These aren't my favorite, but they had a lot of utility because they came in different levels.
Animated Objects and Elementals.
The elementals in the Monster Manual aren't terrible or anything but taking something that went form small to huge for these things, especially given how much love the whole variant theme gets, just strikes me as odd.
Dragonne--one of my favorite monsters.
'old school' Elementals--bland, but useful in multiple adventures
Frost Giants--my favorite giant
I am sure a lot of these will see print in the future, via Manual of the Planes, MM II, etc.
Centaurs and Pegasi. The Leucrotta.
These aren't my favorite, but they had a lot of utility because they came in different levels.
Animated Objects and Elementals.
The elementals in the Monster Manual aren't terrible or anything but taking something that went form small to huge for these things, especially given how much love the whole variant theme gets, just strikes me as odd.
Animated Objects -Yes
Demon & Devil Lords-Couple of Baatezu and Taanari
Couple of Unique monster type- Ghoul Lord, Wight Lord.
Help on Good dragons, alternative suggestions ( Adult Gold dragons could be equal to Adult Red Dragon but add other breath weapons etc). I agree that putting full lists of all good dragons are unnecessary but some assistance for making them would be good.
Not the monsters, but their descriptions and backgrounds. Villains need personality.
Oh, and half-orcs -- do they count?
Good Dragons are the biggest trouble spot for me. Good anything is kind of hard to come by. Certainly players need things to kill but monsters make good allies, better then NPCs much of the time as they are less complex and therefore spend less time stealing the spotlight.
Good Dragons are the biggest trouble spot for me. Good anything is kind of hard to come by. Certainly players need things to kill but monsters make good allies, better then NPCs much of the time as they are less complex and therefore spend less time stealing the spotlight.
I'm still sticking by the belief that 4e was designed for combat -- not roleplaying. Good dragons are about roleplaying opportunities, and are thus superfluous.
Kobold Press
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Centaurs and Pegasi. The Leucrotta.
There's a set of 4E centaurs in Kobold Quarterly #7. It's part of the Ecology article.
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Regular elementals (no ToEE in 4E? How in Heck can it be D&D without ToEE?).
Animals.
Metallic and Gem Dragons.
As happens with the PHB, 4E's Monster Manual seems "deliberately incomplete". I don't feel I have a complete game with the 3 core books. And I used to run "just core" games (now I run "just PF" games :P).
I'm still sticking by the belief that 4e was designed for combat -- not roleplaying. Good dragons are about roleplaying opportunities, and are thus superfluous.
Hmmm, I think that the DMG would disagree with you. I think they left metallic dragons out for space reasons and to sell later supplements.
I'm still sticking by the belief that 4e was designed for combat -- not roleplaying. Good dragons are about roleplaying opportunities, and are thus superfluous.
If good dragons are about rp why do you want combat stats for them?
Good Dragons are the biggest trouble spot for me. Good anything is kind of hard to come by. Certainly players need things to kill but monsters make good allies, better then NPCs much of the time as they are less complex and therefore spend less time stealing the spotlight.I'm still sticking by the belief that 4e was designed for combat -- not roleplaying. Good dragons are about roleplaying opportunities, and are thus superfluous.
So people are still spouting bullshit on here I see.
Honestly, if I never see Metallics or boring crappy mundane elementals I can f+!*ing die happy.
I do have to admit I miss Centaurs and...... maybe a few more plant types.
Creative Director
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I'm still sticking by the belief that 4e was designed for combat -- not roleplaying. Good dragons are about roleplaying opportunities, and are thus superfluous.If good dragons are about rp why do you want combat stats for them?
Because the concept of a good guy PC riding a dragon into combat is pretty compelling and cool. Seemed to be good enough for Dragonlance, after all...
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Because the concept of a good guy PC riding a dragon into combat is pretty compelling and cool. Seemed to be good enough for Dragonlance, after all...I'm still sticking by the belief that 4e was designed for combat -- not roleplaying. Good dragons are about roleplaying opportunities, and are thus superfluous.If good dragons are about rp why do you want combat stats for them?
shhhhhh! you'll unbalance the universe!
Because the concept of a good guy PC riding a dragon into combat is pretty compelling and cool. Seemed to be good enough for Dragonlance, after all...I'm still sticking by the belief that 4e was designed for combat -- not roleplaying. Good dragons are about roleplaying opportunities, and are thus superfluous.If good dragons are about rp why do you want combat stats for them?
