Monster Manual: What's missing which has impacted you?

[Sitara]

I was pissed they did not include the Kraken, which is one of my fave critters and essential for anautical adventure loving perosn such as me self.

 

[Glak]

Like most everyone else, I really miss those animals. In fact, those are really the ONLY monsters that I truly needed. I make my own monsters. In my last campaign I used the zombie and skeleton templates once each, and I used elementals once or twice, but every other monster was completely made from scratch. I didn't have a job at the time so I spent 20+ hours preparing for each session. I had plenty of time to design monsters. Now with 4e I plan to spend a little time planning key monsters, and the rest I'll design on the fly during actual play.

 

[Allenchan]

Kraken. I really miss the ol' super-intelligent evil giant squid.

Seriously.

Epic.

I want Nymph in the MM just so a Kraken can eat it.

 

[Particle_Man]

Cat

I mean how can we do Cat vs. Commoner without the Cat?

Son/Spawn of Kyuss

Modrons

I thought the MM had Formians but I could be mistaken (I don't have the MM).

 

[Rechan]

Anyone with access to the ol' 1e FF, can you tell me what the Berbalang's fluff is? I'm actually curious.

 

[Maximillian]

Djinn.

I have this whole Genies as immortal extraplanar taskmasters enslaving large portions of the civilized world campaign, and while I planned on making lots of variant/class templated versons of the Djinn and Efrit, I hadn't anticipated only having one of the core two to go on.

Hoping Manual of the Planes fixes this.

 

[Starbuck_II]

Cat

I mean how can we do Cat vs. Commoner without the Cat?

Son/Spawn of Kyuss

Modrons

I thought the MM had Formians but I could be mistaken (I don't have the MM).

As luck would have it: I'm having an adventure I'm running soon where Cats attack a town (lead by a demonic cat leader with a few Fel Cats).

I based them on my Badger creation (on D&D boards): changed a little here and there using DMG rules and viola, cats.


a. Kitten Minion
b. Rabid Kitten (has Dire rats Filth fever representing rabies/Skirmishers)
c. Robust Cat (brutes)
d. Fel Cats (demonic Cats)

I hope it goes well. I'm using Fallcrest as starting town because I want to see it be attacked, heh.

 

[Rechan]

a. Kitten Minion

You are evil.

 

[starwed]

Anyone with access to the ol' 1e FF, can you tell me what the Berbalang's fluff is? I'm actually curious.

They were kind of weird, even for the 1e FF. This is off the top of my head, as I don't have the book with me. But I read through the FF pretty recently, in the interest of comparing monsters between editions.

Basically, they spent all their time hidden in a cave meditating, projecting their form into the astral (or was it etheral?) plane. Occasionally they'd project themselves onto the prime instead, in order to obtain physical subsistence. There wasn't anything about them absorbing memories, but the physical appearance was about the same as it is in 4e. (I think the 1e illustration had the berbalang hovering in lotus position, though, which gives a very different feel.)

As an aside, reading through the 1e FF made me realize that the biggest change in monster design in 3e was how few monsters used mechanics unique to the monster. Clearly this has swung the other way again in 4e... the berbalang is a good example.

 

[Rechan]

Thanks, Starwed.

... Huh.