John Cooper
Explorer
Monster Manual IV
By Gwendolyn F. M. Kestrel, Jennifer Clarke Wilkes, Matthew Sernett, Eric Cagle, Andrew Finch, Christopher Lindsay, Kolja Raven Liquette, Chris Sims, Owen K.C. Stephens, Travis Stout, JD Wiker, and Skip Williams
Wizards of the Coast product number 953767200
224 pages, $34.95
Monster Manual IV is the latest in WotC's continuing series of monster books. This one departs significantly from the format of the previous three Monster Manuals (and the Fiend Folio, for that matter), in that each of the monsters is given a significantly larger amount of space devoted to it beyond the stat block and combat description. It's also different in that there are quite a lot of "classed" monsters - that is, standard monsters (many of them from the original Monster Manual) that have been given a number of levels in a class or classes and/or prestige classes, some with standard templates applied as well. All in all, this book just doesn't "feel" like a Monster Manual as much as the others in the line do, and it's already caused a bit of complaints from a vocal segment that don't appreciate that much deviation from the norm. I think if they had simply called it something else besides Monster Manual IV there would have been a bit less culture shock. I know most people buying a 224-page "Monster Manual" from Wizards of the Coast are probably going to expect a lot more than the 52 monsters listed in the Table of Contents. (Adding class levels and variants and such actually brings the total up to 114 separate stat blocks, but still.)
The cover is another of Henry Higgenbotham's pieces, this time depicting a blue dragonspawn ripping through the cover of the book, which is designed to appear as an actual tome bound in various reptilian scales. This one looks the least like a magic tome thus far - just where is that blue dragonspawn supposed to be coming from, anyway? I wasn't particularly impressed with this cover.
The interior artwork consists of 80 full-color illustrations by 16 different artists, plus 11 full-color maps by cartographer Mike Schley. (Yes, that's right, maps in a Monster Manual book, another deviation from the norm.) Most of these illustrations are pretty well done, and best of all just about every monster described in the book is depicted. Even better, most of the illustrations match the written description of the monster in question fairly well, although there are a few exceptions: Arnie Swekel's whitespawn hordeling illustration on page 157 depicts the creatures without wings (despite their 20-ft. fly speed), and Ron Spencer's ogres on page 111 don't look much like 3.0/3.5 ogres (which is fine by me, as I've always hated their current look), but they don't particularly look very big to me, either - their build says more "elf" or "halfling" than "Large, hulking brute". (Likewise, Spenser's trio of githyanki on page 64 don't look as much like githyanki as they should; in fact, they look very much like his ogres, only without the pointy teeth!) Oddly enough, in one instance where the illustration doesn't match the description, it's the illustration that's clearly in the right: Anne Stokes' depiction of a clockroach on page 29 gives it 6 legs, while the description refers to its "eight spindly metal legs." Since the construct is patterned after a cockroach, it should have 6 legs, not 8. Good job, Anne!
While I'm getting nitpicky about the artwork, the Balhannoth Cavern Map on page 17 depicts a wooden bridge, while the description clearly marks it as stone.
Still, most of the artwork in Monster Manual IV is pretty good. Arnie Swekel's deathdrinker demon on page 41 reminds me a little of Skippy the demon from the "Angel" TV show. Francis Tsai's three drow on page 55 manage to look like drow without having spiders all over their armor and jewelry, which makes for a nice change. Daarken's inferno spider on page 77 really sells me on its internal fire, and the red and yellow tones in Francis Tsai's painting of Tiamat's armies on page 151 is similarly evocative. The maps are all easy to read, which is good, although I'm still trying to get used to the idea of maps in a "Monster Manual" book.