Whats stopping a person form just riding a Chormatic? They don't have to be evil anymore. And thank god for that, I can finally throw Mettalics in the trash.
Whats stopping a person form just riding a Chormatic? They don't have to be evil anymore. And thank god for that, I can finally throw Mettalics in the trash.Because the concept of a good guy PC riding a dragon into combat is pretty compelling and cool. Seemed to be good enough for Dragonlance, after all...I'm still sticking by the belief that 4e was designed for combat -- not roleplaying. Good dragons are about roleplaying opportunities, and are thus superfluous.If good dragons are about rp why do you want combat stats for them?
So I take it you won't be buying part II of the Draconomicon? I understand that it'll focus on the Metallics.
Whats stopping a person form just riding a Chormatic? They don't have to be evil anymore. And thank god for that, I can finally throw Mettalics in the trash.
Of course, nothing stopped you from having a neutral or good chromatic dragon in previous editions either. Yeah, they were "always" evil, but off the top of my head I know that both Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance had "always" evil dragons that were in fact good aligned.
The flavor text of the dragons in the 4E Monster Manual makes them sound just as unlikely to allow a hero to ride them into battle as ever. In other words, the evil dragons remained an opposing force that would only, under extreme circumstances, be allied to a PC.
On the other hand, changing metallics into unaligned creatures makes them less likely to aid PCs, and much more likely to be adversaries, and makes it almost as unlikely that a PC hero will be riding one into battle against evil.
As for my favorite missing monsters . . . anything that used to be good that no longer is. Angels, unicorns, good dragons. I know that the design focus is to make the PCs the only heroes, anywhere, ever, but man, it seems like a big job for four to six people to defend billions of people and dozens of planes from evil all by themselves.
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Creative Director
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Whats stopping a person form just riding a Chormatic? They don't have to be evil anymore. And thank god for that, I can finally throw Mettalics in the trash.Because the concept of a good guy PC riding a dragon into combat is pretty compelling and cool. Seemed to be good enough for Dragonlance, after all...I'm still sticking by the belief that 4e was designed for combat -- not roleplaying. Good dragons are about roleplaying opportunities, and are thus superfluous.If good dragons are about rp why do you want combat stats for them?
Tradition, then? And while the fact that chromatics don't have to be evil might be a draw for some... for me, it's not.
Anyway, the boards all know about my preferences for 3.5/PF RPG and your preferences for 4th edition, Viktor Von Doom. So I guess it's probably best to leave it at that; I don't want this thread to descend into another tiresome edition war. I want this thread to continue being a place where folk can champion "missing monsters" since that's a valuable resource to me to determine what to include in the Pathfinder Bestiary, of course...
I miss yugoloths.
I miss guardinals.
I miss archons that remain true to their quasi-gnostic inspired roots rather than being crazy, ce elementals.
And yes, I even miss the egarus (an abyssal fungus) that adapted to living in that "antithesis of fun" the quasi-elemental plane of vacuum.
Yeah pretty much every outsider that vanished in 4e, or appears in a new form that borders on mockery of its previous incarnation of the past thirty years.
I'm still sticking by the belief that 4e was designed for combat -- not roleplaying. Good dragons are about roleplaying opportunities, and are thus superfluous.
Hmmm, I think that the DMG would disagree with you.
I know.
Of course, there used to be a lot more description and background for monsters in the MM, probably taking up at least as much space as the combat stats. Background descriptions are now quite thin, sometimes bordering on nonexistent. The DMG can say all it wants -- IMO the overall package tells a different story.
As an example, check out giants. How tall is a hill giant? Where do they live? What do they eat? Despite being an iconic monster of D&D, there is one paragraph on them, for a total of 51 words, and that's only about their tactics.
I think they left metallic dragons out for space reasons and to sell later supplements.
You're probably more right than I am.
Perhaps their next supplement can be titled Monsters You Can Use Outside of Tactical Encounters. Give me some of those and I might change my tune a bit. Maybe they'll make us pay for a giants supplement, too -- to answer my questions above.
Regards :)
Yeah pretty much every outsider that vanished in 4e, or appears in a new form that borders on mockery of its previous incarnation of the past thirty years.
They didn't vanish. They're now found in that other "antithesis of fun" -- WotC's marketing department.
