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

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sandmann
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Post by sandmann »

Mask_De_H wrote:Oh sweet fuck don't do this again.
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DSMatticus
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Post by DSMatticus »

Hamstertamer's "your daughter is reading books? Stop being such an irresponsible parent and make her go do things outside!" was double-take worthy levels of dumb. Hamstertamer's "the key to holding a woman's attention is their vagina" was... colorfully offensive. With respect to hamstertamer, I am firmly in camp "why is this person saying words and how do I make them stop doing that?" But let's just call him a fucking moron. Or not call him at all; I assume if we don't make eye contact with the crazy person eventually he'll stop talking to us.

Anyway, Night Goat: you lost the right to be taken seriously on social issues when you claimed that being a minority was advantageous in seeking employment. No one is really interested in seeing you point fingers, because you are genuinely one of those racist know-nothing shitstains who whines about how easy black people have it. The truths you know aren't true and the beliefs you hold are unbelievable, and as such your opinions are about as useful as the flaming bag of crap someone needs to leave on your doorstep; sure, you get to laugh at an asshole, but otherwise it's just really shitty.
Omegonthesane
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Post by Omegonthesane »

Starmaker wrote:
Drolyt wrote:
Starmaker wrote: You shouldn't be let anywhere near your friend's four-year-old daughter.
What the fuck?
Recently, hamstertamer went on a rant about his friend's too-mature-for-her-age four-year-old daughter in order to one-up JigokuBosatsu and his daughter. Now he states all women are interested in sticking their vaginas into everything everything into their vaginas, even though he presumably has a counterexample represented by the aforementioned 4-year-old girl. So there are two options: hamstertamer is just a lying semen-stain in his parthenogenetic dad's pants who doesn't actually hold the opinion he expressed, or he's a pedo. Since internet conversation wouldn't be very productive if every post could be "debunked" with "you're lying about your opinion", I assume it's the latter.

Kindly go fuck yourself with a chainsaw, hamstertamer.
I had assumed hamstertamer was lying about his friend's too-mature-for-her-age four-year-old as an act of parody in order to passive-aggressively accuse JigokuBosatsu of making things up on the Interwebs to extend his e-peen.

I also don't really think the logic
Premise: X thinks you can draw in female customers by selling them sex
Premise: X has mentioned the existence of a prepubescent female, ever
Conclusion: X AM A PEDOFILE!
really holds ground.

EDIT: Though, fuck hamstertamer for suggesting only SJWs are interested in non-porno pandering.
Last edited by Omegonthesane on Wed Dec 03, 2014 12:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

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Prak
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Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

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 Red Archon »

Sorry about that one.

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Post by Longes »

Dragons
This is almost its own mini book, so I will break down sections by sections.

We start with some stuff on their age catagories, and all dragons of the same age are the same size. This is probably an improvement as its easier to track. They also age at the same rate. Again same deal. What isn't OK is that the biggest dragon ever is 20ft by 20ft. See that pic? our dragon fits inside that building the dragon is sitting on. Fuck this noise. Finish the bottle, and burn the book. No one has ever complained that dragons were too big. I've never heard it once. I hear consistantly that DND dragons aren't big enough to tell the stories we want. Whoever pitched the idea of an elephant sized dragon should have not been laughed out of the room but shouted out. a 20ft dragon is unacceptable.
Question. Isn't Gargantuan size - "20x20 or larger"? Wouldn't that cover dragons of any size?
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Post by Drolyt »

Longes wrote:
Dragons
This is almost its own mini book, so I will break down sections by sections.

We start with some stuff on their age catagories, and all dragons of the same age are the same size. This is probably an improvement as its easier to track. They also age at the same rate. Again same deal. What isn't OK is that the biggest dragon ever is 20ft by 20ft. See that pic? our dragon fits inside that building the dragon is sitting on. Fuck this noise. Finish the bottle, and burn the book. No one has ever complained that dragons were too big. I've never heard it once. I hear consistantly that DND dragons aren't big enough to tell the stories we want. Whoever pitched the idea of an elephant sized dragon should have not been laughed out of the room but shouted out. a 20ft dragon is unacceptable.
Question. Isn't Gargantuan size - "20x20 or larger"? Wouldn't that cover dragons of any size?
So either you don't have many monsters much larger than 20x20 or that size category is useless.
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Post by Krusk »

Drolyt wrote:
Longes wrote: Question. Isn't Gargantuan size - "20x20 or larger"? Wouldn't that cover dragons of any size?
So either you don't have many monsters much larger than 20x20 or that size category is useless.
Technically you are right. In that they wrote the words "Or make some shit up" after a size description. To elaborate on Drolyt's response, either things are the size they wrote or its all just "Make some shit up". Ill evaluate the rules and leave the evaluation of "Make some shit up" to people on their own time.

