[OSSR]Monster Manual V

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[OSSR]Monster Manual V

Post by Ravengm »

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Monster Manual V is the accumulation of several years' worth of WotC not listening to preferences of customers, figuring out that splatbooks sold like patchouli at a hippie convention when powergamers were involved, willful negligence of game mechanics, and learning that you could totally write a book that's 3/4 filler and, like, no one would ever find out.

Of note, I'm going into this not having read through this particular book before. After the abject horror that was Monster Manual IV space filler with its 30 pages of dragonspawn, I don't think it could get much worse.

I personally don't drink, but I recently had a pretty bad injury and so I've got a stockpile of Vicodin to take the edge of crippling back pain and/or horrid RPG supplements off. I'm not sure my doctor knows that it has this additional effect, but consider it a benefit for you guys.

Introduction

This is mostly a glossary. The entries here explain keywords and what expected information to find under subheadings for monster info. Of note, we have the entry for "Sample Lair". Oh boy. This is exactly what people who purchased these sorts of books said that they explicitly did not want to see out of future books. It looks like obvious padding, it feels like obvious padding, and it's obvious that it's obvious padding. Thankfully, it looks like there are only two different monster entries that even have sample lairs at all. Hopefully, this will keep my liver damage (and consciousness) above critical levels.

Monster Entries

I'm not going to go super in-depth into every entry, but I will at least give a snarky comment for each monster.

Arcadian Avenger: Ugh. Literally the first entry into the book and we have our first example of obvious padding. This is a pretty cut-and-dry "Lawful Outsider", with nothing to really set it apart from anything else. It takes up two pages, one glorious whole page being nothing but fluff padding. The information presented ranges from obvious (they live in realms of Law!), to waste of space (no one wants a quarter of a page talking about campaign settings they're not using!), to mildly useful (they can be summoned with Summon Monster IV!), to vomit-inducing cliche (sample encounter: Avengers attack the party because they "disturbed law or order"). Watch out! That bloodthirsty Arcadian Avenger might be after you because you trampled a small patch of grass!

On the bright side, they're actually pretty badass as summoned creatures. It shows up with two masterwork longswords that do an extra 2d6 damage if they both hit. It has a fly speed, and is able to take 10 on an attack or save 3/day. Its weapons hit as lawful, good, and magic. 60 HP is pretty great compared to everything else on the Summon Monster IV list. So the tl;dr for this monster is: ignore it unless you're a Wizard, in which case you get a power boost. Yoink!

I'm also going to keep a tally for each monster of what the LA is (if listed). I don't expect anything less than a 1, but we'll see.

Banshrae: Oh look, another 2-pager. I hope this isn't becoming a theme (Editor's note: it is). As for the monster itself, I don't even know what to make of this. It's a fey that launches attacks via a flute that it's able to summon at will, so you'd expect it to be bard-like. While it does have a couple "play song, get effect" attacks, it goes whole ham on the crazy train and uses the flute to do crazy shit like using it as a blowgun that shoots a 15-ft cone worth of darts or a live colony of locusts that explodes out from the victim.

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Bees are close enough, right?

There's also something important to note here: the Banshrae doesn't have a mouth. How the fuck is it playing a mundane flute? It communicates telepathically, so unless it's just lip-syncing the telepathic songs it's playing, there's some sort of disconnect here. Don't even ask how it uses the flute as a blowgun, which there's just no explanation whatsoever for.

Thankfully, this monster is at least interesting. Basically, they used to be court bards or whatever, until one of them sassed a fae queen so hard that she stole the mouth off of their entire species in revenge. Apparently they got some of their musical ability back by "making a compact with a verdant prince interceding with dark spirits," which does exactly nothing to answer the question of how they use mundane items that specifically rely on the user's mouth being both A.) Present and B.) Able to blow. You'd think it would have more success by shoving the flute up its ass.

