What use a Monster Manual (II)

[TavishArtair]

So, I realize Fantasy RPGs often have a monster manual. But fantasy RPG worlds can be big, as the Kitchen Sink Roleplaying thread observes. Vast, even. And while I can kind of see the point of publishing an iniital set of monsters to fill out the setting with, things you would commonly encounter pretty much wherever you go, and are useful to have stats for even if just as a benchmark... to what end is there selling another one? And another?

More specifically, it doesn't seem that there is nearly as much call, once you've put down the first Monster Manual, for a second Monster Manual, so much as there is for a Manual of the Planes or a Libris Mortis or a, yes, It's Cold Outside with particularly sizeable monster sections. Obviously you can't make every single player-option-expanding book have monsters in it, down that route lies such oddity as the Monster section in the Tome of Battle (seriously what) or Tome of Magic (really?), but things that define the campaign world, or an aspect of the campaign world, seem better places to put them than "hunkajunkamonsters take 2."

[IGTN]

I could see a compilation of monsters being useful, where you compile all the new monsters released since the last monster book, bunch them together, maybe polish them a bit, and call it a Monster Manual.

But, yes, a more full monster collection in specialized and setting books (Monsters of Setting, monster section of It's ** Outside, etc.) would be best.

I disagree about the Tome of Magic monsters, though. If you're introducing a new kind of power, unless it's supposed to be civilized humanoid only (Tome of Battle monsters, WTF?), there should be some monsters that are naturally good at it. Shadow monsters are awesome.

[Username17]

One Monster Manual generally speaking is not enough. Yes, you could fight Walrus people swordsmen and Walrus necromancers and Walrus psychics and such for your entire career and be fine with that. But practically speaking, you're going to want more than that. Let's consider Level 17 in the 4e MM and it's equivalent, Level 11 in the 3.5 MM.

In the 4e MM, there are 20 Level 17 enemies, and a bunch of them are repeats: 2 different Aboleths, 3 different Azers, 2 Differet Cyclopses. But generally speaking, you're supposed to throw down 5 monsters in an encounter, which means that after 4 encounters you're repeating yourself. Level 17 in 4e is ten encounters long. Even if you consider an Azer Beastlord to be different from an Azer Warrior for purposes of keeping things interesting, it's still pretty limited.

The 3.5 MM does better, with 18 monsters, of which only 3 are repeats within the level (palette swap hydras). And that's better because 3.5 only asks you to fight 14 different monsters at 11th level. 14 encounters, 1 monster at a time. So you don't necessarily have to be repeating yourself until you play through twice (not counting the fact that some of those results - as for 4e - were essentially repeats from previous levels, since at lower levels you encountered both Hill Giants and Werewolves, making a Hill Giant Werewolf not that new as a concept).

But of course, the 4e encounter guidelines are better than the 3.5 ones. Gangster stabbing one enemy monster over and over again is pretty underwhelming, having bigger fights is much more interesting (or it would be, if 4e fights were interesting). The fact that 3.5 has enough monsters to get you through 11th level is actually the biggest problem of the 3.5 encounter guidelines.

So let's take a step back for a moment. Let's assume that we crammed in 200 monsters to the Monster Manual. It's doable, even though neither 3.5 nor 4e actually did that. And let's say that half of them are guys who we intend to scale-up for higher levels (like the afore mentioned Anak). And the other half we just put up as things like Basilisks that are basically "as is" at the level we find them. Let's call these "people" and "monsters." We could have a starting level breakdown that looked like this:

Level	People	Monsters
1	9	5
2	9	5
3	8	5
4	8	5
5	7	5
6	7	5
7	6	5
8	6	5
9	5	5
10	5	5
11	5	5
12	5	5
13	4	5
14	4	5
15	3	5
16	3	5
17	2	5
18	2	5
19	1	5
20	1	5

And that's playable. It's playable at high levels mostly because you can throw in 18th level Lizard folk and 18th level Cloud Giants and so on. But you'll also note that the monsters column is incredibly sparse at every level. It means that at first level you're going to be facing Ash Rats and Corollax a fucking lot. Having an entire book, or even multiple entire books filled with cockatrices and kamaitachi would be incredibly useful.

And that's not even counting the fact that at 18th level you're essentially telling the DM to make up most of the enemies through scaling up giants and beastmen from previous levels. Which means that your enemy scaling system had better fucking work (neither the 3.5 nor 4e versions do), and that you're asking the DM to put in a significant amount of work. So coming out with a whole book of just "these are scaled up NPCs" would actually be valuable, if they weren't the garbage fucking useless Drow Dragon Shamans or whatver the fuck out of the Monster Manual 4.

-Username17

[TavishArtair]

True. But wouldn't it be better to sit down, look at your material, and write a High Level Adventures book? Except not a Joke Book. A given MM is far more likely to have a well-populated lower level area, so it would seem more to the point to specifically redress that.

[RandomCasualty2]

And that's not even counting the fact that at 18th level you're essentially telling the DM to make up most of the enemies through scaling up giants and beastmen from previous levels. Which means that your enemy scaling system had better fucking work (neither the 3.5 nor 4e versions do), and that you're asking the DM to put in a significant amount of work. So coming out with a whole book of just "these are scaled up NPCs" would actually be valuable, if they weren't the garbage fucking useless Drow Dragon Shamans or whatver the fuck out of the Monster Manual 4.

It's a lot easier to just make a monster scaling system that works quickly, at least from a game standpoint, given that you're never going to have enough scaled up individual monsters to fill out an adventure concept, unless the DM specifically builds the concept out of the monsters available which sorta sucks since it leads to: "Well I only have a level 18 hobgoblin and a level 17 troll, so I guess they have to be working together somehow... I also want a wizard... but that can only be an elf or a lich.. so I guess I'll throw the lich in there..."

