Fiendish nomenclature question, and 3eMM rant...

[Plane Sailing]

2nd edition pretty much passed me by, and I was wondering if anyone could help me with a little game of mix and match.

My 1e Monster Manual has an excellent series of pictures of fiendish creatures but I'm left wondering how these map onto the 3e descriptions (since they stupidly didn't bother to give us illustrations of many of the demons and devils)

I presume name changes occurred during 2e, and so I'm left wondering how to map my 1e pictures onto the 3e MM descriptions? Are they (in order)

Barbed devil = Hamatula
Bone devil = Osyluth
Horned devil = Cornugon??
Ice devil = Gelugon
Pit Fiend = Pit Fiend (Duh)

And for the demons:

Manes = Dretch
Type I = Vrock
Type II = Hezrou
Type III = Glabrezu
Type IV = Nalfeshnee
Type V = Marilith
Type VI = Balor

===
In passing, I must note that the 3e Monster Manual falls behind both of the earlier monster manuals in terms of organisation and usability. Why oh why didn't they give each creature a title, a picture, a stat block, descriptive text and then some flavour text (like the 2e MM had). Rather than the sad mish-mash which we have now, with pictures adrift from their associated text (and often completely ignoring the description e.g. Stirge (bat wings, 8 legs, picture has 4 wings?!? and 4 legs); Spider eater (resembles "giant, two legged wasp". Drawn with a spiders head?!?); Grick (dull grey underbelly, tentacles are segmented like the body of an earthworm. Drawn with a yellow underbelly and tentacles like an octopus);Allip ("looks more or less like it did in life but its features are distored in madness... from the waist down trails in vapourous nothingness". Drawn as a vaguly humanoid clump of black smog, no features); Mohrg (looks like a gaunt, nearly skeletal corpse, easily mistaken for a zombie or ghoul. Long cartilaginous tongue. Pictured as a skeleton with a purple worm-thing animating its arms and coming through its mouth).

I'm getting depressed.

I wonder if anything ever came of the quiz that WotC did, asking what people thought of different MM layouts?

 

[Crothian]

3E monster manual is packed with information. We don't need pictures for everything. If they did that it either contain half as many creatures or cost much, much more for a longer book.

 

[Voadam]

mixed feelings

The 3e MM was a mixed joy for me, I was really happy to see ability stats for creatures but it was a step down from the useful 2e description formats and nonstat information on critters. Also the formulas for feats and whatnot were impossible to reverse engineer and get consistent results with the MM until that dragon article came out. I'm also disappointed that the rules for adding classes to 1HD monsters are different than adding them to 2HD monsters.

For the demons the Glabrezou is a dog faced 4 armed (2 of them crab claws) thing. The marilith is the snake bodied 8 arm one, the balor is the bat winged whip and sword one, the vrock is Type 1 vulture thingy, Nalfeshne is the fat boar/goat thing with tiny wings. Hezrou, I forget,

Dretch are Dretch from MM2 in 1e not manes.

I don't know the devils that well.

 

[Vuron]

Well for the most part the MM focused on a handful of the gimpy fiends and the true demons and greater devils. Even with the MotP the fiends are still definitely lacking.

As you can tell all the true demons are represent but they are for the most part the heavy hitters of the tanari. The Vrocks are the elite troops and everything above that are unit commanders or generals. Where are the dretches? Where are the Chasme or Rutterkin etc?

The Devils got less of the good stuff, no nupperibo, amnizu, etc but at least more of the standard troopers are around.

However the Yugoloths and Demodands really got the proverbial shaft!

 

[A2Z]

However the Yugoloths ... really got the proverbial shaft!

That's what they want you to think.

 

[Plane Sailing]

3E monster manual is packed with information. We don't need pictures for everything. If they did that it either contain half as many creatures or cost much, much more for a longer book.

I disagree. It has less information than the 2e monster manual. It uses a large typeface than either of the previous versions which I have seen, and has larger illustrations, both of which reduce the space available.

I want pictures for everything which isn't real-world. I don't need pictures of animals but I do need pictures of Solars and Gelugons.

They should have used a smaller typeface, smaller pictures which were spatially related to their creature and thus have more detail about the creatures and pictures for all.

Same size book, more crunchy information, less rampant art directors

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I agree the layout of the MM is pretty bad. When I have to carry around a 1e MM to show my players what a monster looks like it means WOTC screwed the pooch on this one. They wanted a lot more big flowing art I guess, even if it means that some monsters have no picture, and the pictures are sometimes mixed in with stats for some other monster! The other books suffer from some of the same problems. The 1e & 2e MM were far better in terms of usefulness.

 

[omedon]

I agree with Plane Sailing.

I could handle the more than 1 monster a page is better because you can fit more monsters in the book arguement if so many of the pictures were not so large.

The Delver (p. 40) takes up over half a page! Other blatant offenders include: Worg (p. 185), Shocker Lizard (p. 164), Nightwalker (p. 142), Griffon (p. 113), etc.

And why they felt they had to have a picture of an invisible stalker. Does this make any sense? They have a picture of an invisible guy, but not of devils and celestials.

Oh well,

It is a core book, so that is just our bad luck. Templates almost make up for it.

 

[Arthur Tealeaf]

Oh... DON'T get me started on monster images not matching their descriptions (and how bad SARDHINA is).

ps. If you want me to get started, just ask

 

[Humanophile]

{minor hijack}
I agree that the big problem with the MM is that they really skimp on monster tactics and societies (pictures can go, since I like putting a whole new "skin" on the monster anyways). But thankfully, that's the easiest thing to do.

Hmm... EN World monster culture writeups? It has a certain charm to it...
{/minor hijack}