Blackwing: It's an eagle that happens to be undead and inspire fear when it charges while flying and/or shrieking like a jackass with its friends. Sounds boring. Apparently they are the "guardians of a fallen civilization", but what that entails or what civilization it is they used to guard isn't apparent. In fact, later in the same entry it says they're apparently created from the corpses of tortured eagles that a group of orcs caught for sport. Nowhere in there is the mention of guarding anything, much less a civilization that fell. It's pretty pathetic when you can't even get two paragraphs in the same monster entry to be consistent.

Players can train these as mounts, which are actually surprisingly mobile with an 80ft fly speed with average maneuverability. Not to mention the fear part.

Burrow Root: I think this is a good time to mention how absolutely worthless it is to write "plant immunities" as an entry on what's supposed to be a quick-reference table. If you don't have the entire list of plant immunities memorized, guess what? You get to go hunting for the page where they're listed! Yay! It doesn't even have a page reference for easy lookup in the middle of a session or anything, just expects you to put the game on hold while you go and see if your Burrow Root is susceptible to critical hits, because Fuck You.

Anyway, this is just a plant that has a burrow speed that feeds on blood. The rest practically writes itself, which must have been handy when trying to fill two entire pages with this bullshit.

Dalmosh:
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Oh shit, it's the S&M Blob!

This is an immortal outsider with a stomach so large it is literally a demiplane. He crams everything into his mouth from every side except for dirt and rock, and that which survives the journey through the stomach compression and acid comes out into a nice little area called Dalmosh's Gullet. Inside the Gullet, there are harsh winds that can seriously rip through dimensions. All of this badass and ridiculous outsider, and all I can think of is fart jokes about ripping holes in dimensions.

Oh, and you can summon this insatiable beast that knows nothing but hunger and cramming the nearest object into its mouth by paying 10,000 gp and making a pot of stew.

Deadborn Vulture: This is a vulture that carries disease and instantly rises as a zombie upon dying.
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More to come either tomorrow or Sunday, including Demons!
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Post by Username17 »

Monster Manual V is the accumulation of several years' worth of WotC not listening to preferences of customers


You aren't kidding. In fact, it's worse than that. Monster Manual V is the accumulation of several years' worth of carefully writing down what the customers preferred and then ignoring all of that because fuck the customers.

As you read through the Monster Manual V, keep in the back of your mind that before he even started writing, David Noonan had already received the feedback that customers:
  • Didn't want large amounts of page space dedicated to trivial bullshit about each monster.
  • Didn't want a large amount of page space dedicated to monsters with a couple of class levels.
  • Didn't want a big chunk of the book given over to individual monster groupings.
Seriously. They knew the players didn't fucking like those things. Now keep those three "don'ts" in your mind as you read the book, and ponder what giant brass balls David Noonan has to have to have turned in the manuscript he did.

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Post by RadiantPhoenix »

FrankTrollman wrote:Seriously. They knew the players didn't fucking like those things. Now keep those three "don'ts" in your mind as you read the book, and ponder what giant brass balls David Noonan has to have to have turned in the manuscript he did.

-Username17
Maybe he's just made of herp and derp?
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Maybe David Noonan has a history of going ahead with design decisions he can't justify or know will be unpopular because he trusts his gut too much?
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Post by zugschef »

FrankTrollman wrote:You aren't kidding. In fact, it's worse than that. Monster Manual V is the accumulation of several years' worth of carefully writing down what the customers preferred and then ignoring all of that because fuck the customers.
We've had this before, he couldn't help himself...
Tackling those concerns in reverse order, I knew I wanted the big gang entry in MMV to be smaller and more focused than the spawn of Tiamat. In my original outline, I pegged it at 10 monsters spread over 16 pages. (The big monster entry, the mind flayers of Thoon, wound up running 22 pages, partially because the art came in bigger and better, and partially because I couldn’t help myself once I got started.)
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Post by fectin »

On the other hand, that's more actual design work than wizards has shown evidence of ever, so I hesitate to really pan that post.
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Post by Ancient History »

Wasn't this book the one that did Quintessence?
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Post by Meikle641 »

As in, Quintessence from XPH, or something else?
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Post by Prak »

I don't know if it's the same as in XPH, but yes, MMV has quintessence.
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Post by zugschef »

fectin wrote:On the other hand, that's more actual design work than wizards has shown evidence of ever, so I hesitate to really pan that post.
If that was true, there wouldn't even be a 3rd edition.
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Post by Ravengm »

Well, the Superbowl party I was at ended up running longer than expected, so I got home a bit too late to post last night. So, here we go!

