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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5236270" data-attributes="member: 2067">Characters interact with normal animals in a mechanical way all the time, though! Not necessarily fighting them (though enemy mounts, evil wolves, and swarms of things are standard fantasy fare), but through encounters with them.The disease that the bat carries?The DC for a gnome to train a fox to spy for him?The challenge involved in getting a mule to obey?The damage a cow can take before exploding when you duck into a cattle field for cover against a dragon?How easy it is to cling to the undersides of sheep while the cyclops feels for you in their fur?The level of the challenge of "breaking a wild stallion"?How to use a cat to detect magic?Using an owl as a familiar?Chatting with squirrels to figure out the lay of the land?I probably don't need the bat's Charisma if I'm just maybe getting a disease from it, but if the party druid wants to train it to spy on our enemies, I'll need the Charisma more than I'll need its Attack Roll. That's why an encounter encyclopedia might be a better way of viewing the MM than a combat compendium. Instead of just a list of things you fight, it's a list of possible things that happen to your characters.I guess, for me, a book that included "teaching mushrooms to sing" as a skill challenge (or whatever) alongside "beating up goblins" as a combat challenge would be much more useful and interesting than anything we've had in any of the editions so far. Combat stat for noncombat things are really useless. On the other hand, the idea that an MM is only for combat stats is something I don't really buy. It should be for all sorts of threats and creatures! All sorts of encounters, with the stats for running them! In one place, so I don't need to hunt over 4 different books to find the special encounter I'm looking for!</blockquote>

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