D&D Monster Manual Review - One Badass Bestiary

[CyberThread]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/tabletop/reviews/12252-D-D-5th-Edition-Monster-Manual-Review-for-Dungeons-Dragons?utm_source=latest&utm_medium=index_carousel&utm_campaign=all


So here it seems is an early review, I have looked through the book myself, and it is generous .


Also, everyone is correct, the CR is wild; expect community input inthe future of what something really should be worth.


Edit 2: There is nothing in the book about players using monsters as a race, and none of the races are designed for a player to use.


http://cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/802/802529.png

[tzar1990]

Fewer high-level monsters makes sense to me - the game assumes that the world is lower-power overall than 3rd edition (what with hordes of weaklings being a legitimate threat to even major heroes) and as such, high-power monsters should be rare. Unlike in 3.5, a horde of low-level enemies actually is a legitimate threat, so you can expect to fight lots of low-level enemies even at high level. As such, the book should include a larger variety of low-level threats, as you'll go aginst them all throughout the campaign, while you can't go against high-power threats at low levels (barring, of course, DM Fiat, intervention, or being a really clever bugger).

[CyberThread]

The way I see it, they are just saving them for Monster Manual II.

[Secret Wizard]

Did Goblins change a lot from the playtest?

[BRC]

The way I see it, they are just saving them for Monster Manual II.

That too,


The review didn't mention any rules for advancing monsters, but if there are some (templates or the like), then lower-level monsters are more versatile. They can be advanced or templated up to more powerful levels, used in hordes, or some combination thereof.

A higher level monster you can't really do much with.

[CyberThread]

That too,


The review didn't mention any rules for advancing monsters, but if there are some (templates or the like), then lower-level monsters are more versatile. They can be advanced or templated up to more powerful levels, used in hordes, or some combination thereof.

A higher level monster you can't really do much with.



Elder Red Dragon Thug, This Dragon can attack twice, and gets the move action of attacking with sand, providing a DC 13 blindness check.

[cobaltstarfire]

The way I see it, they are just saving them for Monster Manual II.

Well it's not like they have any more room to put them into the existing monster manual, since the binding is already apparently pretty strained by the material it always has.

It makes sense to me too whether they're planning to release more books or not the lower level monsters can still be used in high level encounters, but the high level ones really can't without some extra finagling on the DM's part.

For some reason I was under the impression that monsters as PC's would have rules in the DMG, not the MM. But the article that gave me that impression I was just misreading. I hope that will turn out to be the case though.

[Steel Mirror]

Fewer high-level monsters makes sense to me
I agree. In addition to the points you made, in 5E lower level monsters are much more usable for much longer than they have been in 3.x and 4E. Giving me a CR 6 monster means I can probably use it until level 16; give me a CR 16 monster, and I can only use it for a few high levels, where fewer players get to play in any case.

The more I see of the MM the more I am looking forward to getting my hands on one. I mostly brew my challenges in any case, but it will be nice to get a feel for what the designers consider challenging at each level (even if I end up disagreeing with some of their choices), and the book looks pretty interesting just as a read-through.

[Shining Wrath]

That cover is EPIC. "Yer gonna be a few teeth shy of a full mouth inna second, Beholder!"

[archaeo]

Also, everyone is correct, the CR is wild; expect community input inthe future of what something really should be worth.

The review doesn't really say that, though; it just says:


It's clear that while there's a mechanical basis for the Challenge numbers that monsters are assigned, there's as much art as science in whatever alchemy spits out that number.

This just means that he doesn't understand the rationale CR assignment, which is reasonable. It's pretty clear he didn't consider the encounter building rules, seeing as he says:


The monsters chosen for this book are also overwhelmingly skewed towards the lower quarter of the Challenge spectrum, covering thoroughly levels one to five before a variety cutoff that severely limits the kinds of enemies that higher level parties will face. If you consider this and the other two core rulebooks a complete game then the creatures available to you for high level adventuring will sorely disappoint you. It's mostly dragons and creatures from the outer planes like angels and fiends.

As Steel Mirror says, the expectation of the system that you'll be using low-CR monsters in groups to threaten higher-level parties makes this critique miss the mark. It's only true that a "variety cutoff" exists if you run every monster as a solo encounter.

Given that he didn't take this into account, though, it seems like the MM doesn't spend much time trying to give advice on encounter building. Of course, the "WORK IN PROGRESS" block in the Basic DM rules says the information is from the DMG, so I suppose that's by design; since the encounter building rules are going to be part of the free ruleset online, I guess they just wanted to stuff the MM full of monsters.

