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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6250122" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 355: May 2007part 4/6Creature catalog VI: And so we come to the final big collection of monsters new and old. Many have come, and a surprising amount are still gone from 3e. The magazine has done their fair share to keep old settings alive in our hearts and update old statistics. It's not over till the last page turns. Can they pull something awesome out of the reserves and back into play? We may be reaching the last few minutes of play, but they might still make a difference to my overall assessment. There's certainly a few familiar faces on the contents page. Let's see if they're handled properly. Black Beasts of Bedlam are basically chaos beasts with a better name and different colour palette, plus extra malevolence and brains. Spreading insanity and chaos throughout the multiverse, one stupid adventuring party at a time. What a job to have. Cave Fishers are one of the many weird old monsters that have fallen to the new edition's increased focus on humanoids and eldritch horrors from beyond the stars. They got an ecology in issue 135, which makes their dropping seem particularly egregious. Some writers have no respect for history. What other awesome monsters never got updated. Haven't seen Slithering Trackers around in a while. Giant Dragonflys are a fairly natural creature that also got displaced by the trend for faster, grimmer, LOUDER! They're exceedingly manoeuvrable flyers, and can be made into mounts, so in situations requiring precision flying like giant caverns filled with poisonous spikes or lava, they might well be a better choice than most of the trainable horse size dragon types they've done over the years. Good to see them again. Dungeon Phantoms are an amusing trope lampshader. They explain how dungeons can be delved repeatedly, and still have lots of unsprung traps, as they reset them, while rarely fighting adventurers directly. Tee hee. Good luck catching them without a good bit of divination to reveal their weakness. Rot Giants are one I'm not particularly bothered about being brought back. They look like undead, but they're not! You really don't want to hit them close up, for infection sucks. Cannon Golems are pretty awesome looking, and not only have missile attacks, but also selfdestruct if things are going poorly. It's good to have minions without a sense of self-preservation. Maedar are another fallen ecology subject. So who have the medusa been mating with for the past 7 years? Given the number that have templates in supplements, some of them have obviously been settling for whatever they can get. The impossible statistics of their 2nd ed entry are sorted out, although they're still ridiculously rare. They also include the glyptar in their description, making it a two for the price of one. Nice. Obliviax are another awesome one that really should have appeared in an official MM. The number of wonky exploits you used to be able to pull have been toned down a bit, but they're still highly amusing little things. Being a dwarven spellcaster looks increasingly appealing in this context. Scarecrows are still another obvious one if you're at all interested in horror. But we've been through the struggles to integrate horror into D&D in great detail over the years, and it's only got trickier with the edition advances. Amusingly, they give it a mechanical benefit for being able to rotate it's head 360 degrees. Pretty cute, really. They can fill a whole bunch of roles in your adventure. Seedroaches, like cannon golems, take an existing thing and add cannons to them. It's a winning formula, like adding marmite or ninjas. (mmm, ninjas covered in marmite. :drools: ) They ought to make it into a template. The illustration is quite amusing too. Giant slugs are still another neglected old eco-friendly monster. Ok, so their acidic slime probably leaves trails of dead plants wherever they go, but it'll grow back. Its all part of the cycle of life in a world where apex predators are more common than plants. Springheels are obviously a riff on jack the ripper. As befits their name, they like urban environments, and leaping out, using spring attack, then running away giggling annoyingly. What video game boss am I thinking of as well when I say that? If I can't place it, can't be too overdone. So it proves another useful little updating where most of the tweaks are for the better in my opinion.</blockquote>

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