Which monster book have you used the most?

[Treebore]

Personally, my new favorite is Tome of Horrors 2. Lots of new undead variations, nasty monster plants, and lots of other neat goodies. Anyone running a horror/ravenloft type game will probably like a lot of these new monsters. Plus evil faerie, more troll types, devils, quasi elementals, and many others. But i most often used MM1 and ToH prior to ToH2's release.

 

[Nightfall]

Well I'm waiting to use Gaurak Trolls myself. Them plus some more golems.

 

[MonsterMash]

Another one backing Tome of Horrors, but now I've got ToH II there's a lot of things in there I want to throw at my PCs.

 

[glass]

My current campaign is only three sessions old, and is the first I have DMed in quite a while. I have only used one monster (the first adventure was entirely investigation and diplomacy based), and it was my own.

Speculating, I would say ToH will see heavy use (I borrowed it last night on 'long term loan'). I have MMII, Monsters of Faerun, and the BoVD, so I would think they will see some use. And I like CC/CC2's take on certain creatures (especially their gorgons) so they might be in too.

And that is assuming I don't buy anything else, which is probably not a very safe assumption, especially with all the praise Monsters' Handbook, ToH2 and Penumbra Fantasy Bestiary are getting on this thread...


glass.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

If we are talking about only 3.0 & 3.5 then I'd have to say MM1 followed by MM2. If we are talking the most used for all time then I'd have to say the 1e Fiend Folio.

 

[Garnfellow]

MMII, Monsternomicon, Monsters of Faerun, Tome of Horrors

I have Fiend Folio, CC1rev, CC2 but rarely use. There are a fair number of decent monsters scattered around other WotC books (Minis Handbook comes to mind).

So which one should I try next - Penumbra or Liber Bestiarius?

I have misgivings about recommending either book, but I'd lean toward Liber Bestarius. Both books use 3.0 rules and have OK art.

On the plus side, the Penumbra Bestiary is HUGE and has excellent indices. On the minus side, it's very expensive and has a pretty quirky selection of monsters: there are several high magic, cutesy critters that would only work well in story-driven scenarios (alchemouse, fuzzwizzit, etc.). Given the monster books you already have, I think you'll find a lot of redundancy in the Bestiary -- similar monsters filling similar niches.

The Liber Bestarius is set up as a book of straight-up, kick-ass monsters, many of which could be used as PC races. Many of these monsters are high on the bizarre scale, and would fit pretty well within a planar or science fanatsy setting.

 

[Garnfellow]

Another one backing Tome of Horrors, but now I've got ToH II there's a lot of things in there I want to throw at my PCs.

I just got ToH II last week, and so far it looks really, really good. In addition to the new monsters, there are some nifty tools for tricking out existing cirtters -- some really fiendish templates, and a bunch o' cool monster feats.

And Tim Truman artwork! Man, I used to love that guy's old D&D stuff.

 

[Sir Whiskers]

My sources in order of utility:

MM
Book of Templates Deluxe
Modules
Monsters of Faerun
Dragon magazine