---

Night Goat and Hamster - Take your weird Pedo/racist/political BS to your own thread and be terrible in it. This is for discussion of the 5e Monster Manual.
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Post by Krusk »

I've got a few minutes, and can get a couple monsters out. Y is surprisingly long, so it won't happen tonight.

Xorn
Inhabitants from the elemental plane of earth, they subsist on loot and are designed to fuck your players in a neat way. It talks about how hungry they are and how they love to steal and beg for food. Food being gold. It doesn't talk much about their society much which seems weird, because it got mentioned in the PHB, but its not that weird. CR wise they are CR 5, so you might actually care. Especially considering they have earth glide, and treasure sense. This means they can cruise around under the ground and punch you in the feet until you die, then eat your loot. If you don't have flight by level 5, these can be a pretty big threat. They have AC 19, essentially full cover, and decent HP. On attacks they make 3 claws and a bite for not awesome damage. Best response is to flee and ignore it because its move and burrow speeds are 20, but PCs hate doing this, and the assumption is that it will track you down at night.

Yeti
Yeti get a shockingly large amount of detail at two pages which is funny to me for some reason. They have two types, a yeti, and an abominable yeti at CR 3 and 9 respectively. Stat wise they aren't that interesting. Basic bruisers with low AC, but a decent speed. They have a CHilling gaze power to cause cold damage and paralyze for 1 min (save ends), but its a low DC con save, so you probably pass. The interesting part about Yeti's is that they are given a language (Yeti) and mental stats between 7 and 13. The fluff sucks entirely and is all about how they are beserkers who just raid shit, but they really missed a chance to have them be isolasionist, have a whole hidden city in the mountains they are fiercly protective of, and fierce in battle when provoked. Something to make them an un-intended foe. Instead they are relatively generic. Also of note, the abominable one has a breath weapon for solid damage. Art wise their yeti look fatter than I've normally seen, and have some cool looking horns which is neat.
Last edited by Krusk on Wed Dec 03, 2014 10:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Krusk »

Yuan-Ti
The Yuan-ti DNDs take on the classic trope of Evil Snake dudes. They basically play the role of COBRA for fantasy games and its a solid niche that not many other races actually fill in DND. Its kind of suprising that there aren't like 14 different races of evil snake dudes, what with DNDs track record on this sort of thing, but there isn't. You get Yuan-Ti and a couple no name throw aways. In DND the fluff is that back in the early days of civilization humans worshiped snakes and were awesome until they became fanatical and then bred with snakes. Yup, it breeds true apparently does apply in DND land, and thats how we got snake people. They have to have some awkward holidays, based around the first time a human got drunk and banged a snake or something, right? I wish I knew more about snake sex, so I could put a lot of awesome factoids in here, but I really don't. As far as I can tell, the bestiality thing is new with 5e. Then you've got a bunch about how they are evil because they don't know human emotions, which sounds more like a neutral alignment to me. There are 4 pages of Yuan Ti, and each type of 5e Yuan-Ti has its own stat block. First up is the abomination, which is apparently the best type of Yuan-Ti. They are giant snakes with arms, and the pic is poorly drawn but kind of neat. CR wise its a 8 and probably alright at that level. Its resistant to magic, has a few solid spells (fear and suggestion) and magic resistance. It can also bite, constrict, and scimitar an opponent all in the same round. Its bite does solid damage and poisons people. The constrict works on anyone and has a auto grapple rider on it. The scimitar is a sword but nothing cool about it. They also carry longbows which makes loads of sense, but is shocking for 5e, as most humanoids don't. So he can shoot you with poison arrows if you fly away. The Malison has 3 types which is super confusing. They all share a stat block even though they all look different and have different stats. All are considered middle caste and CR 3. Type 1 is a human body with a snake head, and thats what the pic is of. This one has a bite, simitar, and longbow attacks, and some basic magic resistance. Its a decent CR 3 foe. Type 2 has a human head and body with snakes for arms. Presumably those snakes for arms also have heads because it makes two bite attacks with its arms and I wonder if they can eat or not. I also wonder about how many brains it has but there is no insight given. This one kind of sucks if you coudln't tell, and it only has melee attacks and can't work door knobs or tie its own shoes. Type 3 has the human head and upper body of a dude and snake legs. This one has a solid amount of forms and is probably the best. Its got longbows, scimitars, and a constrict attack. Its also worth CR 3. Yuan-Ti Pureblood is our last type, and this just looks like a hot chick with a snake tongue. I'm not sure why these just aren't human cultists but whatever. CR wise they are CR 1 and have 3 uses of poison spray and suggestion each and then animal friendship (snakes only) at will. THey also have a sword and shortbow. All Yuan-Ti can shape change into snakes, but their forms suck in combat, so you generally won't for non-story reasons. On the page with the purebloods we get a bit on their gods. Dendar the night serpent that eats "fear", Messhaulk the master of the pit. Who is just a sleeping snake they are trying to wake up, and Sseth the Sibilant Death, who is for some reason winged. People think this one might lead them out of decline. Also apparently Sseth potentially ate Merrshaulk which gives some decent story hooks. So these entries for dieties are actually better than anything in the PHB which is kind of surprising. You probably still don't care, but at least your DM can give some internal logic to them. So lets talk big opportunity missed by 5e. There is no talk of plots to turn existing people into snake people. From every module with the Yuan-Ti I've played, and every computer game that seemed to be the plot of the Yuan-Ti. Its a pretty cool plot and I was kind of confused not to see it. Instead we get a generic "they do evil for evil gods" foe which is kind of lame. All in all, the Yuan-Ti take 4 pages to get through.

