Monster Manual IV - an ongoing review

[Psychic Warrior]

What controversy?

I thought most people hated it, whilst a minority (myself included) thought it was ok. Do some people actually love it?

I rank it as the second best monster book I own next to the MM1. If it had all the dragons and giants MM1 has it would be #1.

Also don't go by the internet for how popular a product is. I noticed many of the people saying they hated it bought it (even with the previews and table of contents being released weeks before the book was in the stores).

 

[Mercule]

Well I love it. Quick review:

Bad bits: Dragonspawn are dull

Average bits: New stat block makes some things clearer (like special abilities) and some things more confusing (like iterative attacks), sample NPCs are nice but never quite what you want

Good bits: Knowledge checks for each creature, suggested encounters and lairs for many of the creatures, good selection of creatures

That pretty well sums up my reaction to it, also. I fear that it may eventually find its way into my collection, because, while there are some monster that I really, really hate, when MM4 has a hit, it's a big hit.

 

[MerricB]

Old Favourites
Monster Manual IV revisits several monster races that are very much "monsters with traction", to use the phrase from the WotC web article of several months ago. These races are the Drow, Githyanki, Gnoll, Lizardfolk, Ogre, Orc, and Yuan-Ti, and form the core of many D&D campaigns.

Here, the authors take the opportunity to expand significantly on the ecology and society of the races, and also to suggest more adventures involving each of the races. This information may be familiar to players who have been playing for 20 years, but I definitely appreciated seeing it in this book. It should be noted that I rather less time for the space spent on the ecology of a race than the culture: in my campaigns, culture creates adventure hooks, much of the ecology sections are purely background noise. Mind you, when the ecology section describes the lairs of these creatures, I find it useful information.

Each race gets three or more "advanced" statblocks, generally advanced with class levels, along with a description of how these advanced monsters fit into their society, along with suggestions of encounters and adventures using them. I quite appreciate these "classed" monsters. Although it is certainly within my ability to add classes to an ogre or orc, the class choices made by the authors are often quite ingenious; in retrospect, it seems obvious to have an ogre scout or a gnoll warlock, but I certainly hadn't thought of them beforehand.

The use of classes from the supplemental books such as Complete Arcane and Complete Adventurer is also quite inspired; you do not need those other books to use the monsters as all information is given in the text. One disappointing note is that the githyanki have not been advanced with psionic classes. This is obviously due to the decision that no supplemental books should be needed with MMIV, something that I applaud and regret at the same time. One can only hope that a Complete Psionic II might come out with such a monster section to enhance the Githyanki.

The Lizardfolk entry takes a slightly different approach, giving the make-up of an entire tribe (the Dark Talon tribe), rather than just presenting sample monsters that could be used anywhere. This gives much more of a ready-made adventure focus to the Lizardfolk.

The other exception is the Ogre Guard Thrall, which is a slave of mind-flayers with unusual abilities. The other two Ogres are for regular usage.

To list the monsters:
* Drow: Lolth's Sting (ninja 4), Dark Sniper (scout 6), Arcane Guard (fighter 2/wizard 5), Drow Priestess (cleric 8)
* Githyanki: Soldier (fighter 3), Gish (fighter 2/evoker 5), Captain (fighter 7/blackguard 2)
* Gnoll: Slave-Taker (ranger 2), Fiendish Cleric of Yeenoghu (cleric 3), Half-Fiend Gnoll Warlock (warlock 4)
* Lizardfolk, Dark Talon Tribe: Soldier (alchemically enhanced), Champion (barbarian 3), Wasp Rider (lance-wielder), Giant Wasp Mount, Dark Talon Shaman (druid 5), Yarshag, Dark Talon King (fighter 1/druid 5/vermin keeper 4)
* Ogre: Scout (scout 4), Tempest (fighter 4/tempest 2), Ogre Guard Thrall (mind-flayer slave)
* Orc: Berserker (barbarian 4), War Howler (barbarian 2/druid 2), Battle Priest (cleric 1), Plague Speaker (unholy scion cleric 5), Half-Orc Infiltrator (rogue 3)
* Yuan-Ti: Pureblood Slayer (rogue 1/assassin 7), Halfblood Deceiver (barbarian 2), Abomination Cult Leader (marshal 4).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What controversy?

