Best OGL Monster Books

[Rechan]

I always thought the Creature Collection monsters weren't very well balanced.

Honestly, the book that I reach for most frequently? Denizens of Dread (3.5 Ravenloft monster book). There are some really useful things in that book for my campaign. Donno if that's OGL or OGC or what.

Also, "Classics in Fantasy" by Lion's Den Press is useful in that all the monsters fill the same niche as the IP Monsters that aren't in the SRD (Yaun-ti, Mind Flayers, Beholders, Carrion Crawlers, etc). This way you can use them as you see fit. It's basically the same Type of abilities, with different flavor. For instance, the Displacer Beast is replaced with a large cat that continually creates Mirror Images (which offers roughly the same odds as Displacement).

 

[BSF]

The Monster Geographica Line from Expeditious Retreat Press is full of solid OGC. What's more, they are categorized by environment. Pick up the Beast Builder and you have a good toolkit to build your own monsters as well. PDF Versions at YourGamesNow.com - Hardcopy - special offers page at EXP's website

If you are looking for templates to add to monsters, then the Advanced Bestiary is good. But don't overlook Silverthorne Games with their Deluxe Book of Templates 3.5 They have their Template Troves books as well.

The Tome of Horrors was already mentioned. Look into ToH2 and ToH3 as well.

If you are looking at keeping the expenses down, look for PDF versions. They tend to be less expensive anyway. As well, it will be easier to extract the text from a PDF if you are putting a product together.

 

[Garnfellow]

I think the Tome of Horrors and Advanced Bestiary, which you've already mentioned, form the core of the OGL monster canon.

If you like to make new monsters, Expeditious Retreat's Monster Builder book is the best toolkit out there.

If you like to modify existing monster, FFG's Monster's Handbook is an excellent resource. It's 3.0, but still has lots of good stuff.

Any planar game should have GR's Book of Fiends. If you don't run a planar game it's still worth checking out.

If you really really want pages and pages of new monsters, I would avoid the other monster books like Penumbra Bestiary or Creature Collection XX and snag the Monster Geographica books, which do a lot of the leg work for a harried DM by sifting through monster books, finding the stronger representatives, and then updating them to 3.5

 

[Pants]

Monsternomicon is great.

Monsternomicon II is quite good as well.

My favorites are the Monsternomicon books and the various Tome of Horrors entries (I, II, and III). IMO, III is the best. Very creative work in it.

I prefer Silverthrone Game's Book of Templates to the Advanced Bestiary, mainly because it seems just a bit more creative (and it doesn't have 80 'Dread Undead' templates), but both are good for templating stuff.

Book of Fiends is nice, but I've never had any real drive to use it yet.

 

[DMH]

What does Complete Minions add, if anything? Or is it just a 3.5 update, digital only?

Before Minions was released, there was a pdf with ~13 monsters that were not incorporated into the book. Complete Minions merges those with the book and updates them to 3.5. It also has some new art, though the 3.0 version included also has new art that wasn't used in the 3.5 version (??).

Another series of monsters in pdf format is the Creature Weekly from Octavirate Games. It was discontinued and then picked up later with different titles. What is nice is the inclusion of all kinds of d20 varients- wounds/vitality, sanity, MDT, defense bonus, armor as DR, 3.0 DR, honor, taint and allegiances. Like many books, the creature names and descriptions are not OGC.

Minions, OTOH, is completely open except the art and trade dress.

 

[Psion]

Well, I see most of my favorites have been mentioned.

Creature Collection Revised has many fun creatures, as does Creature Collection II (though the latter is only 3.0)

Tome of Horrors has a great variety of classic creatures, as well as some interesting new ones.

Other favorites already mentioned are Denizens of Avadnu and Book of Fiends.

For tinkering, I love the templates in Advanced Bestiary and Book of Templates Deluxe Edition.

Minions is nice for its playable/humanoid races as well as lots of off-beat creatures.

 

[jdrakeh]

Creature Collection Revised has many fun creatures, as does Creature Collection II (though the latter is only 2.0)

I'd like to throw in a third nomination for these books, if purely for their originality and flavor. Also, though not strictly a monster manual, the Northern Crown Gazetteer has some very neat beasties in it.

 

[Teflon Billy]

I get a lot of mileage out of...

• Denizens of Avadnu
• Tome of Horrors
• Monsternomicon
• Advanced Bestiary

...and apparently that's pretty common

 

[jaerdaph]

My favorite monster collections (most of which I've mined for d20 Modern games):

Monster Geographica series (Expedious Retreat Press)
The Bestiary: Predators (Beta Bunny)
Apes Of Nature, Myth, & The Imagination (Beta Bunny)
The Book of Unremitting Horror (Pelgrane Press)
Advanced Bestiary (Green Ronin)
Book of Templates Deluxe Edition (Silverthorne Games)
d20 Modern Menace Manual (Wizards of the Coast)
The Iconic Bestiary: Classics of Fantasy (Lion's Den Press/Ronin Arts)
The Iconic Bestiary: Classics of Controversy (Lion's Den Press/Ronin Arts)
Penumbra Fantasy Bestiary (Atlas Games)
Tome of Horrors (Necromancer Games)

 

[Voadam]

After 13 years, I returned to 3.5e D&D relatively late (mid-2005) and I only really began to explore the OGL late this year, spurred on mostly by Paizo's Pathfinder series. I'm an aspiring freelance writer and while I'm looking forward to 4e, I really do love 3.5e, and if the market would support an actual freelance market for it, I would like to support both editions. That said, all of my WoTC monster books are nearly worthless to support 3.5e OGL, so I'm looking to invest (cheaply, I'm being realistic here) in some of the best 3.5e OGL monster books. I already know about Necromancer's Tome of Horrors, Green Ronin's Advanced Bestiary, and Pathfinder's OGL monsters, but what are some of the best books and resources containing open content monsters?

If you are looking for open content monsters to reuse in things like writing OGL compliant modules or such then stay away from the Creature Collections, Manual of Monsters, Monsters of Norrath, Monsters of Luclin and the Malhavoc press monster books (Monsters of the ID I believe and Legacy of Dragons). These make the stat blocks but not the names or descriptions of the monsters OGC and you will have to do a lot of work to reuse them (writing up your own names and descriptions or getting specific permission to use the protected names and descriptions).

Tome of Horrors, Tome of Horrors Revised (3.5), and Complete Minions have full OGC designations for all the writing, and Denizens of Avadnu might as well. These are the gold standards for reusable OGC.

I think all the non oathbound Bastion Press products are this way and their Into the Green, Black, and Blue environment sourcebooks are about half filled with monster entries.

Penumbra Fantasy Bestiary has the names and stats but not the specific descriptions as OGC.

Book of Fiends is moderately open with some restrictions IIRC.

Monsternomicon has a lot of campaign specific info description that is not open and I'm not sure about the general description stuff.

Advanced Bestiary; Book of Templates (original, Deluxe, deluxe 3.5); Creatures of Freeport; Creatures Weekly; Creatures of Ados; EN Critters; Fantasy Flight Games' Giant Lore, Draconic Lore, Elemental Lore, Necromantic Lore, and Twisted Lore; Hungry Little Monsters; and Template Trove series are all good monster products but I'm not sure about the OGC designations. I think the EN Publishing critter series are open but I haven't checked in a while.