Mostly the low-intelligence ones, though. The smart ones went to work in the banking industry, creating levels of chaos, misery, and exploitation that the lower planes could never hope to equal.
Well, the COMBAT stats for good dragons are kind of superfluous. That doesn't mean you can't have good dragons in your 4e game.Good Dragons are the biggest trouble spot for me. Good anything is kind of hard to come by. Certainly players need things to kill but monsters make good allies, better then NPCs much of the time as they are less complex and therefore spend less time stealing the spotlight.I'm still sticking by the belief that 4e was designed for combat -- not roleplaying. Good dragons are about roleplaying opportunities, and are thus superfluous.
Thats a good point actually - though I'll eventually want them around so that they can ally with the party and such.
As an example, check out giants. How tall is a hill giant? Where do they live? What do they eat? Despite being an iconic monster of D&D, there is one paragraph on them, for a total of 51 words, and that's only about their tactics.
I think your using rose coloured glasses here. the 3.5 MM covers 5 giants in 5 pages and also mostly deals with tactics or the changes needed to run them as player characters or NPCs. If you take 4Es descriptions and toss in the stuff you get in the lore section your getting pretty close to the same amount of back ground material as was included in the 3.5 MM. Not saying its adequate particularly, especially when compared to the amount one got with 2nd edition, instead I am contending that their both very comparable in their inadequacy in this regards.
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Creative Director
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Because the concept of a good guy PC riding a dragon into combat is pretty compelling and cool. Seemed to be good enough for Dragonlance, after all...I'm still sticking by the belief that 4e was designed for combat -- not roleplaying. Good dragons are about roleplaying opportunities, and are thus superfluous.If good dragons are about rp why do you want combat stats for them?Still, let's be fair - evil dragons take up 11 pages in the MM. Another 11 for good dragons - which would see exponentially less use, even as mounts - would be displacing probably a significant amount of more useful information.
Now, I can see an argument to have 'ally only' stats for them as mounts or NPCs, possibly even in another resource like the DMG... but at the same time, it is going to be a very careful balancing act to allow for dragons (whose power level is pretty significant) as mounts or similar. I can see why they would want to hold back on that a bit, and give it a really thorough production.
I'm not saying good dragons don't have a place in D&D, not at all! Just that the majority of uses for them will be for RP, and not require any specific stats outside of what the GM can easily assign.
I'm relatively certain I could find 11 pages of content in the book that could have stood to wait a year to appear in the 2nd Monster Manual. Particularly NEW monsters that no one would notice missing in the way that folk have noticed missing dragons or giants or other creatures.
I'm relatively certain I could find 11 pages of content in the book that could have stood to wait a year to appear in the 2nd Monster Manual. Particularly NEW monsters that no one would notice missing in the way that folk have noticed missing dragons or giants or other creatures.
The dead space alone would add up to several pages. The editing was horrible.
Even if you found extra space through tidying up editing or some other method... again, the space it would take to do justice to such an entry would, I think, be better spent on other things.
I think that if they couldn't put 11 dragons in over dead space (which I'm sure they coudn't, they could at least had the decency to add a few more monsters (iconic or otherwise) or at the very least enhanced the existing entries by providing more fluff and character. Either way, dead space like that equals poor writing and editing. After all the consumer paid for the paper, they should at least get writing on it.
I'm relatively certain I could find 11 pages of content in the book that could have stood to wait a year to appear in the 2nd Monster Manual. Particularly NEW monsters that no one would notice missing in the way that folk have noticed missing dragons or giants or other creatures.Because the concept of a good guy PC riding a dragon into combat is pretty compelling and cool. Seemed to be good enough for Dragonlance, after all...I'm still sticking by the belief that 4e was designed for combat -- not roleplaying. Good dragons are about roleplaying opportunities, and are thus superfluous.If good dragons are about rp why do you want combat stats for them?Still, let's be fair - evil dragons take up 11 pages in the MM. Another 11 for good dragons - which would see exponentially less use, even as mounts - would be displacing probably a significant amount of more useful information.
Now, I can see an argument to have 'ally only' stats for them as mounts or NPCs, possibly even in another resource like the DMG... but at the same time, it is going to be a very careful balancing act to allow for dragons (whose power level is pretty significant) as mounts or similar. I can see why they would want to hold back on that a bit, and give it a really thorough production.
