Monster Handbook

[Messageboard Golem]

Legends & Lairs: Monster Handbook is a resource for enhancing and modifying the monsters in your game.

• More than 60 new feats for monsters of all types.
• More than a dozen new prestige classes, including the thunder hammer giant and draconic tyrant.
• Dozens of new special attacks, special qualities, and traits conveniently broken down by creature type.
• New templates such as the chaos dragon and relentless undead that can be applied to a variety of creatures to create devastating and interesting new breeds of enemy.
• Detailed guidelines on adding abilities to monsters and adjusting their CRs to reflect the new challenge for PCs.
• A comprehensive discussion on using monsters effectively in your game, and suggestions on how to modify existing monsters to present exciting and mysterious new challenges to your players every session.
• In-depth suggestions for combining core feats, skills, classes, and magic items with different types of monsters.
  Sample creatures in each section showcase the new rules and make suggestions on how to effectively integrate them into your campaign.

 

[Psion]

Monster's Handbook

The Monster's Handbook is one of Fantasy Flight Games' Legends & Lairs books for d20 system fantasy games. The topic of most such books to date have been traps (with the Traps & Treachery books) and character options for PCs (with the Path of ... books.) The Monster's handbook is almost like the path books in that it provides new options, but in this case, the new options are not for PCs, but for their main opposition: monsters.

A First Look

The Monster's Handbook is a 176-page hardbound book priced at $24.95.

The cover of the book has the same metal-bound style used by all of FFG's Legends & Lairs d20 system books. The front cover has a metallic symbol of some horned monster, with excerpts from the interior art in the backdrop on a parchment tone background.

The interior is black and white. The interior art is good to excellent. Interior illustrations are by Andy Brase, Mitch Cotie, David Griffith, Eric Lofgren, Hian Rodriguez, Tyler Walpole. As usual, I find Brase's artwork to be excellent (especially his harpy and centipede-man pictures), but the other artists have some very eye-catching artwork as well.

The body text is moderately sized, the paragraphs are double spaced and the column spacing is somewhat wide. The text density is a bit low for a major d20 product, and it seems to me that perhaps they might have been able to fit in the missing chapter they sloughed off to the web if FFG used a layout like WotC and Sword & Sorcery Studios.

A Deeper Look

The monsters handbook is arranged into 11 chapters. The first two chapters cover general rules and ideas on modifying monsters and monster tactics. The third through eleventh chapters are devoted to most of the various creature types per the d20 system core rules. There are individual chapters for abberations, dragons, elementals, fey, giants, outsiders, shapechangers, and undead. There is a combined chapter for humanoids and monstrous humanoids. The magical beasts chapter is not in the book, but is available as a web enhancement on the FFG website.

The first chapter, entitled Modifying Monsters, contains the basic rules and common elements for modifying monsters.

The basis of the book is a system for adding abilities and assessing the effects on a creature's CR. Each ability in the book is assessed a cost in challenge points. Each 100 points correspond to 1 CR point.

Ability costs are further split down into absolute and relative. Abilities that scale with a creature's power are given an absolute cost, which provide a fixed adjustment to a creature's CR. Abilities that are relatively static and that are less of a benefit to more powerful creatures are given a relative cost. Relative costs figure CRs from CPs as well, but instead of adding directly to the cost, are added using the EL system in the DMG as multiple creatures of the given CR. This is an astute observation and is central to making the system work.

The system recommends that abilities not adding the new abilities without adding additional hit dice and the attendant effects on attacks, skills, and saves. While this is generally sensible advice (what use is a special pumped up creature if it can't live to use its ability), I can see cases where you would not necessarily want to make a unique creature just as a unique challenge for the players, but as flavor in the campaign. As it is, the costs the system assesses sort of assume you will be using these increased hit dice; an assessment of cost without using the increased HD might have been prudent.

The first chapter also has a number of abilities that you might add to any monster type and an example of using the system: an imp modified with the cold subtype and a cold breath weapon as a special challenge for the party.

The second chapter, Monster Tactics, is short and provides some basic advice on creating challenging creature encounters. The advice is not limited to strictly tactical considerations; much of the advice concerns providing a feel and campaign details behind the sorts of changes you can make with this book, vice just blindly throwing super-monsters at the PCs.

