Castles & Crusades Monsters & Treasure
Monsters and Treasures
By Robert Doyel and Stephen Chenault
128 pages
$19.99
Monsters & Treasures is the second hardback book for Castles & Crusades, completing the set of core rulebooks (The Castle Keeper’s Guide will contain optional rules, but won’t be a core book in the way the DMG is for D&D).
One caveat before you read this review: I was involved as a volunteer in editing an early draft of M&T – I worked on the monsters from A-F. It wasn’t at all a big contribution, but my name is in the credits. I don’t think it biases me – it was edited again after it left my hands – but I’ll mention it.
This review is written based on the assumption that the reader plays C&C – because many of the monsters and treasures in the book are simply C&C versions of traditional D&D monsters, this book has little to no value for someone who does not play C&C.
Of the book’s 128 pages, three pages are used by Table of Contents, credits, and OGL. Five pages are introductory (a breakdown of what the stats mean, mainly), 78 pages are monster descriptions, 40 pages are devoted to treasure tables and descriptions, and two pages are devoted to poison descriptions and rules.
SUMMARY: This may well be the best product produced so far by Troll Lord Games (although I haven’t read Hall of Many Panes, yet). It nails the Castles & Crusades feel that’s such an important part of the game’s instant popularity. Also, it has almost no typos.
Artwork and Layout:
Peter Bradley is the layout designer and the book’s cover artist. Monsters & Treasures gets a solid “A” on layout (my only complaint is the font used for the monster names - a bit busy) and an A + + on art. The pictures are a bit smaller than they were intended, I think, and I've had to look closely at a couple of them to see the detail. However, I can say that some of the illustrations are classics equivalent to the Rakshasa picture in the 1e MM. Truly that good. Check out the androsphinx, the satyr, the remorhaz, mummy, homonculus, halfling, ghast, gargoyle (the gargoyle pic should have been bigger - it suffers from the small size), the green dragon and the dragon attack pic on p. 20, the cockatrice, and many others. The dragon on page 7 is beautiful.
About the Introduction (Experience Points):
Normally, a book’s introduction isn’t particularly relevant in a review, but this is where the M&T experience point chart is to be found. Experience point awards for killing monsters in C&C are quite low, even relative to the first edition of D&D. I compared a small sample of C&C monsters to their 1e counterparts, and found that (with the exception of the gargoyle and most low-level humanoids) the C&C monsters have about a third to a fifth the xp value of their 1e equivalents (and, of course, a minuscule fraction of the 3e values). While I don’t know what the actual game-design philosophy was, the result is to de-emphasize slaughter as the primary source of experience. Accumulating treasure and CK-granted xp bonuses will be much more important than racking up the body count even than in 1e, and infinitely more so than in 3e. Castle Keepers who want to run a combat-heavy game will need to double or triple the xp award for monsters in order to keep the pace of advancement at the 1e level, but the lowering of the xp awards gives considerable new flexibility to a CK who wants to run a campaign with a less carnage-oriented dynamic. As always, C&C emphasizes situational decision-making by the CK, and flexibility, over the all-inclusive, hard-and-fast rules approach.
Monsters:
The monster stats and the nuts-and-bolts descriptions of special abilities are the work of Robert Doyel, and I believe he is also the author of the Fleshcrawler and the Prysmal Eye. As I understand it, most of the descriptive text is the work of Stephen Chenault, with help from Davis Chenault and James Mishlar. Also, although he is technically listed as an editor rather than as an author, Casey Canfield touched up the descriptions throughout the book. So, the monster descriptions are very much a group effort that came together into a great product.
The new monsters in the book are the Frost Worm (I haven’t seen it before, anyway), the Fleshcrawler, and the Prysmal Eye. The prysmal eye is a beholder analogue in that it has a variety of magical attacks and floats, but the nature of its attacks is quite different. The fleshcrawler is an icky beast, rather like a super-powered rot grub from the first edition. I thought that for a creature in the “icky parasite” class, the fleshcrawler might have a few too many abilities – a simple concept works best for this sort of thing. However, it is an excellent monster for the arsenal – the sort that provides a nasty surprise ala the rot grub and the rust monster. The frost worm is a nice, solid, single-concept monster – like I said, I’m not sure that it’s a new monster.
