L&L 4/16 - A Walk Down Monster Lane

[Falstaff]

Sorry for the post, total overreaction. Please continue.

 

[Andor]

I posted this over on the Kenzer boards:

Amusingly enough, your post leaves me unclear on your position, although I get that you are angry about it.

As I read that question, they are wondering if the MM should contain materials expressly aimed at PCs. Rules for using monsters as mounts perhaps, or training rules, market values and the like.

They were not asking if they should fund WotC Ninja hit squads to kill players who dare to crack the sacred tomes. Although doesn't hackmaster threaten that very thing? Perhaps that was your point. Again, I'm unclear.

 

[Falstaff]

Amusingly enough, your post leaves me unclear on your position, although I get that you are angry about it.

As I read that question, they are wondering if the MM should contain materials expressly aimed at PCs. Rules for using monsters as mounts perhaps, or training rules, market values and the like.

They were not asking if they should fund WotC Ninja hit squads to kill players who dare to crack the sacred tomes. Although doesn't hackmaster threaten that very thing? Perhaps that was your point. Again, I'm unclear.

That's okay, I was just kidding.

 

[Remathilis]

Ok guys, confession time. Who else wrote "flumph" in the other box?

 

[Mengu]

I picked some stuff for the poll, but in comments, I told them, ultimately I don't care about what's in the first MM, as long as future products cover missing holes and they all end up in an online database.

Edit: I do want lots of fresh art though.

 

[Blackwarder]

I think that fiends and devils should be in a separate fiend folio that should come out about 3 months after the first MM release.

Or to take the idea one step further, I would like to have concept books of monsters, one boom for fiends and devils, another one for water creature (seas, oceans and rivers) and others for deserts, the underdark, cities etc etc.

The first MM should have some picking from each of the above to make sure that the player and the DM got enough monsters to last them when the game ship out.

Warder

 

[Kaodi]

So, unfortunately you cannot access the survey once you have completed it, so I cannot make that list of what monsters (or rather, categories of monsters) are going to be in the next Monster Manual.

However, I do think that there is an open question of what to do about monsters within categories. Which demons do you include? Which devils? Which giants? Elements? Celestials? ...Dragons?

For instance, while I prefer the succubus and the erinyes to be separate monsters (and if we are trending towards older school flavour, I imagine they wil be separate again), I am not so sure that the erinyes really needs to be in the initial MM. You almost certainly do not need all of the hezrou, glabrezu, nalfashnee, and horned devil in the initial MM. Hill giants and frost giants should be non-negotiable (Thor should make this obvious), and fire giants get a fair amount of play time, but one of either cloud giants or storm giants can probably be pushed back in the interest of saving some space (personally I say storm giant can wait; I do not think they are really a common thing outside of D&D the way cloud giants are a part of fairy tales). As for elements: let the classics reign!

And after the outrage in the last edition, it would probably be insane to leave out any of the classic ten colours of dragon.

 

[fuindordm]

Only 5? I found almost two dozen.

I'd like the next MM to have:
A range of wild and domesticated animals
A few fey
Several horrifying undead in addition to the basics
3 or 4 interesting borderline PC races in addition to the usual slate of humanoids
Several iconic creatures/hybrids from myth
Giants, elementals, dragons, and good/evil outsiders
The super-iconic D&D monsters
A paragraph or two of lore on the monster's society (if any), goals, and role in the world. No need to go overboard, but a good monster should capture the DM's imagination as a character in a story, not just a collection of stats and tactics as the 4e manual did.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Darn, I should have read this thread before taking the poll!

 

[am181d]

Or their disdain for it.

(It really just didn't work that well in practice).

Agree that the Monstrous Manual should be the one true model for all other monster books.

I loved the binder format. My only real beef (and maybe my memory's playing tricks on me) was that some/all of the monsters were only 1 side of a page, limiting your ability to alphabetize and making it hard to keep track of them. (If you took out a Dragon Turtle for an adventure, you've also taken the Dragonne out without maybe realizing it.)

But the concept was great. Nothing like being able to take out the 10 monsters you need for one adventure, slip them into a folder and go. Although I guess you can get the same thing by printing stat blocks from DDI...