Yugoloths
People seem to love these guys, but I don't get it. I heard endless bitching when they didn't make the cut for the 3.X Monster manual, and it just sort of made me not care at all. I read their fluff and I really can't be bothered to care. This is especially bad in 5e where you have demons and devils working as mercs for various other races. It sort of cuts out the need entirely, and I suspect they were included for grognards to fap to. Fluff wise Yugoloths are the NE equivilent of Demons and Devils, and work entirely off profit. The book opens with a bit about how they act as mecenaries and are notorious for their shifting loyalties, which seems to make them out to be really shitty mercs. Whatever, they are spawned on Gehenna (the sloped plane) and the original ones were spawned by "A sisterhood of night hags" commissioned by Asmodeus. Right out the gate I'm not sure why they aren't Devils. When the hags made them, they put all their true names in the Books of Keeping except for the leader and thats how he ruled them before he lost the book. Now they just do their thing as mercs. The next header is "Fiendish mercenaries" which again, makes me think they are actually just devils, as Fiendish is the DND term for devils. Its all about how they make promises and sell their services, but then break their promises and I can't see why anyone hires them. This book treats them like real monsters and wastes a lot of space. Its got a variant tied on this page for giving them the ability to summon. this doesn't increase CR but means there is a good chance of fighting twice as many dudes as planned.

Arcanaloth
These are jackal-headed beings with humanoid bodies, which makes them the third in this book after jackalweres, and were jackals. Their fluff also has a bit about how they speak and write all languages, and I was suprised to see their stats reflect this. Picturewise, someone drew the wolf from little red riding hood in grandmas clothes. It talks about how they are big spellcasters and the stats back it up. They are CR 12, but have 8th level spells. Their spell list is actually not terrible either. Dimension door, counter spell, feat, hold monster, finger of death, chain lightning, mnirror image, and more. It can also teleport as an action, but it only goes 60ft.... so people just move over there and hit you. Randomly it can fly, but none of its fluff or its pictures show it with that ability.

Mezzoloth
This is the bulk of the population, made up of human sized insect monsters. They are your dretch equivalent, but for some reason they are CR 5. Its got cloud kill and the yugoloth teleport 60ft power, but nothing else to speak of. If you survive cloudkill (DC 11) you can probably beat it.

Nycaloth
These are giant fat winged dudes in loincloths. I love the image of them flying overhead in their loincloths just distracting everyone. In reality they are probably supposed to be scary. It feels a need to call out that these ones only break their agreements if the reward is extreme. Stat wise they are CR 9 and have a couple of at will powers that might make them hard to fight, but probably not. Mirror image and invisibility at will. It flies but basically has to fly up to fight you, so its not that scary.