Aside from the new monsters, virtually all of the old favorites from the original MM are here, together with several of the best monsters that came after the 1e monster manual: darkmantles, hags, and the like. A few have new names: shriekers are screechers, for example. All in all, the feel of this book is very similar to the feel of the 1e Monster Manual. These are core creatures, a solid basis for any campaign.
The authors have done an excellent job of building a solidly folkloric feel to these basic creatures, and the conversions to C&C rules also include a number of subtle changes: a few of these old monsters have new tricks, but without changing the basic way in which they work. Some of the changes are simply in flavor. We now have a hill troll, a tusky, Tolkienesque beast, as well as the Gygax troll with its rubbery, elongated features (now, the “river troll”). Given that these are all beloved, iconic monsters, everyone will probably find a couple of these changes not to taste (I like stealthy bugbears, and the surprise ability is gone, although stealth is mentioned in the flavor text). Nevertheless, I think most old-schoolers will find that the tweaks and innovations are on the whole an improvement to the originals, without making any drastic changes. All in all, it is an excellent job, and should please fans who have been waiting to see how C&C would handle the age-old monsters. More importantly, the “feel” of the monsters is consistent with the feel of the C&C Players Handbook – the book is fun to read, unlike the clinical writing of D&D’s third edition.
Here is the list of monsters:
Aboleth, Achaierai, Allip, Ant – Giant, Ankheg, Ape – Great, Arrowhawk, Assassin Vine, Baboon, Banshee, Barghest, Basilisk, Bear (Black, Brown, Cave), Behir, Belker, Bird of Prey (two sizes), Blink Dog, Boar – Wild, Bodak, Bugbear, Bulette, Cat, Centaur, Chimera, Cloaker, Cockatrice, Couatl, Crocodile (alligator), Darkmantle, Devourer, Dinosaur – Triceratops, Dinosaur – Tyrannosaurus, Doppelganger, Dragons - Black, Blue, Green, Red, White, Brass, Bronze, Copper, Gold, Silver, Dragonne, Drider, Dryad, Dwarf, Eagle – Giant, Elementals - Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Elephant, Elf (includes subraces of Drow, Grey, Wild, and Wood elf), Ettercap, Ettin, Fleshcrawler, Frog – Giant, Frost Worm, Fungus – Violet, Gargoyle, Gelatinous Cube, Genie (Djinni and Efreeti), Ghast, Ghost, Ghoul, Giants - Cloud, Fire, Frost, Hill, Stone, Storm, Gibbering Mouther, Gnoll , Gnome, Goblin, Golem (Flesh, Clay, Stone, Iron), Gorgon, Green Slime, Griffon, Hags (Annis, Green, and Night), Halfling, Harpy, Hellhound, Herd Animal, Hippogriff, Hobgoblin, Homunculus, Horse (riding, light war, heavy war), Human, Hydra (including Pyro and Cryo), Imp, Invisible Stalker, Jackal, Jaculus, Kobold, Kraken, Lamia, Lammasu, Lich, Lion, Lizard – Giant, Lizardfolk, Locathah, Lycanthrope (Wolf, Bear, Boar, Rat, Tiger), Lynx – Giant, Manticore, Medusa, Merman/Mermaid, Mimic, Minotaur, Mummy, Naga (Dark, Ghost, Guardian, Spirit, Water), Nightmare, Nymph, Ogre, Ogre Mage, Ooze (Black Pudding, Grey Ooze, Ochre Jelly), Orc, Otyugh, Owlbear, Pegasus, Phase Spider, Pony (Including war pony), Prysmal Eye, Pseudodragon, Purple Worm, Quasit, Rakshasa, Rat (Giant), Raven, Remorhaz, Roc, Roper, Rust Monster, Sahuagin, Salamander, Satyr, Screecher, Shadow, Shadow Mastiff, Shambling Mound, Shark (Including Megalodon), Skeleton (Humanoid), Snake (Constrictor and venomous), Spectre, Sphinx (Andro, Crio, Gyno, Heiraco), Spider, Sprite (Grig, Nixie, Pixie), Stirge, Tavis Wyrm, Tick (Giant), Tiger, Titan, Toad (Giant), Treant, Troglodyte, Troll, Unicorn, Vampire, Wight, Will-o-Wisp, Wolf (normal, worg, winter wolf), Wraith, Wyvern, Xorn, Yrthak, Zombie.
