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Message: <blockquote data-quote="knight_isa" data-source="post: 2009183" data-attributes="member: 1434">Back in the days of 2nd Edition I decided to run a campaign that was a little more exotic, centered around a trans-world gateway.  The PC's were mostly monstrous, which wasn't a big deal in terms of the campaign (there were lots of monstrous NPC's in the gateway city), but it proved to be a balance nightmare.  Along with 3e came the racial level modifiers, which renewed my interest in that campaign.  When I saw that AEG's Monster had already done a lot of the work for me, I knew I had to pick it up.Monster is a 152-page softcover book that retails for $24.95 (I got it at 10% off at my friendly local gaming store).  The font size is about as small as I'd want it to be with good margins, and the illustrations range from mediocre to fantastic.  The book covers a variety of monster-related subjects, as follows:Chapter One: The Age of Man.  The ins and outs of monster society.  Very interesting, and good stuff.  I have one minor quibble, though.  Gnolls are not goblinoids.  Neither are orcs, or kobolds.  I'm not sure how the misconception that they are was started, but it's in there.Chapter Two: Monster Races.  Monsters from the MM converted to PHB format.  The converted monsters were bugbear, centaur, drider, ettin, gnoll, goblin, harpy, hobgoblin, kobold, lizardfolk, merfolk, minotaur, ogre/ogre mage, orc, sahaugin, troglodyte, and troll.  Well done, and it saved me a lot of work.  This chapter also introduced the concept of "young" members of a race with an EL +0.  While a good concept, the execution left a little to be desired, since eventually the youngster gets the full natural bonuses (but not cultural ones) of his race, but without a compensatory increase in EL.Chapter Three: A New Breed.  Combinations/variations on MM monsters.  Oddly enough, there are no listings for young variants of these races.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Black Orc - Basically an elf-like orc.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Brood - Dark elf/orc combo.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Cobra Ogre - Ogre/lizardfolk combo.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dogface - Bugbear/gnoll combo created to be slaves.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Ferris - Ogre/Rat combo.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Grikkyn - Troll/Hobgoblin combo.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Groglin - Goblin/Troglodyte combo.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Gurk - Two-headed orc.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Minos - Centaur/Minotaur combo.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Mongrel - * combo.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Nasimir - Rakshasa/nymph combo. (Interesting inclusion, since nether rakshasa nor nymphs were in the Chapter Two.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Neslikaar - Similar to a giant-lizard/centaur combo.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Ruoth - Horned ogre.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Screeching Green - Harpy/Orc combo.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Sluverian - Merfolk/Sahaugin combo.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Spider Goblins - Spider/Goblin combo.</li> </ul>The grikkyn and the minos will find there way into my games for sure, if only as NPCs.  The others may or may not, depending on how things pan out.Chapter Four: Anti-Heroes.  New uses for skills (good), new feats (okay), prestige classes (I'm not a big fan of prestige classes, so I wont rate them), new/special equipment (including the shoddy quality, a sort of anti-masterwork) (good), superior equipment (good).Chapter Five: Outcasts.  Alignment, monstrous campaigns, monstrous PCs, mixed parties, role-playing a monster.  Some of this chapter seemed to belong in Chapter One, and vice versa, but over-all it was well done.Chapter Six: From the Hands of Giants.  New spells (my favorite being Odorless) (good), magic items (the Figurine of the Damsel--fantastic hero bait--is great) (good), new artifacts (don't care), monster archetypes (MM-style entries for the races in Chapter Three that, in my opinion, should have been in Chapter Three) (good), half-human template (interesting).The Good: Monster is packed with good information.  I especially liked the societal/philosophical descriptions for the monsters, since they'll give me more ideas when creating monstrous societies.  And like I mentioned before, the grikkyn and the minos will find a way into my game, one way or another.The Bad: I really only have a few complaints, as follows:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Editing.  There were quite a few of minor typos (capitalization, hyphenation) throughout the book.  While they don't make the book unusable, I do find them to be extremely annoying.  There is also a section header on page 114 ("Far Better to Live and Die") that is in the same font as the text, and the half-page side bar on page 99 ("Monster Hunters") is identical (except in title) to the half-page side-bar on page 116 ("Monster Allergies and Addictions").  At the price I paid, I expected near-perfect editing. -1 (I might have been more forgiving on this had the book been cheaper, but then again, I'd rather pay a little more and get perfection.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Art placement.  While most of the art was very good, the layout could have been better.  I would have liked to see a picture of each of the new races with that race's description, for instance.  The minos had the picture next to the description, and I think that's probably half of the reason I like it so much. -0.5</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Young races.  These needed to have better aging rules.  It was great start, but not fully executed in my opinion.  I would really like to see some sort of errata or web enhancement from AEG that dealt with increasing EL's so this concept would be usable.  I didn't buy the book for this, though, and the concept has a good enough start to make it useable with some tweaking, so the good equals the bad on this one.  -0</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Since merfolk and sahaugin were included in the book, it would have been nice to see kuo-toa and locathah, too.  This would have been possible had they combined the monster archetypes from Chapter Six with their races in Chapter Three and eliminated the duplicate text.  On the other hand, it is nice to have MM-like entries all by themselves, so I wont dock the score on this one.  -0</li> </ul>Conclusion: If I could give a 3.5, that's what I'd do, but as it is I'll round it up to 4.  It is a very meaty book, with lots of useable content (for a DM), whether or not you plan on letting players use it.</blockquote>

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