Demons

Adaru: This one is kind of weird. It's a demon that specializes in controlling other demons, since it gets to use charm monster 3/day, but only on other tanar'ri. It also has a constant mist in a 30-foot radius that gives a +2 bonus to everything to other evil creatures and automatically sickens everything else (no save). Then, when it's reduced to half hp, everything in the mist counts as difficult terrain to non-evil creatures. It's a reasonable monster, though it suffers from the "whole pile of shit nobody cares about" problem in a big way. The entire monster entry is a whopping 2.5 pages.

Carnage Demon: This is just an uninteresting low-level bruiser (CR 4). Except it's not a bruiser, because it has an AC of 13 and 19 HP, and since it's a melee monster, it's going to go down in a single round. It gets 2 attacks that do 1d4+5 damage, which is nice, I guess, but again, that requires being in melee. The most puzzling thing about this monster is that it has an ability that forces it to attack the nearest non-Carnage-Demon enemy during a round if it fails a Will save, but at the same time gets a +1 bonus to attack and damage for each Carnage Demon that's within 30 feet. They're punished for not being around their own kind, and rewarded for being around their own kind. We get it, they like to be around each other.

Draudnu: In addition to having a ridiculously difficult name to actually parse, pretty much everything about this monster is bizarre.
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Hello, I'll be your nightmare fuel for this week.

What the hell is that thing? It's just a collection of spindly legs and pincers. Those red things are literally zits that pop when the monster takes damage and spray acid everywhere. It has an aura that causes people to "believe that something is growing inside [them]". It uses the immobilized condition. Ultimately, though, this is just a closet troll. It can become a whirling blender of doom (especially with the acid zits factored in), but is pretty easily dispatched at range, especially since it is Medium and doesn't have reach of any kind.

Gadacro: For being CR 3, this dude is pretty badass. It has a bunch of resistances, DR, a 40-foot (perfect) fly speed, a SLA that makes flying things have to land, sneak attack damage, the ability to blind opponents on sneak attack damage, Flyby Attack, a summon ability, mirror image, and whenever it takes damage from a melee attack, it pulls a David Copperfield and disappears in a puff of smoke and reappears 20 feet away. Long story short, this thing is annoying to fight against.

Also worth noting is that, so far, every monster has an entry for "___ in Eberron" and "___ in Faerun". This space would be just as useful (and twice as honest) if "FUCK YOU" was printed over and over again to fill the same space.

Solamith: It's a giant fatass that rips its own flesh off, throws it at people, and then that flesh explodes. It also explodes whenever it gets hit by a melee attack. I'm convinced that David Noonan just wanted to hose fighters more, because there are so many monsters that are just like "lol nope" when they're engaged in melee combat, whether through instantly teleporting away or exploding in the attacker's face.

And that's the end of the demons. Five demons, ten pages. That's keeping pace with the rest of the space used in this book, which comes out to about waytoofuckingmuchfiller.

Demonthorn Mandrake: Wait, I thought we were done with demons? Oh, but this is a plant monster that just happens to have "demon" in its name. It throws plants that grow out of peoples' faces, entangles people, and has a bunch of filler that nobody cares about. Next!

Devils

While unexpected, you'd assume that Devils would get as much love as Demons in any given Monster Manual, being so similar and all, but you'd be wrong. There are only three Devils compared to five Demons, and none of them are interesting. They all just have a different flavor of passive ability and maybe a SLA or two. Bleh. There's a gem buries in the Remmanon's entry, though: whenever a PC casts greater planar ally or greater planar binding, there's a 5% chance that a Remmanon will show up instead of whatever was called. So these affect every cast of a spell in a fiddly and not particularly interesting way, since they show up to negotiate a contract anyway, so it's just using a different skin to get what the PC wants anyway.

