The monster manual

[TheManicMonocle]

So, I had a weird idea. What if the monster manual was an ingame item? It would have to be super rare/expensive, but effectively it would give players in game knowledge of the monsters. Thoughts?

[Finback]

So, I had a weird idea. What if the monster manual was an ingame item? It would have to be super rare/expensive, but effectively it would give players in game knowledge of the monsters. Thoughts?

It would need to be limited in scope, and mostly converted to anecdotal form, rather than stats, which is just metagaming. If you wanted to implement one, have the PCs find a "field guide" a la Volo, and instead of stats, prep up some handwritten field notes about the creature - and include some misinformation, because if you look at older bestiaries, there was some WEIRD STUFF. Like this:

"Pliny in his work Natural History (VIII.72 and 107) variously described the crocotta as a combination between dog and wolf or between hyena and lion. Of the hyena, Pliny writes that it "is popularly believed to be bisexual and to become male and female in alternate years, the female bearing offspring without any male," and that[2]

among the shepherds’s homesteads it simulates human speech, and picks up the name of one of them so as to call him to come out of doors and tear him to pieces, and also that it imitates a person being sick, to attract the dogs so that it may attack them; that this animal alone digs up corpses; that a female is seldom caught; that its eyes have a thousand variations of color; moreover that when its shadow falls on dogs they are struck dumb; and that it has certain magic arts by which it causes every animal at which it gazes three times to stand rooted to the spot. When crossed with this race of animals the Ethiopian lioness gives birth to the corocotta, that mimics the voices of men and cattle in a similar way. It has an unbroken ridge of bone in each jaw, forming a continuous tooth without any gum.[2]"

or

"The toadstone, also known as bufonite, is a mythical stone or gem that was thought to be found in the head of a toad. It was supposed to be an antidote to poison and in this it is not unlike batrachite, supposedly formed in the heads of frogs."

Make up your own. "The blood of ettins is said to prevent confusion". "Gnolls are inherently male and female, and a tincture of their hair can reverse impotence." "Beholders are actually held aloft by an invisible pair of legs." "Displacer beasts are the offspring of a morkoth and a panther." "If a kobold were to be aged through magical forces, they would change into a dragon. Dragon wyrmlings are simply a myth put out by dragons in order to protect their kobold offspring." "If you place a giant owl's egg into a bear's winter den as it hibernates, when spring comes, an owlbear will hatch out."

[ThurlRavenscrof]

I think you could have bestiaries for sure but I don't think it makes sense to include things like HP because that wouldn't exist just like HP don't exist in our world. The same goes for primary stats and skill bonuses. Also the MM includes things like "vetran" and "tribal warrior" which probably wouldn't be included. Basically I'm saying you would probably have to redact like half the info but I think it's a cool idea. For flavor I'd probably limit a single beastiarie to only one region or type of creature. It doesn't make sense to have accurate information about an Erinyes and a Merfolk and an Intelligence Devourer all in the same book.

[Millstone85]

I do like how one of the characters on the cover of Volo's Guide to Monsters is holding the in-universe version of Volo's Guide to Monsters. :smallbiggrin:

[Regitnui]

"The toadstone, also known as bufonite, is a mythical stone or gem that was thought to be found in the head of a toad. It was supposed to be an antidote to poison and in this it is not unlike batrachite, supposedly formed in the heads of frogs."

I love the way that to make the work sound scholarly, he just says the same thing in Latin: toad-stone = bufo-nite. It's like a Pokémon's mega evolution item. "Toad, mega evolve into Mega Toad!"

