Angry Drunk Review - 5e Monster Manual: A Modern Relic

[Night Goat]

Do you really need soul types? I don't see how they'd interact with the game much, and it seems like there'd be a lot of overlap with mind types.

[kjdavies]

Both of these type revisions fall into the same basic trap, which is trying to fuck with 3e's type system at all. The thing is that type system was and is a dead end. There is no reason for Succubi to have comparable numbers of skill points to Howlers or even to Vrocks. Body type just isn't a good indicator of a monster's role, and shouldn't be used as a class. Wizards and Fighters are both humanoid in shape.

It feels really weird saying this, but 4th edition D&D was on the right track here. I mean, they fucked up their math and their monster design system so hard in other ways that it's hard to notice, but "Stalker" and "Brute" are potentially meaningful monster classes in a way that "Fey" and "Humanoid" are not.

I can't say I disagree. I wrote 'another solution' a long time ago, and when I carried on to further deconstruct things for Echelon I found the distinctions honestly didn't matter. Once I became comfortable with breaking the "dragons win everything" mindset and hinged everything off what they could do, the various 'monster types' became build options.

Want a dragon? Take this piece and that one, and you've got a dragon. If it means you spend a lot of your build resources on it because you're a lot of dragon, that's fine -- you're a lot of dragon instead of something else, so you should spend a lot on it.

[BoxCrayonTales]

Do you really need soul types? I don't see how they'd interact with the game much, and it seems like there'd be a lot of overlap with mind types.

They don't overlap at all. The mind types are "Int 1-2," "Int 3+," and "No Int." The soul types are "can be raised," "cannot ever be raised," "require strong magic to be raised," and "resurrection turns them back to living creatures."

[Username17]

Do you really need soul types? I don't see how they'd interact with the game much, and it seems like there'd be a lot of overlap with mind types.

They don't overlap at all. The mind types are "Int 1-2," "Int 3+," and "No Int." The soul types are "can be raised," "cannot ever be raised," "require strong magic to be raised," and "resurrection turns them back to living creatures."

But none of those are even a little bit useful for determining what saving throws, skills, and toughness a creature should have. It's important spell targeting information, but it's completely meaningless when assigning a creature a combat role. A Lich would be turned back into a living creature when resurrected, as would a zombie ogre, and so would a ghostly seducer or spectral assassin. So would that soul type be associated with a wizardly mastermind, a brainless meat shield, or a clever diplomancer? The answer of course, is yes. So it's worthless.

Your monster classes should say something about what they do, not about what they are. Something like this:

• Blaster - creature which can trade mobility for more devastating ranged attacks.
• Ravager - creature which becomes more dangerous as they fight and get injured.
• Controller - Battlefield control and/or Debuff
• Harrier - creature which needs to disengage in order to refresh their stunlocks
• Leader - provides bonuses to allies
• Lurker - has activatable "trap cards"
• Soldier - has defenses and inflicts damage

-Username17

[kjdavies]

Your monster classes should say something about what they do, not about what they are. Something like this:

• Blaster - creature which can trade mobility for more devastating ranged attacks.
• Ravager - creature which becomes more dangerous as they fight and get injured.
• Controller - Battlefield control and/or Debuff
• Harrier - creature which needs to disengage in order to refresh their stunlocks
• Leader - provides bonuses to allies
• Lurker - has activatable "trap cards"
• Soldier - has defenses and inflicts damage

Right. I've got no problem with assigning 'monster classes' based on these things, or things like them (depending on what the game requires).

I had a mini-project long ago that looked at replacing 'monster levels' with 'class levels' (then abandoned it when I got bored).

Some demons were fighters, others barbarians, others rogues, others sorcerers. Each got a layer of 'demon stuff', but fundamentally they were using much the same chassis as PCs. Predatory animals were usually fighters (I might've gone with ranger, but no spells), ambush hunters were rogues. I never really did reconcile the really big non-predators -- I was willing to give a warhorse fighter levels because it was bred and trained for combat, normal horses weren't, and cows and pigs? I never did figure out cows and pigs. Commoner, probably, but decent Constitution to push the hit points up.

This also allows the option -- not if you're using Commoner, obviously -- to balance the monster classes so you can have them mean roughly the same thing when it comes to power. That would be nice.

