Too Many Monster Manuals?

[Pants]

I bought MM2 when it came out, wished I hadn't, and that was the end of the monster books for me.

You're missing out, MMII was, IMO, pretty damn weak by WotC standards, plus there are loads of cool 3rd party monster books out there too! I wouldn't judge an entire line on one crummy book.

 

[papastebu]

Heck no. I am going to buy three through whatever number, eventually. I think that the ideas are inspiring, though not for use in every game, obviously, and the artwork makes me want to engage in some "one-upmanship" against the artist, helping me develop in that area as well. Except for the cost of actually buying the books, it seems like a win/win situation. Another thing I just thought of, once the books are out there, you have them to refer to, and with such a broad selection, you are bound to find something you can use, or at least modify to suit.

 

[questing gm]

By what standard are they "too numerous"? A wide range of choice is always good, and buying anything you don't want isn't mandatory.

I agree but i wasn't tackling the choice of buying the books. I felt that there are indeed too many MMs out there, not including the amount of monsters that are also in the races, environment and other supplmentary rules like the Planar Handbook. I believe the list of monsters is much longer than spells and magic items, which makes it even harder to keep track of them.

Another thing about having more than one MM is that DMs may find themselves having to buy a new MM just for one monster while he didn't really need the rest. If I did that for the past MMs, the MMV is probably going to be more of a turn-off rather than a new opportunity for investment.

Sure, there is the index on the WoTC website but did that stop them from printing Spell Compendium? They could make a Monster Compendium and incorporate the errata for the monsters or use the new stat block format (which MMI-III did not use). Well, they probably wouldn't include the monsters from MMI but at least gather the monsters from the other non-monster books. A 3.5 update of the MMII and FF would also be nice.

Am I the only one that wouldn't like to see a complete list of Celestials in one book rather than having to flip through 5 volumes of MM just to find the one i was looking for?

 

[Particle_Man]

I don't buy them but am glad that others do. I like to be surprised occasionally, so don't look into them myself, and as far as balance goes I trust an official entry more than my friends' homebrew monsters (sad but true).

When running a campaign, I use the basic MM and the appropriate setting book's monsters, plus some monsters that sneak into the class splat books and the XPH (if psionics are present).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If people keep buying them, publishers should keep making them. Even the worst monster book has one or two gems in it, and more power to the folks who want to pluck them out.

 

[Razz]

I'm surprised people don't use MM2 often. There's a plethora of creatures in MM2 that will make great use for most people's campaigns. I'm surprised you folks haven't realized it, yet. Allow me to throw out some creatures that I am sure you'll be inspired to use from MM2:

Asperi
Automaton
Banshee
Bladeling
Bone Ooze
Chaos Roc
Cloud Ray
Death Knight (template)
Demon
Devil
Dinosaur
Dire Animal
Firbolg
Galeb Duhr
Gem Dragons
Giants (Ocean, Forest, Sun, Mountain)
Half-Golem (template)
Leviathan
Neogi
Phoenix
Tauric (template)
Titanic (template)
Yugoloth

That's just from the top of my head. There were plenty of others in there that were conversions of past favorites from old editions. That's what I really loved about MM2, it had a nice collection of brand new and old favorites.

 

[Celebrim]

My rule on buying a MM would be that I'd want to use (but maybe never get the chance to) at least 30% of the content.

Only the MM1 exceeds that standard. For the others, its not even close - maybe 5% or less.

With monsters, I'm looking for an idea behind the design in which at least one of the following is true:

1) Ties into some strong instinctual fear.
2) Ties into some cultural myth or universal mythic concept.
3) Has an interesting and unique special attack or ability.

Beyond that, I'm looking for good presentation of the idea.

a) Strong, non-cheesy art, to sell me on the concept and provide a ready game aid.
b) Flexibility in the concept, meaning I can use the in a variaty of settings and in a variaty of ways. This favors monsters in a mid-range of CR that I can scale up by advancing them, or low CR monsters that make good swarms. For intelligent monsters, it favors things with strong coherent motivations so that either they suggest thier own stories, or else they can be used as complex NPC's which can be either allies or foes. It also favors to some extent monsters which have low ecological requirements (undead, constructs, outsiders, elementals) since you can put those just about anywhere, and which if living can adapt to a variaty of habitats. Something which has a flavor that only fits say tropical savannahs or arctic ice flows have a low probability of being used.
c) Good mechanics.

If you could buy monster manuals by the page, I might buy a few monster manuals in peices. But I'm not going to buy a $30 book in order to get access to 5-6 monsters that I could fudge myself from the concept alone.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I agree but i wasn't tackling the choice of buying the books. I felt that there are indeed too many MMs out there, not including the amount of monsters that are also in the races, environment and other supplmentary rules like the Planar Handbook. I believe the list of monsters is much longer than spells and magic items, which makes it even harder to keep track of them.

Again, [i[why[/i] are there too many? Personally, I wouldn't care if there were 30 or 40 Monster Manuals. I'd read reviews of them to see what was in them, and I'd only buy them if they struck my interest. Besides, why would have to keep track of them? If you're happy with just one Monster Manual, and don't find your game lacking, why would you need to keep track of any of the others? Use only what you want in your game, and pretend the others don't exist.

Another thing about having more than one MM is that DMs may find themselves having to buy a new MM just for one monster while he didn't really need the rest. If I did that for the past MMs, the MMV is probably going to be more of a turn-off rather than a new opportunity for investment.

Why would anyone have to buy a MM for just one monster? The monsters present in just the first MM are more than enough to cover most concepts one could think up, especially with templates and class levels available to modify monsters.

Sure, there is the index on the WoTC website but did that stop them from printing Spell Compendium? They could make a Monster Compendium and incorporate the errata for the monsters or use the new stat block format (which MMI-III did not use). Well, they probably wouldn't include the monsters from MMI but at least gather the monsters from the other non-monster books. A 3.5 update of the MMII and FF would also be nice.

I'd like to see a 3.5 update of those books, too.

Am I the only one that wouldn't like to see a complete list of Celestials in one book rather than having to flip through 5 volumes of MM just to find the one i was looking for?

You could simply use only the celestials in the original MM and ignore the rest. The ones available in just the MM can cover a wide range of possibilities, especially, as I said above, if one uses templates (such as the half-celestial) to modify other monsters to make them into celestials, or adds class levels to existing celestials.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I'm surprised people don't use MM2 often.

Yeah, I think the MM2 gets a bad rap. I think it has an interesting assortment of monsters, and I like it better than the FF or MM3.

 

[Celebrim]

Allow me to throw out some creatures that I am sure you'll be inspired to use from MM2:

Asperi
Automaton
Banshee
...<SNIP>...
Tauric (template)
Titanic (template)
Yugoloth

Of that whole list, the only ones I can see me using are dire animal, dinosaur, and half-golem. Possibly Tauric. Granted there are quite a few in MMII that I like that didn't make your list (Grell, Fihyr, Firebat), but we are still talking about maybe 10% of the book and it's probably my 2nd favorite.