News on Monster Manual V

[Nyaricus]

Always sad to see someone mistaking a vocal minority for a general consensus.

Then again, I was disappointed with all the dragonspawn myself.

Well, my main reason for staying away from MMIV *was* the dragonspawn; I mostly use monster books to get ideas for abilities for monsters in my homebrew, and dragons are done in a completely different manner then core D&D. So this books focus on SoT's was utterly useless for me, and the gallery pictured a bunch of monsters I didn't really have an interest in upon viewing.

That, and when I flipped through it in my FLGS, it still didn't really seem up to par. I bought Goodman Games Books of Templates instead about a week later, and was much happier with the money spent.

cheers,
--N

 

[Nyeshet]

It sounds like MM5 is better than MM4, but from what has been said I still do not think it will be good enough to buy. Classed creatures are not necessary. Templates (weird or otherwise) are little more than variant classes when dealing with monsters. Just give us the templates as an appendix and we can apply them ourselves to whichever creatures we wish to make use of.

Also, how can we make adjustments to the creatures if we have to guess at what the racial modifiers are - especially when the creatures are covered in classes and templates which may have adjusted their skill totals, skill bonuses, etc? Granted, reverse engineering isn't too difficult, but considering how often errors seem to slip into the stat blocks, any reverse engineering has a chance of coming up wrong - simply because we do not know whether a difference is an error or a non-revealed / cut racial modifier.

All in all, I'll take a look at the book when it comes out, but at present I have grave doubts as to whether I would even consider purchasing it.

 

[Razz]

It sounds like MM5 is better than MM4, but from what has been said I still do not think it will be good enough to buy. Classed creatures are not necessary. Templates (weird or otherwise) are little more than variant classes when dealing with monsters. Just give us the templates as an appendix and we can apply them ourselves to whichever creatures we wish to make use of.

Also, how can we make adjustments to the creatures if we have to guess at what the racial modifiers are - especially when the creatures are covered in classes and templates which may have adjusted their skill totals, skill bonuses, etc? Granted, reverse engineering isn't too difficult, but considering how often errors seem to slip into the stat blocks, any reverse engineering has a chance of coming up wrong - simply because we do not know whether a difference is an error or a non-revealed / cut racial modifier.

All in all, I'll take a look at the book when it comes out, but at present I have grave doubts as to whether I would even consider purchasing it.

Well said!

 

[RichGreen]

Hi,

I think MMIV gets unfairly maligned. I had a look through and listed the monsters I used from the last two Monster Manuals:

MMIV (published 2006)
Avatar of Elemental Evil: Waterveiled Assassin
Briarvex
Justice Archon
Greathorn Minotaur
Spawn of Tiamat: Greenspawn Leaper
Tomb Spider
Web Mummy

MMIII (published 2004)
Brood Keeper
Cinder Swarm
Deathshrieker
Eldritch Giant
Glaistig
Kenku
Blackscale Lizardfolk
Poison Dusk Lizardfolk
Needletooth Swarm
Petal
Redcap

Considering that MMIII is two years older, I don't think there's that much difference. I think this also goes to show that I don't really need a new monster book at all. I think I'll get MMV if there's a bunch of interesting new monsters in there and I'm sure I'll find the advanced/classed classic monsters useful.

Cheers


Richard

 

[Shade]

MMV definitely sounds better than MMIV. It sounds like the classed monsters will be more like those found in Frostburn, which was a far cry better than MMIV's treatment.

One thing in Merric's post concerned me. I couldn't ascertain who the quote below came from...

Porting monsters from 1e/2e is tricky. I mean, honestly, is that all that different from a classed monster? I have all the basic rules for the qullan from Fiend Folio 1e, and it isn't hard to stat that up in 3e, no harder (perhaps even easier) than adding levels to a humanoid.

Having worked with monster conversions since the inception of 3E, and being around the monster creation boards since that time, I can't imagine this being further from the truth. Adding class levels to a humanoid is ridiculously easy in comparison to trying to update a monster (successfully) to 3E.

 

[Shade]

Uh-oh. The spawn of Tiamat have made it into MMV! However....

The first of those four is the Greenspawn Zealot, a creature that extends the Spawn of Tiamat family first introduced in Monster Manual IV (spawn-haters can rejoice that it's the only dragonspawn in MMV, I suppose).

...I think I can live with one.

 

[ShadowDenizen]

No mention of flumphs?!? They are not listening to their audience!! Okay, okay...an audience of one, perhaps...

AHEM.
Audience of TWO, thank you very much!

 

[s.j. bagley]

AHEM.
Audience of TWO, thank you very much!

make that three.

 

[Razz]

make that three.

Flumphs were done in a 3.5E issue of Dungeon Magazine.

 

[Pants]

Having worked with monster conversions since the inception of 3E, and being around the monster creation boards since that time, I can't imagine this being further from the truth. Adding class levels to a humanoid is ridiculously easy in comparison to trying to update a monster (successfully) to 3E.

Yeah, updating creatures can be... difficult, though adding spellcaster levels to a monster is just as annoying sometimes.