This special issue of Dragon magazine contains 128 advertising-free
pages of the best ecology articles from the past three years. Drawing from
the ongoing and popular "Monster Ecologies" series, this giant collection
features new rules, art, details, and encounters for some of the most
fearsome and fantastic monsters in the history of Dungeons & Dragons.
Dragon: Monster Ecologies contains ecologies of the choker, chuul, dracolich, draconian, ettercap, inevitable, kenku, kobold, kraken, lizardfolk, mooncalf, night hag, rakshasa, rust monster, shadar-kai, spawn of Kyuss, spell weaver, and will-o'-wisp. But that's not all.
As if a dozen and a half ecologies weren't enough, we also asked Gary Gygax, China Miéville, and Rob Kuntz to recollect their favorite D&D monsters; we take retrospective looks at the beholder, githyanki, mindflayer, and displacer beast, and then we wrap it all up with a feature known as the "Monsters of Suck." And did we mention an index of every ecology ever printed?
NOTE: This special issue is printed on deluxe paper stock with a deluxe cover. It is not included in regular Dragon subscriptions.
It's very good, carrying all the monster you like. What I like was the evolution of certain monster. The original Beholder looks very ridiculous. The section on monsters that suck, was my favorite though. Its one page, but its a funny one.
I picked this product up on ebay for 2USD 12 months or so ago and I never regretted doing so.
This is a top quality softcover book that is typical of Paizo. It is of the same ilk as the Pathfinder adventure path in terms of quality of product - both materials and illustrations.
I like the DC knowledge checks for creatures and this book certainly increased my access to these sorts of tables. Having the ecology background also has lead me to "play" some of these characters better and more logically for my players enjoyment.
I highly recommend this book to DMs. It would have been nice to have more monsters and in hardback but this would have greatly increased the cost. If you do not have the magazines like me this book will help fill in some pieces of the monster puzzle.
I expected this item to be on the scale of the Dragon Compendium: specifically longer and hardcover. Most of these ecologies were taken from Dragon issues of the last two years and were duplicated for me. All in all, not worth the money...maybe for $9.95.
This book is a very worthwhile thing to own. The quality of the binding, pages, and art are all excellent, and I hope this is what the Pathfinder books will be like.
I was excited to see that they had an index of every ecology article ever printed, and I believe they picked a good batch of ecologies for this book.
However, I hope to see further volumes at some point with some of the other great ecology articles out there.