The third through eleventh chapters each provides guidelines for customizing creatures of the given type, as well as a variety of options specific to the creature type covered by the chapter. This includes unique special attacks and qualities, feats, prestige classes, and templates. Some chapters have variant rules specific to the creature type, such as rules for summoning elementals with classes. Finally, each chapter has one sample creature customized by the rules given in the chapter.

Conclusion

The Monster's Handbook is a marvelous resource for a creative DM. Using the tools in this book, the DM can easily create a number of unique or new variants for PCs to face, and promises to keep players on their toes. It is more than just another monster book, but at the same time, it complements and adds to the possibilities of any monster book that you might own.

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By Steven Creech, Exec. Chairman d20 Magazine Rack

Sizing Up the Target
Monster’s Handbook is the latest offering in the Legends & Lairs series by Fantasy Flight Games. This 172-page hardcover, which retails for $24.95, is intended to breathe new life into monsters by giving GMs new tools and suggestions to make those monsters tougher and more dangerous.

First Blood
The book opens with suggestions on modifying monsters in order to add more mystery to them and make them more menacing. An excellent explanation for calculating challenge ratings follows (which is one helluva lot clearer and easier to comprehend than any other publisher has been able to put forth). Chapter two discusses monster tactics and how to make your monsters cool. One of the biggest faults GMs tend to have is that they play monsters straightforward and dumb rather than crafty, cunning and using any special abilities to its fullest potential. The remaining chapters (3-11) address each individual monster type, going into tips for building them, how best to use feats and skills, what character classes work best, a type-specific prestige class, and new feats, special abilities and special qualities for that monster type.

Critical Hits
For starters, the artwork is first rate. I don’t typically comment on the art in a product because everyone’s taste varies, but the black and white art is ideal for the book’s content. The approach towards new feats that are specific to monster type (aberration, undead, etc.) is innovative and will certainly put players back on their heels when they encounter monsters tweaked with this new stuff.

Critical Misses
Honestly, this is one book where, try as I might, there is nothing to complain about. It is pretty much a GM-only book, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It would have been nice to see more open game content, but there is a reasonable amount as it stands now.

Coup de Grace
This is a book that truly belongs in every GMs collection. The new material included is great, especially the suggestions for improving existing monsters. The sample monsters provided really help with the understanding of how to properly calculate and modify challenge ratings. Most of all, the overall quality makes this a must-buy book in my opinion. GMs who effectively utilize this book will certainly have their players walking on eggshells after a few encounters.

To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to Fast Tracks at www.d20zines.com.

 

[blackshirt5]

The only bad thing I have to say about this book is that I think that FFG is maybe a little bit too slavish in their devotion to putting out 176-page hardcovers. I think that they should've included the magical beasts chapter in the book instead of having it as a web enhancement(where after printing it can be lost, necessitating another printing).

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Monster’s Handbook by Fantasy Flight Games

This is the second most important monster book one will ever own. The only reason it’s not the first is because it needs a monster book to work. So, pair it up with any monster from any source. The Monster’s Handbook is a great set of rules for altering and changing the abilities of any creature. The book is hardbound, $24.95, and 172 pages in length. The layout is good and easy to read and the art varies from not so good to really nice. It’s all black and white and done an array of artists. The book, though, has one writer Mike Mearls. Mike Mearls has proven that he is one of the best writers of d20 products and this book only further cements that statement.

The book starts with the Modifying Monsters chapter. This chapter gives the Dungeon Master the ability to add and subtract powers from any creature. It has rules that assigns point values to everything so one can determine if the challenge rating of the creature needs to be increased and if so by how much. This chapter gives one the ability to really change the usual monsters and to really give the players a surprise with their new abilities.

Chapter two is Monster tactics. This chapter is useful for anyone even if one is not using altered creatures. This chapter covers playing the monsters and using them effectively as well as keeping the mystery of the creatures and their abilities.

The rest of the book covers individual creature types. Magical Beasts is covered in the web enhancement found at Fantasy Flight Games website. These chapters take each of the creature types and has templates, prestige classes, and feats that are specifically designed for the creature types. All of these chapters have great options for them.

