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.
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:
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.
More to come either tomorrow or Sunday, including Demons!