Monster Manual IV is definitely a step away from the others in the series. The biggest deviation, beyond scattering maps of sample lairs throughout the book and expanding each creature's write-up to include information about its ecology, society, typical treasure, and so on, is the inclusion of creatures with class levels. Now, it's one thing to provide stats for a new creature like the blackspawn raider and follow it up with stats for a blackspawn raider with 6 levels of ninja - after all, even the original 3.5 Monster Manual has a few examples of this (stats for a troll, stats for a troll ranger 6; stats for a harpy, stats for a harpy fighter 7). Still, it's another thing altogether to include stats of monsters with classes for creatures that appear in the Monster Manual, like the 4 different drow, 3 githyanki, 3 gnolls, 5 lizardfolk, 3 ogres, 5 orcs, and 3 yuan-ti that appear in Monster Manual IV. On the down side, the DM could have created these stats for himself, so he's paying for a book that has a significant amount of stat blocks that really have no new material. This isn't creativity, it's just availability - the DM is saved the time he would have spent creating these stats on his own. On the plus side, these allow for a bit of variety, so instead of simply grabbing a handful of orcs for an encounter, the DM can grab a couple different types of orc. Whether this is valuable enough to eat up as much space in the book as these classed creature stats take up is for each DM to decide for himself; myself, I think I could have done without them, but I will commend the authors/developers for choosing classes that can be "explained" in full right there in the stat block. For example, I don't have Complete Adventurer (which provides details on the scout class), but I feel confident that I could run an encounter with a drow dark sniper (drow scout 6) using only the material from Monster Manual IV, so that's a good thing. On the other hand, this makes for some odd class selections in a couple of cases, like the (psionic-based) githyanki section providing stats for a fighter 3, a fighter 2/evoker 5, and a fighter 7/blackguard 2, but no psions, psychic warriors, soulknives, or so on. I also preferred it when the treasure and alignment information was part of the (new) stat block, as I don't think putting that information in paragraph form does much more than "pad" the book. Especially egregious (to me, at least) were the "Sample Encounters" sections, where the author would do his best to slap a number of creatures from this book (and others in the "Monster Manual" line) together and call it an encounter. There isn't enough detail to make it worthwhile, and it really just eats up space. Had all of those sections been left out, we'd no doubt have room for another small handful of creatures, which would at least take Monster Manual IV a little closer to the number of new monsters people have come to expect from such a book.
However, I have to say that I was really impressed in the stat blocks this time around. I'm pretty well known as the "nitpicky stat-block reviewer," and my reviews of monster-based products usually include a list of all the things I found wrong with the stat blocks. Some of these lists have gotten to be very lengthy, not only in third-party books but in Wizards of the Coast books as well. (My Monster Manual III errata list was exceptionally long.) Well, it took them long enough, but they've finally devoted a much greater force to tackle their stat blocks (the credits page lists 5 developers, the most I can recall seeing in any monster book), but the results are there to see. Sure there are still stat block errors, but there doesn't seem to be quite as many of them, and the specific errors seem to be of a more trivial nature than those I've noticed in recent years. Since I'm on the subject, let's dive right into the specifics. Here's my "unofficial errata" for Monster Manual IV:
[As an aside, I should probably mention that I don't have some of the books that are used in some of the stats, like Complete Adventurer (which has details on the scout and ninja) and the Miniatures Handbook (which has details on the marshall). As such, I was unable to completely "scour" a few parts of some of the monster stats in Monster Manual IV. As always, if somebody spots an error I missed - or spots an error I made - please let me know, and I'll alter my "unofficial errata" section accordingly. The main point of my "unofficial errata" has always been "better stats for the consumer."]
As for the proofreading, there are four editors and an editing manager listed in the credits, and they collectively let very few errors get by them. I noticed only one page reference that was off (the glossary is on pp. 205-220, not pp. 205-221), a few instances where an incorrect word was used (the map on page 23 is the "Grand Tomb," not the "great tomb" as mentioned on page 4; "it's "bloodhulk fighters," not "bloodhulk warriors"; "death aura" should be "aura of unlife"), a missing multiplication sign ("2 damage" instead of "×2 damage"), a few instances of extraneous words ("This generally check will generally yield..." and "...it can repair of 1 point of damage..."), an extraneous comma and an extraneous dash, two instances of splitting a word between two lines incorrectly (the rule is to split it between two syllables, so "Elsew-here" should be "Else-where" and "hordel-ings" should be "horde-lings"), a misspelled word ("shamanss" instead of "shamans"), some capitalization issues ("of" isn't capitalized even in the middle of a title, and the editors need to decide whether the yuan-ti language is "Yuan-Ti" or "Yuan-ti" and stick with it throughout), one spacing issue ("treasureto" should have been "treasure to"), and one instance where a word wasn't bolded (in a stat block, no less!) when it should have been. Not bad at all for a 224-page book! There was one major editing gaffe as well, though: the description of the Lore check tables on page 6 states that the general DC is 10 + the creature's HD, yet the tables in the book all seem to be keyed to 10 + the creature's Challenge Rating.