[BoxCrayonTales]

But none of those are even a little bit useful for determining what saving throws, skills, and toughness a creature should have.

So I don't use it to determine those things. I already said I prefer the monsters roles approach.

[tussock]

Monster roles might well be handy for creating a bunch of monsters in a hurry (though why not just test the first hundred monsters and then copy them?). But in play? That's all but useless. The Hobgoblin "Leader" has to point to the other Hobgoblins it's found with anyway, and generally be one to a squad, so it's barely useful for encounter design.

Front and centre on monsters (in the final product) should be the most useful encounter-relevant information. Time-critical info. Which in D&D is which sets of spells, effects, and weapons can harm that creature, whether it's smart enough to respond when you talk to or not. Not what it does, that should be already listed in table highlights and later detail. Which of the thousands of possible things the PCs might try on it is what matters, compartmentalise that in non-overlapping sets, try to double- and triple-type as few as possible (even though a vampire is sometimes a person and sometimes a cloud of fog).

[Drolyt]

Monster roles might well be handy for creating a bunch of monsters in a hurry (though why not just test the first hundred monsters and then copy them?). But in play? That's all but useless. The Hobgoblin "Leader" has to point to the other Hobgoblins it's found with anyway, and generally be one to a squad, so it's barely useful for encounter design.

Front and centre on monsters (in the final product) should be the most useful encounter-relevant information. Time-critical info. Which in D&D is which sets of spells, effects, and weapons can harm that creature, whether it's smart enough to respond when you talk to or not. Not what it does, that should be already listed in table highlights and later detail. Which of the thousands of possible things the PCs might try on it is what matters, compartmentalise that in non-overlapping sets, try to double- and triple-type as few as possible (even though a vampire is sometimes a person and sometimes a cloud of fog).

Assuming monster role determines most of the things creature type does in 3e (hit dice size, skill points/level, attack and save bonuses etc.) (which is what Frank is suggesting) having it listed in the monster entry is at the very least very useful to any DMs that want to advance the monster or otherwise create a variant monster. Forcing DMs to reverse engineer that information would be very annoying.

[tussock]

When the Player's 9th level Fighter wants to be a Wizard from now, that should just work. Similarly, when the DM's Stone Giant wants to be a Wizard from now, that should just work. I find AD&D's dual-classing handles things pretty well there (not perfect, just better than everything else on offer).

You might think games should have a system of advancing monsters as monsters. But I've seen a few and they're all rubbish. High level monsters are not the same as low level monsters with bigger numbers, they just aren't. That's the 3e Fighter problem in a nutshell. If you want to turn a Tiger into a high-level Tiger, "more tiger" can't work, though taking Psi-Warrior levels possibly could, for touch attacks and stuns and so on.

Yes, variant monsters having PC classes can be a lot of work, but there can be streamlined versions in the DMG for those issues. Got to put something in there.

[Username17]

I find AD&D's dual-classing handles things pretty well there (not perfect, just better than everything else on offer).

How do you get so wrong about everything? Everything?!

Dual Classing is the worst system ever made. Characters stooge around getting abilities that are in no way level appropriate and then at the end of the day their "level" has not even the slightest relevance to actual power. It's a colossal clusterfuck of terrible even without the uniquely AD&D fuckery of having to argue whether or not using weapon proficiencies constituted "using" a Fighter class ability and therefore causing you to lose XP.

-Username17

[Krusk]

Time to get back into it. We start today with M and Ill see how far we get. M is a big letter with lots of big name monsters for DND. Mind Flayer, Minotaur, Mummy, Medusa. All the classics. I also want to point out that the M's start on page 212 of a 350 page book. Actual lettered monsters stop on 316 with the zombie. So while it seems like I'm barely halfway through the book, in reality I'm closer to 75%. My honest theory on this is that they actually started writing the book with the A monsters and wrote the Zs at the end. Then they had a time crunch and skipped a lot of stuff. So you end up with loads of Ds and Ls but very few Zs. Its a small thing to notice, but you do when flipping to the middle of the book and you see the J, and not the M.