While the reviewer goes into some more detail on page 2 about his problems with CR, I'm not really convinced the problems are that big of a deal. He does admit, and I agree, that 5e falls short of 4e's plug-and-play monster design, however.

[obryn]

They do mention Save DCs, which is good.

I hope there's tweaks for it in the DMG.

[Tehnar]

The painfully lacking part of the layout was the decision not to include a "Monsters by Challenge" index.



Take, for example, the entry for the Cyclops and compare it to the entry for the Hill Giant. They're very nearly the same creature, with hit point totals very close to each other and quite literally the same two attacks doing nearly identical amounts of damage, but the Cyclops isn't very good at hitting things with ranged attacks.


That said, the saving throw numbers to avoid the nasty abilities and spells of the higher level monsters are rather unattainable even with their reduced range, and there's little opportunity for players who have bad saves in those categories to avoid those powers. Many players are just going to have to resign themselves to a life of eating dragon breath or petrification - which isn't a particularly appealing fate nor fun gameplay.

Something I took away. YMMV.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Are we talking Tarrasque and Ancient Red Dragon, here? Those are epic threats... it stands to reason they're outside normal capabilities.

The lesser red dragons (pictured in the preview) are much easier to deal with, and in any case only an idiot goes to beard a red dragon in its lair without fire resistance.

The Cyclops/Hill Giant thing is disappointing.

[Steel Mirror]

The lack of a monsters by challenge index is definitely a big letdown. It's one of those core things necessary for the use of the book! I know that I'll just print out a CR index myself and wedge it into the back of the book, but really.

The PHB has a similar problem with its index. I go to look up spell components.
spell components. See casting a spell: components:smallfurious: Really PHB? You already have an entry for the "spell components" heading, would it be so much effort to add in a page number there? It's 3 characters, I'm pretty sure you could do that instead of making me go to another page of the index to look it up when you ALREADY HAVE A LISTING RIGHT THERE. It's like the person who compiled the index is admonishing you to look up terms in the proper syntax, and forcing you to do busywork every time you "get it wrong".

/rant

Okay, I may be the only person to have gotten upset about the PHB index sassing me, but it's just one of those things.

[cobaltstarfire]

Okay, I may be the only person to have gotten upset about the PHB index sassing me, but it's just one of those things.

I am a bit annoyed that the PHB lacks short descriptions for spells per class like 3.5 has. I feel like the lack of a monsters by CR index is in the same vein, (and the complete lack of any sort of index or table of contents in the Basic rules PDF).


I don't know if it's an oversight or purposeful across books, but I hope it's something they address eventually.

[Steel Mirror]

I am a bit annoyed that the PHB lacks short descriptions for spells per class like 3.5 has. I feel like the lack of a monsters by CR index is in the same vein, (and the complete lack of any sort of index or table of contents in the Basic rules PDF).Oh yes, this +3. It was a source of great annoyance at the table when we played our second session the other night, and the spellcaster was a newbie (maybe not the best decision in terms of complexity, but she really wanted to play a warlock touched by the Great Cthulu). She had to individually look up and read the full spell descriptions each time, which took a while, and would have been easily avoidable if she had those short blurbs to jog her memory about what they all did.

Not to mention the annoyance of playing a wizard specialist, and not having the spell list give schools for each of the spells. I was trying to figure out which specialist looked like the most fun, and it was a process made 10 times as painful as it should be because I was constantly flipping through the spell descriptions to figure out whether spells were conjuration or transmutation or evocation. (insert hair-pulling smiley here)

[Occasional Sage]

The way I see it, they are just saving them for Monster Manual II.

Which actually would be very useful for designing campaigns, come to think of it. Sorting the books by threat range limits my need to dig. The only better option might be the 2e method of sorting by region/setting, which wasn't terribly well done as I recall.


That too,


The review didn't mention any rules for advancing monsters, but if there are some (templates or the like), then lower-level monsters are more versatile. They can be advanced or templated up to more powerful levels, used in hordes, or some combination thereof.


I'd expect that in the DMG, as mostly useful in designing games. Though like the index, having it in both places'd be really handy.

[Totema]

I am a bit annoyed that the PHB lacks short descriptions for spells per class like 3.5 has. I feel like the lack of a monsters by CR index is in the same vein, (and the complete lack of any sort of index or table of contents in the Basic rules PDF).


I don't know if it's an oversight or purposeful across books, but I hope it's something they address eventually.