Finally, there were a few things that just seemed a little bit odd with a few of the creatures. For example:
I think a bit of effort was put into ensuring that many of the monsters in this book are "intertwined" somewhat - for instance, since they're adding to the types of drow available in the game, and since drow are associated with Lolth and spiders (at least everywhere but Eberron), the authors ensured that there were several different kinds on spider (or at least spider-like creature) for them to be involved with: bloodsilk spiders, Lolth-touched monstrous spiders, tomb spiders, and heck, even blackspawn stalkers! Likewise, while some have complained about the vast number of spawn of Tiamat that show up in this book (enough to fill 36 pages), I'm glad to see them all lumped together into one book - but now I don't want to see any more spawn of Tiamat showing up in, say, Monster Manual V!
There's a quote about gnolls on page 68 by Cornelius (a satyr cleric of Ehlonna), which is a paraphrase of the apes' warnings about humans from "Planet of the Apes" - that was a cute little "inside joke." There are a couple of little sly winks like that showing up in the book, and it's always nice to see the authors having a good time on their project.
Finally, I just wanted to comment on the way that Monster Manual IV goes out of its way to ensure that the book can be used entirely by itself, without having to reference a lot of other books. Sure, it uses classes, templates, and feats from Complete Arcane, Complete Adventurer, Draconomicon, Heroes of Horror, Miniatures Handbook, and Underdark, but it makes sure that the relevant information is right here in the book. While the Feats and Glossary sections are reprinted here from the Monster Manual, they've added and updated information as necessary, to include such things as 2 githyanki racial feats and glossary entries for such things as "magic strike" and "yugoloth." Likewise, there are listings of monsters by type/subtype, Challenge Rating, Effective Character Level, creatures creatable by PCs, mounts/animal companions, summonable creatures, and the 3 new weapons and one new power component provided in the book. The one main thing I would have hoped for was a listing of which monsters were created by which authors (like they did in the original, 1st Edition AD&D Fiend Folio), especially since Monster Manual IV has 12 different authors!
I'm not really sure where I want to go with a rating for Monster Manual IV. On the one hand, I really think it deviates too far from what D&D players (and more importantly, DMs) expect from a "Monster Manual," and while I can applaud the ease of use that the classed creature stats provide, I really don't think that everyone plunking down their 35 bucks for the book is going to appreciate the amount of stats that they could have just cranked out themselves. (Again, had Wizards of the Coast simply called it something else, I don't think this would have been so much of an issue.) On the other hand, I was thrilled to see that so much more effort was put towards stat block accuracy, and while they've still got a little way yet to go, the difference between Monster Manual III and Monster Manual IV is simply staggering. Since I've made a point of being the "stat block nitpicker," and have chopped down my ratings of other books based on their poor stat blocks, it seems only fair that I weigh my final score of this book on the improvement of their monster stats. With that in mind, I'm going with a final rating of "4 (Good)" for Monster Manual IV.
By Gwendolyn F. M. Kestrel, Jennifer Clarke Wilkes, Matthew Sernett, Eric Cagle, Andrew Finch, Christopher Lindsay, Kolja Raven Liquette, Chris Sims, Owen K.C. Stephens, Travis Stout, JD Wiker, and Skip Williams
Wizards of the Coast product number 953767200
224 pages, $34.95
Monster Manual IV is the latest in WotC's continuing series of monster books. This one departs significantly from the format of the previous three Monster Manuals (and the Fiend Folio, for that matter), in that each of the monsters is given a significantly larger amount of space devoted to it beyond the stat block and combat description. It's also different in that there are quite a lot of "classed" monsters - that is, standard monsters (many of them from the original Monster Manual) that have been given a number of levels in a class or classes and/or prestige classes, some with standard templates applied as well. All in all, this book just doesn't "feel" like a Monster Manual as much as the others in the line do, and it's already caused a bit of complaints from a vocal segment that don't appreciate that much deviation from the norm. I think if they had simply called it something else besides Monster Manual IV there would have been a bit less culture shock. I know most people buying a 224-page "Monster Manual" from Wizards of the Coast are probably going to expect a lot more than the 52 monsters listed in the Table of Contents. (Adding class levels and variants and such actually brings the total up to 114 separate stat blocks, but still.)
The cover is another of Henry Higgenbotham's pieces, this time depicting a blue dragonspawn ripping through the cover of the book, which is designed to appear as an actual tome bound in various reptilian scales. This one looks the least like a magic tome thus far - just where is that blue dragonspawn supposed to be coming from, anyway? I wasn't particularly impressed with this cover.
