I Have A Copy of Monster Manual 5.

[Razz]

I'm upset at the lack of Celestials. Arcadian Avenger is the only one in the book.

What has me really upset is the fact that one of the authors of the book sent in about 7 written celestials...none of them made it in.

I also wish they would stop with the "theme" thing. A whole entry on an illithid city called Thoon? MMIV had Lizardfolk tribes...I really don't like seeing these in a MONSTER MANUAL, to be honest. They just don't belong. Again, they worry about splitting the fan base, but they are literally doing that by combining material in ONE book. These things need to have their own books.

Also, NONE of these creatures are conversions from older editions. What's the deal with that? Did they just give up on converting creatures even though there's plenty out there worth, heck more than worth, converting?

Other than those gripes about MMV, this book appears to be more promising than MMIV. It's still a maybe on my decision on whether or not to purchase it.

 

[helium3]

I'm upset at the lack of Celestials. Arcadian Avenger is the only one in the book.

I think it's understandable though. Most parties won't ever fight good creatures, so you really don't need that many.

A whole entry on an illithid city called Thoon? MMIV had Lizardfolk tribes...I really don't like seeing these in a MONSTER MANUAL, to be honest. They just don't belong. Again, they worry about splitting the fan base, but they are literally doing that by combining material in ONE book. These things need to have their own books.

It's not a city, it's an unfathomable entity from the Far Realms. Like a god or a demon lord, but not. Did I type city on accident?

Also, NONE of these creatures are conversions from older editions. What's the deal with that? Did they just give up on converting creatures even though there's plenty out there worth, heck more than worth, converting?

Well, I would imagine that the lead designer didn't think there was much left to be mined from older editions. *shrug*

 

[Shade]

Also, NONE of these creatures are conversions from older editions. What's the deal with that? Did they just give up on converting creatures even though there's plenty out there worth, heck more than worth, converting?

Not true. The Master of the Wild Hunt and his hounds were from the 1E D&DG. And haunts and phantoms might be updates from similarly-named creatures in prior editions.

Still, I'd have liked to see many more. I'm still holding out for the remaining yugoloths and rilmani at the very least. :\

 

[Voadam]

The mind-flayer on the cover comes about because, I assume, fully 22 pages of the book are devoted to talking about the "Mind Flayers of Thoon." Thoon being some sort of far-realms associated entity that's caused changes to your standard mind-flayer that makes them search for something called "quintessence."

Mechanically variant mind flayers or just fluff?

 

[helium3]

Mechanically variant mind flayers or just fluff?

All new creatures. The Thoon stuff is basically a totally different take on mind-flayers. New goals, new behavior, new minions. It's not meant to replace the basic mindflayer, but to create a new group of the creatures that is at odds with the old flavor.

 

[Razz]

I think it's understandable though. Most parties won't ever fight good creatures, so you really don't need that many.

Not for fighting against, but for fighting with. Also, more celestials can be used for more involved (and evolved) campaigns, whether homebrew or published. They make for good NPCs and storytelling events.

I just feel that celestials shouldn't be overlooked because the designer is ONLY looking at it from a "game mechanic" perspective, D&D should be much more than just that.

It's not a city, it's an unfathomable entity from the Far Realms. Like a god or a demon lord, but not. Did I type city on accident?

Ah, ok. Much better than. I thought Thoon was some sort of illithid city from the sound of it and someone mentioned using Wiki and coming up with something in Eberron. Thoon being Far Realm entity is a lot more intriguing and interesting.

Well, I would imagine that the lead designer didn't think there was much left to be mined from older editions. *shrug*

There's plenty to mine from older editions. But from a few statements made by the designers I've read on these boards and WotC's forums, they only convert monsters if they "believe" it's interesting enough by the gamer populace to convert. I've lately been taking this as "if the designers find it interesting enough" since I don't believe they truly know how the gaming community would accept a creature until it's produced. Creature Catalog from Dragon Magazine is one of the top famous series of articles alongside Core Beliefs and Demonomicon because it produces both a mixture of converted and new creatures.

There's plenty of interesting creatures left to be converted, some of which they converted only halfway (example, the remaining 3 rilmani, I believe 2 eladrins are missing, agathinon and light celestials, and definitely some yugoloths). It's just a matter of convincing the designers to seriously look into feeling nostalgic enough to pull some of those critters back from the "2E graveyard".

Not true. The Master of the Wild Hunt and his hounds were from the 1E D&DG. And haunts and phantoms might be updates from similarly-named creatures in prior editions.

Still, I'd have liked to see many more. I'm still holding out for the remaining yugoloths and rilmani at the very least. :\

I've totally missed that...and the funny thing was I knew the Master of the Wild Hunt was from older editions. Yet I still missed it in my post LOL

Goes to show you, not enough conversions from WotC lately if I missed something like that after being overwhelmed by so many new beasties.

Phantoms, yes, almost forgot that one. There're haunts on the list?

 

[Shazman]

Could you go itnto more detail about the classed creatures (especially the classes of the various hobgoblins)? Also, could you elaborate on some of the new feats? Most of them sound like reprints except for the battle tactics,kuo-toa monk feat, and sense whatever.

 

[JustKim]

All new creatures. The Thoon stuff is basically a totally different take on mind-flayers. New goals, new behavior, new minions. It's not meant to replace the basic mindflayer, but to create a new group of the creatures that is at odds with the old flavor.

I was afraid it was going to be a collection of the illithid-related monsters from Dragon and Lords of Madness, but this sounds really cool.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey there!

What are the ten highest CR monsters in the book (you already mentioned Master of the Hunt was CR 22 as the highest)?

Thank you.

 

[Kunimatyu]

The Thoon concept is a good one - it lets them rework mind flayers mechanically (because WotC's become much more mechanically smart since, oh, about Monster Manual 3) without having legions of fans claiming that they've destroyed the flavor of the game or somesuch.

It's similar to Tiamat's dragonspawn in terms of the mechanical goals, but by far the key difference is that we actually like mind flayers -- getting a whole bunch of Tiamat-spawn didn't really do a whole lot for some of us.