AFAIK they cut out the simple spell descriptions because a lot of new players were using them in place of the fully fleshed out spell entries. Which sounds to me a lot like using the blurb on a novel's back cover to write a book report, honestly.

[archaeo]

I am a bit annoyed that the PHB lacks short descriptions for spells per class like 3.5 has. I feel like the lack of a monsters by CR index is in the same vein, (and the complete lack of any sort of index or table of contents in the Basic rules PDF).

I don't know if it's an oversight or purposeful across books, but I hope it's something they address eventually.

Seems like there could be a few strategies at play.

First, it's entirely possible they wrote the books this way to nudge players toward DungeonScape, which will have an encounter builder built in and hyperlinked spell entries. This frees the books to have tons of concise content with the expectation that electronic indexes are just always going to be better.

Second, perhaps Mearls & Co. want D&D to get away from the idea of simply throwing things together at the table, which was most definitely a playstyle that 4e successfully enabled. Maybe they want DMs to spend some time with stat blocks, since they think that will lead to a better experience for players. This goes along with the expectations in the encounter builder that DMs will use monsters appropriate to the story first, and use CR/XP second.

Third, and most likely, it's not about "encouraging" anything and is just a matter of bringing out thick books of content instead of spending pages on additional indexes and creating overstuffed statblocks.

[Tehnar]

Its one or two pages extra. Out of 300+ pages. For something that will help the DM's more then a additional monster.

Sure, if you have a specific story idea, then you don't need a index. However if you have some vague idea then the monster index helps a lot. For example you know you want to make a adventure around mindflayers and a enslaved humanoid race. So instead of reading the entire MM, you can just look at CR2 or less humanoids and figure it out from there.

Or if you need to make up a encounter quickly, a good index is very helpful.

[cobaltstarfire]

Seems like there could be a few strategies at play.

First, it's entirely possible they wrote the books this way to nudge players toward DungeonScape, which will have an encounter builder built in and hyperlinked spell entries. This frees the books to have tons of concise content with the expectation that electronic indexes are just always going to be better.

Second, perhaps Mearls & Co. want D&D to get away from the idea of simply throwing things together at the table, which was most definitely a playstyle that 4e successfully enabled. Maybe they want DMs to spend some time with stat blocks, since they think that will lead to a better experience for players. This goes along with the expectations in the encounter builder that DMs will use monsters appropriate to the story first, and use CR/XP second.

Third, and most likely, it's not about "encouraging" anything and is just a matter of bringing out thick books of content instead of spending pages on additional indexes and creating overstuffed statblocks.


Who said anything about throwing things together at the table? I print out my spells in advance as spell cards, it's much easier for me as a cleric, since they have access to all their spells. But for wizards and other folks who have to pick what they know? It's a real pain in the ass to have to flip through all the spells to read what they do. It's much easier to decide what spells and flavor you want to go for if you have a short description of what each spell does like they did in 3.5.

As a player I've never used the book for spells at the table, and as a DM I have never used the book for monsters (in fact I didn't own the MM I just used the SRD, and would write down the stripped down stat block for reference). I imagine it'll be very irritating to try to find monsters of a particular CR since they're all mixed together alphabetically (it may help if the table of contents at least lists their CR, but it's still slower than just having an index by CR)

Having indexes in a book makes it easier to use the book for planning purposes, books typically have indexes and tables of contents because it makes using them to find things easier.

[Lokiare]

One of the major problems with using low level monsters against higher level parties is that initiative can determine the victor. The DM is also left with a very tight balancing act between too few monsters to challenge the party and too many.

The more monsters you put against the party the more attacks they will take. The number of attacks doesn't go up linearly. It goes up exponentially.

With 5 monsters with a single attack each, assuming the party takes out 2 per round:



Round

Attacks

Running
Total



1

5

5



2

3

8



3

1

9




With 20 monsters with a single attack each, assuming the party takes out 2 per round:



Round

Attacks

Running
Total



1

20

20



2

18

38



3

16

54



4

14

68



5

12

80



6

10

90



7

8

98



8

6

104



9

4

108



10

2

110




That's 110 attacks taken over the course of 10 rounds, meaning 5+ critical hits by the monsters and about 40 regular hits minimum. Easily enough to take out any party.

On the flip side if you have a caster that can throw out large area spells, suddenly this kind of encounter is a cake walk.

In other words, the encounter building system is worthless.

[Steel Mirror]

That's 110 attacks taken over the course of 10 rounds, meaning 5+ critical hits by the monsters and about 40 regular hits minimum. Easily enough to take out any party.