The interior artwork consists of 80 full-color illustrations by 16 different artists, plus 11 full-color maps by cartographer Mike Schley. (Yes, that's right, maps in a Monster Manual book, another deviation from the norm.) Most of these illustrations are pretty well done, and best of all just about every monster described in the book is depicted. Even better, most of the illustrations match the written description of the monster in question fairly well, although there are a few exceptions: Arnie Swekel's whitespawn hordeling illustration on page 157 depicts the creatures without wings (despite their 20-ft. fly speed), and Ron Spencer's ogres on page 111 don't look much like 3.0/3.5 ogres (which is fine by me, as I've always hated their current look), but they don't particularly look very big to me, either - their build says more "elf" or "halfling" than "Large, hulking brute". (Likewise, Spenser's trio of githyanki on page 64 don't look as much like githyanki as they should; in fact, they look very much like his ogres, only without the pointy teeth!) Oddly enough, in one instance where the illustration doesn't match the description, it's the illustration that's clearly in the right: Anne Stokes' depiction of a clockroach on page 29 gives it 6 legs, while the description refers to its "eight spindly metal legs." Since the construct is patterned after a cockroach, it should have 6 legs, not 8. Good job, Anne!
While I'm getting nitpicky about the artwork, the Balhannoth Cavern Map on page 17 depicts a wooden bridge, while the description clearly marks it as stone.
Still, most of the artwork in Monster Manual IV is pretty good. Arnie Swekel's deathdrinker demon on page 41 reminds me a little of Skippy the demon from the "Angel" TV show. Francis Tsai's three drow on page 55 manage to look like drow without having spiders all over their armor and jewelry, which makes for a nice change. Daarken's inferno spider on page 77 really sells me on its internal fire, and the red and yellow tones in Francis Tsai's painting of Tiamat's armies on page 151 is similarly evocative. The maps are all easy to read, which is good, although I'm still trying to get used to the idea of maps in a "Monster Manual" book.
Monster Manual IV is definitely a step away from the others in the series. The biggest deviation, beyond scattering maps of sample lairs throughout the book and expanding each creature's write-up to include information about its ecology, society, typical treasure, and so on, is the inclusion of creatures with class levels. Now, it's one thing to provide stats for a new creature like the blackspawn raider and follow it up with stats for a blackspawn raider with 6 levels of ninja - after all, even the original 3.5 Monster Manual has a few examples of this (stats for a troll, stats for a troll ranger 6; stats for a harpy, stats for a harpy fighter 7). Still, it's another thing altogether to include stats of monsters with classes for creatures that appear in the Monster Manual, like the 4 different drow, 3 githyanki, 3 gnolls, 5 lizardfolk, 3 ogres, 5 orcs, and 3 yuan-ti that appear in Monster Manual IV. On the down side, the DM could have created these stats for himself, so he's paying for a book that has a significant amount of stat blocks that really have no new material. This isn't creativity, it's just availability - the DM is saved the time he would have spent creating these stats on his own. On the plus side, these allow for a bit of variety, so instead of simply grabbing a handful of orcs for an encounter, the DM can grab a couple different types of orc. Whether this is valuable enough to eat up as much space in the book as these classed creature stats take up is for each DM to decide for himself; myself, I think I could have done without them, but I will commend the authors/developers for choosing classes that can be "explained" in full right there in the stat block. For example, I don't have Complete Adventurer (which provides details on the scout class), but I feel confident that I could run an encounter with a drow dark sniper (drow scout 6) using only the material from Monster Manual IV, so that's a good thing. On the other hand, this makes for some odd class selections in a couple of cases, like the (psionic-based) githyanki section providing stats for a fighter 3, a fighter 2/evoker 5, and a fighter 7/blackguard 2, but no psions, psychic warriors, soulknives, or so on. I also preferred it when the treasure and alignment information was part of the (new) stat block, as I don't think putting that information in paragraph form does much more than "pad" the book. Especially egregious (to me, at least) were the "Sample Encounters" sections, where the author would do his best to slap a number of creatures from this book (and others in the "Monster Manual" line) together and call it an encounter. There isn't enough detail to make it worthwhile, and it really just eats up space. Had all of those sections been left out, we'd no doubt have room for another small handful of creatures, which would at least take Monster Manual IV a little closer to the number of new monsters people have come to expect from such a book.
