D&D 5E What old books work best with 5e?

[S'mon]

I was thinking today about a good slim book to bring to 5e games, I came up with the GM's book from the Pathfinder Beginner Box - it has proper comprehensive encounter tables, I think better treasure tables than the 5e DMG, and magic items - the monster stats are pretty compatible too. I reckon you could run 5e with it plus a PHB.

 

[Eric V]

I think 4E monster books are good pulls. Most 5E monsters are pretty much just boring blobs of HP, weak ass AC and mediocre attacks. Slapping some 4E monster powers on their 5E equivalents, giving out solo abilities, etc can spice things up, even if you don't use a combat grid/map. After the first Monster Manual, 4E's monster design was top notch and avoided the grind. 5E's monsters are a definite step backwards and my only real complaint.

This is truth.

 

[Staffan]

After the first Monster Manual, 4E's monster design was top notch and avoided the grind. 5E's monsters are a definite step backwards and my only real complaint.

One of the problems with monster books is that it takes a certain amount of system mastery to design mechanically cool monsters, but you want to get the classics done ASAP (remember the flack Wizards got for not having the full complement of giants in the 4e MM1, for example). For example, look at 3.5e: mechanically, the monsters in MMs 3, 4, and 5 were way more interesting than the ones in the main MM. But all the common monsters were in the MM: goblins, gnolls, orcs, ogres, giants, dragons, demons, devils, a bunch of fey, and so on.

For example, MM5 had a cool devil with the ability to dominate people by grappling and swallowing them, and then spitting them back out. That's awesome. But since it was in MM5, no-one ever heard of the gulthir, and instead everyone uses bearded devils for low-/mid-level diabolic encounters. It also had variants on the badly designed ogre mage (elemental mage) that no-one ever used, and so on.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

One of the problems with monster books is that it takes a certain amount of system mastery to design mechanically cool monsters, but you want to get the classics done ASAP (remember the flack Wizards got for not having the full complement of giants in the 4e MM1, for example). For example, look at 3.5e: mechanically, the monsters in MMs 3, 4, and 5 were way more interesting than the ones in the main MM. But all the common monsters were in the MM: goblins, gnolls, orcs, ogres, giants, dragons, demons, devils, a bunch of fey, and so on.

For example, MM5 had a cool devil with the ability to dominate people by grappling and swallowing them, and then spitting them back out. That's awesome. But since it was in MM5, no-one ever heard of the gulthir, and instead everyone uses bearded devils for low-/mid-level diabolic encounters. It also had variants on the badly designed ogre mage (elemental mage) that no-one ever used, and so on.

Yeah, it's why I'm hoping we get a MM2, Fiend Folio, etc. Plus we need more high level critters. I was going to run a chimera, and saw it was a paltry CR 6 or something, meaning you need to throw one at a party of like level 3's to make them sweat.

 

[Barantor]

Yeah, it's why I'm hoping we get a MM2, Fiend Folio, etc. Plus we need more high level critters. I was going to run a chimera, and saw it was a paltry CR 6 or something, meaning you need to throw one at a party of like level 3's to make them sweat.

That's when I just start giving things extra powers, spells or attacks. A Chimera whose master is a spellcaster might have a collar that casts spells or allows it to teleport or something.


I've liked the stuff Frog God has put out, they have a book of extra spells and the fiend folio as well as a ton of quests.


@OP - Most of the books you encounter that are adventures can be converted. I've converted stuff from old Greyhawk and some one shots of things like Tomb of Horrors and White Plume Mountain.

 

[S'mon]

Yeah, it's why I'm hoping we get a MM2, Fiend Folio, etc. Plus we need more high level critters. I was going to run a chimera, and saw it was a paltry CR 6 or something, meaning you need to throw one at a party of like level 3's to make them sweat.

Very noticeable that nearly all the classic monsters in 5e are CR 3-6 or so! I wanted my 7th level group to fight a manticore; turns out in 5e they're CR 3 so I had to use three and it was still pretty trivial.

I guess that does mean plenty of design space for a MM2 with boosted versions of classic monsters - a CR 9 Dire Manticore, say.