On the flip side if you have a caster that can throw out large area spells, suddenly this kind of encounter is a cake walk.

In other words, the encounter building system is worthless.I'm not sure how this is supposedly a problem unique to 5E, as I've thrown encounters with dozens of mooks at my players since 3.0, and so this has always been a consideration. And in 5E just as it has been in D&D forever, the second of the things that you claim is broken just about makes up for the first. In other words, all those mooks tend to get torn through like tissue paper, so they don't really get the chance to land all those hits that you are worried about, and in the end the encounter plays out about like you would hope, with the baddies probably landing a few hits and seeming at first to be a sizeable threat, but by the end the PCs' sheer power wipes the floor with them quite handily.


In other words, the encounter building system works quite well, over all.

[Sartharina]

I'm not sure how this is supposedly a problem unique to 5E, as I've thrown encounters with dozens of mooks at my players since 3.0, and so this has always been a consideration. And in 5E just as it has been in D&D forever, the second of the things that you claim is broken just about makes up for the first. In other words, all those mooks tend to get torn through like tissue paper, so they don't really get the chance to land all those hits that you are worried about, and in the end the encounter plays out about like you would hope, with the baddies probably landing a few hits and seeming at first to be a sizeable threat, but by the end the PCs' sheer power wipes the floor with them quite handily.


In other words, the encounter building system works quite well, over all.In 3.X, all those mooks have a dramatically lower chance of hitting and critting the high-level PCs (Only hit+confirm on a Nat20), and PCs have a dramatically greater chance of hitting and critting them. (Only miss or fail to confirm on a nat 1), where in 5e, enemies hit on a 15 even at high levels (And don't need to confirm crits), while high-level PCs miss on a 5.

[Steel Mirror]

In 3.X, all those mooks have a dramatically lower chance of hitting and critting the high-level PCs (Only hit+confirm on a Nat20), and PCs have a dramatically greater chance of hitting and critting them. (Only miss or fail to confirm on a nat 1), where in 5e, enemies hit on a 15 even at high levels (And don't need to confirm crits), while high-level PCs miss on a 5.It's true, but I don't think it will make much of a difference. For one, I commonly boosted the attack rolls of mooks in 3.5 for that very reason, and they still tended to happen in much the same way. High level PCs just have so very, very many ways to scythe through low-defense minions by the armful.

This isn't to say that lots of lower CR mobs can't be a credible threat to high level PCs. They very definitely can, which is something about 5E that I like. But PCs can also go through lots of mooks quite easily, and I think that Lokiare's assumptions for his math about how many attacks mobs of goons are likely to get understated the sheer offensive potential that PCs have.

[rlc]

The more monsters you put against the party the more attacks they will take. The number of attacks doesn't go up linearly. It goes up exponentially.

With 5 monsters with a single attack each, assuming the party takes out 2 per round:


but it's not even how you usually think of exponential increases. it's still exponential and total attacks increases, but the attacks per round decreases (+4 and then +1 with 5 monsters, for example). it's possible to still have problems, but the encounter building rules aim to create worthy challenges.

[archaeo]

Having indexes in a book makes it easier to use the book for planning purposes, books typically have indexes and tables of contents because it makes using them to find things easier.

Certainly! And I'm sure you'll agree that this fact is blindingly obvious. So, I think it's safe to assume that Mearls & Co., for some presumably compelling reason, decided against a CR index/better spell index. Or maybe they just ran out of time!

You could always ask Mearls via tweet. Personally, I'm betting they just decided to leave these "table aid" tools out of the books because they knew fans would put it together for free online and DungeonScape/the card people would offer it for money everywhere else.

[Steel Mirror]

Certainly! And I'm sure you'll agree that this fact is blindingly obvious. So, I think it's safe to assume that Mearls & Co., for some presumably compelling reason, decided against a CR index/better spell index. Or maybe they just ran out of time!My theory is that they simply needed to cut pages out of their book (I think I read somewhere that it is still something like 20 pages over what they had decided would be the maximum), and decided that cutting out a few pages of index was better than a few pages of monsters. Not a terrible argument actually, if that were the case.

I think that any other reason they might have formulated to deny customers such a convenient and useful feature would be, by definition, a bad one. :smallwink: Removing useful, standard features from your already quite expensive book so that you can force people to buy more of your services to get what they should have had in the first place is not a "compelling" reason, it's a despicable one.

