variation of all those NPCs.

Ugh, is it Friday yet? I want this book soooo badly...

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I wanted to see Tasloi in the book, but it looks like they weren't in that leaked TOC.

 

[Parmandur]

Thank you very much for that link.



As a result, I am fully hyped for this book now.



I am just shy of 100% happy with the monster line up. My only real complaint is that gibberlings are absent, but that's really minor compared to what did get in. I was pretty well resigned to no gem dragons or updates to the main outer planar races, especially celestials, but I know those are likely being reserved for future books of this type - the psionic and/or dragon one and the planes one respectively - and the inclusion of a few demons did placate me a bit on that front.



Quicklings got in. That alone gives the book a 50% bonus on my personal appreciation index.



The dinosaur selection is excellent! They filled in every niche that was missing in the MM, actually giving us both small predators I was wanting, and even threw in dimetrodon (though technically not a dinosaur) to boot.



Not only did xvarts get in, they get a variant, and one that references their deity. I wonder if they will be covered in the goblinoid section? One of the previews mentioned that they have a four-tier social system, so slotting them in as the fourth goblinoid race makes sense...



I'm really liking the number and variation of all those NPCs.



Ugh, is it Friday yet? I want this book soooo badly...

Yeah, the guard drake and the Kobolds are the only dlDragon-y bits; given that anything with "Dragon" in the title is a big seller, dollars to donuts if this book is a success, we get "Volo's Guide to Dragons" by the end of 2018, including Gem Dragons and the extra Chromatic and Metallic types with full ecologies; maybe even 5E version of the "Council of Wyrms" rules for playable Dragons?