However, I have to say that I was really impressed in the stat blocks this time around. I'm pretty well known as the "nitpicky stat-block reviewer," and my reviews of monster-based products usually include a list of all the things I found wrong with the stat blocks. Some of these lists have gotten to be very lengthy, not only in third-party books but in Wizards of the Coast books as well. (My Monster Manual III errata list was exceptionally long.) Well, it took them long enough, but they've finally devoted a much greater force to tackle their stat blocks (the credits page lists 5 developers, the most I can recall seeing in any monster book), but the results are there to see. Sure there are still stat block errors, but there doesn't seem to be quite as many of them, and the specific errors seem to be of a more trivial nature than those I've noticed in recent years. Since I'm on the subject, let's dive right into the specifics. Here's my "unofficial errata" for Monster Manual IV:
- p. 24, Bloodsilk Spider: Spent 1 out of 5 skill points (on Hide; everything else is covered by racial bonuses, size bonuses, and ability modifiers).
- p. 26, Briarvex: Skills should include "Knowledge (nature) +2" (0 ranks, +0 Int, +2 synergy from Survival). The "Strategies and Tactics" section discusses how a briarvex tries to intimidate powerful opponents by lying about its companions' numbers, yet oddly enough the creature has no ranks in either Intimidate or Bluff, so it would seem as if this strategy is seldom effective. That just seemed a bit odd.
- p. 30, Clockwork Mender: As a Tiny creature with a 2½-ft. Space, its Reach should be 0 ft., not 2½ ft.
- p. 34, Concordant Killer: Survival should be "+6 (+8 on other planes)," not "+6 (+9 on other planes)." This looks like a simple typo; the +2 is from a synergy bonus from Knowledge (the planes).
- p. 44, Demon, Nashrou: Skills should include Knowledge (nature) -2 (0 ranks, -4 Int, +2 synergy from Survival). I'm only listing this in the interests of completeness; it's entirely possible that the authors/developers purposefully decided not to worry about it for a creature that only has an Intelligence score of 2.
- p. 52, Dwarf Ancestor: Jump should be +0, not -4 (0 ranks, +6 Str, -6 speed). Spent 48 of 56 skill points.
- p. 55, Elf, Drow, Lolth's Sting, female drow ninja 4: The "Special Actions" line is completely blank; should it be "—" or is there something missing? (Not having Complete Adventurer, I'm not sure of the ninja's class features.) Skills should include Balance +5 (0 ranks, +3 Dex, +2 synergy from Tumble). The descriptions of Special Abilities at the bottom of the stat block aren't alphabetized.
- p. 56, Elf, Drow, Dark Sniper, male drow scout 6: Tumble should be +16, not +15 (9 ranks, +5 Dex, +2 synergy from Jump).
- p. 57, Elf, Drow, Drow Priestess, female drow cleric 8: Melee touch attacks (for spells) should be at +7 melee touch, not +8 (+6 BAB, +1 Str).
- p. 63, Githyanki Captain, male githyanki fighter 7/blackguard 2: Plane shift spell-like ability should be 1/day, not 3/day (as per the githyanki entry in the Monster Manual).
- p. 67, Gnoll, Slave-Taker, male gnoll ranger 2: The AC and flat-footed AC values are off, since the gnoll ranger doesn't actually have the Two-Weapon Defense feat as listed in his AC line. Thus, AC should be 16, not 17 (+1 Dex, +4 armor, +1 natural) and flat-footed AC should be 15, not 16.
- p. 67, Gnoll, Fiendish Cleric of Yeenoghu, female fiendish gnoll cleric 3: Speed (20 ft.) is correct as listed, but should specify "in full plate, base speed 30 ft."
- p. 68, Gnoll, Half-Fiend Gnoll Warlock, female half-fiend gnoll warlock 4: Grapple should be +7, not +8 (+4 BAB, +3 Str).
- p. 72, Golem, Fang: Special Qualities should include "death throes." Also, "verdant surge" really isn't an Attack Option; it should probably be listed under Special Qualities instead (although that's probably debatable).
- p. 81, Justice Archon Champion, justice archon paladin 4: Looks like it spent 77 of 80 skill points - maybe bump Knowledge (religion) up to +8?
- p. 83, Lizardfolk, Dark Talon Soldier: As a 2-HD humanoid with a 16 Con, average hit points should be 15, not 19.
- p. 83, Lizardfolk, Dark Talon Champion, male lizardfolk barbarian 3: When not raging, masterwork falchion damage should be 2d4+6/18-20, not 2d4+9/18-20 (1.5 times +4 Str bonus = +6).
