A Better Monster Manuel

[Glade Riven]

I'll admit that an index that said which of the monsters had PC racial information would be a nice thing for the Bestiary to have, but it's not like you can't find that information fairly easily online.

Doesn't do any bit of good if the internet isn't avalible and I need to go digging through PDFs or books that I don't have memorized.

 

[Knightfall]

Traps, hazards, and general dungeon design belong in the DMG of the Book or Challenges.

Yep, 5e needs its own Book of Challenges, like 3e had. But make it even better.

One think I like about 4e is that it has the extra playable races in an appendix.

IMO, that was the best part of the 4e MM.

When I think of a Monster Manual, I think of something like a medieval bestiary, full of illustrated creatures. If the book were to throw in stuff about traps and lairs, I wouldn't be happy. Honestly, even "leveled" creatures annoy me somewhat.

<snip>

Also, I think something akin to Rogue's Gallery would nice as well - filled with NPCs of all levels that can be allies, enemies, nemesises or even replacement PCs.

I think the OP's wishes would be complete with both a BoC and a Rogues' Gallery for 5e.

 

[Greg K]

Add me to the No to traps, hazards and lairs in the MM.

One thing I would like to avoid are numerous entries like dire wolves, winter wolves, elemental wolves, stone wolves, spirit wolves, zombie wolves, construct wolves etc. We don't need entries for all those types of creatures. Give us a wolf. Give us a lot of templates that we can apply to various creatures. Let us apply the templates create those variants.

 

[TarionzCousin]

The cute barmaid your thief has been flirting with for over a week is a monster.

Not after five mugs of ale!

 

[GM Dave]

The "Monster Manual" is a quintessential piece of D&D from the first edition. To have it include anything other than "Monsters" (and by that I mean anything that is not a PC and, potentially, PC races) would be an affront to many many generations of players.

Traps, puzzles, "how to build a better dungeon" are alllll the purview of the DMG. Hands down.

I believe they absoLUTEly should be in material for new gamers/DMs. AbsoLUTEly. But not in a Monster Manual.

Thank you. Good night.
--SD

I am not much on the argument that things were done in the past one way and so they should be done that way again. I deal often with ideas that get passed on to next generations without people taking the time to think and challenge those past views.

I have lived through all the generations of DnD (and yes I am that old) and my only real concern is creating better tools for myself and my players. I usually buy and read five or six different RPGs a year just to look over the rules (and over all those years that leads to many many shelves of rulebooks, editions, and supplements).

Despite all that buying of books, I normally would skip purchasing the MM/Bestiary of the various games because 90% of the time it was a 'throw away' book that listed the same general information to be found in other bestiaries or could be made up. The 1e DMG had the monsters listed in the appendix (very useful as a young teen trying to save money and getting the book required mail order or traveling out of country to a game convention).

The Player's book clearly should cover the material for generation of PCs and their interaction with the game world.

The Gamemaster's guide should cover the material on how to run and handle the game, assemble adventure materials, and how to help people have a good time.

The thrid book should be the tool kit that supports the Gamemaster's guide in performing the duties of developing the adventures and filling in encounters.

For one thing, it makes sense for Kobolds and Kobold Traps to go together.

Another thing is that players expect more in adventures then rooms of things to kill. They expect to find clerics of Tiamat to be found aiding dragons.

Another things is that I have yet to have a decent General Store, Wizard's Library, or Alchemist's Lab in the initial materials and yet how often are these things common and important to play?

This goes for NPCs which are another big element of game play. Guidelines for NPCs can go in the DMG but there should be some examples of merchants, thieves, assassins, and other things that a GM is constantly needing to reach for in the course of play.

I love a good Ooze or Mindflayer but I need sample theives guilds (with sample master thieves and beggars) more than I need a Brown Dragon or a Three legged Bird.

The concept of the 1e MM was to have a horde of things to fill dungeons and mostly wait for people to come across them.

There was a time when I wrote those sorts of adventures but I now right adventures using ideas pulled from things like Smallville and Dresden Files. My players have friends, enemies, and parents that they need to interact with along with crazed cultists, and dragons only known by the name 'The Silence'.

I would prefer a book that has the materials to help me build an adventure in minutes or on the fly if I need to because my players can suddenly decide they want to look for some store owner in an unscripted part of a town.

 

[the Jester]

I want my Monster Manual to be pretty much a manual full of monsters. I am not interested in long treatises on how they should all fit together or whatnot; I want a bunch of monsters. All the rest should go in the DMG.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

For the environment breakdown, check out the 1e DMG, 1e monster manual (I assume 2e MM did this as well) and/or original Fiend Folio has pages and pages of environmental breakdown.

Seems to be intuitive/a no-brainer, but I guess later edition MMs failed to do this in favor of "power levels" and (if I have this term correct) "CR"s (?)

As for picking monsters of higher or lower levels, I don't really see/get how that's something a rules system can/will tell you. Use what you like. It's up to the PCs to know/say "we can do this" or "RUN AWAY!"