Ultroloth
These are apparently the Balrog for yugoloths but its pretty unimpressive. They look like every big head green alien ever, and thats special. Because the description calls them gray skinned, but the artist used green. Somehow no one cared enough to check that sort of thing, and its not the first instance I've caught this book. Statwise its only CR 13, so its not going to be a big bad for most campaigns. Thats a problem with Yugoloths in general, in that you can't really make a campaign about someone finding the book of names and getting an army of them to conqure the universe. At best they are CR 13, and while thats impressive to a towns guard or a cat or something, the CR scale goes to 30. I know bonded accuracy fucks with this, but they seriously aren't much of a political threat. The ultroloth has some spells but not really anything cool. Wall of fire is fun, dimension door, invisibility, etc. It has a hypnotic gaze power with its eyes forcing DC 17 wis saves or being charmed. That seems like a good idea, considering it can do that and 3 sword attacks, but you are only charmed until its next turn. And while charmed you are stunned. So really you are stunned, not charmed.

And thats it for the yugoloths. 4 monsters really doesn't seem like enough when compared to Devils and Demons and its not. At best these are just filler evil dudes for when you get tired of fighting ice devils all day.

Zombies
Zombies are the last named monster in the book, but there is still ~40 pages so don't worry. In 5e zombies are not a template and you can't just make zombie anythings. Instead you pick the zombie form that most closely matches the stats presented. This is obviously terrible at face value. You get 3 stat sets, adn have to match stuff to that. "Zombie", Ogre Zombie, and Beholder Zombie. No Giant zombies, horse zombies, or gnome zombies. Fluff wise they are driven to kill anyone they touch, which rules out the "mindless only obeys orders" bit skeletons have. That seems like a decent choice to make and gives you most modern zombie movies, but 3 paragraphs later you say they are mindless and only follow orders. Which is also a decent choice to make and gives you a more classic zombie out of voodoo with necromancers creating them for a purpose. Unfortunatly you can't have a "Kills everything in arms reach" and "Only does what I say" zombie. Its sort of one or the other. 5e gives us both and you have no idea what happens when you stumble on a zombie in a hallway. Does it attack or does it ignore you? Stat wise they attmepted to create a headshot mechanic and its certainly an attempt. If it would die, it makes a con save DC 5+damage. If successful it goes to 1 HP instead. If it is crit or takes radiant damage it doesn't get the save. I feel like this is going to make fights against a lot of zombies a pain in the ass to actually run. Especially seeing how the stock one is CR 1/4 and you should probably fight 16 at a time. The beholder zombie gets an eye ray, but I have no idea if that indicates other magical beast type zombies get their powers when I make my own zombies. Also vital info. Zombies now have mental stats of Int 3, Wis 6, Cha 5. Wis 8 if its a beholder. So your zombie might be as wise or charismatic as some of your PCs if you rolled stats. More importantly though, thats the same as some monsters generally seen as sentient. Say Ogres or Displacer Beasts. Shit a beholder zombie is wiser than ogres.


Now that I've gone through Z, the assumption is that this is the end. Like all monster manuals, there is a secret last letter for Animals. This time its called Apendix A, Miscellaneous Creatures. Ill get into this next time because its my absolute least favorite part of the book.
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Post by Blicero »

Congrats on actually getting through this thing. Just skimming through entries, this book seems to have a lot of stuff that the 3E MM did not. A surprising number of those seemed to have their first 3E appearance in that Monstrous Compendium book. Which is weird, because that book was pretty light in content. The rest seem to mostly be from the 3E MM2 or FF, with odd exceptions like the fucking Nothic (only appearance: 3E Miniatures Handbook).

Is this book missing anything notable from 3E? Or have pagecount bloat and shorter statblocks just let them include more? Also, does this book have any completely new entries? (As opposed to something that shares only a name with its previous incarnations.) For that matter, did the 3E MM have any completely new entries?
Last edited by Blicero on Thu Dec 04, 2014 11:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by TiaC »

Blicero wrote:Congrats on actually getting through this thing. Just skimming through entries, this book seems to have a lot of stuff that the 3E MM did not. A surprising number of those seemed to have their first 3E appearance in that Monstrous Compendium book. Which is weird, because that book was pretty light in content.
Monsters of Faerun was a chance for the grognards of WotC to add in all their AD&D nostalgia. It's unsurprising that there's a lot of overlap.
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Post by erik »

Blicero wrote:Is this book missing anything notable from 3E?
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Post by Krusk »

Fuck it lets keep going. Blicero I can't answer your question without hitting the most frustrating part of this book.

Appendix A: Miscellaneous Creatures
Because the rest of the book hasn't included that... This section promises to include "statistics for various animals, vermin, and other critters. The stat blocks are organized alphabetically by creature name."

Your first monster seems normal enough. Ape[. It covers all monkeys and gorillas aside from Baboons which for reason also show up in their own entry. So you think this is going to be a section on animals, vermin and shit. Right? Right?

Hey Fuck You.

