Do you run monsters straight from the MM?

[Ed Cha]

Most of my monsters are straight out of the MM, but sometimes I mutate them. I am going to run a planar campaign soon though, so I hope to use a lot of monsters from Denizens of Avadnu and Legends of Avadnu. I love these books, especially their encounter ideas which are truly inspiring.

I am also planning on just making a bunch of monsters on the fly during the game. I'm sure some of them will be real duds, but I think it will be fun. I get kinda sick of sticking to the rules so closely all the time.

 

[HellHound]

I use critters from monster books all the time. I'll be prepping a scene and decide I need something 'else' as a baddy... that leaves me two options, look for a monster to throw in, or add levels, templates, or Hit Dice to an existing monster. If I'm short on time (99% of the time, this is the case), then I flip through the monster books looking for something right.

I have the benefit of being the only one in the group who really *knows* the monster books front and back, so I don't have to worry too much about metagame knowledge.

 

[KB9JMQ]

I tend to use things straight from the MMs but I also like to use the lesser used creatures from them to shake things up a bit.

If I need a really different creature I will use one of my other (non-wotc) monster books since I know that no one else has those.

 

[devilbat]

Hm, both, I guess. For 'routine' monsters the MM is fine. Powerful creatures intended to challenge the PCs benefit from some attention

.

Ditto

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I run an awful lot of the top end nasties for my game straight out of the Players's Handbook... Humanoids are always the nastiest bad guys! (The buggers cheat I tell you, cheat! When they find a dragon that can fight 10 to 1 odds easily they attack with 100 to 1!)

The bulk of my critters are straight MM, with a smattering of templates. I keep them rare so that they remain special. (Exception - I use the quickplates out of Monsternomicon for the only mildly special critters such as the alpha in a pack of hellhounds.)

The Auld Grump

 

[Steel_Wind]

Yeah - often. 50/50 or so? Depends. I usually use the e-tools version of same. Sometimes I customize it in e-tools; sometimes I don't.

 

[DungeonMaster]

I use almost exclusively straight MM fare.
I only add levels to humanoids and never multi-class any of them.
I do use templated creatures but never multiple templates which I find silly.

I honestly don't think things need piles and piles of mechanical "enhancements" like levels, templates, multiple classes, "bloodlines" and so forth to make an interesting encounter. Often these things don't make a memorable encounter, they don't appeal to any particular legendary creature or set of abilities.

PC1: "yeah you remember that frog-thing we fought in Pete's game in that pit where I got the sunblade?"
PC2: "no, not really. It had wings didn't it?"
PC1: "no I swear it was purple and frog like"
PC2: "whatever, we killed it with acid"
PC1: "uh no... it was immune to acid"
PC2: "no it had *resistance* to acid"
PC1: "didn't it swallow things whole but kept failing to do it?"
PC2: "beats me, I thought it drained blood"
PC1: "no those were the stirges right before"
PC2: "no I'll never forget the stirges.. damn I hate those little flying blood sacs of death. You're getting confused, we had to firewall the cleric to kill the bastards before he died"
PC1: "I know that! I was pretty sure the stupid frog thing didn't drain blood as well."

This is almost word-for-word a conversation I heard between two players. The only reason the players even remembered the "frog thing" was because they had gotten a sunblade out of the deal. They had trouble remembering any of the details of the fight with the multi-templated leveled bloodlined thingamabob.

Meh, to each his own. Situation is more important to me than the nitty gritty mechanics of the monster.

 

[RichGreen]

Hi,

I use a lot of monsters straight out of the MM, but I also use creatures from the other monster books I have. I customize creatures by adding class levels and templates, but more by exception. I also plunder Dungeon magazine stat blocks to use in totally different adventures.

Cheers


Richard

 

[Campbell]

I use stat blocks straight out of monster blocks roughly 40% of the time, but that's mostly resulting from a predeliction towards NPC adversaries. I also tend to create homebrew creatures using existing monsters as a base fairly often, espicially when I'm trying to represent unique outsiders. I rarely use templates, preferring in most cases to create homebrew creatures to acheive the desired result.

 

[Galethorn]

Short answer: No

Long answer: I use the 'basic' stuff like animals from the SRD, but build my own setting-specific creatures from scratch, and I make 'grunts' the same way I make NPCs.