Do we really need monster books?

[Arnwyn]

Seriously, I don't think that new Monster Books add all that much to my campaign unless the book is directly tied to the setting I am using.

Fixed it for you.

 

[Doug McCrae]

DMs like books of new monsters, players like books of new feats and PrCs.

 

[barsoomcore]

Fixed it for you.

Hee.

 

[Ace]

I don't use many monsters IMC, prefering leveled humans (not humanoids) instead --

No don't get me wrong my campaign isn't grim n gritty -- in fact its pretty blog standard -- I just can't justify most of the monsters in the worlds I use

My current camapign (2 sessions old yay!) is a bot of an experiment -- it is going to be monsters heavy

So far I have used Skeletons, Ghouls (a template) Ghasts and Wolves

next up is "warmade" basically blue psi goblins and a displacer beast

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

Monster books are a nice luxury but hardly in the 'needed' column.

 

[gamecat]

it depends on the game i run - my usual game involves scads of leveled humans, but another one i'm running is a regular dawn of the dead. The latter uses any monster book i can find, the former rarely touches one.

 

[Pants]

As a further point, I want to ask you fine people this: do you decide on the monsters first, then generate a story for them? Or do you generate a story and then try find monsters that fit it?

I do both really. If a monster is cool enough, I'll find a way to use it. Sometimes, when I'm planning out a session, I need to throw in some monsters and I'll search through books for the appropriate one. Really depends.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Well, in a big picture sense: no.

Check out WotCs site. There's more than enough free material to run a campaign to level 15. All you really need is a Player's Handbook, the SRD, and a set of dice. Of course. the adventures probably won't match up nicely, but that's not the point. You can get to level 15 with US$40 and a lot of free printing. There are also adventures for 16-20, so you can slide your way past those without a terrible ammount of effort.

I beg to differ. You forgot the Adventure Locales, the Vicious Venues, the Random Encounters. That is two 1st to 15th level campaigns. That smooths out the gaps between adventures, and if a DM is willing to convert a lot of 2e material or approximate at least, theres at least one more, maybe two if the DM subsitutes some elements for others.

Apart from that, I say keep your MMII, MMIII, Fiend Folio and all the others! I don't need them.

I agree, but because of the Creature Catalog (when will it be back up for Kord's sake?!?), not because the Monster Manual contains such a wealth of monsters. Well, that and I check Enworld religiously for free stuff.
So I have LOTS of monsters and adventures and plots and all kinds of stuff.

 

[The Shaman]

My campaign settings tend to be pretty "monster" light - plenty of humanoid baddies, but few magical beasts, abberations, outsiders, and so on - so no, I don't really need a lot of monster books.

I like templates - each template can take an ordinary goblin and turn it into any of a number of different kinds of nastiness. Templates are easy to write, and a few go a long way, so again, I don't need books full of them.

With the ability to add class levels to humanoids and many critters, again, it's easy to create a unique challenge from an otherwise "mundane monster."

I tend to create my world first, including the races and species that populate it, and let my stories arise out of the interaction that results, so in that sense, the monster comes first. However, the stories tend to dictate what critters are involved, so it's kind of a chicken-and-egg thing for me.

 

[BOZ]

NEED? no.

you could easily make up a dozen or so scalable stat blocks, and add creature types, and voila instant monsters. you could make a few pages of SA's and SQ's culled from the monster books and your own imagination, and add what you want when you want it.

but most of us seem to prefer the monster books, i'd imagine.