RPGPundit Reviews: the 5e Monster Manual


This is a kind of mini-review, by my standards, anyways.  I got the Monster Manual and the DMG for 5th edition last week, after some mailing mix-up, as part of the compensation for my Consulting on 5e.  I'll note, thus (as if anyone out there still didn't know this by now) that I was involved on the 5e project, and that bias should be kept in mind.  Even so, as far as I recall I had no role whatsoever in the design of the monsters (there may have been some very brief chat about design goals, but absolutely nothing to do with the concrete mechanics of the thing), and I think I can be relatively objective within the boundaries of my biases here.

So, this is a review of the new Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual.  It was published by Wizards of the Coast, and Chris Perkins was the lead designer (out of what appears to have been a large team) for this particular book.

I'm not going to go into the usual level of detail for this book, seeing as how most of you reading will already be familiar with D&D in general, and 5th edition in particular.  Suffice it to say, like all 5e rulebooks, the Monster Manual is actually a supplement/expansion of the core Basic D&D rules, which are available for free download on PDF from the Wizards website.

The book is 350 pages long, jam-packed with text and images; its interior is full-color with very impressive art.  The book is a hardcover with a very well-rendered image of a Beholder (in a fight with what we can presume are some player characters) featuring prominently.  The Beholder is, I think, a very good choice for the Monster Manual cover, as it is one of the great iconic D&D monsters, and one we associate with D&D far more exclusively than some of the other popular monsters of the game.


Now, I've never been one of these D&D gamers obsessed with the Monster Manual.  I've never needed more than a few dozen monsters to manage a campaign.  I'm not a sentimentalist here. This might affect my view of things.

So the real question as I see it is not "what is the Monster Manual?", because you all know that already, but rather, how does this Monster Manual compare to what has come before?

Pretty favorably, I'd say.

If we look back at a retrospective: the 1e Monster Manual was quite inspirational in an old-school way, but it was certainly lacking in some of the detail that later editions would have.  The 2e Monstruous Compendium (or whatever it was called) is a favorite of some, but not of mine.  Its over-detailed ecological notes were too impractical for my tastes, and the three-ring binder format was (to me) much more of a hassle than it was worth.  To me, it exemplified a lot of what was bad about post-old-school design.  The 3e Monster Manual was a return to sanity, but I didn't feel it was really ideal either; the art was that kind of irritating 'dungeonpunk' aesthetic that exemplified that edition.  In many cases in all three of these editions, it seemed as though the monsters weren't particularly unique; variances in hit dice or attack bonuses did not necessarily tell you all that much about the playable differences (2e fluff excluded) between one type of humanoid monster and another.  And of course, the 4e monster manual doesn't even count.

In many ways, I think the 5e Monster Manual incorporates some of the best of all the previous editions.  The artwork is amazing. The material, almost everything in it, is strongly playable; there's nothing there that's just flavor-text meant for the GM to be entertained but useless in actual play.  There's plenty of descriptive material, but of the kind you can very directly apply to the PCs' encounters with the monster in question.  And there's very creative elements of individualization for all the monsters: things like descriptions of the creature's lair (sometimes, in cases of very powerful monsters, complete with "lair actions" that can be used to emulate the creature's control of its home environment), motivations for roleplay, and specific and unique tactics and attacks.  The end result is that not only do Kobolds seem very different from Goblins, but Green Dragons seem very different from Red Dragons, and not just because of the type of breath weapon they use.

Are there any details that I think the 5e Monster Manual does less well on than some of the other versions?  Yes; a couple of practical elements in old-school play: number appearing, morale, and treasure types.  I know that there are rules on the last two of these in the DMG, but I'm spoiled on the old Rules Cyclopedia when it came to this.  Ah well, you can't win them all.

The last question is, really, can you use this book if you are not playing 5e and have no intention of playing 5e?
I would say yes.  Statistically, 5e has sufficient similarities to most of the other D&D-variants that conversion would be fairly easy.  There are some clever ideas, like hit die type being determined by size, monster backgrounds, lair information, special abilities, etc. that could easily be introduced as house rules for (for example) an old-school game.  The background and details on many of the monsters is sufficiently novel, interesting, and (most importantly) practical that anyone could be interested in this book as a sourcebook for non-5e play.

That makes this book especially valuable, because it makes it useful even to someone who has no intention of playing 5e.

All in all, the new Monster Manual manages, in my opinion, to be a worthy successor to some of the best to have had that title before it.  As art, as game material, and as inspiration, it's a job well done.


RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Stanwell compact + Image latakia

what do you mean by dungeonpunk art (as a note on that point i loved the 3e art)

Quote from: tuypo1;804446what do you mean by dungeonpunk art (as a note on that point i loved the 3e art)

I don't know what RPGPndit means by "dungeonpunk art," but for me it is synonymous with:

1) Spikey armors that would normally hinder movement and regularly get you tripped or pinned on things.

2) Over-sized weapons that would be totally unwieldy and thus a danger for yourself in combat, not for your targets (as such a weapon would be really slow moving for somebody with normal strength).

3) Absurdly over-sized feet that tend to irritate me to no ends.

4) Hair cut resembling current fashion among Western and Asian teenagers, but certainly not how hair were cut in ancient history.

5) A clothing style that owes more to cyberpunk than historical garbs.

Etc.

Now, the 3e monsters appear less dungeon-punkey to me, but they often still manage to get over-sized feet and weapons, etc. And of course they were drawn by the same artists.

Of course I am an old grognard who was raised in Europe with movies such as Excalibur, and more recently LotR, and doesn't like anime and mangas.

Quote from: RPGPundit;804344And of course, the 4e monster manual doesn't even count.


RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Stanwell compact + Image latakia

Why's that? I have only managed to flip through 5th MM but it seems to me that some of the advancements you touted have some lineage from 4e especially the Essentials line. They worked under 4e to make the Stat block easier to use and that was one thing during the play test that they were openly discussing porting to 5e.

I felt like one of the beauties of 4e especially in the Essentials era was the mechanical flavor and differentiation they gave to the monsters. I thought they did pretty good at marrying individual flavor to mechanics
 
I would point to the White Dragon's "frozen tomb" attack. It does damage and immobilized the pc. In a 1 line entry it gave the DM a very distinct ability from every other dragon. "You just got frozen for x damage and you are in a frozen block of ice and can't move or be moved by anyone else."

I'm not disputing the rest of your review and everything screams 5th is an improvement. But I might suggest one of the best advancements in the 5th MM might have been in the works in the edition you totally dismissed. And there is very little else I would defend about 4e, it was playing 4e epic tier that may me run screaming for an OSR game. But I loved the diversity in the 4e monster books.

I cut my teeth on AD&D as a young nipper, so naturally I have fond memories of the various books in that line, to include the Fiend Folio.

However, I also really dug, as a slightly older nipper, the various ecology bits in the Monsterous Compendium, so Ima disagree with you, the Pundit, here. I've made a firm habit in my world design efforts to figure out where and how things fit together, in part because of those ecology bits. Sure, I couldn't tell you the shape of a beholder's droppings from memory (I'm reasonably sure that dropping descriptions are NOT in the MC... but I won't swear to it...), but knowing I could look that sort of thing up helped make the 'world' of D&D more 'real' to me.

Eh. What do I know? I'm a potentially aspergerish ADHD riddled forest dwelling cannibal who fancies himself a student of engineering.

i have to agree with you i love it when a monster manual gives info that will help you fit things into a campaign

that was the main problem with the 3e fiend folio it was to vague on some of the fluff one of the worst examples being the Varakhuts do they only hunt down those who seek to steal divine power or do those who are ascending for other reasons also get hunted.

what happens when a century worm reaches maturity how does it get out of its parent

how are crawling heads created is it all beheaded giants, giant heads animated by another crawling head, just a giant body and the head falls off or any animate dead on a giant head

that dam book raises far to many questions

Its closest ancestor is probably the 4e Monster Vault and Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale. That was where WoTC developed expertise in combining & integrating fluff with mechanics to give a solid overall presentation.

You didn't mention the NPC section at the back, which IMC gets far more use than the rest of the book put together.

Another point: lots of necessary monster info such as listings by terrain & by Challenge Rating are actually in the DMG, along with a few encounter tables.

What about the 2e Monstrous Manual as opposed to the Compendium thing? I was always under the impression that was what was highly regarded, not the 3-hole punch sheet version.

Quote from: TristramEvans;833010What about the 2e Monstrous Manual as opposed to the Compendium thing? I was always under the impression that was what was highly regarded, not the 3-hole punch sheet version.

I have the 2e black cover manual, which I believe is identical to the white cover 2e manual, which is identical to the compendium, except for the binder format.

In other words, I hear the only difference is the covers, but I don't have every copy to compare. It's been a long time since I've owned the other two.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;833096I have the 2e black cover manual, which I believe is identical to the white cover 2e manual, which is identical to the compendium, except for the binder format.

In other words, I hear the only difference is the covers, but I don't have every copy to compare. It's been a long time since I've owned the other two.

The Monstrous Manual is made up of Volumes I and II of the Monstrous Compendium, plus a selection of monsters from the various settings.  As such, it contains far more content than any previous MC product.  Aside from new color artwork, though (the MCs were B&W), the format and text are the same.