Magmin
This is another monster they really could have skipped. Its a small sentient fire elemental. Thats not particularly different than a normal elemental in any way except size. This is a case of "Was in previous editions" and so it didn't get cut. Entries like this make it clear no one went through and attempted a balance of monsters to cover a broad range of themes. Apparently they can be summoned by magic and their summoners can exert control over them. There are no hints as to how this happens. They are relatively intelligent, but it appears they have no civilization which annoys me. It also calls them "Simple minded creatures, ... oblivious to the harm their native element causes creatures of the material plane". Which seems weird considering they are chaotic neutral, and not unaligned. It also seems weird when they have an 8 int, 11 wis, and 10 cha. Your fighter probably has that same stat array. He probably isn't going to be calling them simple. Stat wise they are CR 1/2. They kind of suck in battle, but when you kill them they explode save for half. That kind of sucks, because you are never fighting 1 of these. Its more like 5-8. So when they swarm the fighter, you can expect him to go down, even if they never hit him and he kills them all. They are one of the first fire monsters that have a power that explains how much light they give off. Thats actually pretty neat and missing in a lot of monsters in this edition and older ones. They attack is called "Touch" and its a melee weapon attack. Its not a touch attack, and you might find that confusing if you've played prior editions. If it hits you, you take damage, and then take ongoing fire damage until you spend your action to stop. So its very possible one of these guys can juggle you into oblivion if you aren't fire immune.


Magmin apparently.

Manticore
These are a classic I expected to see. The art on this guy shows him covered in spikes. Like beyond reason. Its kind of cool in some spots, but the mane spikes are a little stupid looking. Manticores are designed to own everyone in 5e, with their natural tactic of "Fly and shoot at dudes" being almost unstoppable. I wouldn't be suprised to see them TPK parties often. Especially since they are CR 3, and you might find one at level 1 and 2. Its fly speed is 50ft, so good luck getting away. Luckily they only have 24 spikes to shoot before they need to take a long rest. Unluckily, those have a 100/200ft range, +5 to hit and deal 7 damage. And it can throw 3 a round. At level 1 thats basically killing a PC a round, targeting the low AC dudes first. Fluff wise they are jerks who hunt in packs and are specifically described as using the "Fly around and shoot spikes" tactic. I like that it mentions they fear and avoid dragons. As though thats somehow different than most beings.

Medusa
They go with the hot chick model with snake hair. I am a fan of that medusa method and the art is actually pretty cool. She looks like a hot royal chick that got cursed for being hot. It works. Fluff wise, they apparently were exactly a race of the greek medusa. The twist is that it comes to people who prey to gods, dragons, archmages, demons or archdevils offering to become a terrible snake woman in exchange for being hot. Its kind of not a bad trade at first glance, aside from the "can't look at people". Of note apparently medusa are immortal now, and they go insane and angry. This is why it lists them as LE. It makes no mention of dude medusa's which seems like something that should get a line or two. It does specifc that medusas are subject to their own curse and if they see their reflection they turn to stone. Interestingly enough, the rules in their stats say that "When a creature that can see the medusa's eyes starts its turn within 30ft of the medusa, the medusa can force it to make a DC 14 con save". Thats interesting because it means the medusa actually probably doesn't turn itself to stone. Because its an optional thing. It can also totally live with people. It just should choose not to turn them to stone. Lastly, it also means that if you see her eyes, even if she doesn't see you, you turn to stone. It throws a line at the bottom that says if it sees itself reflected on a polished surface within 30ft of it, it is affected by its own gaze. This implies it can't optionally hit itself and always has to. This also opens a giant bag of worms about "I polish my armor and shield, now it has to fight blind". It calls out averting your eyes to avoid its effect. It doesn't say what that means to you, just that you can't see it. No idea how this does or does not interact with the stealth rules (if they existed).