Dragons of the Great Game

Oh God no. I knew there would be dragonwank in this book. It's unavoidable. But this is ten pages about a dragon gladitorial competition called xorvintaal. And it really is just straight-up dragon masturbation. The entirety of xorvintaal is "dragon-only", so the PCs will either have a campaign based around this (hint: they won't), or not care in the slightest when they encounter a dragon that's a master of the game. The entire description reads like the Complete Book of Elves, since every other sentence basically says "You humans are of puny intellect. There's no possible way you could understand this game, which is made for the dragons."
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Basically, though, xorvintaal is just what dragons would normally do anyway: use lackeys from the lesser races in order to gain more territory and power. You really don't need ten pages worth of explanation to say that. Really, it's more just a way for dragons to keikaku than anything else. The entries just suggest that "ACTUALLY THE WHOLE CAMPAIGN WAS JUST A DRAGON MANIPULATING YOU ALL ALONG SO THAT HE COULD STEAL SOME TREASURE FROM ANOTHER DRAGON'S HOARD" is seriously a legitimate thing that won't just make the players feel like they wasted 3 months of gaming.

The section also includes the random nobody-gives-a-flying-rat's-ass leveled PC character that David Noonan played in a campaign and wants to masturbate all over your face with because he never got to play more than a session and thinking about it gave him a raging erection. It's little more than an example of a xorvintaal dragon's minion.

PCs can also become exarches for these dragons, which slaps a template onto them that gives them a LA of +2. No, I don't know how that works for an already-established PC.

Elemental Mage: These are basically just palette-swap giants that have different flavors of elemental attacks. One breathes fire, one causes earthquakes, and I've already stopped caring. There's no compelling reason to use these unless you're just bored of using the regular flavors of giant and you want to make it so the PCs don't know the monster entry by heart. The good news? We have three monsters in four pages, which is below the average of one monster every two pages. Hooray!

That's it for now, hopefully I'll have some time tonight for more.
Last edited by Ravengm on Mon Feb 03, 2014 6:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by TiaC »

Ravengm wrote:PCs can also become exarches for these dragons, which slaps a template onto them that gives them a LA of +2. No, I don't know how that works for an already-established PC.
Well, you start as an ECL 10 character with 45,000 XP and 10k more needed for next level. You end up as an ECL 12 character who still has 45,000 XP so you now need 33k more for next level. You'll notice that this is absolutely terrible, as you are fighting stronger monsters and need to kill three times as many to gain a level. It's even worse if only one member of the party gets the template.
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Post by Wiseman »

To be honest, some of the xorvintall template abilities are pretty interesting. If it wasn't packaged with so much fluff, i might be inclined to test them out.
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Post by rasmuswagner »

I seem to recall the Xorvintall dragons giving up complicated spellcasting for simple buffs to breath weapon and other dragony stuff.
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Post by Ravengm »

rasmuswagner wrote:I seem to recall the Xorvintall dragons giving up complicated spellcasting for simple buffs to breath weapon and other dragony stuff.
Yeah, they lose the ability to cast spells, gain charm monster and scrying (both targeting an exarch) as SLAs, and they start with one ability off a menu of things, and get more by "achieving victories in the great game". Essentially, that translates to one ability plus one for every two age categories beyond young adult, or +1 CR per ability otherwise. The abilities range from handy to simple numbers bonuses in combat, but none of them really make up for the fact that the dragon loses spellcasting entirely.

The most interesting ability that I saw is Twist of Fate, which gives three separate abilities:
-Once every 1d4 rounds when targeted by a spell, the dragon can take an immediate action to get a bonus to the save for the spell equal to its age category.
-When subject to an area spell or effect, the dragon can take an immediate action to move 30 feet, so long as it ends up outside the spell's AoE. It then can't move during its next turn.
-Instead of making an attack of opportunity, the dragon can flap its wings to make a bullrush attempt, except the dragon doesn't move along with the target. This doesn't actually use up an AoO.