Given all the possible race class combinations, trying to do that would be a waste of space. You could pump outs tons of books and still never even begin to cover all the things people would need.

A well-designed gaming system needs to make creating NPCs quick.

[Username17]

True. But wouldn't it be better to sit down, look at your material, and write a High Level Adventures book? Except not a Joke Book. A given MM is far more likely to have a well-populated lower level area, so it would seem more to the point to specifically redress that.

Sure, but that would still be a Monster Manual 2. Yes, the Monster Manual 1 is going to ideally be biased towards low level monsters. It is after all easier to scale a monster up than to scale it down. So if push comes to shove, any 3rd level monster could be used with some tinkering in a 13th level adventure, but the same is likely not true for a 13th level monster and a 3rd level creature. My sample split of the monsters had 14 1st level monsters and only 6 20th level monsters. You could plausibly go more extreme than that. 3.5 only has a single entry at 18th level (Nightcrawler), and 4e only has two entries at 29th (Godforged Colossus and Runescribed Dracolich - note that neither is even a unique monster).

But whatever you do, the fact is that you're still going to want, in an ultimate sense, about fifty enemies that can be plugged and played for every level. And that would fill about five monster manuals.

So no, I don't think there is anything weird at all with having a Monster Manual 2, and a Fiend Folio, and a Fiendish Codex, and a Monster Manual 3. That seems pretty reasonable to me.

-Username17

[A Man In Black]

There isn't a disagreement here. TA's point is that it's kind of dumb to have more than one Generic Book Of Randomly Chosen Monsters, and that further monster books should be themed, with supplementary game material for the theme in addition to monsters. That doesn't preclude making more monster books; more monsters are always awesome. It's just saying that the Book Of A Bunch Of Random Stuff is not a good way to organize further monsters.

[K]

4e's model of making Monster Manuals is designed to sell more books by making each monster a unique thing from which there is no coherent system for making your own monsters.

Now, if your goal was to make a good game, you'd write a game where monsters could be built off of easy templates and the book you printed was a huge number of well designed and concepted-out monsters for easy play and to serve as examples.

That way, if you decided you needed some monsters for a level 1 party you could use the Skeletons in the book, but when players started to get tired of that you could stat out some thematically appropriate thing like a "Blackheart Skeleton" to mix it up rather than pulling out some weird BS like a Corrolax from your core book or buying a whole new book.

[A Man In Black]

Now, if your goal was to make a good game, you'd write a game where monsters could be built off of easy templates and the book you printed was a huge number of well designed and concepted-out monsters for easy play and to serve as examples.

And the second monster book would ideally have more easy templates and more well-designed, well-concepted monsters.

[Username17]

There isn't a disagreement here. TA's point is that it's kind of dumb to have more than one Generic Book Of Randomly Chosen Monsters, and that further monster books should be themed, with supplementary game material for the theme in addition to monsters. That doesn't preclude making more monster books; more monsters are always awesome. It's just saying that the Book Of A Bunch Of Random Stuff is not a good way to organize further monsters.

And that's why there's total disagreement here. A bunch of random monsters is the only thing that a monster manual is good for. As K points out, the game should be set up in such a manner as to allow you to make a monster from scratch easily and effectively, as well as being set up in such a manner as to allow one to take monsters and swap them out for similar monsters or monsters that are more (and to a lesser extent, less) powerful.

That's why when you make an evil Wizard, the fact that he's an Elf should not change his figured characteristics and basic mathematical profile. It should be a series of distinct abilities that are clearly marked and isolated so that you can quickly and easily have an evil dwarf wizard instead.

You have 200 different entries in a Monster Manual, and all of them can be used right out of the box with no effort at all. And they can be modified to thematically similar things with little effort. Harpy Archer becomes Sprite Archer. Dinosaur becomes Giant Metal Bull. Goblin Warrior becomes Halfling Warrior. And so on and so forth. Putting out a book of already thematically related monsters is insulting, and of minimal use.

A "Book of NPCs" could be pretty damn useful - if it was easy to change an enemy's race around on the fly (by making the racial traits distinct use-activated abilities rather than passive, profile affecting bonuses). Imagine, for the moment, giving 13 classes at full writeups at all 20 levels, with a little bit of fluff text accompanying. That would be 260 characters, and easily fill a book. And if it was easy to swap the 5th level Goblin Druid for a 5th level Troglodyte Druid because you the last block of pages to just giving basic ability lists for 30-50 races that you could swap in and out, that would be a great book.

But you still want literally random monsters to spark ideas. And part of the point of these monster entries is ranting about their ecology and disposition and stuff so that they inspire stories and aren't just plug-n-play battle elements.

-Username17

[K]

Now, if your goal was to make a good game, you'd write a game where monsters could be built off of easy templates and the book you printed was a huge number of well designed and concepted-out monsters for easy play and to serve as examples.

And the second monster book would ideally have more easy templates and more well-designed, well-concepted monsters.

Nah. Conceptual space is pretty narrow. I mean, look at 3e where they ran around making Blackscale Lizardmen and even more entries for drow in the later books. I mean, after a point I just don't need conceptual rip-offs like the lizardmen from Land of the Lost or the guys from Dark City in my MM. The last three MMs from 3e are basically just full monster entries for weird minis for the DnD miniatures tactics game, recycled monsters, and things stolen straight from other media.

However, setting-specific monster books could still be sold. Design is much easier if you stick to a theme and set arbitrary constraints on yourself.