Mephits
These are elementals that are generally a fusion of two elementals. I kind of like the concept, but 5e and all. They basically float around on the elemental planes and the material just acting like dicks. They are all CR 1/2 and have a death burst power. So really the only difference between them and a magmin is "fire/fire vs fire/rock". Same combat critiques apply here as the magmin. Most mephits have a fly speed, a 1/day spell and a breath weapon. This means that you fight a swarm of stuff that kills you at this level. Dust mephits are earth air and breath dust that blinds you. Ice mephits are air and water. They have a frost breath weapon that damages you. They also have a fuck you hide power to pretend to be ice. You can't make a check to counter this. Magma mephits are earth fire and have the same powers as the ice one, just with a fire swap. Mud mephits are earth/water. They only have a mud breath ability. Thats kind of stupid, and it basically just has save or restrained. So this is generally the worst one, but they actually realize this. It has more HP than the others, but is a lower CR. It also has a fuck you hide power to be mud. Smoke mephids are air/fire that have a blinding breath weapon. They basically suck. Steam mephits have a fire breath weapon which is worth something. This page has a variant, where mephits can summon other mephits 1/day. This does not increase their CR, but it allows any mephit to summon 1d4 of its own type of mephit for a minute with 25% chance of success. So maybe your fight with 16 CR 1/4 mephits got a lot harder. 25% succeed meaning 4 summon 1d4. So it might be 26 mephits on average. that seems a lot harder. The art for all mephits gives them giant noses and makes them look really mean. I'd prefer giving them a mischievous look making them more fun, but eh.

Merfolk
This is a big one in fantasy so I'd hope for a good entry. It starts off with a half page of art thats pretty sweet. Instead of the half woman/half fish woman 5e goes for all fish person. Thats probably the better idea anyway. Then you go into the fluff. here is the first line. "Aquatic huimanoids with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a fish". Well shit. Did we not tell the artist or something? They drew a really cool fish person. Add 3 letters and its fine, but I don't know any humans who look like that thing. (Humanoid). Apparently merfolk have kingdoms that span the world, but somehow landfolk consider them a myth and have tales of romance. It really plays up the "maybe these aren't real" which really doesn't work in DND where someone can check really easy. It also works really poorly when you say they have "Kingdoms spanning the world". Whatever, the next paragraph goes into how they live in small hunter gatherer tribes and only unite occasionally under a strong leader. Basically the fluff for merfolk is every variant on the tale you have ever heard of. It talks about how they live in shallow water and build settlements there, and humans don't know about them. It talks about how they don't go deep into the ocean, but totally salvage shipwrecks. Its just, all of every mermaid story together. I'm suprised I don't see any entries about how their druids keep singing crabs around. Merfolk also get a single page entry, split between art, stats and fluff. In keeping with every edition, this is way not enough for an undersea empire. Stat wise they are CR 1/8 and amphibious. So really anyone near the ocean knows about these people. They are not exotic.

Merrow
This is a skippable bad guy mermaid. Its just exactly a mermaid but bad. The art looks pretty sweet, but its hard to believe this is somehow not the same race as the mermaid on the previous page. anyway, the fluff is that these used to be mermaids but then started worshiping Demogorgon. He made them into these things, and they became large sized. This made them insane and mean. Now, they live on his layer of the abyss, and he sends them to the material plane occasionally to harass costal settlements. Thats all stupid and whoever wrote it is terrible. The obvious fluff for these is that they are a parallell evolution of mermen from the deep who war with the good mermen from the previous page and live deep in the depths of the ocean. Instead you get a monster that kills you in the water, and dies on the land. So you just never use them. Their harpoon power is near, in that if they hit a huge or smaller creature, they can pull it 20ft to them. IE off a boat and into the water. You could probably wipe a low level party with some of these if you wanted to. Thats about all they can be used for.

Mimic
Its not DND without this stupid monster. Apparently they are naturally occuring shapeshifting predators. No "A wizard made them" or anything like that. Just "These are natural shapeshifters that hate dudes and like to live totally alone for years until adventurers touch me". It says they might know common or undercommon, but the stat block says they don't. DMs call I guess. This is CR2 and like all mimics intended to just auto kill a single person, and then be beaten to death. It can pretend to be anything and you have no ability to check and see. It talks about how it can change between its object form or its "True amorphous form". I'd have liked to have gotten a description of what that looks like, or maybe a picture. Total mystery though. So I said mimics were designed to just kill a party member and die. Because this is 5e, even though that was the intent, and multiple monsters in this book actually do this by accident, the mimic does not do this. If you youch it, it auto grapples you. If it grapples you, it gets advantage to deal 11 damage to you on an attack roll. Thats about it. So in reality, it bites someone, and then everyone kills it and spends the rest of the campaign hitting every object with a 10ft pole. Thanks DM.

