Monster Manual IV - an ongoing review

[GQuail]

I have stood my ground against those who have attacked MMIV on the notion of including classed versions of existing creatures because I feel that generelly speaking, the classed creatures would make up a warband or team or tribe or what have you, that would be a challenging and rationally organized opposition for the players. It's just that the Githyanki lack that virtue by omitting one of their central schticks, thus I don't think they earn their stripes the way the other classes creatures do.

If I can't utilize the classed creatures in the book out of the box as a representative cross section of the opposition, then it seems to me that the MMIV has lost its major selling point on distributing creatures in that format.[/QUOTE]

There is some merit in that: just like, for example, a commonor 14 Kobold wouldn't be useful to me, and otehrs might find a Wizard 12/Archmage 2 Dwarf pointless, you might find a Fighter/Wizard Githyanki useless because it differs too far from a typical Githyanki. Though considering the core Githyanki's favoured class is, IIRC, fighter, I don't think it's surprising that Stat blocks featuring them have that occur, you know, on occasion. ;-)

The "part core, part not, depends on version" nature of Psionics is the problem here, methinks: enough history about the beasts mentions their intrinsic psionicness, but in this edition Psionic classes are a plug-in to the game and so core creatures avoid that system. We can't blame the MMIV authors for inheriting a broke system on this front, and I hope the 4th ed authors finally make a more decisive decision on this front.

You are going to strange lengths to mischaracterize me or make my position seem more extreme. Have I ever commented on WoL? Since I have not (indeed, I don't even own it), I think you are hardly in a position to contrast my viewpoints on a supposed contradiction when I have presented no viewpoints on WoL.

It's not "mischaracterisation", it's a comparison, though if you find it invalid that might prove useful to the discussion if you explain so. My point was that the presence of a psionic race but absence of XPH stats made those creatures odd to some people, going as far as useless to others: I bring up examples where a similar situation applies outside the MMIV. I genuinely want to know if you think it's different or not, because I can't see myself why it would be, which is why we're butting heads online. ;-)

 

[Psion]

My point was that the presence of a psionic race but absence of XPH stats made those creatures odd to some people, going as far as useless to others: I bring up examples where a similar situation applies outside the MMIV. I genuinely want to know if you think it's different or not, because I can't see myself why it would be, which is why we're butting heads online. ;-)

Well, I hope that the previous quoted paragraphs demonstrate: yes, I think it's different. I have no idea in what context the mind flayer appears in WoL, and the one in the MM is strictly a core book (no, I do not put core books and supplements in the same category... pulling small amounts of material for use with other supplements is fair game. It is not for the MM.) A singular creature is not a problem to me, but if you are going to represent a variety of traditionally psionic creatures, if you wish to represent them fully and have them perform their function of "out of the box usability", you should stat them up with the full psionic system, as was done in Lords of Madness for mind flayers.

 

[BryonD]

I think it's clear you and I disagree on this, so there's no point in touching it again.

Shrug. **I** could do it. I assume Wotc could if I could. Perhaps you don't rate them as highly as I do.

Becuse they appear in core rules, and are thusly not married to the XPH rules. In 3.0 you would maybe have a point since they weren't core monsters; though even there, they appeard in the Manual of the Planes exempt from the PsiH rules.

The insistance that a core race always come accompanied with non-core trappings or it isn't being done "properly" strikes me as strange. i can't think of another race it would apply to: perhaps the problem here is that the half-way house of "Psionics as Spell Like Abilities" of the core rules allows for the inclusion of monsters that others feel should be getting an "all XPH or nothing" approach. If so, it's not the MMIV's authors fault they worked with that hey had.

Um, you kinda missed the whole point.
There are plenty of other monsters that were not chosen. Any of those could have been chosen instead and the issue would have gone away. The XPH completely drops out of the conversation.
Whether you find it strange has zero impact on the negative reaction generated.
I'd hope WotC would rank having their products cast as wide a net as possible higher than they would your personal feeling of strangeness.

 

[GQuail]

Shrug. **I** could do it. I assume Wotc could if I could. Perhaps you don't rate them as highly as I do.


Um, you kinda missed the whole point.
There are plenty of other monsters that were not chosen. Any of those could have been chosen instead and the issue would have gone away. The XPH completely drops out of the conversation.
Whether you find it strange has zero impact on the negative reaction generated.
I'd hope WotC would rank having their products cast as wide a net as possible higher than they would your personal feeling of strangeness.

It's clear you and I are working from such different mental perspectives that discussion will never reach a consensus: so I'm going to just leave it at "I disagree a lot" and let Merric get back to his thread. ;-)

 

[Felon]

"Intimidated"? Sheesh, where did that come from?

It appears to be a retort to your remark about why WotC "should act so scared of" including psionics. They have little to gain by including or excluding it. You and others in this thread may love psionics, but it turns a lot of folks off completely (particularly when we read WotC articles about about 5th-level characters unleashing invisible, inaudible 40-foot 5d8 radius bursts on poor, defenseless orc hordes, or somesuch--but that's a topic for another thread).

 

[Felon]

It's clear you and I are working from such different mental perspectives that discussion will never reach a consensus: so I'm going to just leave it at "I disagree a lot" and let Merric get back to his thread. ;-)

G, when you've decided you're done replying...just stop replying.

 

[BryonD]

G, when you've decided you're done replying...just stop replying.

Good advice.

 

[BryonD]

It's clear you and I are working from such different mental perspectives that discussion will never reach a consensus: so I'm going to just leave it at "I disagree a lot" and let Merric get back to his thread. ;-)

Ok, you disagree that a wider net is a good thing.

Noted.

 

[Alceste]

After looking through a copy, I will not be buying the MM IV. The pregenerated gnolls/drow etc simply do not interest me. If I want drow/gnoll in my campaign I would prefer to design them myself using heroforge. Also, the huge volume of pages devoted to dragonspawn is simply way too much. Less pregenerated and more new monsters (non-dragonspawn) would have served much better imho.

 

[Thanee]

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

But that's just three (and one of them is called githyanki ).

What I really don't need are monsters with class levels, though. It takes like 10 seconds to make up a standard monster with class levels in a standard class (without writing it down, that is). *shrug*

More description and more info on their social ecology and such would be great, though.

Bye
Thanee