Remeber, this is a 5e book. Your second monster? An awakened Shrub. Your third monster, an Awakened Tree. Apparently shrubs and trees are different enough but Orangutans and spider monkeys aren't. Fuck you. The awakened tree and shrub have the fuck you hide power, but can randomlly attack you. The only fluff it gets is that it can be made with the awaken spell. Thats pretty cool, but if you go read the awaken spell it specifically says "Your DM pulls stats out of his ass, or uses the ones in the MM". So maybe you use these, but maybe not. Also apparently this section includes magic plants too. Whatever though, animals, vermin and plants. Apparently plants are critters too. Lets do this.

Fuck You.

The fourth monster is the Axe Beak. WTF is an axebeak? I don't know, 5e is my first game. Your answer had better not be "Google it". I did and the first his paizo, pathfinder wiki, final fantasy wiki, pfsrd, and finally something called wikibooks saying its a bird that lived with dinosaurs I forgot about. So a bunch of pathfinder shit, and then an obscure dinosaur. Glad you threw this into a section on dogs and cats and shit. Got it. If I want to find a weird dinosaur bird, I don't look under A for axebeak, I don't look for D for dinosaur, I look under F for Fuck You. It also has no picture, like most entries in this appendix. Paizo's website also mentions that this is another name for the Terror Bird, a DND monster I have heard of, but by that point... fuck it. No one is going to flip through their book to T, then think "No A!" "Maybe D?..." and then finally settle on the appendix.

Rolling through some normal animals gets us to the B section. Here we hit Blink Dog. Yup. You'll notice I never gave any review of blink dog, because apparently that was easy enough for someone to immediately understand it didn't need an entry. Just like Black Bear that comes right before it. Blink Dogs are now fey and have a teleport power. Its CR 1/4 and generally is a waste of space, but it does give you a picture on the next page and its clearly supernatural.

So as the reader, at this point it starts to dawn on you. This appendix is all the bullshit they didn't have space or time to complete. They just stuck everything in here, didn't they. Yes. Yes, they did.

Immediately following Blink Dogs is the Blood Hawk and I'm immediately unclear if this is a supernatural hawk that spews blood, or some obscure hawk they felt a need to include. Googling it returns stuff from F-zero and X-men 2099, so I assume its a fake DND monster. It has no special powers or abilities, is the same creature type as a bear, and is CR 1/8 vs a normal Hawks CR0. I have no idea why anyone wanted to include this...

CrabI feel an obligation to point out that on page 320 you've got two tiny animals. One is a "Cat" with no fluff. I assume its a house cat, but it could be the worlds lamest lion. Right next to it is a crab. I don't know if you've ever seen a crab, but most crabs are not the size of a cat. This is probably just back to me bitching about size catagories in 5e again, but if Crabs and Cats are the same size you'd think they would put something about how "These are those crazy hubcap sized crabs and really small house cats" or something.

Death Dog
The death dog as far as I can tell is new to 5e. Its also thrown in here randomly so that you might glance across it I guess? I dunno. Its basically a two headed dog, but its creature type is Monstrosity, not Beast or Fey or Plant, and really this whole section should be called "Animals, and shit we forgot about". This one also gets a pic, so its very easy to tell it has two heads.

The Dire Wolf is worth calling out. What with being the only dire animal mentioned in the entire book. All those prior editions dire whatevers? Gone. I'm genuinley shocked no grognard rage has erupted over this one. Of course, you get wolves because Game of Thrones is big right now. If it bites you, you get a DC 13 str save or knocked prone.

Flying Snake is something to stop at. It has a little bit of fluff attached unlike most animals and is the same creature type. But here is the thing. Flying Snakes are real. They are called flying snakes. The only visual cues I get are that its bright and has wings. Real flying snakes have wings. My assumption is this is some sort of Bird winged snake, but this could also just straight up be a flying snake. No insight is given.

Giant Ape. I've mentioned a few times how this book needs templates badly. The giant ape is the first in a series of "Why the Fuck don't we have templates?". Instead we get 28 creatures all listed as "Giant Thing". Alphabetically by giant. Its awful. Even better, these don't get fluff either. Just "Sometimes animals are bigger than normal". The giant ape is huge, so I assume its for king kong knock offs? The Giant Badger is medium so I guess its for nothing? I think this is what old Dire animals became.

Giant Centipede. In the middle of the giant animals are some giant insects. My big hurdle is that Giant Centipedes are a real thing. In this book they are small creatures. A real world giant centipede hits about a foot in length. Small size is like 3 feet. So its more like "Slightly large centipede" I guess? There should be some shit here about "Oh and a wizard made normal centipedes giant". or something. Also of note, no Giant Ants, which seems weird. thats a relatively classic adventure.

