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

[Danzauker]

I'd personally wished for more humans.

Honestly, humans are the most prominent race my player's gonna meet (and fight).

The lowest level human IIRC is a 2 (or 3, don't remember) bandit armed with a club.

I don't want to go through the first 2 levels fighting just kobolds and goblins. Plus, I'd like to meet a human with a sword, sometimes.

(yes, I know, I know: "you can do them yourself blah blah", and I'll do it, but still I think it would have been a good idea to give more humans and demi-humans right in the book)

P.S.

I want Giffs, Modrons and Blink Dogs, too

 

[Kwalish Kid]

violet shrieker

This was one of the first things I looked for! Now, I realize that it is much better simply thought of as an environmental hazard and perhaps part of a skill challenge (in the underdark, say).

 

[Dausuul]

Elephants. I'm running a campaign in an ice age setting. I wasn't expecting to actually have woolly mammoths statted out for me, but I figured I'd just flip to the "normal animals" section and use elephant stats... nothing doing.

Also frost giants.

At least white dragons and dire wolves are still in.

 

[Jhaelen]

I'm not missing a specific monster, I am missing standard options for certain roles/types at many levels. E.g. there's no controllers or solo monsters at level 1 and 2.
It's easy to fix by modifying existing monsters, but still...

Also, there's a definite lack of high level monsters. Definitely not enough options to start an epic campaign with just MM1. Orcus is the only monster of level 30+. If you follow the DMG suggestions, there should be plenty of monsters available with level 31-37 to create encounters.

Finally, the two highest Fey monsters are level 21. Are there no epic zones in the Feywild?

 

[Mengu]

I'm not missing a specific monster, I am missing standard options for certain roles/types at many levels. E.g. there's no controllers or solo monsters at level 1 and 2.

I don't really understand why there aren't any solo 1st/2nd level creatures either. But for controllers, if you look at your typical encounter, the controller's level is usually level+2 or level+3, so I can see why they wouldn't need a level 1 controller.

My campaign will have mephits and elementals, so I'll need to stat those out, but it's pretty fast to do, and it's fun, so I'm not complaining. It's actually possible to create enough elemental material that we could see a MM: Elementals expansion, covering levels 1-30.

 

[77IM]

As mentioned by others,

- Standard Elementals
- Plain old animals

[mini-rant]I'm also disturbed by the utter lack of Good creatures (the Celestial Charger is the only one listed). I understand why they would shy away from these, and I rather like that things like dryads and guardian nagas are now Unaligned, but throw us a bone here. The unicorn, which in contemporary fantasy is a symbol of goodness, purity, and hope, is merely Unaligned. (Yes, I know how nasty they were in folklore, but D&D threw folklore-accuracy out the window long ago.) Couldn't they have made them Good, and given some excuse for them to be combative (they are guardians of the forest, after all)? And for the metallic dragons -- I think this is the first Monster Manual ever to NOT include the gold dragon. Sigh. [/mini-rant]

-- 77IM

 

[Nebulous]

I imagine that the DDI will have an explosion of supplemental non-combat monstes, backgrounds and plot hooks.

 

[Dragonbait]

Normal animals and dire animals. Why do we have a normal wolf, hyena, and rat, but not a normal grizzly or tiger?

Carnivorous dinosaurs (Behemoths, I think they were called?)

Frost giants.

Kenku!

 

[erik_the_guy]

A lot of the staple monsters have been intentionally omitted in this edition so that they can be in the next monster manual. That's what happens when the game is sold by a company. IMO its still cheaper than most gamers' hobbies though.

Also I rarely used the stats for animals, since most animals will run rather than fight a PC. If you think about it, heroes with weapons could easily dispatch most animals, but I guess for things like rhinos etc it would be useful...

 

[Brian999]

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