D&D 5E (2014) Volo's Guide to Monsters - Which monsters do you want to see?

[pukunui]

From Chris Lindsay on Twitter: "I fought hard to bring these bad-frogs back. SO... YOUR WELCOME!!!"

 

[Demetrios1453]

From Chris Lindsay on Twitter: "I fought hard to bring these bad-frogs back. SO... YOUR WELCOME!!!"

lol I was guessing that is what had happened, that they were someone's sentimental favorites.

 

[pukunui]

That was my thinking as well.

 

[Charles Rampant]

The urge to have a short marsh themed adventure is growing. Bullywugs fighting these Grung lads, a coven of Sea Hags cutting about in the margins, Shambling Mounds moving in packs. Combined with the (rather unnecessarily grotesque) Marsh and Sewers soundtracks from Syrinscape, should be a fairly well-themed outing. Perhaps it can be an Alive in Wonderland sort of thing - the players are asked to go in, and after doing so find themselves in this crazy little micro-world, each inhabitant furiously doing something daft and the whole lot of them utterly isolated from the 'real' world.

 

[Parmandur]

New issue of Dragon+ has a Volos Guide preview. Hags have their own section in Chapter One after all, so there are eight sections with seven maps. Based on the latest podcast description of the Gnoll, I suppose they lack a map.

Have the stats for the Annis Hag on page 159 from Chapter Three, and the Slithering Tracker, a medium ooze with 1E roots on page 190.

 

[Demetrios1453]

New issue of Dragon+ has a Volos Guide preview. Hags have their own section in Chapter One after all, so there are eight sections with seven maps. Based on the latest podcast description of the Gnoll, I suppose they lack a map.

Have the stats for the Annis Hag on page 159 from Chapter Three, and the Slithering Tracker, a medium ooze with 1E roots on page 190.

More good stuff! The annis hag was one of my "100 monsters I would like to see updated", so looks like Volo's is well on its way to giving me a substantial percentage of what I listed!

I'm surprised this isn't getting more attention - I'm going to start a new thread on it to get the discussion rolling...

 

[Demetrios1453]

So I came across this article on Polygon

http://www.polygon.com/2016/10/28/13460414/volos-guide-to-monsters-giveaway

Being unfamiliar with Roll20, when it says "over 130 statted tokens", does that mean there will be over 130 monster stat blocks (so that the 96 monsters we'll be seeing will have 130+ stat blocks after variants) or can "statted tokens" also include the information on playable races as well?

 

[Parmandur]

So I came across this article on Polygon



http://www.polygon.com/2016/10/28/13460414/volos-guide-to-monsters-giveaway



Being unfamiliar with Roll20, when it says "over 130 statted tokens", does that mean there will be over 130 monster stat blocks (so that the 96 monsters we'll be seeing will have 130+ stat blocks after variants) or can "statted tokens" also include the information on playable races as well?

Based on the Fantasy Grounds preview, it would seem that the Kobold Dragonshield, at least , counts as six distinct tokens. So, some combo if variants within a statblock, NPC blocks, playable races...we'll see soon..

 

[Demetrios1453]

Like the player races, some of the monsters have been leaked:




So, from what we haven't seen already previewed, I'm very happy to see the babau (so the book isn't shying away from the main extraplanar races like demons), the bodak, the brontosaurus (YES! More dinosaurs! The lack of a typical sauropod from the MM was very noticeable, and hopefully we'll see a smaller predictor like deinonychus and/or velociraptor and a stegosaur at the least as well), and the catoblepas (which I had very much wanted to see updated). With what has already been previewed, and now knowing that we'll be seeing additional demons, dinosaurs, and the catoblepas, I can only hope we get gibberlings and quicklings in the book, and I'll be very near 100% satisfied with the updates!

It looks like this is in strict alphabetical order, and not in the order they will appear in the book, since we know the hags and the alhoon will be under "H" and "M" respectively in the actual book. I assume all the NPC-types will be in their own appendix (and there looks to be an interesting assortment of them, even in the first few letters of the alphabet). Those "Booyahg" types are goblin variants alluded to on the preview page we've seen already...

 

[Parmandur]

Like the player races, some of the monsters have been leaked:


View attachment 78037

So, from what we haven't seen already previewed, I'm very happy to see the babau (so the book isn't shying away from the main extraplanar races like demons), the bodak, the brontosaurus (YES! More dinosaurs! The lack of a typical sauropod from the MM was very noticeable, and hopefully we'll see a smaller predictor like deinonychus and/or velociraptor and a stegosaur at the least as well), and the catoblepas (which I had very much wanted to see updated). With what has already been previewed, and now knowing that we'll be seeing additional demons, dinosaurs, and the catoblepas, I can only hope we get gibberlings and quicklings in the book, and I'll be very near 100% satisfied with the updates!

It looks like this is in strict alphabetical order, and not in the order they will appear in the book, since we know the hags and the alhoon will be under "H" and "M" respectively in the actual book. I assume all the NPC-types will be in their own appendix (and there looks to be an interesting assortment of them, even in the first few letters of the alphabet). Those "Booyahg" types are goblin variants alluded to on the preview page we've seen already...

From the Fantasy Grounds pages it also looks like there are extensive tables ("story templates") for eight of the monster groups in chapter one: but no Goblins? Beholders seem to have massive table for physical attributes, to make a random Beholder a true individual (as is only appropriate).