Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aegeri" data-source="post: 5579712" data-attributes="member: 78116">Neither does reprinting monsters with minor alterations like Vestapulk and Hurly Burly brothers to occupy 3 pages of a book. When those three pages could be used for much needed epic monsters - which allows for the wide exploration of a lot of different mechanics (and has very little "crowding" design space wise as well compared to a very crowded heroic tier and lower paragon). I could buy your logic if everything in this was really new, unique and everything else. When I see things that are original monster + 1 power I kind of sit there and go "Really?". Most of MV:TtNV is really exciting that I've seen. It's just it feels to me certain concepts were crammed into the book because of its limited scope - the complete opposite of your point actually.For example other than half a page of fluff, what makes the Hurly Burly brothers such a unique and interesting monster to demand their page space? Mechanically the stat block is just a troll with a cleave power, with a trait that isn't actually worded quite correctly (fixed in final version?). But ultimately it's just a barely modified troll from MV. The number of monsters I've seen like this make me wonder if the heroic/paragon focus was to the detriment of the book. Where certain things just got put in just to fill a bit of space in an incredibly crowded couple of tiers monster wise. Hurly Burly Brothers, Vestapulk and Mages of Saruun feel like Dragon content to me, as they are largely updates of original existing monsters with rather functional equivalents already existing. Something like the Hound of Ill Omen, the Wandering Tower and Fell Court all demand their page space (though the Fell Court are paragon tier quality monsters pretending to be in the Low Heroic, I assume they just got lost!).You should certainly do so! But bear in mind that official support from wizards is the most important in two ways (Not to belittle your work at all incidentally!): Firstly it shows that Wizards actually is going to give epic tier the support it needs. The odd monster made in peoples spare time does not equal a monster vault. For example you should check out Robert J. Schwalbs blog where he makes numerous epic tier creatures. Secondly it means they will be implemented into whatever monster design tools that - I can only hope - will eventually be usable at some point in future. Making - again I can only hope - redesigning and fiddling with them much easier. But if you make some epic monsters then put a thread here, I'll even join in helping you do so (I am not bad at monster design myself just quietly)! But what is really needed is wizards to show genuine and actual support - I feel they can do that in a future MV product without abandoning any tier.I can also make my own monsters very successfully as well, but what I need are a good *chunk* (30+ individual monsters) of monsters all at once. Otherwise I'm going to get to epic tier, look at the hideous amount of work I'll have to do and just give up. That's really my choice at the moment: Do far more work than is required at any other tier or give up. Right now with the way my time is these days, one of those options is now untenable. Like I would be making more epic creatures in general now (working on an entire small epic adventure to showcase an Ancient Mithril Dragon for example*), but my other games demand attention and so I can't spare the time to "pre-prepare" epic tier as I would need to do.I am aware of people claiming "Well it's SUPPOSED to be just for the Nentir vale", but I already accepted with Monster Vault "They wanted to update largely heroic/paragon monsters for new DMs". I accepted that argument and so I was silent at the time about MV not having epic content. Doing it twice in the row is what irks me. In this case I'm really not going to be sympathetic to wanting to have my room painted, then discovering the painter has trapped himself in a corner and won't bother painting the rest. Sure you have most of a very nicely painted room, with only the odd blemish here and there - but it would be far better to have the entire room painted.*I shall put this up on the forum for everyones general benefit once it is finished.</blockquote>

Verification