Giant Fire Beetle Giant fire beetles exist. Normal ones don't, but apparently we needed to call these giant ones. It seems dumb to have Giant Fire Beetles without having Fire Beetles. By Giant, I of course mean small sized. It glows and has a bite attack. It looks like the flame thrower bugs in starship troopers, but it does not flame throw. I believe they used to do this in prior editions, under the name bombadier beetles or something. They were a fun low level "not kobolds" threat.

Giant Frog makes an appearance, but it is unaligned, not Chaotic because Giant Frog.

Giant Lizard. The only reason to stop and talk about these is how broad a catagory this is. For some reason, someone decided it was super offensive that all Giant Lizards had the same stats, but not offensive that all frogs, cats, and apes have the same stats. Whatever the reason, the end result is that they got variant traits. One variant gives them the ability to hold breath 15 min and swim, and the other gives spider climb so you can be like Obi-Wan. Neither affects CR because you know the drill by now.

Giant OctopusThis is also a god damn real animal. Real world giant octopuses reach 11ft in diameter. Your fantasy Giant Octopus is large. Is this a real world animal slipped into the "Giant for no raison monster" section? Or is this a giant for no raison monster? No fucks are given.

Giant Rats Giant rats are the first monster with a variant that makes them better, and lowers their CR. Its got the diseased giant rat variant. Its attack is a little worse, but you get a disease and might actually die.

Giant Toad I love that they made two monsters for toads and frogs.

Giant Wolf Spider speaking of two monsters, what the fuck? I already passed giant spider, and now we hit giant wolf spiders? Like "Woah woah wo wo wo. We can't have one type of spider. We need at least 2. If we get that we are done. No fuck your tarantulas and orb weavers, we have spiders and wolf spiders".

Once outside of giant shit, we find the Hunter Shark. It gives an indepth explanation of whatever the fuck a hunter shark is letting you know exactly what it is. Why they don't call it a great white, I don't fucking know. Instead its "Smaller than a giant shark, but larger and fiercer than a reef shark". Not more fierce.

Keeping with the tradition of random almost dinosaurs, we get the Mammoth. Its just a elephant with +2 CR and slightly higher stats.

Phase Spider Spider guy earlier then was all "people obviously know what a phase spider is, no need to give it its own entry. Just put it with the real ones". Phase spiders show up in this section too with some pretty cool art that makes them look artic. Basically it can go to the ethereal plane or material plane as a bonus action. This makes them a bitch to fight.

There is a variant for Polar Bears called the cave bear. It has the same stats, but they just want you to know that the advice earlier about swapping monsters for similar ones also applies to bears.

Quipper I think these are piranha, but I wouldn't be able to tell without the fluff and picture. Its basically a piranha but maybe someone convinced them it was copyright or something? Its a fucking Piranha, but youll never find it by browsing.

Swarm of Bats This marks the begining of the swarm stats. Who gives a shit because its just a bunch of a small thing that attacks you with bite attacks and can stand in your square and has resistance to non-magic weapons. You fight it light everything else you ever fight. Its got a bit in the variant rules sidebar about the nature of swarms. Its not actually a variant, but it wants to be clear that if someone turns into a swarm with magic that you don't use these rules. Instead they wrote a bunch of one off rules that conflict.

For whatever reason they were actually smart about some of the swarms. they wrote stats for a swarm of insects, and then have a variant pile that has beetles, centipedes, spiders, and wasps in it. Each one slightly changes the stats and adds a power.

I want to talk about the Warhorse but only because this is apparently where they stuck the fucking barding rules for this piece of shit game. As a variant for warhorses. Then you read that variant references you to the PHB for more on barding and the PHB just says just buy armor as normal, but it costs more. Then animals can wear it. Which is way better than this fucking chart here.

Winter WolfYou didn't think we weren't getting these did you? Sliped in with animals winter wolves are evil, CR 3, and have a breath weapon. Apparently they speak fucking common and giant, so enjoy that thrown out. No insight into society or why they can talk, they just fucking do OK?

Worg I think the intent here is that you saw the LoTR movies. its one of those. It speaks and all that shit, but basically it is a goblin slave but is cool with it. Also their new art direction is terribe. They don't have fur on their faces anymore, but its not done in a creepy way. Its just sort of stupid looking.