- p. 84, Lizardfolk, Dark Talon Wasp Rider: As a 2-HD humanoid with a 16 Con, average hit points should be 15, not 19.
- p. 84, Lizardfolk, Dark Talon Shaman, female lizardfolk druid 5: "Animal Companion monitor lizard (MM 275)" doesn't factor in the monitor lizard's +2 HD, +2 natural armor bonus, +1 to Str and Dex, 2 bonus tricks, and evasion it gets as an animal companion to a 5th-level druid. The monitor lizard should have received a stat block of its own, or at least a list of the changes to make to the standard monitor lizard's stats.
- p. 86, Giant Stag Beetle Animal Companion: According to the Trample rules (helpfully provided on page 219), trample damage should be 2d8+10, not 2d8+3 (1.5 times +7 Str bonus = +10). Of course, the giant stag beetle in the Monster Manual should have trample damage of 2d8+9, not 2d8+3, by these rules, so the designers may have been led somewhat astray.
- p. 93, Lolth-Touched Monstrous Hunting Spider: Hunting spiders don't get to use webs as weapons the way web-spinning spiders do (see Monster Manual, page 288), so delete the ranged web attack from this stat block.
- p. 98, Mageripper Swarm: Skills should include Hide +14 (0 ranks, +8 size, +4 Dex, +2 from the Stealthy feat).
- p. 100, Minotaur, Greathorn: Flat-footed AC should be "— (see text)" instead of 15 (due to the minotaur's natural cunning special quality, they are never caught flat-footed). Also, a greathammer threatens a critical on 19-20, which is not reflected in the stat block damage entry of "(3d6+10/×4)."
- p. 116, Orc Plague Speaker, male unholy scion orc cleric 5: The "Resist" entry should include "electricity 5" (as per the unholy scion template, from Heroes of Horror).
- p. 117, Orc, Half-Orc Infiltrator, female half-orc rogue 3: The stat block is missing "trap sense +1" - it should show up in either the "SQ" or the saving throw line (I'm not sure where they'd think it best fits under the new stat block guidelines, but as a Rog3 she'd have the class feature).
- p. 134, Spawn of Tiamat, Blackspawn Stalker: Shouldn't the "spit acid" supernatural ability provide a saving throw? It's patterned after the breath weapon of a black dragon, after all. Using the standard formula, a Reflex save against DC 20 (10 + ½ HD + Con modifier = 10 + 5 + 5) would seem appropriate.
- p. 140, Spawn of Tiamat, Bluespawn Godslayer: It doesn't look as if any armor check penalties were applied to its Climb and Jump skills. Heavy shields impose a -2 armor check penalty, so they should each probably be +13 instead of +15 (5 ranks, +10 Str, -2 acp).
- p. 158, Spawn of Tiamat, Whitespawn Berserker (Raging), male whitespawn hunter barbarian 2: 30 ft. does not equal 4 squares! The entry should read "30 ft. (6 squares) in breastplate; base speed 40 ft."
- p. 164, Tomb Spider: Spent 7 of 11 skill points.
- p. 164, Tomb Spider Broodswarm: Senses lists "Listen +11, Spot +11" but Skills lists "Listen +9, Spot +9" - the former is correct. Hide doesn't take size into account; it should be Hide +17, not Hide +11 (0 ranks, +5 Dex, +8 size, +4 racial).
- p. 168, Varag Pack Leader, male varag scout 4: Skills should include Knowledge (nature) +2 (0 ranks, +0 Int, +2 synergy from Survival).
- p. 177, Windblade, Windscythe: Javelin attacks should be at +8 ranged, not +9 (+8 BAB, -1 size, +1 Dex). The creature doesn't have a climb speed listed, which perhaps it should (given that the related creature, the windrazor, has a climb speed - but more importantly because the "Windscythe Characters" section on page 179 lists a 10-ft. climb speed) because otherwise it shouldn't have a Climb skill rating as high as it does. (As an 8-HD creature, it can only put a maximum of 11 points into any one skill; its Climb +21 breaks down to +5 Str, -2 armor check penalty from its chain shirt, leaving 18 points unaccounted for, not all of which can be "spent" legally. If we give the windscythe a climb speed of 10 feet and a corresponding +8 racial bonus to Climb checks, then that bumps the skill points spent on Climb down to 10 points.) "Craft +4" doesn't specify the area of focus - armorsmithing, weaponsmithing, trapmaking, etc. Whatever the Craft focus is, the windscythe should get a +2 synergy bonus to Appraise checks for that type of item. Speaking of synergy bonuses, its Survival ranks should also add "Knowledge (nature) +1" into its Skills listing (0 ranks, -1 Int, +2 synergy from Survival), and its Tumble ranks should add "Jump -5" (0 ranks, +5 Str, -12 speed, +2 synergy from Tumble). When all's said and done, though, the windscythe still spent 82 out of 77 skill points; dropping the "Craft +4" fixes this (and also removes the need for the Appraise addition I mentioned above).
