Dungeon Denizens / Creature Collection

[Obergnom]

I have been very reluctant to buy any third party stuff for 4e. I was waiting for new Necromancer Games stuff, as their modules and the Tome of Horrors actually added more to my 3e DMing than any of Wizards books. I like the "old school" style, though I have no nostalgic memories about it. To me, it feels like the Mushroom Kingdom of fantasy worlds.

What also made me not buy anything is are WotCs tools. The players in my group like the Character Builder and I like the Monster Builder. Looking back at the past 1.5 years of playing 4e, these tools may have been the worst thing WotC did to me, they made me not introduce houserules and "unofficial" stuff into 4e. It was these things that made me enjoy 3e afterall.

I finally decided to fix some rules for our group and I got me my first third party products:

I got Dungeon Denizens by Goodman Games and Creature Collection by Fiery Dragon. Wow, I have been missing out. I should have bought those books earlier. They are awesome! I love the flavour, and the fact the monsters do not feel that "over developed" as the ones WotC puts out. I like only having one or two versions of a monster, instead of five. And I am so happy having back my every day giant spiders

Thank you so much for these books, GG and FD.

Sooo, as Necro is no more (As a 4e publisher)... are there adventures out there I might have overlooked that are as great as Vault of Larin Karr, Lost City of Barakus or Rappan Athuk?

 

[avin]

Some months ago I was manually inserting my Creature Collection monsters on Monster Builder. An update kille them all, so I'll probably wait until it leaves Beta for that again...

 

[Obergnom]

What I had to remind my self of, I actually do not use the Monster Builder for much more than the compendium (Printing Stats). As I bought both books as pdfs, I can do that easily.

Leveling a monster manually using a pencil and said print out is actually pretty fast, I do not know why I forgot that

 

[Nebulous]

I'm especially fond of the Creature Collection, that is just a FUN book to read, it has tons of description that can be adapted to any campaign and the monster stats are solid and the artwork great. I don't use it as much as i should as the Monster Builder makes it so easy to tweak your own stats.

 

[Glyfair]

I have both books and have used both. However, I have found Goodman's Critter Cache series to be the best of the 3rd party monster books. Each book has a strong theme, and that helps when looking up a particular sort of monster.

That being said, all of the aforementioned books do seem to have the same flaw, in my opinion. The monster abilities all do lack a certain creativity in mechanical design. It's not a huge flaw, though, since most attempts at creative mechanical design by 3rd parties do typically fall flat on their face. When they succeed though.....

 

[Rechan]

I decided to pick up the Creature Collection, and immediately noticed several errors in various statblocks. Sigh.

 

[Obergnom]

@Glyfair - in a way I like this 'not overly creative' design. At times, 4e seems to chaotic, for my taste. I have a hard time describing fire, for example, in a way to make all the different effects it might have somehow imaginable. Besides the obvious ongoing damage, there is fire that adds to the next attacks damage, that slows or does other kings of fancy stuff. I sometimes think this game could have used a bit mor consistency at the world/game interface.

@Rechan - So far, I did not notice many errors, but I have never really cared about stat blocks much. What kind of errors did you find?

 

[Rechan]

The biggest culprit is information about actions.

The Dart Blossom's Fusillade of Darts says (when the dart blossom is first blooded). But it doesn't tell you if it's an immediate action, or a standard action, or what.

On the same page is the Child Trap. The Soporific Gas power just says 'zone'. I can't tell if this is an always on effect that's a close burst 1 (So it's an Aura?) or if it happens at any given time.

 

[Klaus]

The biggest culprit is information about actions.

The Dart Blossom's Fusillade of Darts says (when the dart blossom is first blooded). But it doesn't tell you if it's an immediate action, or a standard action, or what.

On the same page is the Child Trap. The Soporific Gas power just says 'zone'. I can't tell if this is an always on effect that's a close burst 1 (So it's an Aura?) or if it happens at any given time.

I'll forward those to the folks at Fiery Dragon. If you notice anything else, let me know!