Monster Manual 2!

I was lucky enough to receive a spankin' new review copy of the Monster Manual 2! I've not had the chance to actually exercise any of the new baddies in my campaign, but after reading through the book I am very excited to do just that.

The Good Stuff

There's a lot to like in the MM2. Some very iconic critters show back up: Rust Monsters, Genasi, Barghests, and the like... all exciting to see again. There is a large 14-page section on Metallic Dragons of varying difficulty levels (something for nearly every party level) and some truly excellent artwork. There's a whole host of new additions as well, I hope to review these new monsters as I get the chance to unleash them on my unwitting players.

Speaking of excellent artwork, they've got the Dimensional Marauder which I believe made a cameo appearance in the new Star Trek movie. I'm pretty sure they reused that artwork from before, but its still pretty striking. The Marauder makes use of a new snatch-and-grab style mechanic that can teleport the player and the Marauder itself around the map, giving close combat a bit more pizazz.

Located confusingly AFTER the glossary there is a single page that has racial traits for Monster Races intended to be NPCs, or if you're really brave, Player Characters. The options provided are Bullywug, Duergar, and Kenku. My mind immediately went to what havoc Vanir could wreck as a bullywug player character, but its probably wise to not give him any ideas.

The Bad Stuff

It seems that the nerf bat has struck, sadly. Petrification seems to still exist in its normal form, however many of the death effects appear to be AWOL. This was most noticable to me when reading the section on beholders... to me a beholder isn't a beholder if it can't kill you with a Ray of Death. Can the abilities of these new beholders still kill your players? Absolutely. They just do so in a more roundabout fashion.

It seems they are taking the opportunity to elaborate on sections previously created in the original Monster Manual... seeing some omissions from the Monster Manual make their return is encouraging, but part of me was wanting for a bit more originality.

Conclusion

The Monster Manual 2 appears to be a pretty solid addition on its surface, but the proof will be in the pudding as I drop some of these monsters in place in the campaign.

For a truly excellent in-depth look at the Monster Manual, head on over to the Critical Hits review. They even take an in-depth look at the contents of the Monster Manual 2 in two excellent articles. They're worth a read!

10 Monsters I Never Want to See

Several of the DMs out there have posted their top 10 favorite D&D monsters (check out RPGBloggers to read them all).  Here's my list, but slightly twisted.  As a player, here are my top 10 I-Never-Want-to-See Monsters:

1. Doppelgangers - Imagine meeting up with your good friend, whom you haven't seen for a long time.  Then, all of a sudden and with no provocation, your friend tries to kill you.  Yeah, see, that's why no one likes to meet a doppelganger.

2. Owlbears - Not the cute, cuddly creatures their name implies, these vicious killers are annoying.  Mostly, because after the battle, you have to hunt down their nest in order to find any treasure they may have.

3. The Tarrasque - Legendary creatures of all kinds are going to guarantee a moment of panic, but the Tarrasque, well, let's just say if you've never adventured with Batloaf, you can't truly understand the panic I feel meeting this monster.

4. Beholders - I think most players feel the same about this one.  Beholders are just no fun, and it can be summed up with two simple words: eye rays.  Can you think of a more terrifying combination of words in all D&D-dom?

5. Drow - I really, really hate to encounter any Drow.  Ever.  My very first character was an elf, who had the misfortune to encounter Drow.  Let's just say the resulting drama has left me with a crippling fear of dark places and a burning hatred for dark elves.  Also, they worship Lolth.  Ew.

6. Giant Spiders - Webs and Poisons and Lolth (again), oh my.

7. Liches - Creepy guys to begin with, and usually bent not only on ruling the world but also on destroying all adventurers, liches just don't spell "party," no matter where you find them.  They could be wearing silly hats and singing karaoke, and they still wouldn't want to have cake and ice cream with them.  Plus, who really needs a phylactery anyway?

8. Banshees - Anything with a "save vs death" is right out; banshees are just my representative of all things death-ly.

9. Hill Giants - Synonymous with "flying boulders," hill giants encounters are generally painful.  And unless you have a lot of ranged attacks in your group, you're going to be taking a lot of damage before you ever get close enough to inflict some of your own.  Ouch!

10. The Vorpal Rabbit - Perhaps the most terrifying of all woodland creatures, the vorpal bunny, who can take your head right off your shoulders before you can blink, is a blood-thirsty tyrant.  Like its estranged cousin, the Tarrasque, there is, fortunately, only one.  We had the un-pleasure of meeting it along the road once upon a time, and our good friend, Swun, didn't survive the encounter well.  So don't let those floppy ears and innocent eyes fool you... that rabbit is dynamite!

Monstrous Advice

Surprise!! I'm still around, but with the move, I've been a little busy lately.  I hope you all didn't miss me too much! With the holidays, I'm sure things will be a bit chaotic around stupidranger.com, but I'll try to be here more often for you!

I had one of those blog moments... when you read someone else's blog, and it sparks an idea that sinks into your brain and rattles around until you decide to do something about it.  Shelly Mazzanoble posted a funny and insightful look at the fact that geek girls do not often fit the general profile for popular women's magazines, especially the advice columns.  And it got me to wondering what kinds of letters would be submitted to monster women's magazines.  Here's what I think we might see:

Dear Popular Monster's Magazine:

My awesome monster boyfriend has invited me to move in with him.  I'm really excited, because he's so awesome, but his cave is less than fabulous.  He works in a dungeon as an adventurer-control technician, and he is always bringing home bones and armor fragments that he leaves all over.  Worst of all, he brings home every wand he comes across, and they are just sitting a pile in the main room of his cave.  It's a disaster!  I'm afraid that if I try to organize his collection, he'll be mad.  I really want this to work because I think he might be The One. Please, can you tell me what to do about the mess?