The sheer amount of dragonwank in the entry turns me completely off of trying to deal with it, though.
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Re: [OSSR]Monster Manual V

Post by codeGlaze »

Ravengm wrote:Image
I'm curious, what's the source of this?
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Post by Maxus »

Intro movie of Bioshock 1.
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Post by Koumei »

Ravengm wrote: Carnage Demon: This is just an uninteresting low-level bruiser (CR 4). Except it's not a bruiser, because it has an AC of 13 and 19 HP, and since it's a melee monster, it's going to go down in a single round. It gets 2 attacks that do 1d4+5 damage, which is nice, I guess, but again, that requires being in melee. The most puzzling thing about this monster is that it has an ability that forces it to attack the nearest non-Carnage-Demon enemy during a round if it fails a Will save, but at the same time gets a +1 bonus to attack and damage for each Carnage Demon that's within 30 feet. They're punished for not being around their own kind, and rewarded for being around their own kind. We get it, they like to be around each other.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess they were shitfaced on a Friday night. it's specifically a monster designed for the eight of these at CR +6". So you will never actually fight one Carnage Demon at level 4 because that's a fucking joke. Instead, at level 10 you fight 8 of them and it's still a joke really because individually they're so weak that the party will have no trouble, but if they get the drop on you they can cause some hurt before you beat them all. Kind of like Tome NPC classes - you fight them in mobs, you still win, but you take a little damage in the process.

Actually I was probably right the first time.
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Post by codeGlaze »

Koumei wrote:
Ravengm wrote: Carnage Demon: This is just an uninteresting low-level bruiser (CR 4). Except it's not a bruiser, because it has an AC of 13 and 19 HP, and since it's a melee monster, it's going to go down in a single round. It gets 2 attacks that do 1d4+5 damage, which is nice, I guess, but again, that requires being in melee. The most puzzling thing about this monster is that it has an ability that forces it to attack the nearest non-Carnage-Demon enemy during a round if it fails a Will save, but at the same time gets a +1 bonus to attack and damage for each Carnage Demon that's within 30 feet. They're punished for not being around their own kind, and rewarded for being around their own kind. We get it, they like to be around each other.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess they were shitfaced on a Friday night. it's specifically a monster designed for the eight of these at CR +6". So you will never actually fight one Carnage Demon at level 4 because that's a fucking joke. Instead, at level 10 you fight 8 of them and it's still a joke really because individually they're so weak that the party will have no trouble, but if they get the drop on you they can cause some hurt before you beat them all. Kind of like Tome NPC classes - you fight them in mobs, you still win, but you take a little damage in the process.

Actually I was probably right the first time.
Yea, I was thinking hordes of demonic monkeys.
You just throw a wave of them out there to harry the party.
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Post by Prak »

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too. It seems like the reasoning was "Well, they fight in hordes, so let's say CR 4, because a few of these gangbanging a pc *will* happen and it'd be a complete curbstomp at 1st." It feels like they forgot about EL or think their players did, because really these things should be CR 1, give or take, with a sample encounter at EL 4. Of course even four of these would be a joke at CR 4, because they'll go down to just a couple Level 4 swings.
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You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by codeGlaze »

Well, there's also the fact that Noonan specifically told his team to divide monsters into 'roles.
These are clearly 'minions'... or what ever he called the lower/lowest role of monster.

So basically these are 4e mooks.
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Post by Ravengm »

I might not have time for a bunch of entries, but I'll get as many done as possible before I have to go.

Ember Guard: It's a fire elemental. That happens to be evil. It looks like an earth elemental. But don't be fooled, it's almost exactly like a fire elemental. However, I want to share the "Typical Treasure" entry from this monster:
MMV wrote:At a glance, it seems veins of brass fleck an ember guard's hide. On closer inspection, it becomes obvious that this is not valuable material.

Ember guards do not collect treasure. Divide standard treasure of a monster that has the ember guard's Challenge Rating between treasure found on the ember guard's companions and its commander, and rewards from grateful people the PCs save from the creature.
Or, you know, you could go the sane and not-ridiculously-padded way and say "Treasure: Standard".

