Monster Vault

[Perun]

I'll just repeat my annoyance which has remained the same with all of the 4e monster books so far, and which unfortunately seems will be present in the future -- no monster descriptions.

In the beholder description they talk about unwholesomeness of the Far Realm which comes into tenuous contact with the World... etc., etc... and yet somehow it never says something along the lines of "all beholders look basically like a floating ball with a big central eye, mouth, and a number of eyestalks, the exact number of which depends on the type of beholder".

Illustrations are nice and all, but I'd like a description to be included in the monster write-up.

Just my pet peeve.

Regards.

 

[weiknarf]

The Huge Carrion Crawler is also very similar except for the damages - the attack that's now a 2d12 + 12 was a 1d4+5 in the MM1, absolutely pathetic in a 17th level monster. Interestingly, much of the 'controller' effects are blunted in this new version of the monster. For example, the Monster Builder version imposes a -5 to saves versus its stuns, which was fairly brutal. That penalty doesn't appear in the new version.

The new carrion crawler is a soldier not a controller.

 

[Peraion Graufalke]

Ich bin der tuefelhund!

[nitpick] That should be Teufelshund. [/nitpick]

 

[josha]

I, for one, am exited about the Monster Vault.
The book is great because I can use MM1 monsters again.
The adventure is great because you can't have enough of those.
And the tokens are great because minis are too expensive.

WooHoo!

 

[Klaus]

I, for one, am exited about the Monster Vault.
The book is great because I can use MM1 monsters again.
The adventure is great because you can't have enough of those.
And the tokens are great because minis are too expensive.

WooHoo!

And hey, you can get tokens for the MM1/2/3 monsters to complement the MV ones!

 

[Korgoth]

[nitpick] That should be Teufelshund. [/nitpick]

A Marine encounter? In the middle of the forest?

 

[Stalker0]

My one question is why is that beholder artillery? Other than its fire ray, everything else it does screams controller to me.


But then again, I have consistently found that artillery monsters are better controllers than controller monsters

 

[Obryn]

I've preordered Monster Vault, happy to have MM1 monsters updated... but, seriously, this is 4.5 in disguise...

Shame on you, Wizards, shame on you...

I look at it as more like, "Oh, neat! I can buy a hardcopy of the monsters, updated to MM3 numbers!"

I could do it on my own, but I'd rather (1) have someone else do it for me, and (2) have a hardcopy of them. Also, tokens are rad.

-O

 

[Jhaelen]

Illustrations are nice and all, but I'd like a description to be included in the monster write-up.

Just my pet peeve.

Indeed! That's one of my pet peeves, too.
The other is a habitat/society section. Why do we no longer get info about preferred climate/terrain? This has always been my main starting point when creating encounters.

After this preview I'm pretty sure I won't need Monster Vault. I was hoping for new monster variants, not this. I can update damage expressions myself, thanks, and I'm not going to pay for errata.

The tokens are very nice, though, and depending on the price point, I may eventually get it just because of them (I'm also a sucker for poster maps and may get some of the Essentials stuff just to get more of them...).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Indeed! That's one of my pet peeves, too.
The other is a habitat/society section. Why do we no longer get info about preferred climate/terrain? This has always been my main starting point when creating encounters.

After this preview I'm pretty sure I won't need Monster Vault. I was hoping for new monster variants, not this. I can update damage expressions myself, thanks, and I'm not going to pay for errata.

The tokens are very nice, though, and depending on the price point, I may eventually get it just because of them (I'm also a sucker for poster maps and may get some of the Essentials stuff just to get more of them...).

Eh, the old habitat etc stuff was OK, but OTOH a LOT of monsters already pretty obviously belong in specific environments and others I can use my imagination on. That kind of stuff is interesting, but so is all the other stuff and really I think 2e went a bit overboard with it.

Descriptions though, I must say I do find it odd there isn't a sentence on that. OTOH if you compare say 1e MM entries to the modern ones, they have really upped the font size a lot. There's just quite a bit less text. Helps my poor aging eyesight, but something had to go...