Mind Flayer
This is an entry you brace yourself to read. They are one of the coolest DND monsters, and they were fucked up in the end of 3.X, 4e, and 5e does not have a good track record so far. The first image of a mind flayer is a purple hued cave. It basically looks like the same cave drow live in. Thats a weird choice, but OK. You know the fluff for mind flayers. I won't rehash it all, except to point out that Thoon isn't mentioned. It puts a lot of fluff into the "Mind flayers have tons of thralls" idea, but when you read the stats they really just don't. They can dominate 1 monster a day. And it gets a save. In reality they just can't have huge mind dominated armies. The fluff references an elder brain but it has no stats. This is debatable a good thing, but I'd want some sort of stats, even if its not monster stats. Apparently they eat brains because it has stuff they need for their biology. It doesn't say how many they need to eat. There is a sidebar in the variant rules font talking about qualith. Qualith is that stupid mind flayer brail tactile writing they do that is read via tentacle. This is and has always been stupid. Next page has a picture of a mind flayer, and he looks badass. This is someone I want as my campaigns end boss. He is CR 7, and sucks pretty hard in combat. He no longer has spells outside of at will detect thoughts and levitate, and a 1/day dominate monster and self only plane shift. INstead he has a mind blast DC 15 int or be stunned for 1 min. Save each turn. It then has a single attack a round called "Tentacles" that does minimal damage and might grapple you. This is one of the few grapples that you get to roll againt to not be grappled. Maybe on your turn, maybe immediatley when it happens. The rules are unclear. This also throws a DC 15 int save or be stunned until grapple ends. If it has you grappled, and you are stunned, you take 55 damage. If that kills you, it eats your brain. They kind of suck and you'd need to fight 5-6 of them for it to be a danger to a party. Otherwise, it stuns everyone, grabs a dude and then sucks on his head. Everyone else wakes up and beats him to deaeth. It has a variant that is CR 8 with spells. This is actually a challenge. It can throw out walls of force, telekenesis, confusion, hallucinatory terrain, clairvoyance, blur, invisability, ray of enfeeblement, sleep, disguise self, and a bunch of spells I skipped. This is actually a challenge and the mind flayer you remember. It can probably divide and conqure your party and actually be a threat.


The blacks are way deeper in my book. Its really solid.

Minotaur
Another classic. I told you, M has a lot of them. Minotaur get tons of descriptions depending on edition and story. 5e keeps the DND tradition of wild monster that eats dudes. I'm not against it, but with the recent computer RPG crowd used to them being playable, I can see this being a mistake. Although I know 5e would hate to use that as a reason. The fluff keeps all the BS about how they follow baphomet but it doesn't seem totally out of place for them. Its got a bunch of stuff about how even though he made them, they breed true which is good to know. They are a classic brute, and at CR 3, they do that job well enough. They are fast, decent HP, super low AC, and charge+Rage powers. If they move, and hit with a gore they get 9 free damage and a str save to not be pushed and knocked prone. It also has the traditional labyrinthine recall power where they can't get trapped in mazes. 5e gives that a boost to a thing you care about and not a piece of fluff. Now it can recall perfectly any path it has traveled. Thats actually a shame, because it might be weaker than immunity to the maze spell. The art differs a little between the two pics. One has a humanoid proportions and one is way more ogre/bestial with a hunched back. The difference is kind of annoying.

Modrons
Oh good, that stupid joke monster is back. Yaaay..... Thanks 5e. They are beings of absolute law that inhabit mechanus. Here they "increase order in the multiverse in accordance with laws beyond the comprehension of mortal minds". That sounds like chaos to me, and if I didn't know better you could almost argue its a critique on law/chaos alignments. We do know better because 5e uses this as an actual argument, and not a metaphor for how law and chaos are stupid ideas for alignment in the manner DND implements them. They have no sense of self and receive their commands from superiors and carry them out with total obedience. Randomly once every 289 years, Primus (the leader, not the band) sends all his Monodrones on a mach across the outer planes. This is "Obstensibly" a reconnaissance mission, but its long and dangerous and only a small number ever return. This sounds a lot like insanity to me. Now I'll describe the actual versions of Modrons, and this is the real bullshit part. Monodrones are allowed 1 task. They can only ever do 1 thing. There is no qualifiers for what that one thing is, so I can't say if "Fight" is a single thing, or if "Defend yourself" "Attack that guy" is two commands and beyond its ability. What about "Walk" "Dodge" "Swing sword"? No help there. Some sample commands would have been great. More ranks up means more commands. Anyway, all modrons suck at everything, so your DM shouldn't really use them often. They are also all super low level.

