Necromancer Games's Tome of Horrors

[painandgreed]

Wow, that's pretty heavy requirement. Its a good book, but no monster book I'd make a requirement except maybe MM.

...but, you can't play D&D without piercers, lurker aboves, rot grubs, trappers and gas spores.

 

[Staffan]

Personally, I wasn't too impressed with Tome of Horrors. My main thought when reading it was "Yeah, I see why these were left out of the MM." I would have liked it more if it had converted interesting monsters like the Grey Philosopher, Brain Collector, Magen, Villichi, Elemental Drakes, Giff, and so on. Instead we get Flail Snail and Wolf-in-sheep's-clothing. Whee.

 

[Crothian]

It's more than a good book. It's an awesome book. Packed with adventure ideas. I'd actually say that ToH and ToHII are more useful to me than MM.

I don't think it was that packed with adventure ideas. The best monster book I've seen for that is the Freeport one, but it was as much a Freeport book as it was a monster book. I liked both ToH but clearly not as well as many other people.

 

[philreed]

I don't think it was that packed with adventure ideas. The best monster book I've seen for that is the Freeport one, but it was as much a Freeport book as it was a monster book. I liked both ToH but clearly not as well as many other people.

Well, I can open the ToH to just about any page and come up with some neat adventure ideas just by reading the description. I like strange, non-standard monsters, though. And I love aberrations and oozes -- the stranger the better. And ToH had more than its share of strange monsters. Hell, I even like the flail snail.

I haven't seen the Freeport monster book. (Monsternomicon is another great book for adventure ideas.)

 

[Crothian]

I agree that one can come up with adventure ideas just by reading the descriptions, but this isn't unique to TOH. I can do that with any monster from any book. I don't think there is a book with descriptions so poor that adventures can't be thought up about the creatures.

 

[Psion]

I come up with as many or more ideas reading CC2 and Denizens of Avadnu as ToH2, myself.

 

[BOZ]

It's too bad the Tome II didn't do more conversions there are still so many missing monsters. Especially from Mystara.

if i could find a publisher willing to put up with WotC, i'd love to put together a proper book of conversions for 3.5.

 

[Nightfall]

I come up with as many or more ideas reading CC2 and Denizens of Avadnu as ToH2, myself.

YEAH!!! *goes wild* Sadly...we so need a 3.5 conversion/update/fixing for some of those CC2 monsters. I still am irate with Belsameth Spider one, in terms of it goes undead YET still has a freaking Con score.

Anyway Tome of Horrors, great book. ToHII, also great book.

Not sure it's "heavily" required but I'm 100% GLAD it's in my collection. Especially for Orcus! The combined Orcus of ToH and BoVD would be my way to go for statting out a truly massive "avatar-like" version of Orcus.

 

[Psion]

YEAH!!! *goes wild* Sadly...we so need a 3.5 conversion/update/fixing for some of those CC2 monsters.

Well, I already did night touched 3.5.

I was going to pull a 3.5 vermin host using the swarm rules, but nobody seemed interested and my game wasn't at the point yet. So I never did it. Now I feel extremely beat to the punch by the swarmform template. I'll still probably do it anyways.

 

[Alzrius]

I really liked seeing so many old monsters get updated. However, both the 3.5E changeover, and what amounted to quite a few errors (check the threads here and at the Necromancer Games website), would sour me on it today if I were looking to buy it (as it stands, I already own my copy).

Assuming its popular enough that they anticipate need for another print run, my idea would be that they just release one with errata and updates. It wouldn't violate their contract with WotC since they'd still be using the same monsters. Then the book would be worth its weight in gold.