I'm not saying good dragons don't have a place in D&D, not at all! Just that the majority of uses for them will be for RP, and not require any specific stats outside of what the GM can easily assign.
And I would be certain to find at least 11 old monsters that make me wonder why thier still in the book.
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And I would be certain to find at least 11 old monsters that make me wonder why thier still in the book.
So can anyone else. Monster selection is an art, not a science. What's your point?
BTW, why are you back here at the Paizo boards? You made a big stink when you left about how hostile everyone was to 4E. Now that things have settle down and we're enjoying our various games, you come back and hurl accusations -- again -- how the site members are asinine; you're attacking one of the major editors for his selection of monsters disregarding the fact that Paizo has, uh COSTS to consider in publishing; and engage in other belligerent behavior. Until Paizo announces otherwise, IT'S NOT MOVING TO 4E. Want great Paizo-esque adventures? Go flame WotC. (And don't even THINK of accusing me of taking sides: I DM 3.x (Eberron), 4E (PoL, LFR); AND PRPG (Golarion).
Well I'm not 100% happy that there are no good Dragons in the Monster Manual, however I can see a silver lining with this approach so it may not be all bad.
One of the things that WotC needs to do with good Dragons is make good, balanced, dragon riding classes as well as really think about the role that good Dragons might play in the game. They are not simply the good counterparts to evil Dragons, at least not in a fairly gamist system like 4E. Instead they fill specific roles in the campaign as varous kinds of allies of the players, be that as mentors, allies with their own agenda's that converge with the players goals or mounts and cohorts.
Since these rolls are not necessarily straight forward its not the worst plan in the world to consider what kind of abilities and roles such creatures should have or fill in order to make using them at the table good for the game.
In particular riding Dragons on an ongoing basis is completely cool but you can't easily just add a full fledged Dragon to say a Paladin player as an ongoing mount without considering play balance. That play balance really has to be considered in a manner that actually takes away from the Paladins core abilities or the Paladin player becomes over powered.
3.5 choose to handle this by making the Dragons have a significantly lower CR then the Paladins level but, while its a play balanced solution, it was not a very good solution from a gamist point of view - If we give a 12th level Paladin a CR 8 Gold Dragon and the Paladin is normally fighting CR 14 monsters the Dragon is now so weak that it can barely participate in the fights - the Paladin has a mount thats more of a liability then a cool companion.
The only other alternative that I can think of, besides just giving the Paladin a CR 12 mount and letting his player be better then the rest of the players around the table, is creating full on Dragon Riding prestige classes. That way the Dragon can be significantly more powerful because the Paladin player is giving up his characters power to compensate.
Thus I still miss Good Dragons not being in the MM but will be less unhappy if the Draconomicon II is chalk full of well thought out good dragons and dragon riding prestige classes and feats that can be slotted into play without upsetting game balance. It does, of course, remain to be seen if they do manage to make Draconomicon into such a resource.
And I would be certain to find at least 11 old monsters that make me wonder why thier still in the book.
Joela has a point. If your only reason for hanging out on this forum is to try and start up an Edition War then your part of the problem and not the solution. Most of the people on this thread prior to your entry were just involved in minor b+**%ing and moaning and 4E can handle that. You seem intent on turning some minor b@*!!ing and moaning on why the MM did not include (insert your favourite monster here) into a major battle in the Edition Wars.
Seeing every negative statement about 4E on a message board as a full fledged attack on the game is pure madness - b%@+#ing and moaning about aspects of the game or design choices of the games creators is always a big part of what people engage in on a message boards. Any message board - go to one about the X-men and it'll be a bunch of X-men fans complaining about the latest comic.
Back when Paizo main gig was publishing Dungeon and Dragon we sat around and b+$$!ed about their design choices or the broken parts of the modules - thats what people do on message boards.
Now I recognize that the last time you where hanging out here we were in the middle of a full fledged battle in the ongoing Edition Wars and maybe in that environment your just answering in kind (and I'm as guilty of that as anyone) but things have calmed down a lot around here recently and now your just stirring the pot.
I miss yugoloths.
I miss guardinals.
I miss archons that remain true to their quasi-gnostic inspired roots rather than being crazy, ce elementals.
And yes, I even miss the egarus (an abyssal fungus) that adapted to living in that "antithesis of fun" the quasi-elemental plane of vacuum.
