3e Fiend Folio

[the Jester]

Okay, we know it's focusing on fiends, including how to integrate them into the campaign, but will have other monsters of all types as well... does anyone know anything they can tell or wish to speculate on what's in that's old and what's up with the 3e Fiend Folio?

 

[Olive]

i remember Scott (form Necromancer/Creature Catalog) said that it wasn't going to be just another monster book, or words to that effect...

 

[Erik Mona]

I wrote about 15 monsters in the book. Most were reinterpretations of older monsters, but I did five or six new ones, at least one of which I'd call "significant." I think I deliberately chose to do more old monsters because I have such a fondness for the first edition critters in the old monster books. Other authors (if my memory serves) seemed to have more new critters than I did (which was fine with me).

Four of the book's authors work at Paizo Publishing (me, Dragon editor Jesse Decker, Dungeon editor Chris Thomasson, and Dragon editor Matt Sernett). We bounced ideas around all the time, and I think we had a sort of friendly competition to "outcool" each other that led to some really intriguing, really innovative monster designs.

Each of us wanted to design at least one monster that had as much "cool potential" as the drow, mindflayers, or githyanki, which means that each of us tried to design a monster that could achieve "iconic" status among the pantheon of D&D critters.

Time, of course, will tell whether or not we succeeded. Having seen most of the monsters in the book, I'd say there's pretty good chance we did.

--Erik

 

[Alzrius]

I've personally got my fingers crossed that this book will fill in the remaining "gaps" among the Tanar'ri, Baatezu, and Yugoloths.

Between the Monster Manual, Monster Manual II, Book of Vile Darkness, and Tome of Horrors, almost all of them have been converted to 3E, but a few in each group remain un-updated. I really really really hope those last few get converted to the new edition in the Fiend Folio.

 

[Sniktch]

That was a very good sales pitch, Erik. I'm there.

 

[Dragongirl]

But is that all it is? Another monster book?

 

[the Jester]

I wrote about 15 monsters in the book. Most were reinterpretations of older monsters, but I did five or six new ones, at least one of which I'd call "significant."
.....
Each of us wanted to design at least one monster that had as much "cool potential" as the drow, mindflayers, or githyanki, which means that each of us tried to design a monster that could achieve "iconic" status among the pantheon of D&D critters.

Time, of course, will tell whether or not we succeeded. Having seen most of the monsters in the book, I'd say there's pretty good chance we did.

--Erik

Wow, that sounds pretty cool to me... can you hint at the relative CRs of the creatures in there? I mean, are there more high-CR monsters? I'd hope so- there seems to be something of a dearth of them, although the MM2 really helped a lot... But having just designed an adventure that goes up to the verge of epic levels, I can say that your choices at high levels are very limited unless you add templates, advancement, and/or class levels to the mix.

 

[Sniktch]

But is that all it is? Another monster book?

Unfortunately, I seem to be addicted to these. MM, MM2, Legions of Hell, Armies of Abyss, Tome of Horrors, Monsternomicon, both Creature Collections, Minions, etc... I just love monsters

 

[the Jester]

Yeah, I have the MM, MM2, CC2, ToH... I could use a few more high CR challenges, that's for sure!

 

[Darrin Drader]

Unfortunately, I seem to be addicted to these. MM, MM2, Legions of Hell, Armies of Abyss, Tome of Horrors, Monsternomicon, both Creature Collections, Minions, etc... I just love monsters

Then you should definitely check out Liber Bestarius by Eden Studios and Monsters of Narrath for the Everquest RPG. Monsters of Narrath is really awesome because they didn't just create a bunch of new monsters and redo some of the old standbys from D&D to use in Everquest, but they also made several advanced versions of orcs, goblins, kobolds, and other monsters (What, a CR 17 kobold??). Also, the overall CR on the new monsters is fairly high, which makes this the perfect resource for a higher level D&D game.

The only issue I have with it is that some of the Everquest spells are named differently than D&D spells, so a few monsters have spells I've never heard of. I'm trying to get my hands on a conversion list so that I can quickly bring up a corresponding D&D spells for the ones they have them listed there. By and large, this is not a problem, thankfully.