Monster Manual II and III: Both worth getting?

[ElvishBard]

[/QUOTE] But for sheer inspiration and utility, I find MMII to be the better book. I feel no desire to use most of the MMIII creatures in my game.[/QUOTE]

What, exactly do you mean by that? Did you mean you find MM2 to be better, or MM3 but you make your own monsters from it, or what?

Nevermind, you caught the mistake

I have found both to be useful, but as these are the only monster books I own my opinion isn't worth much. It is nice having monsters that the players have no idea about what they do though.

 

[Shemeska]

MMII - some really cool critters in the book, I really do enjoy it and honestly don't see why some folks feel otherwise. Plus about 50% of the Yugoloths in 3e are in here and you can't go wrong with them. They were very well translated to 3.x as opposed to some of the 'loths in the MMIII (where the Ultroloth therein would get its head handed to it by a MMII Arcanaloth. )

MMIII - some gems but overall some very VERY wierd critters, so it may be of great use to you and might be of very little use to you. I like it between the 'loths, the trilloch, dust weights, and a few others.

I like monster books, unless it's Libris Mortis than it's a victim of high expectations.

 

[Ninja-to]

Some good advice here. The Lords of Madness is that the Aberrations book? When I saw just the cover, I had to spend a few moments in quiet contemplation. Then stop myself from grinning evilly and scaring the out of anyone looking at me.

Fiend Folio is on my Amazon shopping cart...!

Hmm. Not sure about these MM's II and III. Might not be worth it after all it seems. MM 1 is pretty good as it is... and after 2 years my PC's have barely touched on it.

Maybe I'll pick up MM II and III when I can find a sweet deal on them. Until then I guess I'll pass until needed.

Thanks for the info guys!

 

[frankthedm]

MM3 is a good book. the critters are amusing and the Poison dusk lizard folk is the ultimate ECL +1 rogue race out there.

Lizardfolk, Poison
Dusk
(MM3 p96)
+2 Dex
+2 Con
–2 Cha
Ranger • Small Size
• 30’ Movement
• +3 Natural Armor bonus to AC
• Low-light vision
• Can Hold Breath for 4 x Constitution
• Poison Use – never accidentally poisons itself
• Level Adjustment +1
• Humanoid (reptilian)
• Natural Weapons – 2 claws (1d3) & 1 bite (1d3).
• +4 Racial bonus on Balance, Jump, Swim checks
• Weapon Familiarity – Bolos & Nets are treated as
Martial weapons (instead of Exotic).
• As long as most of the skin is exposed, a Poison Dusk
Lizardfolk receives a +5 Racial bonus on Hide.

 

[ThirdWizard]

MM II tends to have more higher level CRs, while MM III has more mid level CRed creatures, if memory serves. I liked III much more than II, the second one had more CR problems.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

I have MMII and my friend has MMIII but I haven't had a chance to look it over.

MMII is alright, I have used templates (paticuarly spell stiched, death knight and monster of legend) from it and monsters from it and have been inspired by it to create a couple of interesting adventures. Gemstone dragons are cool too.

Some of the stuff in it is utter junk though (wtf is up with the capped ape or the blood ape and I think there is some other monkey that I'm missing too). And another thing that really bugged me is the Spinosaurus has a higher CR than the T-Rex which is just messed up. And they have a megalodon (a big prehistoric shark) in the book which is really redundant with the dire shark.

Some of the CRs for the powerful critters are too high. Nearly anything in the book with a CR over 20 needs to have its CR reduced to 20 or less but thats not an issue in most games.

 

[Celebrim]

Honestly, while I saw a few cool monsters in Fiend Folio, MM2, MM3, CC1, and CC2 none of the monster books have had enough cool monsters that I felt justified in paying the price. There probably wasn't more than 5 or 10 monsters out of each book that I seriously wanted to use. Sure you can't ever have enough quality monsters, but between being able to convert creatures out of my 1st edition books, having all the fun with templates and advancing monsters, and my own imagination I've got more monsters than I'll ever realisticly use anyway. The monster book that tempted me the most was Savage Species, and that was pretty much only for the templates in the middle of the book. But that's like 15 pages out of a full sized hard cover book with a full sized hard cover price.

Sometimes I wish I could download individual pages from RPG books. I'll take page 23-26,37,49,82 of this, and page 45,78-81, and 119 of that...

 

[Kaji]

For monster books, I'd give MMII a miss. I recently sold mine.

MMIII I can't speak too, but I'm awfully happy with Denizens of Advadnu (Inner Circle Games) and Tome of Horrors II (Necromancer Games) for creepy crawly goodness. Both have been excellent purchases. Also, take a look at Complete Minions from Bastion Press,also excellent. Compete Minions and Denizens of Avadnu both have full color art if that interests you.

 

[dren]

The MM3 was my favorite book outside the core rules. Errata like insano, but has ton'o'ideas for my game style.

 

[Dragonblade]

Right on Ninja-to!! I used to live in Tokyo and played D&D. Alas, finding other games was extremely difficult sometimes. The best gamers I ever played with were Japanese gamers willing to let me play with them despite their broken English. My Japanese was pretty good at the time so we communicated just fine. Those guys were a lot of fun.

Anyway, if you are looking for a good gaming shop in Tokyo, check out Yellow Submarine in Shinjuku. Just a short walk from Shinjuku station's Minami-guchi. Last time I was there about three years ago, they carried all the WotC stuff and a fair amount of other d20 stuff. Be prepared to pay about 1.5 to 2 times US cover price in Yen equivalent. English language RP games are an imported niche item that appeal to a small segment of an already small market.

Anyway, as to your question, I personally did not like the MM2 as much as MM3. IMO, MM2 had more exotic monsters that were less likely to see use in my game whereas MM3 had a lot more monsters that I felt would be easier to drop into my campaign. Take that as you will.

Good luck finding a group. My wife is Japanese and wants to return to Japan someday so I'll be looking for another group in Japan in a few more years myself.