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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 1670211" data-attributes="member: 2205">While I continually hear (read) the complaints about all the "steampunk"ishness of the Monsternomicon, I have to admit, that leaves me scratching my head a little bit.  Out of the 50-60 or so monsters in the book, there's about 5-6 that are "steampunk"ish.  A more valid complaint that I've been hearing lately is that it rehashes creatures; the farrow replaces the gnoll, the gobbers replace goblins, the various trolls replace a variety of other monstrous humanoids, etc.  Still, even that's not a bad thing; they don't replace them by being exactly the same with some IK stuff written in.  It's of tremendous utility to DMs who homebrew, and might well see gobbers as a much more interesting take on the traditional ole goblin.I'd still say the Monsternomicon is my favorite monster book, and I use it quite frequently.Yep, I agree.  Along with Monsternomicon, this book sees the most use in my campaign.  Then again, my campaign may be specifically well suited for those two kinds of books; a kind of Warhammer meets John Carter of Mars meets Robert E. Howard's Conan (as opposed to the movie's Conan) meets the X-Files.  Weirdo undead, some aberrations (especially if they aren't chock full of gimmicky magic abilities) and fiends are especially prominent.  An iron lich is a primary villain.  Etc.I don't own this one, but I've been underwhelmed to the point that I haven't picked it up yet.  It didn't look particularly impressive from a presenation standpoint, and I didn't think it had a lot of particularly useful creatures for my purposes.  It's also extremely expensive.Another one that I don't have, but based on my experience with the first one, I'm not that excited to get it.  The first one does indeed have some good creatures in it (although talk about redundant -- how many different types of undead are in there?) but the signal to noise ratio is quite bad.  Granted, that maybe because the first one's main purpose was to convert older creatures that didn't make the cut into official products, and I think they didn't make the cut for good reason, so maybe ToH2 would actually be more useful to me than the first.  But I doubt it.I just saw this the other day and it was the first I'd heard of it.  If you complain about Monsternomicon being a bit of a niche product, you have to pay the piper his due and admit that this one is as well, even moreso, IMO.It is older.  I actually use it very little for some reason; it seemed like exactly my thing when I was listening to the development of it, but I haven't found the occasion to use it ever.  Before starting my current (albeit still fairly young) campaign, I went through all my monster books making lists of what I could potentially use in this campaign.  This one had one of the smallest lists I made...As did this one.  I give kudos to WotC for going a little bit out on a limb with some of the ideas in here, but unless you're playing a very unusual planes oriented game, I can't imagine much of these get used.  The weird ideas often end up being just weird instead of "hey, that's really different and cool"And those I have little or no familiarity with.</blockquote>

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