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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 6037640" data-attributes="member: 11697">2e Monstrous Manual - it strikes the balance of crunch and flavor that I want, and only in a few instances since then have we really seen as well done of an integration of stat blocks and ecology.Runner Up: Various setting specific 2e monster manuals such as the Planescape Monstrous Compendium I, II, and III. Amazing monster detail, still a source of inspiration years later, and still useful even when it uses a system that I've never actually played under.Runner up 2: Pathfinder Bestiary 2 - awesome art, really interesting mix of monsters, and while it falls short of the detail bonanza of the book above, it's better than the 3e MM, much better than the 1e MM, and better than the 4e MM which was the complete nadir of monster fluff*. But I'm biased here just a bit, because it gives stats to a number of monsters I created (and didn't have space to give stats and full writeups to in earlier books).Runner up 3: the bestiary sections in the various Pathfinder Adventure Paths. The balance of flavor text is awesome, actually approaching and occasionally sometimes exceeding the 2e Monstrous Manual ratio of stats/fluff. I'd go even further down the fluffy road myself, but it's a really good balance as it stands there.*Consolation prize: After having earlier slammed the 4e MM, which had -under virtually any metric- the lowest amount of monster detail and flavor text of any monster book in the history of D&D, I should offer up some belated praise for the flavor text in 4e's Monster Vaults. They aren't bad in how they include flavor text, some in-character descriptive quotes, etc. It's actually quite good. For the balance of crunch to fluff it's a step in the right direction, especially after how the edition began. However, having said that, it does suffer from having all of the flavor text being based on the core Points of Light setting which I don't care for, in light of how it replaced lots of monsters and monster details from earlier editions' incarnations, and some of the early 4e design comments regarding flavor from past editions. For as well designed and written as the books are, I have a really hard time getting past my distaste towards the PoL material to fully appreciate it when it has a lot of stuff there to appreciate.Final runner up: I'm very tempted to include 2e's 'Faces of Evil: The Fiends' here, except that it's entirely fluff, and being devoid of stats in the best way, it probably doesn't fit the intent of this thread. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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