I thought most people hated it, whilst a minority (myself included) thought it was ok. Do some people actually love it?

No, most people yapping about it hate it. This is the Internet: The negative opinions always get stated more forcefully and often. I suspect it's too soon to say how good a book it actually is.

Heck, people run down MM2 all the time, but whenever there's a poll of what monster books are actually used by people, it's one of the most popular.

Time will tell on MM4.

 

[zoroaster100]

This positive review has made me reconsider this book. I may consider getting it after all. I definitely agree the new stat block is superior to the old one, much more so. The only thing that bothers me about the new stat block is that when Power Attack is figured in to the attack, the amount of points put into Power Attack is not called out, which makes it hard to reverse engineer to select a different amount of Power Attack. That is a major flaw, though easily fixed if the designers would just put in the amount of Power Attack used in parenthesis next to the attack line.

 

[MerricB]

This positive review has made me reconsider this book. I may consider getting it after all. I definitely agree the new stat block is superior to the old one, much more so. The only thing that bothers me about the new stat block is that when Power Attack is figured in to the attack, the amount of points put into Power Attack is not called out, which makes it hard to reverse engineer to select a different amount of Power Attack. That is a major flaw, though easily fixed if the designers would just put in the amount of Power Attack used in parenthesis next to the attack line.

Power Attack *should* be called out, I agree. It certainly is in Dungeon adventures - and done so very well.

There are probably a lot of stat-block errors I'm just not seeing (and, really, a lot of them don't matter). One that has been pointed out to me is that the Lolth's Sting, a ninja, is wearing armour when the ninja is monk-like and doesn't wear armour. Hmm. It's only a +3 armour bonus, so it doesn't affect things greatly, but it's frustrating.

Cheers!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The use of classes from the supplemental books such as Complete Arcane and Complete Adventurer is also quite inspired; you do not need those other books to use the monsters as all information is given in the text. One disappointing note is that the githyanki have not been advanced with psionic classes. This is obviously due to the decision that no supplemental books should be needed with MMIV, something that I applaud and regret at the same time. One can only hope that a Complete Psionic II might come out with such a monster section to enhance the Githyanki.

I don't get this: If supplemental material is OK if they include all the relevant information, why not just include it for psionic characters? I don't use it myself, but if it's all kept on the DM's side of the screen, why not include the info needed to run psionics and throw the psionics folks a bone?

 

[MerricB]

Spawn of Tiamat
A significant portion of the book, 36 of 224 pages, is given over to these new monsters. With 2006 being promoted the Year of the Dragon, it is not surprising to see a selection of dragon-themed monsters in Monster Manual IV. So, how are they?

The conceptual nature of the Spawn of Tiamat is that the Queen of the Evil Dragons is attempting to impose her power on the material plane by creating new creatures - the spawn - primarily from the offspring of chromatic dragons that she warps to her own purposes.

Dungeons & Dragons covered the idea of draconic-like creatures as footmen of evil in the Dragonlance saga with the draconians, but that version has peculiar problems in portability. That they are created from corrupted good dragon eggs certainly presents a major obstacle, and their design is also very much a legacy of 1st edition methodologies.

Integrating the Spawn of Tiamat into a campaign with dragons should not prove troublesome. So, what are they? Each colour of chromatic dragon (black, blue, green, red and white) has a number of spawn that can be created from its eggs, from the Blackspawn Raider, a vicious monstrous humanoid hunter, to the Redspawn Firebelcher, a stupid mount for more intelligent spawn that can attack with a ranged fire attack.

