Needed: Good Monster Books!

[haiiro]

I've seen three completely 3.5e compatible monster books so far:

- Dangerous Denizens (Kenzerco)
- Creature Collection Revised (Sword & Sorcery)
- Monsters of the Mind (Green Ronin)

Monsters of the Mind is excellent, and DD also looked very good. I already own the non-revised CC, so I didn't take a look at that one.

For 3.0 monster books, I'll throw in with the Monsternomicon folks -- that book rocks. Other favorites for me include Liber Bestarius (Eden Studios) and Twisted Lore (Fantasy Flight). Green Ronin's other creature books are also excellent (Armies of the Abyss, Legions of Hell and Jade Dragons & Hungry Ghosts).

For general info on altering and customizing monsters, FFG's Monster's Handbook is an excellent resource. It's one of the best d20 books to date, and it's chock full of useful material. Highly recommended.

 

[Terry Edwards]

Monsternomicon is great, especially if you're looking to incorporate firearms into your campaign. I just can't say enough good things about this book, it is...precious to me.

I have also found the MM2 very useful. It is packed with a high ratio of foes on the powerful side but still provides something new for the less experienced party.

For some free creatures you should peruse the Creature Catalogue right here at EnWorld.

http://www.enworld.org/cc/index.php

 

[Voadam]

From the ones I have:

Penumbra Bestiary: Lots of very well developed monsters with good descriptions, identification system for rpg role of the monsters (combat, magical, trickster, epic foe, etc.) a good bunch of angels and constructs. See a bunch of previews at www.atlas-games.com (Plus I'm one of the authors)

Gaming Frontiers Monsters: PDF book with neat fey, constructs and some neat critters like the carnivorous boulder things (I'm an author of this one too, see my sig). It's only $6.95 I believe

Denizens of Darkness: Ravenloft horror themed monster book converts lots of 2e ravenloft monsters including tons of templates, better if you don't have the 2e stuff so that it comes at you fresh.

Minions Rebirth: another pdf with a huge number of monsters but more expensive than GF monsters. Does a good job on the monster cultures/history/roles. Very different original monsters.

Book of templates: PDF lots of high powered templates.

 

[KingOfChaos]

There is also the 'Lore' series of books by Fantasy Flight Games. Such as Twisted Lore (Aberrations, oozes, and shapechangers) and Elemental Lore (Elementals!). They're very specialized, but useful monster books

 

[JeffB]

Only two monster books have made it into my collection and stayed (besides the MM)

Tome of Horrors

Dangerous Denizens: Monsters of Tellene

 

[DragonLancer]

This is what I have in my monster collection (no particular order)and I recommend any of these.

• Monster Manual 2
• Fiend Folio
• Dangerous Denizens
• Liber Bestarius
• Denizens of Darkness
• Creature Collection
• Creature Collection 2
• Tome of Horrors
• Monsternomicon
• Monsters of Faerun
• Legions of Hell
• Armies of the Abyss
• Avatar's Handbook

 

[Geoffrey]

Check out the monsters in the d20 Call of Cthulhu book.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Second on Tome of Horrors. Good stuff. Don't have Monsternomicon yet unfortunately.

You might want to take a look at blurbs for Bastion Press' new series at www.bastionpress.com. I wrote two monsters for Into the Green, so I think it's cool. The next in the series, Into the Black, is set to come out soon.

 

[Kichwas]

Creature Collection Revised (not out yet, but will be soon)

Last Wednesday, two days before you posted this, a player showed up at my MnM game with a copy of this in hand. I just traded in my first printing of it today for the revised book, along with a copy of Fiend Folio that had been marked down to 50% off due to overstock.

It was a hard choice between Fiend Folio and Tome Of Horrors, but the 50% off ended the debate for me. The other book will just have to wait for some other day.

Monster books don't usually do much for me, of those I've had for a while the Creature Collection II looked most interesting. IN the last few days I've ended up with three new ones though - so we'll see how my opinion reshapes itself, if at all.

 

[Desdichado]

Oddly enough, I don't use monster books all that much but I seem to have a fetish for picking them up; I own 15 books that are dedicated monster books and another 10 or so that have large monster sections. And, the Penumbra Fantasy Bestiary and the Warcraft Monster books are on my list to pick up this fall...

I'm actually not that big a fan of the Tome of Horrors. While it has some good stuff in it, most of it is Scott Greene's original monsters. Most of the older monsters that were converted -- probably should have been left behind with 2e, quite frankly.