Lords of Madness: The Book of Aberrations

[siege72]

John,

Thanks for the great review! As far as the stat corrections are concerned, I find them to be very valuable and wish more reviewers would take the time to look at mechanics.

 

[Kelleris]

Hmm... I've found another thing that makes me wonder. The adult neogi's full attack is listed as including a bite and 2 claws. Based on that, I think that the three errors in neogi stat blocks you point out are actually right, just confusingly abbreviated. They aren't getting iterative natural attacks, they're getting one claw and then another claw. The fact that the attacks aren't at iterative attack patterns (one attack, and then another at -5), but rather two identical bonuses, makes me think they've actually got the numbers right here too. This proofreading thing is harder than you and the designer's make it look, eh?

 

[John Cooper]

I assume you're talking about the neogi defiler on p. 95 and the neogi sorcerer on p. 96. Compare their stat blocks with the adult neogi's on p. 90. There, the Full Attack line specifies one attack bonus (+2 melee) and the number of claws (2 claws). This is the standard way to do it. Giving attack bonuses on either side of a slash ("+3/+3 melee" or ("+7/+7 melee") just confuses the issue, although now that I look again the neogi defiler's Full Attack says "2 claws" and the neogi sorcerer's Full Attack just says "claws." Still, as written (using the standard stat block nomenclature), the neogi defiler's stat block says that it attacks with two claws, each of which makes two attacks at +3 melee. (I think part of the problem is that the book has three authors and a two-man development team, any of whom might be responsible for a given stat block. Everybody might be using slightly different notation to try to get across the same idea, and nobody went through and standardized everybody's work.)

And nobody ever claimed that stat block work was easy!

 

[The Black Kestrel]

John,

Yes, the Grey are the Fraal from Alternity. As are a number of creatures in the Menace Manual and several of the Aliens in D20 Future. I for one am happy to see them get a new lease one life

 

[olshanski]

I'll voice that I really, really, really like the stat block reviews.

Question though regarding the first entry:
I thought that strength bonus/penalty applied only to thrown weapons (slings/javalins/axes), not to bows. I also thought that a strength bonus could apply only if the bow was specially designed.

 

[John Cooper]

olshanski: You're partially correct. From the longbow description on page 119 of the Player's Handbook:

If you have a penalty for low Strength, apply it to damage rolls when you use a longbow. If you have a bonus for high Strength, you can apply it to damage rolls when you use a composite longbow (see below) but not a regular longbow.

This makes sense, given that there's an upper limit as to how far back you can pull the bowstring on a given bow (and thus after a point, higher Strength makes no difference), whereas if you're not strong enough to pull the bowstring all the way back, you're not going to send the arrow flying as fast, and thus your damage potential decreases.

Our good friend Huck One-Eye from page 35 of Lords of Madness has Str 7, and thus a -2 Strength penalty, which applies to his longbow damage.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Crabapple

Dennis Crabapple McLaren-McLain Mc-whatever's artwork is in LoM?

Aww, crap.