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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Water Bob" data-source="post: 5308871" data-attributes="member: 92305">I guess it depends on your players.  We all come from the Monster-Manual-Is-a-DM-Reference-Only book.  And, since I usually DM for our group, it's not a problem.  If you had the DM chores revolving among different players, you couldn't do this. Another way around it is to play in a different universe.  If you have different DMs, they all agree not to read monsters from the other's universe.  I DM the Conan game and use only the monsters in that game (which are all unique from standard D&D fair).  You DM the Black Companies game, which, again, is different.  And so on. You'll have trouble, of course, if you've got DMs both using standard D&D worlds with cross-over monsters, like Dragonlance and Greyhawk--different, but enough similarity there to count.   But...even if the players have access to the MM, there are A LOT of monsters out there in various books.  If you are creating the adventure yourself, then you can strive to pick monsters you KNOW the players are not familiar with.  With published adventures, you might want to substitute some other type. And, all players can't know every monster--so, even if they know something about the monster they're up against, then why help them out and give them all the details becuase of a dice throw? Nay, I say.  Don't do it.  Keep the mystery of the monster in the game. Justin Alexander wrote an essay about magic that also applies to this topic.  He said:  What I'm trying to say is that:  If you let a dice roll tell you a lot about a monster in the game, it becomes, in Justin's words, "less nifty." I'd much rather bang away at a silver-haired minortaur, wondering why I can't seem to hurt him than make a simple dice roll and know that, for this particular monster, only those blades dipped in the water of Tymora's shrine can do more than 1 hit point of damage to the creature. I'd much rather learn that during the course of the adventure than get lucky on a dice throw and lose what could be one of the most memorable moments of the game.</blockquote>

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