[ThurlRavenscrof]

"Pliny in his work Natural History (VIII.72 and 107) variously described the crocotta as a combination between dog and wolf or between hyena and lion. Of the hyena, Pliny writes that it "is popularly believed to be bisexual and to become male and female in alternate years, the female bearing offspring without any male," and that[2]

among the shepherds’s homesteads it simulates human speech, and picks up the name of one of them so as to call him to come out of doors and tear him to pieces, and also that it imitates a person being sick, to attract the dogs so that it may attack them; that this animal alone digs up corpses; that a female is seldom caught; that its eyes have a thousand variations of color; moreover that when its shadow falls on dogs they are struck dumb; and that it has certain magic arts by which it causes every animal at which it gazes three times to stand rooted to the spot. When crossed with this race of animals the Ethiopian lioness gives birth to the corocotta, that mimics the voices of men and cattle in a similar way. It has an unbroken ridge of bone in each jaw, forming a continuous tooth without any gum.[2]"



Funny enough, Pliny wasn't 100% crazy. Female spotted hyenas actually have a pseudopenis and are very difficult to distinguish from males. Just 95% crazy...
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141028-the-truth-about-spotted-hyenas

[Finback]

Funny enough, Pliny wasn't 100% crazy. Female spotted hyenas actually have a pseudopenis and are very difficult to distinguish from males. Just 95% crazy...
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141028-the-truth-about-spotted-hyenas

Yeah, it's easy to understand how *that* myth got started. Or that crocodiles weep for their victims, when it's just salt being dumped by their bodies.

[TheManicMonocle]

That's all really cool, I love these ideas!

[Regitnui]

Funny enough, Pliny wasn't 100% crazy. Female spotted hyenas actually have a pseudopenis and are very difficult to distinguish from males. Just 95% crazy...
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141028-the-truth-about-spotted-hyenas

Suddenly makes gnolls a lot more interesting, don't you think? As "hyenafolk", I can cleary imagine them all looking male until it's breeding season, when suddenly half of the tribe has babies in slings suckling.

[Finback]

Suddenly makes gnolls a lot more interesting, don't you think? As "hyenafolk", I can cleary imagine them all looking male until it's breeding season, when suddenly half of the tribe has babies in slings suckling.

Yep, see my examples of how you could use this to make up weird adventure stuff. Maybe the party's sponsor has heard that the hair of a gnoll can reverse a curse that swaps sexes, because gnolls are inherently male and female. Except, maybe they're *not* so the whole thing is a wild goose chase. Or maybe gnolls are just that bit weirder. Or maybe they change sex a la clownfish when there's not enough of a particular sex - eg after a war where most of the males get bumped off, or a plague where most of the gnoll children die - you might need more males to shore up the clan, or more females because there won't be enough offspring for the next generation.

tl;dr gnolls are weird and awesome

[Regitnui]

Yep, see my examples of how you could use this to make up weird adventure stuff. Maybe the party's sponsor has heard that the hair of a gnoll can reverse a curse that swaps sexes, because gnolls are inherently male and female. Except, maybe they're *not* so the whole thing is a wild goose chase. Or maybe gnolls are just that bit weirder. Or maybe they change sex a la clownfish when there's not enough of a particular sex - eg after a war where most of the males get bumped off, or a plague where most of the gnoll children die - you might need more males to shore up the clan, or more females because there won't be enough offspring for the next generation.

tl;dr gnolls are weird and awesome

Yeenoghu is a female. The reason she's so angry all the time.is because the demonologists are looking at the wrong piece of anatomy and using the wrong gender.

[cobaltstarfire]

So, I had a weird idea. What if the monster manual was an ingame item? It would have to be super rare/expensive, but effectively it would give players in game knowledge of the monsters. Thoughts?

One of my old games had this (mostly so we could help the DM with with book keeping).

It would take up time to use in combat and leave you vulnerable (our wizard held it though so he wasn't exactly in the thick of things anyway), and the information inside was not guaranteed to be completely correct. Just to make it more interesting, and also because the DM tended to re-skin things and do lots of interesting little tweaks.

It worked pretty well for us, but we were all the types of players who didn't go out of our way to abuse things the way a lot of people on this forum tend to do, or complain about their players doing. We didn't use our Monster Manual that often. Also we didn't have it for much of the first "arc" of the campaign, it was part of the loot for defeating Zargon at the bottom of The Lost City. (we did not defeat him a lone, we had unified the people living higher up in the temple and they fought alongside us)