Do you run monsters straight from the MM?

[arwink]

About 30% straight from the MM, 50% MM monsters with levels, new abilities, or physical descriptions tweaked, and about 20$ homebrew creations.

 

[Shemeska]

Except for mooks (goblins, guards, mezzoloths*, whatever) I'll rarely use critters straight from the book without some sort of descriptive or mechanical tweek, giving them a name or a history in some manner, etc.

For example, last session I had an appearance by two heralds of the deity Lei Kung in Acheron. That deity is LE yet the first servant to appear and warn the PCs about encrouching on a specific cube (containing an exile who had offended said Power) was a Deva. Very much a fallen deva (LN), changed slightly from the typical milton'esque Angel details to reflect her patronage by an Eastern power, and her abilities and equipment changed to reflect Lei Kung's nature of 'justice/revenge/thunder'. Similar thing with the other herald, which was a risen Erinyes (again, LN).


*And when mezzoloths are considered 'mooks' you know that you're in one of my games

 

[Hussar]

Since I use the three Creature Collections almost exclusively for my campaign, the rare time I actually use a MM critter, my players are confused since they figure that it can't possibly be just an orc.

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

Yes and no.

Grunts, yes. Challenges, yes.




But I try not to have it in a blank area with a nice untrippable surface. They run up and down hills; they leap gaps, they climb hills, they find themselves balancing precariously over raging rivers.


A goblin is a problem when you have a fifty feet drop into rapids if you fail that balance check.

 

[Ferret]

I run the staple monsters from the MM, but I hombrew and template a fair few.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

I occassionally use straight-from-MM monsters.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

If I get enough time in the week I will go to the work copier, xerox the pages from the book I need and make notes on the stat block for any minor changes I want to make. It makes it much easier and I can make notes on the back of the page if I need. Then when its all done I can pitch the whole mess and move on to the next encounter or the next week. So in that sense I guess I do kind of use critters straight up from the MM but with minor modifications (if any). I guess I prefer to use my time dedicated to other areas rather than the stat blocks of my monsters.

 

[DragonLancer]

I have enough monster books that I don't feel the need to worry too much if the players know the traditional MM fair too much. Sooner or later they will run into something they don't know and thats when the funs begins.

 

[dren]

Depends upon how much time I have to prepare...I will increase or lower a creature's power level at will, as long as I feel that creature has the feel that I want for the encounter. That feel is more important to me than the HD or CR or even the beasties abilities.

 

[Evilhalfling]

Good question, this tweaking is more common than I thought -
I would say many of my monsters are tweaked. perhaps as high as 60%, my reasoning is the the variety of things all the monster manuals is just to great to inhabit a world. So I have normal lizard men, LM the the aboleth have tinkerd with (skum) and gaint lizard men (ogres)
So it feels like there is only a few creature types, with gentic offshoots the 1000s of monsters with no place in biology, or ecology.