Tome of Horrors - Evil Nitpicker at work!

[Knight Otu]

Let me start with praise... Even though I only have had the ToH for a few hours, I am already liking it very much. Thus, please read the following post as an attempt to make compiling errata and editorial or layout problems easy, and possibly to allow future books to be even better. If I happen to be wrong somewhere, please correct me!

1) The babbler is described as a "mutated form of lizardfolk" with an Intelligence of 10, but yet, the creature type is Beast. Why, when Humanoid or Monstrous Humanoid had been much better choices?

2) The Caterwauls' Size and Type descriptors are caught above it's picture, while the rest of the stat block is below.

3)The daemons' summoning power makes mention of MotP yugoloths, although disguised as daemons. I guess this was ok for WotC?

4) The shaggy demodands are the ruling class of the demodands, but at the same time, they are the lesser relatives of the slime demodands, who are the middle class. Now that's a chaotic society!

5) It's rather strange to see only one Quasielemental.

6) There are references to Maglubiyet, Yeenoghu and similar gods/planar lords. I'm assuming the same as in 3)?

7) Well, I'll get in trouble for this, but I propose making the half-ogre a medium-size giant, or giving him the giant blood ability. It may sound strange, but it is more in line with the other half-races.

8) Stymphalian birds are Beasts. However, the description seems to scream Magical Beast to me.

9) I'm curious as to why the Undead Ooze was included?

10) The templates usually don't say what the base creatures are. It may be obvious in most cases, but not always. In addition, some base creatures do not seem to exist in either the ToH or the core rules.

11) The dire creatures gain the non-existant dire subtype. Also, aren't they supposed to have all good saves?

12) In the owlwere's writeup, the first four letters of Weakness Gaze are printed on the same space.

13) I suppose that the Thessalhydra has a 8-headed hydra as the base creature. But taking the rules literally, it should then have 16 bite attacks.

If I haven't stepped on to many toes, I'll look through the book to see if I can find more.

 

[Geocorona]

If I haven't stepped on to many toes, I'll look through the book to see if I can find more.

I'm sure they'd appreciate help on the errata, no matter how much it might sting.

 

[Usurper]

To avoid a billion threads on ToH, I figured I'd sneak in here and say that this monster book kicks more ass than an army of professional ass-kickers against an enemy force of stationary asses of assweres.

My only complaint is that the book is so thick, the monsters are so good, and the cover is so glossy that my MM and MMII are jealous and plotting against it.

 

[Knight Otu]

Re: Re: Tome of Horrors - Evil Nitpicker at work!

I'm sure they'd appreciate help on the errata, no matter how much it might sting.

Hopefully.

14) Half-Ogres and Ogrillons both worship the Destroyer, but the texts disagree on his domains: One says Destruction, the other says Strength and War.

15) The Orog apparently missed the alignment shift of the orcish races. Intentional?

16) The Oliphant is an animal, but has an Int score of 4.

17) In the S section, the small chapter captions says Sybiotic instead of Symbiotic.

18) The Undead and Vampiric Oozes gains Ooze Qualities. The Undead Ooze lists fewer ooze abilities, and several overlap with Undead Qualities. Also, they do not include the Ooze Bonus Hit Points for size, which I think should be in.

19) Neither the Cloud nor the Mist Dragon have Damage Reduction. Intentional? Also, they do not specifically state that they follow the same rules as the Dragons in the MM, although that is rather obvious.

20) Therianthropes revert to their natural form according to the template, but all samples state that this is not the case.

 

[Knight Otu]

Something really minor:

21) Lava Child is listed as Lava Children. At least I don't think that plural shoud be used here.

 

[Wolf72]

7) Half-ogres, changing the type to giant changes nothing stat wise (or saves or what have you). (so change away). I think iirc that they do have ogre-blood, which is basically giant-blood ...

this was from the online CC:

Ogre Blood (Ex): For all special abilities and effects, a half-ogre is considered an ogre.

(ogre blood=ogre=giant)

 

[Knight Otu]

7) Half-ogres, changing the type to giant changes nothing stat wise (or saves or what have you). (so change away). I think iirc that they do have ogre-blood, which is basically giant-blood ...

Sure, but that was not my point.

My point was that half-elves are actually elves (they have the humanoid subtype elf), and the same goes for half-orcs (they are orcs). Thus, my reasoning is that the half-ogre should be a giant (and the same should propably go for the ogrillon, and maybe the orog). And ogre blood isn't really the same as giant blood.

Edit: Two more points:

22) The Ogrillon lists an ECL of 8. Comparing to the Half-Ogre and the Orog, this value seems too high. 3 or 4 seems more appropriate.

23) The clockworks have regeneration.

 

[Pale]

I'm not getting your poiny on 23 there. In the description some of the clockworks created by the Braingear have regeneration. So what's wrong with it?

 

[Cheiromancer]

Regeneration converts all damage to subdual damage. Constructs are immune to subdual damage. It should be fast healing instead.

 

[DnDChick]

11) The dire creatures gain the non-existant dire subtype. Also, aren't they supposed to have all good saves?

Since the Dire Template is my design, I can answer this one.

When I first made up the Dire Template, I gave the dire animals the "non-existant" dire subtype because I felt they deserved it to set them apart from otherwise normal animals. They aren't just normal animals.

Also, the dire template cannot reproduce the dire animals in the Monster Manual. Believe me, I tried. There is no unifying mechanic that I could 'reverse engineer' to create a workable dire template, so I just had to make one up. Using a dire subtype helps further set the templated versions apart from the "official" ones.

Besides, there are more possible subtypes than those mentioned in the MM and MMII. I don't think it's a terrible breach of rules to make up one's own subtypes.

As for the saves ... my bad. I goofed. Plain and simple. Others have pointed that out to me as well and unfortunately we didn't address it before it went to print.