Yeah pretty much every outsider that vanished in 4e, or appears in a new form that borders on mockery of its previous incarnation of the past thirty years.
See my Expanded 4E link, the guy on SCRIBD has re-done the Angels, Devils, Dragonnes, Bullywugs and many more. Take a look.
Personally I want to see ALL Outsiders (Angels, Devils, Demons, Eladrin, Celestial things etc) in a single book somewhere in the future so when I run a Planescape Campaign or do a Planar campaign bit I don't need 20 books with 10 creatures in each like in 3rd edition. But saying that, you do need a token of the more Common Outsiders that visit the prime material in the main MM.
As an example, check out giants. How tall is a hill giant? Where do they live? What do they eat? Despite being an iconic monster of D&D, there is one paragraph on them, for a total of 51 words, and that's only about their tactics.
I think your using rose coloured glasses here. the 3.5 MM covers 5 giants in 5 pages and also mostly deals with tactics or the changes needed to run them as player characters or NPCs. If you take 4Es descriptions and toss in the stuff you get in the lore section your getting pretty close to the same amount of back ground material as was included in the 3.5 MM. Not saying its adequate particularly, especially when compared to the amount one got with 2nd edition, instead I am contending that their both very comparable in their inadequacy in this regards.
I initially assumed the same thing. Then I made a direct, deliberate comparison.
According to the 3.5 MM, hill giants:
- are selfish, cunning brutes who survive through hunting and raiding
- have light tan to deep ruddy brown skin, and brown or black eyes and hair
- wear layers of crudely prepared hides they rarely wash or repair
- are about 10 1/2 feet tall, weigh about 1100 pounds, and live to be about 200 years old
- prefer temperate climates
- often trade with other giants or groups of ogres or orcs to get foodstuffs, trinkets, and servants
- (typical possessions are described, sometimes in colorfully-descriptive ways)
As I've said before, 4e is a well-designed system with lots of good points. In particular, I am head-over-heels in love with the new magic system. However, I think 4e allows, but does distressingly little to encourage, story and character development. This view is (IMO) supported by consistently weak plots and backgrounds for the new Adventure Path in Dungeon and the adventures/campaigns sold in game shops (starting with KotS -- and these opinions are widely held, even among fans of 4e).
I know this is a tired debate, and I'm sorry for beating a very dead horse. Unfortunately, my group and I have (within the past week) all but decided to abandon our attempts to convert to 4e -- it's just missing too much of the things earlier versions provided. I say this with some regret, because I love most of the mechanics of the game -- but our RPing is dominated by characters and plots, not combat mechanics.
4e doesn't help in the areas we find most important.
BTW I like to think I'm not entirely guilty of threadjacking here -- I miss monster descriptions more than I miss monsters.
Regards :)
I initially assumed the same thing. Then I made a direct, deliberate comparison.According to the 3.5 MM, hill giants:
This is in addition to about six paragraphs of essentially non-combat description that is generic for all giants. This contrasts dramatically with 4e, no matter how much material you count (even giving hill gaints credit for having a Lore section, which they don't -- presumably an oversight).
- are selfish, cunning brutes who survive through hunting and raiding
- have light tan to deep ruddy brown skin, and brown or black eyes and hair
- wear layers of crudely prepared hides they rarely wash or repair
- are about 10 1/2 feet tall, weigh about 1100 pounds, and live to be about 200 years old
- prefer temperate climates
- often trade with other giants or groups of ogres or orcs to get foodstuffs, trinkets, and servants
- (typical possessions are described, sometimes in colorfully-descriptive ways)
Well they spent more time in the giants background telling about the Giants place in the Cosmos and their relationship with Titans etc. instead of telling about their skin colour but I tend to think of both of these as essentially background details. I suppose one could decide that certain kinds of fluff are better then others but I'm of the opinion that neither edition did a particularly good job in this department.
As I've said before, 4e is a well-designed system with lots of good points. In particular, I am head-over-heels in love with the new magic system. However, I think 4e allows, but does distressingly little to encourage, story and character development. This view is (IMO) supported by consistently weak plots and backgrounds for the new Adventure Path in Dungeon and the adventures/campaigns sold in game shops (starting with KotS -- and these opinions are widely held, even among fans of 4e).