[archaeo]

I think that any other reason they might have formulated to deny customers such a convenient and useful feature would be, by definition, a bad one. :smallwink: Removing useful, standard features from your already quite expensive book so that you can force people to buy more of your services to get what they should have had in the first place is not a "compelling" reason, it's a despicable one.

Hey, I just said "compelling," nothing about its moral rightness. Extra money is often compelling to companies that exist to make money.

But that said, I don't honestly think that WotC put out purposefully gimped books. Rather, I think your first paragraph (which I omitted here) is basically right, that monster stat blocks are "more important" than indexes, especially when you know that said indexes will be available online about a dozen hours after the book gets released.

And hell, who knows, maybe they're saving a CR index for the DMG. That mystical future book that will solve all our problems!!

[cobaltstarfire]

I think that any other reason they might have formulated to deny customers such a convenient and useful feature would be, by definition, a bad one. :smallwink: Removing useful, standard features from your already quite expensive book so that you can force people to buy more of your services to get what they should have had in the first place is not a "compelling" reason, it's a despicable one.

Yeah this, whatever the reason they had for constantly leaving such an important part out of the book, it can't be good enough for me. Because leaving out things like tables of contents and indexes to make finding things quickly and easily is idiotic no matter how you spin it.

Even with the Basic Rules it's extremely irritating that they didn't include a table of contents. Yeah I can search the document for what I want, but you know what would be infinitely faster? Being able to just look up the number and enter it into that little field at the top of your PDF reader of choice to skip right to the relevant page.

[Shining Wrath]

One of the major problems with using low level monsters against higher level parties is that initiative can determine the victor. The DM is also left with a very tight balancing act between too few monsters to challenge the party and too many.

The more monsters you put against the party the more attacks they will take. The number of attacks doesn't go up linearly. It goes up exponentially.

With 5 monsters with a single attack each, assuming the party takes out 2 per round:



Round

Attacks

Running
Total



1

5

5



2

3

8



3

1

9




With 20 monsters with a single attack each, assuming the party takes out 2 per round:



Round

Attacks

Running
Total



1

20

20



2

18

38



3

16

54



4

14

68



5

12

80



6

10

90



7

8

98



8

6

104



9

4

108



10

2

110




That's 110 attacks taken over the course of 10 rounds, meaning 5+ critical hits by the monsters and about 40 regular hits minimum. Easily enough to take out any party.

On the flip side if you have a caster that can throw out large area spells, suddenly this kind of encounter is a cake walk.

In other words, the encounter building system is worthless.

In the online DMG, they recommend increasing the XP used to estimate the difficulty (but not awarded, which is a different puzzle) as the number of monsters increases. So if you go up to 20 monsters you'd be applying a multiplier of x4 or x5 when estimating the difficulty; e.g., if one of these monsters is worth 100 XP, 20 of them would be worth 100*20*(4 or 5) when trying to guess if they were a fair match for the party.

[Steel Mirror]

And hell, who knows, maybe they're saving a CR index for the DMG. That mystical future book that will solve all our problems!!It hacks! It slashes! It builds level appropriate encounters out of monsters of various CRs! Options for balanced parties who never see more than a +1 longsword in their lives, or for groups who glow like a Christmas tree by level 6! Rules modules for daily powers, dual classing, prestige classing, reclassing, and classy sassing. Now with 75% more pictures of creepily deformed halfings!

[Nevereatcars]

Everybody talks about the MM like it's already out. Isn't it releasing on the 30th? Where can I get one earlier?

[andhaira]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/tabletop/reviews/12252-D-D-5th-Edition-Monster-Manual-Review-for-Dungeons-Dragons?utm_source=latest&utm_medium=index_carousel&utm_campaign=all


So here it seems is an early review, I have looked through the book myself, and it is generous .


Also, everyone is correct, the CR is wild; expect community input inthe future of what something really should be worth.


Edit 2: There is nothing in the book about players using monsters as a race, and none of the races are designed for a player to use.


http://cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/802/802529.png

In a preview they showed rules for Were creatures as Player Characters, including Werewolves, Weretigers and Wererats. Also, there is the Half Dragon Template. What would be wrong with just strapping that template onto a PC, aside from making the pc more powerful?

[cobaltstarfire]

Someone made an index by CR, which was of course bound to happen since every review includes "why is there no index by CR?"

http://www.theilluminerdy.com/2014/09/18/5e-monster-manual-monsters-by-challenge-rating/

Includes a "pretty" version and a "printer friendly" version.

It's about 6 pages long with fairly large text for ease of reading, and there's a bit of art work too, I'm sure it'll find a happy home in many DM planning binders in the future.