I think your review is right on. I agree that the new direction for monster books is a good one because, really, how many whacked out undead and oozes do we need? (And I tend to use such stuff more than Joe Average, DM, I suspect, but I haven't used most of the really high CR wierdo undead in MM3.)
The pre-statted guys are great, and a major time saver---I wish there were more of them for lots of other scalable "race" monsters. In the last session of my campaign, there were five githyanki straight out of the book (three of warriors, one gish, and the captain), backed up by two red spawn arcaniss and one red spawn belcher. Given the githyanki red dragon allies, this made a lot of sense and allowed the encounter to be balanced nicely rather than dominated by a dragon. Combining githyanki and red spawn made for a tough encounter, though I had some fun with it---the githyanki had one of the characters as a target but had a hard time controlling the red spawn, who decided they *really* wanted to kill the dragon shaman instead... and didn't mind fireballing their allies to give it the old college try.
Re: [RPG]: Monster Manual IV, reviewed by Matt Drake (5/4)
So you consider this to be an outstanding product in all ways except there are too many undead included? Did you not find some of the material to be redundant or overly strange?
Re: [RPG]: Monster Manual IV, reviewed by Matt Drake (5/4)
Quote:
Originally Posted by C.W.Richeson
So you consider this to be an outstanding product in all ways except there are too many undead included? Did you not find some of the material to be redundant or overly strange?
Yes. I did find a lot of it to be redundant or overly strange. For instance:
"puzzlingly bizarre undead, disgusting oozes (what DM really needs an ooze made of pustulant flesh?), and conglomerations of cobbled-together monsters made from leftovers"
"you've still got your oddly disconcerting and ultimately silly undead, your extra-planar demon bugs, and your oozes made from blood that's on fire"
"too many pages are wasted on undead pus balloons and golems made of spare teeth"
But yes, I do find it to be an outstanding product in most ways. The Spawn are exceptionally cool. The pre-statted stock bad guys are incredibly helpful. The themed groups of monsters are a good touch.
The undead creature made by stapling a bunch of arms together - now that was stupid. There are a bunch of utterly useless creatures. If it were just a collection of stupid creatures, I wouldn't give this book more than a 2 or 3. The good stuff, however, outweighs the garbage by a hefty margin, which is why I was quite comfortable giving it a 4 for substance.
Re: [RPG]: Monster Manual IV, reviewed by Matt Drake (5/4)
Quote:
Originally Posted by C.W.Richeson
Thanks Matt. Would you consider this product to be more of a DM aid than a straight up traditional monster book?
IMO it's 60% trad monster book and 40% DM aid. The DM aid part is better---I like wacko ooze monsters probably more than the next guy, but enough is enough already. The freaky undead were even less useful because most of them were incredibly powerful.
The pre-statted drow, orcs, ogres, etc., along with ideas for using them, some quite creative, is good stuff.
Re: [RPG]: Monster Manual IV, reviewed by Matt Drake (5/4)
Hi Matt,
This review was very helpful to me. Before I was uncertain about whether or not I would get MMIV, but after reading your review I have decided it has some useful stuff that I would like to have.
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