A bit about Modrons. They originally started as a joke. They were literally sentient dice that arbitrated all law in the universe. Get the joke yet? Good, I'm glad you did. Basically Mearls didn't. This was a throw away joke monster that got a gritty reboot. They used to have a heirarchy with a motivation for keeping law and order. Showing up to beat on PCs who cheated as a subtle reminder from the DM to let the dice rule all, not cheating. Now they are a race of 5 arbitrary things that all listen to the rantings of a mad dude called primus who lives and does incomprehensible stuff in the name of law. Prior you could believe that the Modron has no idea why its task is lawful because its above his rank (Get the joke, its a beurocracy). Now you have modrons who don't know why its lawful because its probably coming from Primus, who just assures us it is lawful. Oh and there is a variant presented to allow for sometimes chaotic ones.

Wikipedia on Modrons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modron_(Du ... 6_Dragons)

Basically this is an old joke monster that was brought back as a serious monster, and then failed to be as serious as the old joke monster. Its an astounding failure of 5e.

Mummies
Mummies are a classic. They should probably be a template, but they aren't. Instead its a traditional monster. Straight mummies are a curse. Priests do a ritual where they blow the GM and he lets them make a mummy. This mummy gets parameters and gaurds a thing. They lose their memories and so a lot of classic stories about mummies are right out. They are basically zombies, only they aren't immortal. Its got a bunch about how you can end the curse, but it looks like hitting it with a sword works a lot faster. It then goes into mummy lords. Basically if you are making a mummy and suck the GMs cock just right, you might make a mummy lord. This is what you do to someone you like, who will keep their memories and be super powered. These are actually immortal unless you destory their heart. The page with the mummy stats on it also has the mummy lords lair stats, so at a glance, you think you might get them on a generic mummy. All mummies are CR 3, and have a 20ft move speed. So its hard not to kite them with 5e's movement rules. That said, it can glare at you (DC 11 wis, so you pass) and if you fail you are frightened for a turn. If you somehow fail by 5 or more, you are instead paralyzed until its turn. It can also punch you and give you mummy rot. This drains your HP max by 10 every day until you hit it with remove curse. Its got 58HP and vulnerability to fire, so as soon as you see one your mage probably one shots it.

Mummy Lords are CR 15. They also have a shitty move speed, but they have spells. Their glare DC still sucks. The spells are thematically appropriate for a mummy and decently worth casting. All of its powers suck including its legendary actions, so once its out of spells just let it die and respawn. It does have a lair action preventing spellcasting of spells less than 4th level requiring a DC 16 con save. Failure means Xd6 where X=spell level. Thats actually worth something, but only works 1/3 rounds. Its regional effects are kind of neat. You can't bring food inside its tomb, meaning you can't hang long. Divination fails 25% of the time, but provides misleading results. So you don't know you failed. Basically you could make a maze, and use the lair effects decently to make it so no one ever gets to the mummy. But thats not a cool mummy. Thats just an annoying battle of attrition.

Myconids
Intelligent hippy mushrooms that live in the underdark. They actually have a society that I can see not immediately falling apart. Basically they just grow fungi and pal around. You get a solid ammount of monsters from CR 0, to CR 2. All of them have neat spore powers and they actually slip a template in the middle of the template. Thats weird considering we came from mummies but OK. This is not a template you want your PC to have, so expect it to be one of the few the DM lets you add to your character. It basically maeks you a slave to fungus people and all your mental stats go down. The art on page 231 is awesome. Possible the best in the book. The one looks like a fungal swamp thing, and the others just look super trippy. Exactly like they are supposed to. Stat wise you could probably wipe out a tribe if you wanted to, but i can't really see any reason for anyone to want to. Mind flayers, adventurers, zombies, anything really. I will mention that the animating spores power is a huge pain in the ass. You are supposed to apply the spore servant to any corpse it targets as a standard action. Applying a template mid-combat is a huge time sink.