- p. 184, Yuan-ti, Pureblood Slayer, female yuan-ti pureblood rogue 1/assassin 7: +1 human bane rapier damage should be 1d6+2/18-20 plus poison, not 1d6+1/18-20 plus poison (+1 Str, +1 magic weapon bonus). Likewise, against humans, the damage should be 1d6+4/18-20 plus 2d6 plus poison, not 1d6+3/18-20 plus 2d6 plus poison (+1 Str, +1 magic weapon bonus, +2 bane bonus). With 12 HD, it should have 5 feats, not just 4 (besides the 2 bonus feats it receives as a pureblood yuan-ti).
- p. 185, Yuan-ti, Halfblood Deceiver, male yuan-ti halfblood barbarian 2: Touch AC should be 12, not 14 (+2 Dex). Also, it's odd that there are no "raging" vs. "non-raging" stats; the other creatures in this book with barbarian levels get that treatment to their stat blocks. Finally, he shouldn't have "trapfinding" as a Special Quality, as he's a 2nd-level barbarian, not a rogue.
- p. 188, Yuan-ti Ignan: Move Silently should be +3, not +4 (3 ranks, +1 Dex, -1 armor check penalty for a light steel shield). (Actually, I suppose it's more accurate to just point out that the creature spent 15 of 14 skill points, but this seemed like the most likely way that the points were incorrectly spent.)
- p. 190, Yugoloth, Corruptor of Fate Assassin, male corrupter of fate assassin 5: With 12 HD, he should have 5 feats, not just 4. (Since he's already got Dodge and Mobility, Spring Attack would be a logical choice to complete the "feat chain.")
- p. 193, Voor: Skills should include Knowledge (nature) -1 (0 ranks, -3 Int, +2 synergy from Survival).
- p. 193, Voor, Dreadful Lasher: Skills should include Knowledge (nature) -1 (0 ranks, -3 Int, +2 synergy from Survival).
- p. 197, Zern Experiments, Zern Arcanovore: Spent 9 of 13 skill points.
[As an aside, I should probably mention that I don't have some of the books that are used in some of the stats, like Complete Adventurer (which has details on the scout and ninja) and the Miniatures Handbook (which has details on the marshall). As such, I was unable to completely "scour" a few parts of some of the monster stats in Monster Manual IV. As always, if somebody spots an error I missed - or spots an error I made - please let me know, and I'll alter my "unofficial errata" section accordingly. The main point of my "unofficial errata" has always been "better stats for the consumer."]
As for the proofreading, there are four editors and an editing manager listed in the credits, and they collectively let very few errors get by them. I noticed only one page reference that was off (the glossary is on pp. 205-220, not pp. 205-221), a few instances where an incorrect word was used (the map on page 23 is the "Grand Tomb," not the "great tomb" as mentioned on page 4; "it's "bloodhulk fighters," not "bloodhulk warriors"; "death aura" should be "aura of unlife"), a missing multiplication sign ("2 damage" instead of "×2 damage"), a few instances of extraneous words ("This generally check will generally yield..." and "...it can repair of 1 point of damage..."), an extraneous comma and an extraneous dash, two instances of splitting a word between two lines incorrectly (the rule is to split it between two syllables, so "Elsew-here" should be "Else-where" and "hordel-ings" should be "horde-lings"), a misspelled word ("shamanss" instead of "shamans"), some capitalization issues ("of" isn't capitalized even in the middle of a title, and the editors need to decide whether the yuan-ti language is "Yuan-Ti" or "Yuan-ti" and stick with it throughout), one spacing issue ("treasureto" should have been "treasure to"), and one instance where a word wasn't bolded (in a stat block, no less!) when it should have been. Not bad at all for a 224-page book! There was one major editing gaffe as well, though: the description of the Lore check tables on page 6 states that the general DC is 10 + the creature's HD, yet the tables in the book all seem to be keyed to 10 + the creature's Challenge Rating.
