Monster's Handbook! Attn: CGreathouse!

[Psion]

Edited to attract Charles Greathouse's attention -- see the post below.


I got this in my latest order along with some other products and must say I am impressed. There's some pretty interesting ammo for creative and devious DMs here. Way cool!

It goes through (along with the web enhancement) each creature type. It has rules for enhancing and adding abilities to creatures, with specific abilities that can be added to every creature type, along with templates and prestige classes for each. All told, its a great toolkit for crafting new and unique versions of any existing monsters.

Only grumbles - humanoid chapter really needed more variety, and the shapechanger chapter seems to ignore shapechangers outside of the MM; there are great creatures like the Tempus Twin in other books that could realistically use many of the options it restricts to dopplegangers and phasms.

 

[BigFreekinGoblinoid]

Hey Psion, you must be slipping! You didn't even mention that the Monster's Handbook is the newest Legends & Lairs hardbound book by Fantasy Flight Games : $24.95.

I'll look forward to your full review!

 

[Turjan]

LOL! And I was asking myself what he was talking about .

j/k

 

[Crothian]

How's the Dragon Chapter? I just picked up Draconic Lore and while the new Dragons are pretty darn cool, I was really hoping for some general dragon options. I'm hoping they show up in the Monster's Handbook.

 

[Buddha the DM]

I just ordered the Draconic Lore book today. I'd be interested in hearing if the Monster Handbook is a good buy as well.

 

[Winterthorn]

I purchased Draconic Lore. I liked it when I peeked at it in my FGS (since I've moved it ain't Local anymore ), and I had the chance to peek into the Monsters Handbook as well as.

What I've learned so far:

1) The MH is really a monster building/warping tool. All that's new are the ideas on twisting your favourite critters into something funky to your tastes--aahhh, the pleasure of tormenting players who are so presumptuous to have memorized the Monster Manual and related offerings! The MH, from FFG, looked quite good to me at the time. (Unfortunately budgetary constraints prevented my buying it at the moment. Drat.)

2) The Draconic Lore softcover is a really nice book for those who have a fondness for dragons. Rather than adding on to material on previously published dragons, or creating their variants, FFG introduced a whole family of new ones. Granted you might not be able to use all of them in your game, the offerings remain quite imaginative! In fact you could populate your homebrew world with only certain types offered in this modest tome to give your world it's own flavour. (I like the Wild Dragon native to primordial forests--a real friend to Druids! They may be good for the Slaine setting from Mongoose? )

The 30+ offerings range from the Tiny Tome Lizard that nests in old libraries and Tiny Wind Lizard suitable for a "familiar" role, to the Drakes of various sorts who are rarely larger than Large sized who often form symbiotic/dependant relationships with intelligent beings such as Humans (Drakes are the low Int cousins of Dragons), to the Chthonian, Dire and Reef Dragons who can reach frighteningly Colossal proportions! Really nasty too. Wow.

It seems all new folks--many with new breath weapons and abilities... There are also a few Dragons of fixed size as they are really draconic offshoots--like the Dragonshark... There's also a Revenant template, and details on a new humanoid draconic race. (The Dragoth were once a proud species, older than elven history, but now mere shadows that lurk in Bards' tales...)
So if you like dragons, this little book is a nice addition to your library!


Btw: the MH has about 6 pages covering Dragons--but, following the spirit of the rest of the book, only material on modifying those you know from other sources with new feats, a Prestige class and new scary abilities. Draconic Lore holds 62 pages of purely draconic material! (There's no overlap that I could tell.)


I'm pleased so far... I just gotta get the MH when some $ re-enters my everburning wallet...

-W.

 

[2WS-Steve]

I'll second the thumbs-up here; Monster's Handbook is one of my favorite d20 supplements so far. It's full of tools for how to make monsters even more fun than they already are and the beginning section on modifying monsters demonstrates a deep understanding of how the game works. The relative CR/absolute CP distinction strikes me as an insight that a lot of other game systems would benefit from; for instance, one could port that technique into the Hero system and make a whole bunch of new options available.

 

[Psion]

How's the Dragon Chapter?

Pretty decent. If you think that the selection of dragons in the MM is too stale, the options in here can totally morph them into something unrecognizable.

 

[Asathas]

Get them both if you can...

I'm one of those DM's who hates featureless, tasteless dragons. They are to be feared as the next-best-thing to gods that they are. As such, Draconic Lore was a great buy for me since I don't plan on having white dragons and brass dragons and such but each dragon being completely unique. Thus when I find a "type" of dragons, I've just found a new individual dragon for my campaign world.

Beyond that, I love having the drakes and such that give the party something draconic to associate with without wetting their pants.

As for Monster's Handbook... even better. I pull monsters from a variety of sources so as to keep my players guessing. Monster's Handbook makes this even better. My campaign is currently featuring goblinoids as the main opponents and I'll be creating a few new goblinoid races using MH over the next few weeks.

Truly, MH is finally the book to give to the monsters all the crunchy bits players have been enjoying with just about every other supplement out there.

 

[Zaukrie]

I agree, both are good books. The MH is almost a must buy for any DM who's willing to spend a few minutes making monster encounters unique. I wasn't planning on buying this, but when I looked through it, I knew I had to have it. I'd really recommend the MH to anyone who wants to customize their monsters. As for Draconic Lore, I like the little drakes the best, along with one or two of the larger dragons, whose names I can't remember because instead of working right now, I'm typing this.