[TiaC]

Time to get back into it. We start today with M and Ill see how far we get. M is a big letter with lots of big name monsters for DND. Mind Flayer, Minotaur, Mummy, Medusa. All the classics. I also want to point out that the M's start on page 212 of a 350 page book. Actual lettered monsters stop on 316 with the zombie. So while it seems like I'm barely halfway through the book, in reality I'm closer to 75%. My honest theory on this is that they actually started writing the book with the A monsters and wrote the Zs at the end. Then they had a time crunch and skipped a lot of stuff. So you end up with loads of Ds and Ls but very few Zs. Its a small thing to notice, but you do when flipping to the middle of the book and you see the J, and not the M.

This has always been the case, the halfway point of 3.5's MM was at Grey Render. The Ds alone made up a quarter of the monster pages.

[erik]

This has always been the case, the halfway point of 3.5's MM was at Grey Render. The Ds alone made up a quarter of the monster pages.

I think a running theme of this review has been complaining about things that have existed long before 5e. But there's enough good stuff in here that I think we can let it slide.

[TiaC]

This has always been the case, the halfway point of 3.5's MM was at Grey Render. The Ds alone made up a quarter of the monster pages.

I think a running theme of this review has been complaining about things that have existed long before 5e. But there's enough good stuff in here that I think we can let it slide.

That is fine when there's an actual reason to fix things, I was disputing that they just gave up at the end. Modrons are older than 5e, but there was no good reason to bring them forward. However, there's no inherent problem with having a bunch of monster names early in the alphabet. (It's actually to be expected, as the end of the alphabet has all the letters we never really use.)

[tussock]

I find AD&D's dual-classing handles things pretty well there (not perfect, just better than everything else on offer).

How do you get so wrong about everything? Everything?!

Right, because the line of explanation it needed ("meh, whatever") and typical AD&D restrictive nonsense that's been thrown out for every other rule (so you don't need 17 Int, you can flip back, demi-humans can do it, you just keep your abilities, yes, yes, yes, yes) and it's all vastly less book space, easier to use, and you can just be level appropriate all the time and learn the new class as you go.

If having a "power meter" attached is so vital, which it isn't (a level 8 Fighter is what comes after a level 7 Fighter, and that's all it's ever been), you can just make one. 3e says multiclass people are a 2-3 levels better than their caster class level in the multi-class patches. AD&D says they're 1 level better than their caster class level (1.5 for a triple-class). Pick one.

[spongeknight]

I find AD&D's dual-classing handles things pretty well there (not perfect, just better than everything else on offer).

How do you get so wrong about everything? Everything?!

Right, because the line of explanation it needed ("meh, whatever") and typical AD&D restrictive nonsense that's been thrown out for every other rule (so you don't need 17 Int, you can flip back, demi-humans can do it, you just keep your abilities, yes, yes, yes, yes) and it's all vastly less book space, easier to use, and you can just be level appropriate all the time and learn the new class as you go.

If having a "power meter" attached is so vital, which it isn't (a level 8 Fighter is what comes after a level 7 Fighter, and that's all it's ever been), you can just make one. 3e says multiclass people are a 2-3 levels better than their caster class level in the multi-class patches. AD&D says they're 1 level better than their caster class level (1.5 for a triple-class). Pick one.

I think we've found our new Shadzar, everyone. "AD&D mechanics work if you don't use even a single part of the actual mechanics!"

[Dean]

He's not like Shadzar he's just a harmless idiot. Once you understand that Tussock just says things without worrying whether they're right or even clearly thought out you get a kind of zen acceptance of him. Think of him like a senile man telling stories. He can be entertaining and even fun to listen to but it's all just ramblings so you shouldn't expect anything meaningful.

[Krusk]

I think a running theme of this review has been complaining about things that have existed long before 5e. But there's enough good stuff in here that I think we can let it slide.

Thats the thing. Even if it has always been shitty, we are reviewing a new edition. This is the opportunity to make it not shitty. Not keep it shitty and say "But the last guy also made it shitty".