Treasures:
Stephen Chenault is the primary author of the Treasures section of the book, and does a solid, workmanlike job – the descriptions of individual items are succinct but less flavored than the monsters. A careful leavening of Davis Chenault’s unabashedly over-the-top prose would have fired up the item descriptions to a more Vancian, or even Dunsanian level, but space considerations were almost certainly a factor. Stephen managed to pour a staggering quantity of information into 40 pages. As a long-time D&D player with many books of magic items, the item descriptions were my least favorite part of the book because they miss the newness, the tweaks and flavor that characterize everything else that has been written for C&C. However, this is a stand-alone game, and I recognize that with only 40 pages allocated to this section (fewer for the individual items), TLG needed to fit as many item descriptions as possible into the available space. Once again, the section is highly collaborative, with Todd Gray and Mike Stewart being the authors who revised and expanded Mr. Chenault’s work. As in the monster section, the items presented are the traditional magic items of the game. I don’t think there are any new ones. However, there is much interesting “new” material in the discussion of land grants and titles, which is quite excellent, and also for the creation of magic items.
The Land Grants section of “Treasures” contains a set of guidelines for what sort of land grants and followers might accrue to a character as he or she gains levels. In keeping with C&C’s baseline assumption of Western European feudal culture, this section provides not only a good gaming tool but some insights for world-builders into the demographics of the read-as-written world and the relative power level of the world’s NPCs. I was very pleased to see this information – as a “world-builder” type of game-master, I like to know such things even if I don’t use them.
Another very strong section is the book’s discussion of creating magic items. The ability to create potions, scrolls, and permanent magic items is an inherent feature of certain classes, gained at particular levels of experience (different for scrolls, potions, and permanent items, and also different for arcane and divine magic). As always in C&C, the process is governed more by the Castle Keeper than by any hard-and-fast set of rules, but the book contains clear guidelines for the CK to use (enough to just say, “do it by the book”). As written, the character can either create an item by using up experience points (at huge cost) or can use his wealth to find materials and other methods that substitute for experience points – or the CK can pick which method works in his or her particular campaign.
In terms of organization, all of the charts for treasure are located in one place, which makes it very easy to generate a large treasure hoard with very little page-flipping. Aesthetically, I didn’t like the way the charts were laid out on the page (I think it’s because the small charts aren’t the same width as the long ones), but the layout may have been done this way in order to fit the charts on one page, in which case it’s completely worth it.
Poisons:
The actual poison rules can be summed up as follows: make a constitution save at the appropriate CL for the poison. Most of the poison section is devoted to a list of common and exotic poisons, and rules for determining the CL for the check to brew various poisons. One odd thing about this section is that it does not seem to address the CL for the constitution check involved in saving against a poison. None of the listed poisons have a CL modifier, and increasing the CL modifier isn’t one of the listed options for brewing a potion, either. This may be deliberate (only those with a constitution prime get to add their levels to the saving throw), but it seems strange.
Conclusion: Monsters & Treasures continues the Castles & Crusades feel, has excellent layout (except title fonts), absolutely stunning artwork on many, many monsters, and almost no typos. Reading this book (especially the Monster section) is fun – I heard myself say, “oh, that’s cool” more than once. It’s definitely Castles & Crusades – and for those reading this review, that’s probably all that needs to be said. It’s the real deal.
