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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7898954" data-attributes="member: 4937">I don't know if I'm qualified, as outside of D&D, I haven't read many bestiaries.   Usually outside of D&D there aren't needs for extensive monsters, and there is just a section of the GM guide to the system.   And usually, I'm not actually a fan of bestiaries, because I'm so picky about what I use that for most monster books I find myself only wanting to use 5-10 pages of the whole book.   But, noting that perhaps unfortunate D&D bias, here would be my favorites.1) "Monster Manual II", TSR 1e AD&D - While the original 1e AD&D monster manual is a classic, it shows that it was written before the rules were finalized, and the editing and quality of the presentation is also lacking. MM2 in 1e AD&D is TSR at its finest: great art, great creativity, a ton of useful monsters, integration with rules in the DMG and Deities & Demigods, and much more credible high level foes and superior monster design compared to the original MM.2) "The Bestiary: Predators", Betabunny Publishing (3e D&D OGL) - Although limited in scope, this is in some ways in my opinion the best monster tome ever published. It only covers real world animals, and only a slice of animals (large predators) at that, but it covers them in such glorious detail with an eye towards realism and clear experience with the reality of what DM's need to know. For example, it has detailed rules for determining the value of pelts, hides, and other animal body parts - which as any DM knows, would be an entirely welcome addition to any monster manual as I've never been in a campaign where the player's didn't decide to carve up a monster or otherwise cart it away to be sold. It's a shame that this book didn't reach a wider audience, as I certainly would have bought any follow ups.3) "Tome of Horrors": Necromancer Games (3e D&D OGL) - Faithful conversions of the AD&D monsters to 3e stats. This tome was nigh essential for DMs like myself that had campaign setting continuity between 1e AD&D and 3e D&D, and was largely superior to any offering by WotC and certainly superior to later offerings by WoTC. Saved me so much effort.4) "Monster Manual", WotC 3e D&D - I'm uncertain whether this or the 3e Player's Handbook was the best rulebook WotC put out in its whole run, but the combination of the two I think really made 3e D&D the blockbuster hit that it was. Not only did it have a great selection of classic monsters, but it really empowered DMs to make whatever the heck they wanted, with excellent guidelines about the expected math and how changes would effect the difficulty level. The accompanying article in Dragon magazine(?) explaining the design process was also great reading regarding the logic they'd put in place. I didn't agree with everything, and subjective CR is always subjective, but this book was an amazing accomplishment.5) "Monstrous Compendium", TSR 2e D&D - There are a lot of things I hated about the 2e presentation.  I disliked the full color art, as it was with a few exceptions evocative and less well drawn than the original pen art.  I hated some of the arbitrary rebalancing of monsters.   I hated that as cool as the concept of a single ever expanding tome was in theory, in practice it was a bit of nightmare as any school kid knows that three ring binders and their pages aren't durable.   But there was a lot of cool things done here, including much more organized layouts to the monster entries that made looking things up easier, and a real focus on ecology and behavior of the monsters in question was I think very helpful.</blockquote>

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