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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5236169" data-attributes="member: 2067">Recently, a post randomly referenced these things:<img src="http://www.d20.cz/data/C/4296/campestri.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Y'know what they are?Campestri. A joke of a critter who popped up in a Monster Manual once upon a time, whose main purpose was to annoy characters and have a laugh. Here is a blurb about them:D&D has a long history of these types of critters. I'm not talking about "weird" critters. Everyone loves the flumph. I'm talking about "noncombat" creatures. Creatures you aren't supposed to fight, but that are present in the MM's of D&D (which, come to think of it, may include the Lawful Good flumph). Singing mushrooms aren't, believe it or not, unique in the game's lexicon. There's been a comfortable place for the humble regular bat in every edition's very first MM until the most recent. Regular bats aren't horrifying monsters. They aren't even credible threats.So I asked myself: Why were they stuck in a Monster Manual and given stats? What gameplay purpose might they have served? What were you supposed to do with these things at the table? Why did someone go through the effort of writing up a whole page of fluff about singing dancing mushrooms?And here's the answer I came up with: Monster Manuals aren't just lists of things to fight. Or at least, they weren't, up until 4e's MM's. They are lists of interesting things to interact with. You can't battle the Campestri in any kind of a satisfying way. Killing inoffensive mushroom creatures and taking their stuff is pointless. Same with bats. "Oh, big hero killed a flying mouse!"But you can have interesting encounters using either of them. A situation in which the party needs to teach the Campestris to sing and dance to impress a bard? Sounds like an interesting challenge. A druid befriending a bat in order to have it spy on some goblins? Sounds like a cool use of a player resource. In both situations, combat stat blocks are kind of useless. No, I don't usually need to know how much damage a bat does, or what a Campestri's Constitution score is. But stats of some sort are useful. I could probably stand to know the mechanics for teaching a Campestri to sing, or how good the bat is at spying.Now, 4e's MM's are a more focused tool. They don't muck about with things you can't beat the snot out of. That's a strength; all killer no filler. But I feel like it's leaving a gap, a place occupied by bats and housecats and terries, a place for the Campestri and the Wisdom Bird (who delivers your destiny, but flees at violence!) and the Afanc (who creates whirlpools, but is too big to battle!) and the old-school fey like the Nymph (who you wouldn't fight, but who might still serve to be a hazard). Angels and metallic dragons fall into this category, too. You could even make a case for GIANT monsters like colossi, rocs, or the Terrasque: too big to fight, but a lot of fun to encounter, even if all you're doing is fleeing from its immense limbs!So, I'm wondering if we can't conceive of a new kind of "Monster Manual," maybe more of an "Encounter Encyclopedia" rather than "Combat Compendium," a book full of stats, but stats for things you fight, and for things you negotiate with, and for things you train, and for things you summon, and for things that may interact with your character in interesting and challenging ways aside from trying to murder them with pointy things. This also strikes me as the natural home for things like diseases, traps, and hazards, environmental effects like thunderstorms, sandstorms, hurricanes, etc.What kind of critters would you put in there? What are your favorite "monstrous" encounters that didn't involve necessarily beating the enemies to death? How would you describe their challenge for your favorite edition/game? Do you think such a book, with such contents, would be more useful than the current and past MM's (current ones being all combat, earlier ones giving you combat stat blocks for things you'd never fight and blowing page space), or is the kind of book most useful to you one chock full of combat stats and an excuse to pit them against the party?Well, what do you think?</blockquote>

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