Finally, there were a few things that just seemed a little bit odd with a few of the creatures. For example:
- It doesn't seem like the deathdrinker demon's "deathdrink" ability should kick in when it destroys an undead creature, as the ability seems to be based on absorbing the slain creature's life energy, but as written there's nothing precluding it from happening.
- How does a 12-HD, CR 10 creature like the bluespawn godslayer get away with calling itself a "godslayer?" Any god that this creature could bump off would have to be a pretty insignificant god indeed!
- Why does the Monster Manual IV greenspawn razorfiend have a 5 Int, when the greenspawn razorfiend from Red Hand of Doom has a 12 Int? Did the creature's intellect get significantly revised between the publication of the two books?
- Zern reproduction (all zerns are born as males, then change to females around age 40, and then become a sterile neutral gender after giving birth to a child) is pretty much guaranteed to destroy the zern population after several generations - every time a zern is killed before it can give birth, that's another entire line wiped out for good. (Any reproduction scheme that only allows each member of the species to give birth to a maximum of one offspring in its lifetime will never allow that race's numbers to increase, only decrease, over time.) The only way this would even be feasible is if multiple births were common, but the description specifies a child results from mating. (Of course, with the zern zeal for flesh sculpting, maybe they get around this biological dead end by creating new zerns out of different creatures - who knows?)
- I'm not sure how the zern blade thrall, which has bone blades sticking out of its wrists in place of hands, is supposed to wield a net, let alone throw it with any accuracy. This would have worked out better as some kind of a web attack.
I think a bit of effort was put into ensuring that many of the monsters in this book are "intertwined" somewhat - for instance, since they're adding to the types of drow available in the game, and since drow are associated with Lolth and spiders (at least everywhere but Eberron), the authors ensured that there were several different kinds on spider (or at least spider-like creature) for them to be involved with: bloodsilk spiders, Lolth-touched monstrous spiders, tomb spiders, and heck, even blackspawn stalkers! Likewise, while some have complained about the vast number of spawn of Tiamat that show up in this book (enough to fill 36 pages), I'm glad to see them all lumped together into one book - but now I don't want to see any more spawn of Tiamat showing up in, say, Monster Manual V!
There's a quote about gnolls on page 68 by Cornelius (a satyr cleric of Ehlonna), which is a paraphrase of the apes' warnings about humans from "Planet of the Apes" - that was a cute little "inside joke." There are a couple of little sly winks like that showing up in the book, and it's always nice to see the authors having a good time on their project.
Finally, I just wanted to comment on the way that Monster Manual IV goes out of its way to ensure that the book can be used entirely by itself, without having to reference a lot of other books. Sure, it uses classes, templates, and feats from Complete Arcane, Complete Adventurer, Draconomicon, Heroes of Horror, Miniatures Handbook, and Underdark, but it makes sure that the relevant information is right here in the book. While the Feats and Glossary sections are reprinted here from the Monster Manual, they've added and updated information as necessary, to include such things as 2 githyanki racial feats and glossary entries for such things as "magic strike" and "yugoloth." Likewise, there are listings of monsters by type/subtype, Challenge Rating, Effective Character Level, creatures creatable by PCs, mounts/animal companions, summonable creatures, and the 3 new weapons and one new power component provided in the book. The one main thing I would have hoped for was a listing of which monsters were created by which authors (like they did in the original, 1st Edition AD&D Fiend Folio), especially since Monster Manual IV has 12 different authors!
I'm not really sure where I want to go with a rating for Monster Manual IV. On the one hand, I really think it deviates too far from what D&D players (and more importantly, DMs) expect from a "Monster Manual," and while I can applaud the ease of use that the classed creature stats provide, I really don't think that everyone plunking down their 35 bucks for the book is going to appreciate the amount of stats that they could have just cranked out themselves. (Again, had Wizards of the Coast simply called it something else, I don't think this would have been so much of an issue.) On the other hand, I was thrilled to see that so much more effort was put towards stat block accuracy, and while they've still got a little way yet to go, the difference between Monster Manual III and Monster Manual IV is simply staggering. Since I've made a point of being the "stat block nitpicker," and have chopped down my ratings of other books based on their poor stat blocks, it seems only fair that I weigh my final score of this book on the improvement of their monster stats. With that in mind, I'm going with a final rating of "4 (Good)" for Monster Manual IV.
Last edited:
