Monster Manual review

Recently, I purchased the "Monster Manual" for Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition and had mixed feelings towards it. As I have stated in the past, I am a late adopter to 4th edition but, as they say, "better late than never".

I will start off by listing the negatives as that way the article can end on a positive note. The first complaint that I have is the descriptions are much shorter than I was expecting. The monsters height or length and weight have been removed. Granted, the statistics block still tells what size class a creature is, but this does not help if you need to tell whether a drider has to duck in order to get through a low archway. Likewise, since I do not know how much a rust monster weighs, I cannot tell if it will set off a trap that requires 400 pounds to trigger. I know that I could just “wing it”, but I would like to use the official values if possible. Also, if there are printed values, It would help me to maintain consistency.

My second complaint is that I was hoping that the ecology section would be included again. I realize that, technically, Dungeons & Dragons – at least to my knowledge – never had an ecology section. However Advanced Dungeons & Dragons did and I found it extremely useful. Characters who knew what to look for (scales from a dragon, vampire’s blood, etc.) could obtain parts for weapons and armor, spell components, or items that could be sold in the next town. I could still include this aspect in my games, but it is much harder to improvise or look in older materials than it would be to have this information in the descriptions.

Now, on to the positive aspects. The art work – as always – is phenomenal. Even more than being aesthetically pleasing though, it is useful. First of all, the dungeon master can look at the image and describe it to the players instead of reading the accompanying flavor text to make their game a unique experience. Secondly, the artwork portrays sub-types of the main entry if they exist. This portrayal is handy, for example, if you know what a gnoll looks like, but have trouble picturing how a gnoll berserker would be dressed you can look at the illustration.

The stats blocks are arranged in a clear and concise manner which makes it simple to locate the specific piece of information that you are searching for. There is a slight learning curve as things have moved again, but, for the most part, it is pretty easy to remember where each statistic is located. The rest of the information is also easy to find; some of the information that is no longer included would probably be considered unnecessary by many. By removing this information, what remains is easier to dig through (abilities, items, spells, etc.)

The templates and information for running monsters as characters are also quite useful. It is fortunate that they stuck with templates since using them cuts down the number of unique entries that are required, thus making it easier to locate a specific creature. Also, templates aid in making the game more flexible. For example, if I wished to create a death knight who had been an elf in life, but the death knight was a creature instead of a template (as it was in some versions of the game) and was based upon the original creature being human, it would require a substantial amount of work on my part to adapt. However, by applying a list of changes as explained in the template, I can create death knights based upon a wide variety of races.

The new race descriptions in the back allow for treating some of the creatures as playable characters or as townspeople and adventurers for the party to interact with as more than just a dull creature; it gives them more depth and helps to distinguish each one as an individual not just a set of numbers. Some of these races are ones that used to be playable in previous editions such as gnome, githyanki, githzerai, minotaur, and drow. Others though include gnoll, goblin, and bugbear as well as even more obscure creatures.

Before I leave you to explore your own copy of this book, I need to praise one other aspect: the monster tables. I have seen many monster tables printed in previous editions, but they were mainly set up by location (i.e. temperate forest, desert, subterranean, etc.) which is great except, many of the monsters that you would roll are completely inappropriate for the level of the party. The tables in this edition of the "Monster Manual", by contrast, are set up by monster level. The monster you roll may not be an exact fit for the environment that the party is currently in, but at least it will not be a push over or party destroyer.

Overall, I think that the changes that Wizards of the Coast made were positive, but there are a few things that I wish had been handled differently. As mentioned I wish the ecology section was back. I would also have preferred is the society section had returned, but this is not as big of an issue. The final issue that I have is that only some of the standard genies, dragons, and giants are listed; I assume that the others will be in subsequent source books, but I have not bought any of them yet. I would have rather all of the dragons (the metallic ones are missing) be in one book and all of the genies be in another if they felt that this was too much content for one manual. I can see the reasoning behind this splitting though; parties can encounter a few types of every thing this way. However, I would rather be able to look up all of a type of creature in one location. This is what made the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition “Monstrous Compendium” series nice as it had 3 hole-punched pages that could be reordered in a binder as new updates were released. Most of these are just superficial gripes though, and the templates and fantastic artwork more than make up for them.