As with other monsters in MMIV, each spawn has one very strong theme or attack trick. The spawn are designed to be used together, so that you might have two or three (or even more) different types of spawn in the same encounter. Indeed, many spawn have an ability named "Tiamat's Blessing", which gives adjacent spawn a measure of energy resistance or immunity. So, a redspawn and a greenspawn together are more fearsome than a redspawn alone.

The elegance of this design is that it is very easy to use many of the spawn together; they're not difficult to run due to their low number of special abilities, but, as they act quite differently in combat, encounters with spawn of tiamat allow a great deal of variety depending on what spawn are used. As with the other monsters in the book, the ecology and culture of the Spawn are explored, and there are many suggested encounters and groupings for them.

The Spawn of Tiamat are as follows:
* Blackspawn Raider (CR 4) - a vicious hunter
* Blackspawn Exterminator (CR 10) - advanced Raider with ninja levels, often found as the leader of raiding parties
* Blackspawn Stalker (CR 9) - dragon/spider cross; web and acidic spittle.
* Bluespawn Ambusher (CR 4) - quadruped beast
* Bluespawn Burrower (CR 9) - desert scout
* Bluespawn Godslayer (CR 10) - bipedal melee combatants with particular skill against good dragons and outsiders
* Bluespawn Stormlizard (CR 6) - large mount with electrical attacks
* Greenspawn Leaper (CR 2) - mount, hunter and guardian
* Greenspawn Razorfiend (CR 7) - voracious predators of woodlands and swamps
* Greenspawn Sneak (CR 2) - small bipedal scout
* Greenspawn Sneak Raid Leader (CR 7) - advanced sneak with ranger/scout levels
* Redspawn Arcaniss (CR 6) - fiery spellcaster
* Redspawn Firebelcher (CR 6) - large mount with fiery attacks
* Whitespawn Hordeling (CR 1) - bipedal meleeist
* Whitespawn Hunter (CR 4) - stalker of the frozen realms
* Whitespawn Berserker (CR 6) - advanced hunter with barbarian levels
* Whitespawn Iceskidder (CR 6) - large mount for cold environments with icy breath

 

[MerricB]

I don't get this: If supplemental material is OK if they include all the relevant information, why not just include it for psionic characters? I don't use it myself, but if it's all kept on the DM's side of the screen, why not include the info needed to run psionics and throw the psionics folks a bone?

You can't. To include psionic material would require too many pages of explanations. You'd need to explain Power Points, Psionic Focus, give every power description a monster has, reprint lots of feats, and so on.

To include a scout just required a very short description of Skirmish and Battle Fortitude, as follows:
Skirmish (Ex): +1 bonus on damage rolls and to AC in any round during which the scout moves at least 10 feet. Complete Adventurer 12.
Battle Fortitude (Ex): Bonus on Initiative checks and Fortitude saves while wearing light or no armour and carrying a light load. Included above. Complete Adventurer 12.

That was it. Compare how much text you'd need for even a 4th level psion.

Cheers!

 

[BryonD]

No, most people yapping about it hate it. This is the Internet: The negative opinions always get stated more forcefully and often. I suspect it's too soon to say how good a book it actually is.

Heck, people run down MM2 all the time, but whenever there's a poll of what monster books are actually used by people, it's one of the most popular.

Time will tell on MM4.

Meh, There has certainly been some complaints against MM2. But I don't recall nearly the level as has shown against MM4. I also don't recall the nature of the complaints being at all the same.

Of course complaints come through strong on the net. This doesn't lead to the conclusion that the complaints are meaningless.

There is bias in the data, but the bias is fairly constant. MM4 has had a lot more to complain about than MM2.

Look at Amazon. MM2 = 4 stars, MM4 = 2 stars. If the complaints come through stronger, then how did MM2 pull off 4 stars? (MM3 also got 4, MM1 is a little lower, which I assume has some "I hate 3.5" weight and still beats MM4)