Monster Manual III: Buying?

[Gez]

I understand that fourth Monster Manual is under development. And a Tome of Horrors III is in the works, and even though I am a huge fan of the first two ToHs, I'm really not excited about the idea.

And do not forget Creature Collection IV... It's in the work, too.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

Boy, I'm a total monster book glutton, but I'm really not sure about this one. The preview monsters didn't do much for me, nor did the monster lists, and I'm not running Eberron, either. And I'm really concerned about the reports of editing problems. (I know that WotC has already made changes in their QA/QC procedure based on past gaffes, but what books benefit?)

I wonder if we have finally hit total d20 monster saturation, the point at which every new monster is just (a) a pale variation on past monsters, (b) a powered-up, kick-ass version, or (c) a heavily world-specific variant. It's like a beholder, but this one is /purple/! This is a /blood/ troll, and it has 20 HD and a vorpal bite! This is a halfling, but they're called mu-shus, and here's six pages of loving description of their culture and history in the World of Gorth!

I understand that fourth Monster Manual is under development. And a Tome of Horrors III is in the works, and even though I am a huge fan of the first two ToHs, I'm really not excited about the idea.

Now the Monster Geographica series, on the other hand, is a different story -- culling through exisiting monster books, pulling out worthy candidates and updating them to 3.5? /That/ seems like a worthy project.

This just about sums up my views, nicely. The books that come out dealing with monsters, the less I am enthused.

 

[Garnfellow]

And do not forget Creature Collection IV... It's in the work, too.

Feh. Two of those were plenty.

 

[Mystery Man]

Bought it. Used it. Love it. Get it!

 

[Belen]

Nope. I have too many monster books and the only one you actually need the the MM.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Well, I love new monster books. Sometimes those like Creatures of Freeport and Legacy of the Dragon really help niche the setting even as others like Denizens of Avandu raise the bar on what a book should look like.

MMIII will probably get some heavy use from me at first and then be mixed in with other books.

As far as making players fear the creatures, I do that through role playing. When I first introduced the Ebon Maw (demon lord from Dragon mag) to my campaign, I introduced one of it's powerful servants. An NPC the party was with threw a +2 dagger at it and did nothing. The party knew that the NPC was pretty good with daggers and decided, "Well, if that didn't scrath it, we're getting out of here." Tales of the monsters will go a long way to making them more creepy.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Yeah, I'll pick it up. I'm a sucker for monster books, even though I don't use most of the ones I have. I enjoy reading them and thinking of ways to use the new monsters, even if I don't actually get around to using them in a game.

 

[Tetsubo]

I already ordered a copy via Amazon.

 

[Voadam]

Addendum

If it goes on a crazy amazon WotC 60% off sale in a couple months and I see that I'll probably tack it onto an existing order.

 

[Desdichado]

I totally don't need it. I have monster books coming out of my ears:

• Monster Manual 3e
• Monster Manual 3.5
• Monster Manual 2
• Fiend Folio
• Monsternomicon
• Book of Fiends
• Legacy of Dragons
• Creatures of Rokugan
• Beasts of Norrath
• Oriental Aventures (not a monster book, but has a lot of monsters)
• Creature Collection
• Creature Collection 2
• Tome of Horrors
• Call of Cthulhu (also not a monster book, but I use a lot of monsters from this)
• gosh, probably half a dozen more I'm not thinking of right at the moment.

However, I also have a strange fetish for monster books. Oddly enough, I usually use classed humanoids as adversaries, not monsters, but I still really want this one, Creature Collection 3 and Creatures of Freeport.