As for front loading the early letters, its mostly just weird and I wanted to point out that while I'm on M, I'm also nearing the end of the book. It does give the impression that they just had to stop making entries towards the back of the book though. You could seriously pad out the R, S, T's of the book with more monsters and balance it out. Instead it comes off like they padded one side and not the other. (the D's).

[Previn]

I think a running theme of this review has been complaining about things that have existed long before 5e. But there's enough good stuff in here that I think we can let it slide.

Thats the thing. Even if it has always been shitty, we are reviewing a new edition. This is the opportunity to make it not shitty. Not keep it shitty and say "But the last guy also made it shitty".

As for front loading the early letters, its mostly just weird and I wanted to point out that while I'm on M, I'm also nearing the end of the book. It does give the impression that they just had to stop making entries towards the back of the book though. You could seriously pad out the R, S, T's of the book with more monsters and balance it out. Instead it comes off like they padded one side and not the other. (the D's).

That doesn't honestly sound that different from the 3.x MM where you have something like 60 monsters under the D heading and a total of 5 under X, Y and Z together.

[ACOS]

As for front loading the early letters, its mostly just weird and I wanted to point out that while I'm on M, I'm also nearing the end of the book. It does give the impression that they just had to stop making entries towards the back of the book though. You could seriously pad out the R, S, T's of the book with more monsters and balance it out. Instead it comes off like they padded one side and not the other. (the D's).

This shouldn't be a surprise. The "D's" give us Devils, Demons, and Dragons; all of which inherently have a massive amount of stuff attached to them. Even by simple coincidence due to language, just these 3 iconic creatures are enough to push the page distribution on any Book o' Beasties. Seriously, bias/padding/whatever very well may not have anything to do with this.

[name_here]

And, of course, celestials are in C and elementals in E, so those letters are also oversized.

[TiaC]

As for front loading the early letters, its mostly just weird and I wanted to point out that while I'm on M, I'm also nearing the end of the book. It does give the impression that they just had to stop making entries towards the back of the book though. You could seriously pad out the R, S, T's of the book with more monsters and balance it out. Instead it comes off like they padded one side and not the other. (the D's).

This shouldn't be a surprise. The "D's" give us Devils, Demons, and Dragons; all of which inherently have a massive amount of stuff attached to them. Even by simple coincidence due to language, just these 3 iconic creatures are enough to push the page distribution on any Book o' Beasties. Seriously, bias/padding/whatever very well may not have anything to do with this.

In 3e at least, D also has Dire animals and Dinosaurs for another decent chunk. In 3.5 celestials were no longer a unified entry, but they all ended up before G anyways.

[ACOS]

And, of course, celestials are in C and elementals in E, so those letters are also oversized.

Not to mentions "G" for giants.

In 3e at least, D also has Dire animals and Dinosaurs for another decent chunk. In 3.5 celestials were no longer a unified entry, but they all ended up before G anyways.

True. And Celestials were broken up in to Angels, Archons, and Guardinals - all still early in the alphabet.

It's simply a matter of coincidence; a really silly thing to get twisted up over.

[TiaC]

In 3e at least, D also has Dire animals and Dinosaurs for another decent chunk. In 3.5 celestials were no longer a unified entry, but they all ended up before G anyways.

True. And Celestials were broken up in to Angels, Archons, and Guardinals - all still early in the alphabet.

And Eladrin.

[ACOS]

In 3e at least, D also has Dire animals and Dinosaurs for another decent chunk. In 3.5 celestials were no longer a unified entry, but they all ended up before G anyways.

True. And Celestials were broken up in to Angels, Archons, and Guardinals - all still early in the alphabet.

And Eladrin.

Oh yeah, I forgot about those.

So, (in 3.5 ... I don't have access to 5e MM, but I assume similar #s) between Celestials, Demons, Devils, and True Dragons, you've got 45 pages - that's 15% of the book with just those 4 categories of creatures.
Toss in Giants for 7 pages, Dinosaurs and Dire Animals for 6, and Genies for 4 pages, and with just these 8 categories of creatures, we've got 62 pages - that's 20% of the book in just 3 letters (not to mention the other creatures in those letters).