Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6154332" data-attributes="member: 2067">For me, it's also a matter of that information being relevant in play. I'm generally cool with adding a "dark fey" vibe to the critter (kills pixies and sells to hags, sure why not, it works),  but the bigger problem with the blurb is that it doesn't tell me how to use the thing in play. That's what I tried to capture in my version: here's what it's like to encounter the thing, to talk with the thing, to fight the thing. Some of that might be statblock-bait, but that's part of how the Monster Vault failed me as a DM, but how 2e's MM serves me well to this day. The Monster Vault isn't useful for actually running the monster as anything other than a combat encounter (though it's leaps and bounds ahead of the original 4e MM in terms of helping me plan cool monster fights to begin with). And it's important to note that aside from utility, self-conscious attempts to be "evocative" can so often go awry. The Ettercap works OK as an ally of the dark fey and the tormentor of pixies, but the "transforms into aranea-like critter" is pretty narmed. I'm reminded of how they want to turn Dire Corbies into Pazuzu's minions. They seem to be operating somewhat under a monster design scheme of "Lets smash vaguely physically similar creatures together to enhance cross-pollination!" without giving much thought to the ramifications of that idea on the feel of either of those monsters. Which is cool when ettercaps are working with hags, but facepalm-inducing when ettercaps are turning into magical spider-people  because they ate too much pixie dust. It's difficult to predict what will go one way and what will go the other when you're writing it.</blockquote>

Verification