Ethereal Defiler: At first glance, this guy doesn't seem to have much going for him. He has pretty good HP, moderate saves/DR/resistances, weak attacks, and isn't very fast. But the real gems are in the special descriptions. First, it has an anchoring aura that prevents teleportation effects within 20 feet of it (also forces a Will save to be able to move in mundane fashion more than 20 feet from it). Second, it has, essentially, an Eldritch Blast that does 6d6 untyped damage as a swift action on a ranged touch attack up to 120 feet (and carries a save-or-suck effect rider to boot). And lastly, it can use the equivalent of ethereal jaunt every ten rounds, and when it appears in the material plane it hits everyone within 20 feet for 10d6 untyped damage. So an encounter with this thing could start the party at -35 HP, and one person at another -21. That's not shabby for actions performed before the fight begins at all. The Anchoring Aura is also another "Fuck Fighters" ability since it keys off a Will save for them to not be able to get in range.

Unfortunately for it, once it pops the ethereal explosion, it's more or less a sitting duck that can only really shoot Eldritch Blasts 1/round until it gets gangbanged by the party, since it's not immune to anything meaningful. I suppose that a group of them could burst the party down without warning, but that's the biggest advantage it has. Rocket launcher tag at its finest.

Laughably, the book suggests advancing them with class levels. It has 22 HD to start with plus a +4 LA. That's just not going to happen in any reasonable capacity.

Fetid Fungus: This is basically a "Because Fuck Monks" monster. It's coated in acid, and does reactive acid damage whenever it's hit, except if you strike it with a weapon. It has two auras: one that requires a save-or-be-sickened, and Death Throes for 1d4 acid damage. It also can engulf people by simply moving into their squares. On the other hand, it's slow as shit and doesn't have any ranged offensive options, so it dies to some arrow fire (and only has 12 HP; CR 1). They also have a +10 to hide in swampy terrain, so they can just pop out of the bushes and give the party Monk a warm, acidy hug while the rest of the party shoots arrows at it, and by extension, the Monk. But it's okay, because you have Deflect Arrows, right?

Image
This was the closest thing I could think of.


That's all the time I have for now.
Random thing I saw on Facebook wrote:Just make sure to compare your results from Weapon Bracket Table and Elevator Load Composition (Dragon Magazine #12) to the Perfunctory Armor Glossary, Version 3.8 (Races of Minneapolis, pp. 183). Then use your result as input to the "DM Says Screw You" equation.
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tussock
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Post by tussock »

Xorvantal Dragons are strait-up 4e Dragons, only you build your own because it's still a 3e book. The MM5 is based on the "Flywheel/Scramjet" phase of 4e development where it all went so terribly wrong for them with the AEDU action economy and power sets and the points of light setting.

The problem from there being that they'd just finished writing 4e in final form when the MM5 was released, so couldn't really learn anything from it. The concerns about the MM4 had time to filter into 4e's MM, but not so much into this one, which was already being written.
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NineInchNall
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Post by NineInchNall »

I don't understand why they didn't include a little thing at the back of the book that lists which monsters are natives to the various Eberron planes. Like ... Planar Shepherds care about that shit, and since that's the only class I'm ever going to consider playing in an Eberron game, it'd be nice to know whether carnage demons go to Shavarath or Fernia or both.

That's the only setting specific information I give a flying fuck about.
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Ravengm
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Post by Ravengm »

NineInchNall wrote:I don't understand why they didn't include a little thing at the back of the book that lists which monsters are natives to the various Eberron planes. Like ... Planar Shepherds care about that shit, and since that's the only class I'm ever going to consider playing in an Eberron game, it'd be nice to know whether carnage demons go to Shavarath or Fernia or both.

That's the only setting specific information I give a flying fuck about.
Almost every monster has a "____ in Eberron" entry, which says where it generally inhabits, or which group was responsible for its creation, or how it interacts with the world, etc.
Random thing I saw on Facebook wrote:Just make sure to compare your results from Weapon Bracket Table and Elevator Load Composition (Dragon Magazine #12) to the Perfunctory Armor Glossary, Version 3.8 (Races of Minneapolis, pp. 183). Then use your result as input to the "DM Says Screw You" equation.
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