--SD

I remeber the enviromental breakdown in the 2e manual. In the dmg 3.0 there was at least a sample list for one enviroment and for dungeon levels IIRC.

4e lacked that.

I don´t want to be told which level the monsters have. I want a variety of different monsters in each enviroment. The rules system should allow and ecen encourage higher and lower level monsters, which can be reaonably fought and if not... running away should also be encuraged.

But I have hopes. Neverwinter campaign setting does kist monsters by faction. Which more or less is an enviromental division. So I am really crossing my fingers.

 

[Li Shenron]

1> Trap information for traps of different shapes and levels
2> Hazard information for hazards of different shapes and levels
3> Organization information for how the different monsters might fit together in a larger group. I'd also like to find suggestions on Villianous Religious groups or Magical Cabals and how they work and operate
4> Lair information for how the monsters might manipulate their environment and use it as 'part of the encounter' instead repeatedly finding the monster sitting in a 'bare' room.
5> Several linked series of story seeds and general story seeds.
6> Sketched out details of plug and play encounters for the GM that has to assemble pieces in a hurry for players that went somewhere they did not plan or need to prepare an adventure in a hurry.
7> Guide lines for monster construction or adapting the provided monsters to new situations and encounters.

Ok, I am not so sure about the traps and hazards but everything else in the list looks very nice. I'd be willing to accept 30-35% less monsters in the first MM to make space for this additional info.

On the top of my list would be points 4 and 6. I would like the presenation of each monster to be done thinking of the 3 "main phases" of the D&D game: the plot, the exploration, the combat.

1) For the plot phase, which includes investigations and non-combat interactions, we need mostly fluff about how does a monster fit with the world, i.e. the ecology and eventually the society of this species, the archetypical characters. Some stats such as non-combat skills can be useful too as a reference, if you can/want to have a verbal/social interaction with these creatures. I don't want too much fluff tho... no setting-specific stuff such as names. The DM can flesh out the exact names and addresses of the individual monsters, or use those provided by a campaign settings sourcebook.

2) For the exploration phase, it would be useful to have a list of features of a typical monster's lair (or building/house/castle in case it's a civilized creature) including treasures, and guidelines on how to run the monster behaviour during the exploration phase, including relevant stats (e.g. perception and sneak abilities). Is this monster stationary, does it stalk and observe intruders, does it tend to hide or flee, does it hunt, does it see intruders as food, does it group with its kin or others, does it elaborate tactics with them to surprise intruders, does it kill or capture, does it setup traps...? All these info can provide improvement to the boring "party explores the dungeon, monster waits in its room".

3) For the combat phase, besides the obvious stats block, I want guidelines on the monster's tactics. Don't forget to summarize which of its abilities the monster is usually going to use predominantly, and in which case. Highlight which are its best weapons and its weakness points. Maybe write a small flowchart or checklist on what the monsters does in the most common events: when it is losing the battle, when the PCs are running away, when one PC is killed, when it is surrounded or attacked by magic or puzzled by invisible foes... can the monster be submitted, captured or even calmed down? It doesn't have to be a huge list, but it would be nice that each monster has at least some specific ideas tied to it: maybe this one creature is known to be more easily backed off if confronted with aggressivity and display of power, while another one may react the opposite and instead ignore foes that don't present an immediate threat.

edit: I'd be happy with a MM where every monster gets 2 pages (150 monsters is ok for me):
- 1/2 page for combat stats, guidelines and tactics
- 1/4 page for ecology/social stats and guidelines
- 1/4 page for exploration-phase stats and guidelines
- 1/2 page for the picture
- 1/2 page of additional stuff (e.g. sample characters with classes, enlarged/elite versions) or extra space for previous points if needed

 

[Ratinyourwalls]

Not after five mugs of ale!

Ongoing 5 fire damage (save ends)

 

[Li Shenron]

I want my Monster Manual to be pretty much a manual full of monsters. I am not interested in long treatises on how they should all fit together or whatnot; I want a bunch of monsters. All the rest should go in the DMG.

But do you want a bunch of monsters or a bunch of stats? Is for you monster = stats?

I certainly don't want the MM to waste space with fluff about what do monsters eat as part of their regular diet, but I want to know it these monsters try to eat anything that passes by, because that can make for some difference in an encounter (e.g. it is probably going to target one PC and try to swallow it or take it away with it).

Or, I don't want to know the details of their system of social castes, but if I know that creatures XYZ at least have castes, then I already know that when dropping them in an adventure, I should use this info to characterize the social interactions of the PCs with them. Can they even parlay with these creatures?

All that really matters, it what is applicable in an encounter with the PCs, but as I wrote in my previous post, combats are not the only type of encounter! If the MM provides nothing besides combat stats, then it doesn't cater to all those gaming groups which enjoy the other 2/3 of the encounters spectrum