So remember all that bitching I did about how "What the fuck is this filler shit?" and "It seems like they had to ship and weren't quite ready? Turns out thats exactly what fucking happened. No room for the arch rival of Displacer Beasts, mentioned in this very book. Nope, we gotta fit in that Fucking Aarakocra and it took forever to write. Luckily, everyone loves the aarakocra, right? you've seen him in tons of games right? Whoever uses blink dogs or phase spiders.

Next up? Appendix B: Nonplayer characters. This section is almost helpful!
fectin
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Post by fectin »

Krusk wrote:I don't know if you've ever seen a crab, but most crabs are not the size of a cat.
Oh, you haven't seen this?
Image
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rasmuswagner
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Post by rasmuswagner »

I can smell the editor rubbing his balls on this piece of shit from over here.
Every time you play in a "low magic world" with D&D rules (or derivates), a unicorn steps on a kitten and an orphan drops his ice cream cone.
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Aryxbez
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Post by Aryxbez »

WTF is an axebeak?

r some obscure hawk they felt a need to include

The death dog as far as I can tell is new to 5e
Axbeak I found, though I originally saw them in 3E's Arms & Equipment guide, as giant ostrich's that had literal ax-shaped beaks.

Blood Hawks are apparently in Fiend Folio (2003, pg23), though I could've sworn they were in 4E (so they're probably that).

Death Dogs, so nope, another Fiend Folio insert.

I have to say, congrats good sir, my favorite part to this review, is the VERY FIRST monster in the ABC's of the MM being a TPK for its CR. So hilarious, it makes me want to join their forces, and engage in the Gargoylian Wars.
What I find wrong w/ 4th edition: "I want to stab dragons the size of a small keep with skin like supple adamantine and command over time and space to death with my longsword in head to head combat, but I want to be totally within realistic capabilities of a real human being!" --Caedrus mocking 4rries

"the thing about being Mister Cavern [DM], you don't blame players for how they play. That's like blaming the weather. Weather just is. You adapt to it. -Ancient History
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RobbyPants
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Post by RobbyPants »

Krusk wrote: Night Goat and Hamster - Take your weird Pedo/racist/political BS to your own thread and be terrible in it. This is for discussion of the 5e Monster Manual.
Fuck you, Monsterious Manael thread. You get to be political every two pages.

I'm actually a bit surprised that this is the thread that keeps getting derailed.
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RobbyPants
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Post by RobbyPants »

rasmuswagner wrote: Man, this edition is Mearls old notes for 2nd AD&D.
Yeah, having grown up on 2E, it makes it easy to spot when they're going all old school.

I still remember the distinction between orogs and ogrillons. I was confused by it in 1994 and I'm still confused by it.
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Post by Username17 »

On the Axe Beak: it's "legit" in that it showed up in the 1st edition Monster Manual from 1977. The original Monster Manual included a bunch of extinct animals: the Cave Bear, the Irish Elk, the Titanothere, various Dinosaurs, and of course the Axe Beak. These sorts of mundane but non-existent animals are perfectly fine for an edition of D&D to include in their core book... but they need descriptions. Since they don't exist (in our current time), players don't get exposed to them.

A non-insane writer might have a section on ancient beasts that had shit like Mammoths and Tyranosaurs. But such a section would necessarily tell the reader what the fuck was going on.

Anyway, Blood Hawks and Death Dogs are from the original Fiend Folio. They are kinda-legit monsters, in that they aren't half as stupid as some of the monsters in that book. But putting them into the appendix of "stuff we haven't finished writing" along with Blink Dogs and Winter Wolves is basically just criminal.

Quippers are D&D fresh water piranha that live in temperate and cold climates. Because piranhas are awesome, and most D&D adventures take place in climates where piranhas don't normally exist. So D&D did a D&D thing where it made there be piranhas that exist in fantasy Norway so that Viking Heroes can be threatened by piranha attack. Totally legit, but if you don't explain that, you've just wasted ink.

-Username17
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hamstertamer
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Post by hamstertamer »

Starmaker wrote:
Drolyt wrote:
Starmaker wrote: You shouldn't be let anywhere near your friend's four-year-old daughter.
What the fuck?
Recently, hamstertamer went on a rant about his friend's too-mature-for-her-age four-year-old daughter in order to one-up JigokuBosatsu and his daughter. Now he states all women are interested in sticking their vaginas into everything everything into their vaginas, even though he presumably has a counterexample represented by the aforementioned 4-year-old girl. So there are two options: hamstertamer is just a lying semen-stain in his parthenogenetic dad's pants who doesn't actually hold the opinion he expressed, or he's a pedo. Since internet conversation wouldn't be very productive if every post could be "debunked" with "you're lying about your opinion", I assume it's the latter.

