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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 3009606" data-attributes="member: 3586">Old FavouritesMonster 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).</blockquote>

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