This is one of those rare books that will always be useful. The ability to change and alter creatures to keep them fresh for the players and dungeon master alike. I can see this book being as close to a must have as any outside the core rules.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Looking over what's in the book, I can't fight the impression that any DM worth his salt could come up with half (or more) of this stuff in seconds.

Thoughts on that?

 

[Crothian]

It's amazing the times I read comments like that, yet only the very best of the DMs can actually do that, if them. THis book is way more thorough then any DM I've played with including myself could ever do.

 

[Greatwyrm]

Stop what you’re doing and go get this book. Really.

Monster’s Handbook, written largely by rising d20 star Mike Mearls, is a very interesting monster supplement. Interesting in that it doesn’t contain all that many monsters. In fact, I think I only counted twelve in 169 pages. That’s because this isn’t a book full of what other people thought were cool ideas for monsters. This is a book that shows you very easy ways to take the monsters you already have and make them your own.

In DMing for 3e/3.5e, the thing I’ve probably had the most trouble with is creating good homebrew monsters. I like to create my own worlds and I like to try to throw at least one homebrew critter in each adventure. The Monster’s Handbook has made this very simple for me. Even though it’s a 3e book, I’ve had little trouble using it for my 3.5e games.

There are eleven chapters, covering most of the different types of creatures. Magical beasts were not included in the book, but are available in a web enhancement. Also, Shapechangers appear as their own type, which is no longer the case for 3.5e. This is a minor annoyance, however, and doesn’t diminish the usefulness of the book.

The first two chapters, Modifying Monsters and Monster Tactics, can be applied to just about any creatures. Modifying Monsters has guidelines for adding things like spell-like abilities, supernatural abilities, poisonous attacks, and fiddling with things like stats or bonus feats. Monster Tactics isn’t so much a tactical primer as advice for thinking through what you want your new creation to do and playing to its new strengths and weaknesses. Quite simply, this is the most clear and concise advice I’ve seen on making new monsters.

The subsequent chapters provide modifications more specific to different types of monsters. This is done through specific abilities that can be added to creatures by modifying their challenge ratings, new feats, and monster specific prestige classes. In fact, I think this is the first time I recall seeing monster specific PrCs anywhere. To me, just advancing a monster based on its hit dice is tedious and boring. The monster PrCs are a welcome alternative.

Another thing I particularly like is the way adding abilities and modifying the CR is handled. For the most part, everybody knows how templates and PrCs are handled. Adding specific abilities that aren’t in a template or PrC is a little trickier. The core Monster Manual offers a little advice on this. Add one to the CR if the abilities generally improve the effectiveness of the creature in combat. Add two if the abilities significantly improve the effectiveness of the creature in combat. My problem is, if I want to add natural armor and magic resistance to a skeleton, is that worth +1 or +2? How about adding a poisonous stinger tail to a kobold?

Monster’s Handbook prices individual abilities in two ways. The first is Absolute Cost. These are abilities that have pretty much the same overall effect no matter what kind of monster you put them on. Adding 4 points of natural armor to a skeleton or to a hill giant make the both harder to hit and adds the same amount to either one’s CR. The other kind of cost is the Relative Cost. Some abilities vastly improve a creature while some don’t add much at all. Adding the ability to cast Magic Missile at will to a goblin definitely lets the little guy pack a lot more punch, especially against low level adventurers. Adding the same ability to a mind flayer or a dragon usually won’t matter nearly as much, since both would have other abilities that already overshadow a simple Magic Missile. The idea of the Relative Cost handles this disparity in a very elegant way.

The only thing I can find that is problematic for a 3.5e game are the costs for various levels of damage reduction. However, penalizing FFG for not being able to see into the future and include a 3.5e version right along side would be silly. Using the guidelines in the 3.5e update booklet available from WotC’s website, you should be able to come to a reasonable cost for this one ability.

The bottom line is no DM should be without this book. If you like to make up your own creatures, this will save you loads of time and inspire even more creations. Don’t let the fact that it’s a 3e book scare you off. That has practically no effect on the 99% of abilities covered that aren’t damage reduction.