Monster Manual IV - an ongoing review

[Felon]

Non sequitir. You do not need this.

Seems pretty clear the MM's designers felt that the monsters should have general utility. Ninja invisibility and scout skirmish are plug-and-play; they don't require someone to own Complete Adventurer or learn a whole new subsystem. It's a significant distinction.

 

[GQuail]

Just include the stats for a 4th level psion. You will have wasted much less space for those who won't use the psion than you will have wasted repeating material for those who actually WANT it repeating material that they already own.

As Felon notes, the Monster Manual team were clearly working from the principle of making everything stand on its own: the Scout levels could be added, a short blurb explains the class' unique powers and the monster is as useable in my game as any other.

Merric's point isn't invalid: one set of classes was treated with one rule for the MMIV, and by those rules another set had no chance of getting included. People argued (somewhat over-the-top) that the monsters included were "useless" because of their non-Psionic levels: i would argue that far more people would have found a no-hints-provided stat block for a Wilder or Psychic Wariror or whatever far more useless.

 

[Psion]

Seems pretty clear the MM's designers felt that the monsters should have general utility.

Simple principles followed to slavish levels do not make for good game products. If they wanted to do the Githyanki justice, they should have made an exception.

 

[TheNovaLord]

The more i use MMIV the more i like it. the stat blocks, enconuter ideas and description based on knowledge allw it too be used very much on the fly.

hagve used maybe 10 or so creatures from it in the last 2 months. So much betta than MM 3, which i have very rarely used in all the time ive owned it

JohnD

 

[GQuail]

Simple principles followed to slavish levels do not make for good game products. If they wanted to do the Githyanki justice, they should have made an exception.

As was mentioned in a speciifc thread on the subject, there are plenty of roles a Githyanki can play without being a Psionicist (Gish, anyone?) and the insistance that they should never be printed without XPH stats sorta flies in the face of including them in the core books in the first place.

I do think that a web supplement featuring XPH stats for such creatures would be cool, though.

 

[the black knight]

My ongoing review of MMIV:

It fails to satisfy me.

Mod edit: Dude, that was not grandma friendly.

 

[Thanee]

In general, I'm quite in favour of these changes to the format.

Yep, the in-depth information does sound like a very good idea. I don't really buy monster books, normally, but this one I probably will get, eventually. They should also make an expanded MM I.

The new stat-block is bad, though (just IMHO, of course). I hope the plus side is good enough to make up for it.

Bye
Thanee

 

[demiurge1138]

My ongoing review of MMIV:

It was edited by a moderator.

Well, that was a thoughtful and reasoned reply. It's so nice to see how fun the boards can be when everybody's civil to each other and shows some common kindness.

/so very, very sarcastic.

I like the MMIV. It's not the best monster book in my collection, but it's far from the worst (that dishonor goes to the Scarred Lands Creature Collection 1 [although the Revised isn't half bad]). Like Merric, I've already found plenty of use for it in my campaigns - my Eberron group has fought tomb spiders and met a zern in Xen'drik, and I'm expanding my Age of Worms game to feature a vitreous drinker and maybe some spawn of Tiamat. Oh, and I've even made use of the sampled classed ogres.

I do have my qualms with MMIV, but overall I think it was worth my gaming dollar. Especially since it ended up helping me in my own freelance writing. But that's another tale for another day...

Demiurge out.

 

[MerricB]

Yep, the in-depth information does sound like a very good idea. I don't really buy monster books, normally, but this one I probably will get, eventually. They should also make an expanded MM I.

Heh. In some ways, this is it. The expansion of the ogres, orcs, githyanki and suchlike does a great deal of that.

One thing about this expanded material for old monsters: long-time players probably already know it, but new players don't.

Cheers!

 

[Felon]

As was mentioned in a speciifc thread on the subject, there are plenty of roles a Githyanki can play without being a Psionicist (Gish, anyone?) and the insistance that they should never be printed without XPH stats sorta flies in the face of including them in the core books in the first place.

Well, that's all good and well if we're talking about pragmatic utility, but the tangent we've shifted is about "doing justice". Man's entitled to his feelings I suppose. :\