I know this is a tired debate, and I'm sorry for beating a very dead horse. Unfortunately, my group and I have (within the past week) all but decided to abandon our attempts to convert to 4e -- it's just missing too much of the things earlier versions provided. I say this with some regret, because I love most of the mechanics of the game -- but our RPing is dominated by characters and plots, not combat mechanics.
I'm basically in agreement with you on the failings in this department but am unclear why you can't just add this sort of thing back into the game on your own?
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Because the concept of a good guy PC riding a dragon into combat is pretty compelling and cool. Seemed to be good enough for Dragonlance, after all...I'm still sticking by the belief that 4e was designed for combat -- not roleplaying. Good dragons are about roleplaying opportunities, and are thus superfluous.If good dragons are about rp why do you want combat stats for them?
Yeah...
Seriously, James, all due respect, but that's pure bull. Dragonlance's biggest fraud was the idea that it was about riding dragons. It wasn't. The heroes in the books rode dragons infrequently and the idea that the PCs in the game might ride dragons wasn't even paid lip service. The only contribution Dragonlance made to having PCs ride dragons was some cool art showing that concept. There were no rules for riding good dragons in Dragonlance, at least not in any of the editions with which I am familiar.
So, I agree, the concept is cool, but no prior edition of D&D has included rules for riding dragons in the core set (and, to the extent it's been addressed in supplements, it's required a lot of rules because dragons are fairly powerful and the addition of them to a campaign alters the power level substantially). I agree that having the metallic dragons in the core rules contributes to those who want to realize the dragonrider concept in D&D, but it's not as if such a concept has been workable out of the box in any prior edition and I have yet to see any evidence that the concept is so popular that it demands support in the core rules. The vast majority of encounters with good dragons are rp encounters, not combat encounters, as has already been pointed out. To suggest that the dragonrider concept is so core to D&D that it requires having good dragon stats in the core book is a gross mischaracterization of the history and existence of the dragonrider concept in D&D.
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I know someone already brought it up, but Centaurs were the biggest thing that I missed in 4e. I may be in the minority, but I used them a lot as a Mongel hoard style enemy for my PCs as well as Commanchee/Souix tribe style allies. They were just perfect as a plains dwelling nomadic race, and I was sad that they were not in the 4E monster manual.
Just because I know I got a little carried away, allow me to elaborate in a manner that doesn't just sound like cranky old gamer guy hating on 4E:
First Thought: Dragon Riders
Actually, dragonriders were really important to Dragonlance, but at the same time, the original War of the Lance campaign didn't have the players doing it much. Without the Knights of Solomnia gaining metallic dragon allies, they wouldn't have been able to hold back the dragonarmies until the heroes do their thing in Neraka.
Plus, there were two (admittedly, only one good) trilogies of adventures for Dragonlance in 2nd edition where part of the thrust of the story was to ally with dragons and/or become dragonriders (in fact, the Taladas one included the Dragon Knight kit which was all about riding dragons).
So, I'll agree that the dragonrider concept hasn't been realized in every edition of D&D, or even presented as the best option for a campaign, but at the same time, I'd have to disagree that the concept of the dragonrider, however problematic to realize in its full potential, hasn't been an important theme in D&D over the years.
Second Thought: Good Allies
Given that monsters are built for their role in encounters now, I think it would actually be really interesting to have good aligned monsters in the game, since it should, theoretically, be easier to have an ally in combat.
Dragons, angels, and all of that don't have tons of abilities that a DM or player running the ally has to sort through. They'd have a couple of limited abilities and a few interesting at will abilities to allow them to contribute to the encounter.
In fact, something like a Guardian Angel monster should be really easy to implement in 4E, by having something that is able to bolster defenses and trigger healing, and has X number of hit points. Once the bad guys drop it to 0, you can have it dramatically tell them that it can no longer help them, and the encounter moves on without the healing and the buffs.
I do think that help foster this ease of use, good monsters shouldn't often be elites or solo monsters, if only because then you can be sure to only use an ally that won't be doing the lion's share of the work for the PCs in the encounter.
I'm basically in agreement with you on the failings in this department but am unclear why you can't just add this sort of thing back into the game on your own?
Because I'm an employed, middle-aged parent, with less and less time to do this kind of development myself. And while mine probably isn't their most important demographic, I wonder how they've concluded that we're too busy to create dungeons (which they publish for us), but we have lots of time to create background stuff.
But I think the truth is simply that WotC is no longer interested in such game elements. They say otherwise, but I consider their products a more convincing indicator of priorities than their PR releases.