Monstress in Love

And for the monsters getting ready for their big wedding day:

Dear Modern Bride-Zilla:

My future monster-in-law is driving me crazy!  She insists that the wedding should be in the old-fashioned swamp instead of the up-scale dungeon my fiance and I both want.  She thinks all the bridesmonsters should carry swamp weed bouquets instead of the stink blossoms I want.  We are not getting along, and my fiance wants to give in to all her demands.  How do I find the right balance without compromising on my dream wedding and not alienating my future monster-in-law?

Worried about the Wedding

The Monster Mash

Yax's Sunday morning quiz was a fabulous query involving monsters! I'm proud to say that I managed to pass this one with an 84% (I usually fail spectatuarly!), mostly by guessing on the Devil/Demon portion.

I love the Sunday morning quizzes, even when I fail spectactulary, because they are fun and there's a lot of good Red Dragon in there. This one was especially fun as there's a little aside to one of our favorite creatures. I won't tell you which one, that would give it away!

Take a peak at the Sunday Morning Quiz - Mystery Monsters and see how you well you can do the Monster Mash!

My belated introduction to D&D Miniatures...

Over the weekend, SR and I hosted a houseguest in one of my old college buddies, Boyle. He brought with him this magnificent trio that you see (parts of) above, along with the rest of his collection of D&D Miniatures to show me.

Wow, you're late to the party, Dante.

Why yes, yes I am. I had originally purchased a starter set of miniatures when they first came out because I wanted them to augment my D&D campaigns with. Unfortunately, money was tight and I didn't end up getting too many that were directly applicable to my setting so I threw them quickly back into the starter box where they resided for many years.

Luckily, when Boyle produced his miniatures it was exactly two days after I had recognized that starter box in the top of my closet and made note of it, so down it came and before long we were creating our parties and having some fun.

It was better than I anticipated!

I'm not going to lie... when I first got the miniatures a few people tried to convince me to play the game that goes along with it and I rejected that idea on the premise that I knew the D&D combat rules and anything based on that was probably far too complicated for me to actually ENJOY. Could I play it? Probably, but rules lawyering is a pursuit best left for SR as she enjoys the ancient art of being right.

Boyle is one of my dearest friends, and I could never tell him that I wouldn't at least try it... besides... there were adult beverages involved so it couldn't be that bad, right?

Right! I have to say the simplified rules, coupled with some familiar D&D characteristics made the experience immediately recognizable and fun. It also helps that my starter set happened to include a Medusa, which I understand is somewhat sought after. I'm sure there are a few of you that are kind of sick reading that, sorry!

Regardless, we played several rounds but I stopped short of playing any scenario involving the dragons pictured above, since I was barely having any luck at all with my meager starter set.

From what I can tell, much of the stat blocks that I have seen related to the D&D 4th edition seems to approximate the simplicity of the miniature rules, so I have hopes that all combat will take place in similar fashion as the new edition hits. The only thing that bothered me a little was the rules for routing and running... it seems to me that shouldn't be so much determined by a die roll but I understand that miniature games are based more solidly in concrete rules so I can tolerate that minor annoyance.

It was a really fun evening, special thanks go out to Boyle for bringing his stuff over so we could give miniatures a try!

Monstrous Pictures

When I was a little kid, I had lots of little plastic dinosaurs and aliens and monsters. When I was about 7, TSR came out with a line of completely awesome toys featuring creatures from the Monster Manual. I personally had about 2/3 of the creatures on this list, and man they were cool. Sadly, I gave them all to a friend's little brother when I was in high school. I'd found a couple cool ones I still had around and my lovely wife Efreak loaned me the macro lens on her camera so I could take some pictures for show and tell today.

My favorite of these creatures was the Shambling Mound. Mine was called "Shambles". (You may think that was a silly name, but I also had a Tauntaun named "Bryan" at the time.) Recently, I decided that I would like a new shambling mound as my good luck dice totem for D&D, and so it was that I used the magic powers of Ebay to summon one for me, which I named after his predecessor.







The same auction also came with a Fire Elemental figure, which I also had as a kid. My new Fire Elemental and Shambles II now reside above my fireplace and guard the Christmas stockings during the dangerous pirate-infested holiday season.





I was also going through some boxes of stuff I had when I was a kid a few weeks back, and I found a bunch of the little tiny dinosaurs and monsters that I used to play with. One of them I had when I was very young, and didn't know what it was called until my brother called it a "rust monster" when we were both a little older. Well, I was surprised to find out that it wasn't called that for years by anyone until Gary Gygax picked up a the same set of plastic monsters, saw the same figure, and was inspired to create the rust monster as we know it today.





I also had another little monster that we used to just think of as a weird beetle bug, but it didn't occur to me until I found it again recently that I was staring at a little figure of a bulette. Turns out, just like the rust monster, this thing didn't get its name until Gary Gygax went plastic monster shopping either. (Apparently, the owlbear has similar origins, but I didn't have one of those to take pictures of.)





There was one other monster of similar construction to my rust monster and bulette, and we called it a "blue dragon" when I was growing up. That could well be exactly what it is, but I didn't notice any special D&D significance to this one. (Efreak says he looks "way friendlier than that gross rust monster with his sickass tail -- blech!")



I've created a couple of wallpapers from a few of these images in case anyone's interested. (Shambles II now guards my laptop against pirates as well.)

Shambles II: Normal | Widescreen
Rust Monster: Normal | Widescreen

I hope you all enjoyed a little trip to what's left of my former menagerie. Is it sad to say that I really can't wait until I have kids so I can play with their stuff?