Kindly go fuck yourself with a chainsaw, hamstertamer.
That wasn't recent dumbass. And to make sure you get it, my friend's four year daughter does not exist. I was just showcasing "the internet warrior's daughter" of that poster.

If you are too stupid to understand what people are writing in their posts, then don't you think you are also too stupid to post as well.

Btw, stop raping your mom and get a girlfriend. Your mom doesn't owe you sex just because she lets you live in her basement.
Last edited by hamstertamer on Fri Dec 05, 2014 6:56 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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hamstertamer
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Post by hamstertamer »

Omegonthesane wrote:
Starmaker wrote:
Drolyt wrote: What the fuck?
Recently, hamstertamer went on a rant about his friend's too-mature-for-her-age four-year-old daughter in order to one-up JigokuBosatsu and his daughter. Now he states all women are interested in sticking their vaginas into everything everything into their vaginas, even though he presumably has a counterexample represented by the aforementioned 4-year-old girl. So there are two options: hamstertamer is just a lying semen-stain in his parthenogenetic dad's pants who doesn't actually hold the opinion he expressed, or he's a pedo. Since internet conversation wouldn't be very productive if every post could be "debunked" with "you're lying about your opinion", I assume it's the latter.

Kindly go fuck yourself with a chainsaw, hamstertamer.
I had assumed hamstertamer was lying about his friend's too-mature-for-her-age four-year-old as an act of parody in order to passive-aggressively accuse JigokuBosatsu of making things up on the Interwebs to extend his e-peen.

I also don't really think the logic
Premise: X thinks you can draw in female customers by selling them sex
Premise: X has mentioned the existence of a prepubescent female, ever
Conclusion: X AM A PEDOFILE!
really holds ground.

EDIT: Though, fuck hamstertamer for suggesting only SJWs are interested in non-porno pandering.
They aren't avoiding sexy female images in their books because of conservatives, Muslims, or other people who may have a problem with said images. They are avoiding them because of the SJW mob.
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Orion
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Post by Orion »

Literally none of us think or have said that they're changing their art to appeal to conservatives. Look at Red Archon's post -- your opinion here is not controversial. We all agree that the art style was changed to appeal the SJW mob.

(Just a quick check. I'm not up on my internet slang but I assume "sjw mob" is a new word for "women, feminists, and people of good taste?)
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hamstertamer
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Post by hamstertamer »

DSMatticus wrote:Hamstertamer's "your daughter is reading books? Stop being such an irresponsible parent and make her go do things outside!" was double-take worthy levels of dumb. Hamstertamer's "the key to holding a woman's attention is their vagina" was... colorfully offensive. With respect to hamstertamer, I am firmly in camp "why is this person saying words and how do I make them stop doing that?" But let's just call him a fucking moron. Or not call him at all; I assume if we don't make eye contact with the crazy person eventually he'll stop talking to us.

Anyway, Night Goat: you lost the right to be taken seriously on social issues when you claimed that being a minority was advantageous in seeking employment. No one is really interested in seeing you point fingers, because you are genuinely one of those racist know-nothing shitstains who whines about how easy black people have it. The truths you know aren't true and the beliefs you hold are unbelievable, and as such your opinions are about as useful as the flaming bag of crap someone needs to leave on your doorstep; sure, you get to laugh at an asshole, but otherwise it's just really shitty.
I enjoyed your 100% accurate quotes from me. Never let anyone accuse you of making up fake quotes from a person or of trying to mislead people. But to be fair, you have some really memorable quotes yourself, who can forget when DSMatticus said, "I like dog butt holes. Sorry I just like them. I love getting my little dick dirty. I really love it." That's classic a quote from you. I find it disgusting, but each to one's own I guess.
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hamstertamer
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Post by hamstertamer »

Orion wrote:Literally none of us think or have said that they're changing their art to appeal to conservatives. Look at Red Archon's post -- your opinion here is not controversial. We all agree that the art style was changed to appeal the SJW mob.

(Just a quick check. I'm not up on my internet slang but I assume "sjw mob" is a new word for "women, feminists, and people of good taste?)
Read this carefully,
EDIT: Though, fuck hamstertamer for suggesting only SJWs are interested in non-porno pandering.
my response:
They aren't avoiding sexy female images in their books because of conservatives, Muslims, or other people who may have a problem with said images. They are avoiding them because of the SJW mob.
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