Sorry for my cynicism. I'll try to stop derailing this otherwise interesting thread :)
Regards again.
Yeah...
For the record Sebastian, yours has to be the sorriest avatar available on these boards. And your profile is highly disturbing. Who is this Jack that you so dislike?
Oh, and you misspelled tendencies.
:P
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Just because I know I got a little carried away, allow me to elaborate in a manner that doesn't just sound like cranky old gamer guy hating on 4E:
I've never thought you sounded that way. As always, I'm in awe of your ability to even discuss 4e without profanity given your fondness for FR and what happened to that setting.
Dragonriders stuff
I largely disagree with your comments. The dragonriders were very incidental from a narrative perspective in the Dragonlance books. I have always been annoyed at the bait and switch of the title and cover art with regards to those works. The amount of dragon riding is minimal and is only in service to the plot regarding the war. Compare with something like the Dragonriders of Pern novels, which are entirely about dragonriders.
And what's really sad is that Dragonlance, the campaign setting which is supposedly about dragonriders, has a tiny amount of dragonriding rules crunch in it. To make the assertion that the mechanics of dragonriding is a core of D&D is just not true. It's an idea that runs through fantasy, but it has never been supported in the core rules, and even in the setting which is about the concept, it has received minimal support.
good allies stuff
A fair point, and much better supported than the idea that good dragon stats are needed because dragonriders are a core part of D&D.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Yeah...For the record Sebastian, yours has to be the sorriest avatar available on these boards. And your profile is highly disturbing. Who is this Jack that you so dislike?
Oh, and you misspelled tendencies.
:P
Eh? I don't dislike Jack all that much, I just gave him some bonus slots on my enemies list because he has an army of nutty clones.
Spelling error fixed! Thanks for the update, that's been wrong for years.
But I think the truth is simply that WotC is no longer interested in such game elements. They say otherwise, but I consider their products a more convincing indicator of priorities than their PR releases.
I think WotC is interested in those sorts of elements, but I think they're interested in providing them in the Dragon magazine ecology articles, rather than straight in the Monster Manual. To some degree, that's a matter of having to buy more stuff to get what you used to get in the core books, but there's a little more to it than that. The ecologies are usually better quality and more detailed than what you used to get in the Monster Manual. They usually include extra goodies.
I'm pretty critical of most of the monster fluff in the 3e and even in the fairly entertaining 2e monster manual. There's entry after entry, and it all pretty much said the same kinds of stuff over and over. There's a physical description, which may or may not match the picture. The entry usually takes pains to point out that what is being described is, in fact, a monster and that it likes to attack nearby things, particularly adventurers. Then depending on what type of monster it is, you get a hodgepodge of other facts. Common allies can be useful, but you get the same sort of information in a more immediately useful form in 4e with the encounter suggestions. Habitat/society stuff drives me crazy, since if I'm already making up an adventure, I can make up that stuff in less time than it takes me to actually read it, and I know that it will fit my story. Even a lot of the other info, like habitat, number appearing, organization, etc I find more or less useless. Monsters appear when, where, and in the number I need for my story or encounter.
In other words, when I miss that stuff at all, it's just that I miss the entertainment value. The campaign setting or my own imagination changed all the other info so frequently that it's almost unhelpful to have it there.
Oh, but did I say hope for 4e stats for the Aurumvorax soon? Also the Catoblepas.
I think WotC is interested in those sorts of elements, but I think they're interested in providing them in the Dragon magazine ecology articles, rather than straight in the Monster Manual. To some degree, that's a matter of having to buy more stuff to get what you...
And hope they get around to what you want/need in a timely manner. I think you're right about the quality of the DDI stuff, but it's an extremely poor solution for DMs that need quick access to lots of material.
So I'm left with the fact that the D&D rules don't provide the tools I require -- I'll also need to purchase DDI, and many of their supplemental books as they come out... hoping along the way that the released material is what I need.
Sigh...
PS I'm trying not to slam 4e. Most of my statements are about what I want, not necessarily what anyone else wants. Which I suppose is the point of the thread -- what we miss.
Ahem, would you mind fixing my name too? I am Tharen the Damned, no Theran. For you it might be nothing, for me it is impactful!
I think we should be saving some of that impactfulness for those that butcher and degrade our blessed English language! :P