More templates? Coolio.
I assume that it was an attempt to joke about the abundance of unnecessary descriptive adjectives. Specifically stemming from the naming of the Fleshtearer Shark.
Although there might be more templates. I would like that.
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Nah, I'm just poking fun at 4e monster naming convention... one can't have just a plain "wolf", it must be either "shadow wolf", "doomfire wolf" or "flumphtouched wolf". Smells awfully of WoW monster naming schemes...
I thought you were stealing the joke-thunder of nedleeds.
Although, "flumphtouched wolf" beats his bear joke, heheh. I like what I've read and what little I've played of 4E, but some of the monster names are silly. It's a little like a Dragonforce song. Take "fire", "shadow", or "death" and mix with another two- or three-syllable word, add with a monster name and, viola! New monster!
I looked at MM2 at my FLGS today, and would like to pick it up the next time I have some spare cash. Nice to see some favorites as well as some new baddies.
Nah, I'm just poking fun at 4e monster naming convention... one can't have just a plain "wolf", it must be either "shadow wolf", "doomfire wolf" or "flumphtouched wolf". Smells awfully of WoW monster naming schemes...
On page 264 of your 4th Edition Monster Manual you will find the TOTALLY XTREME and ADJECTIVES EVERYWHERE "Gray Wolf" monster.
Nah, I'm just poking fun at 4e monster naming convention... one can't have just a plain "wolf", it must be either "shadow wolf", "doomfire wolf" or "flumphtouched wolf". Smells awfully of WoW monster naming schemes...On page 264 of your 4th Edition Monster Manual you will find the TOTALLY XTREME and ADJECTIVES EVERYWHERE "Gray Wolf" monster.
Booyah!
And let's not forget the extreme awesome of the half-fiend gnoll ranger 7/blackguard 6!
Okay, back to the subject at hand.
It looks to have a lot of great monsters, but I've only skimmed through it. I'll be able to give a fuller report tomorrow as I just received it.
One thing that I did notice - metallic monsters are now Unaligned. Okay, I know why they did it (why fight a Good aligned monster?), but still, I've always considered the metallic monsters to be Good. Dragonlancers will not be pleased.
At any rate - that's pretty minor in my book. I'm just happy they exist now. I will of course, be making them at least lean toward Good in my game. Now and again a metallic dragon my become a villain, but that will be an unusual occurrence.
More thoughts tomorrow.
Is any silly new name ever going to top the celestial dire badger? I don't think that'll ever happen.
Ah, so now that I've had a little more time to look it over, here are some initial impressions. I realize most who are going to buy the books, probably have already done so, but I thought I'd still give my opinion anyway.
MMII is probably essential for any 4e player. I feel that with the release of PHBII and MMII we now have a complete game. Many anti-4ers have used this fact as a reason for why 4e sucks, but for me, it has been worth it. I now feel I have tons of options and a really great game.
Creatures that make me feel more complete: metallic dragons, ankheg, behirs, gibbering mouther, centaurs, djinn, animal creatures, giant ants, remorhaz, rust monster(!), kenkus, stone giants, frost giants, will-o'-wisps, and many more.
4e admirers won't mind some of the revision of some of these creatures. Case in point, the rust monster. The rust monster can still destroy the PC's items, but now there are mechanics in place to make up for some of the destruction (the residuums on magic item can be retrieved). Another example, metallic dragons are now considered Unaligned.
Some creatures we have already seen get further treatment. There are more varieties of angels, demons, devils, oni (a personal favorite), archons, humans (pirates!), trolls, eladrin, lycanthropes, and many more. Most of these varieties are excellent and definitely add to the game.
But best of all: Demogorgon. Not only is Demogorgon a formidable level 34 solo creature, he and his retinue are well described. Almost 10 pages are used to describe the archdemon and his various aspects and followers, making MMII essential for any Demogorgon focused campaign (such as a certain AP).
There are a few silly creatures. The arbalester (basically an arbalest construct) seems like an awkward creature to combat. I've never been a fan of myconids (the mushroom menace). The chaos shards seem more like traps than living creatures (however, they might play well in game).
So I'll sum by repeating what I said before: for anyone who likes and DMs 4e, the MMII has great new options for your campaign.
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And for a side note on 4e naming conventions: Sometimes a tiger is just a tiger.
And for a side note on 4e naming conventions: Sometimes a tiger is just a tiger.
Yes, I was happy to see that several animals avoided, what I feel are, unnecessary adjectives adjectives to them, even if that just left them a "Tiger" rather than a something else. There are still a few that use them, but few of those stuck in my mind when glancing through the book.
I do have my suspicions about Marvel inspired monsters popping up in the Monster Manuals. First with Zombie Hulk in MM1, now with the Gnome Wolverine (no claws or regeneration, but I'm prone to associate the short gninja with the Marvel character).
The chaos shards seem more like traps than living creatures (however, they might play well in game).
Yeah the shards made me think that some designer was struggling to think up a new monster while watching Star Trek. And the 'death' one that has little skulls in it? It looked like a promotional item for a metal band.
In general I like the book, the new monsters scan well and I am full of all sorts of nasty ideas about how to use them allready. I was impressed with the depth of the demogorgon section as well. When I saw there was a cockatrice I was glad to read that they can still petrify you. I love all the PC race writeups. Like in any zombie film the only truly evil monsters are the humans, or in this case humanoids.
Here is my pedantic nerdy quibble of the week though: Mushrooms are not plants. Myconids are, and some of their powers relate to effecting plants only. I realize that making an in-game classification specifically for fungi would be silly and pedantic but It still bugged me.
All in all I think MM2 is better than MM1 at first glance, as was the case with the PHBs. Lots and lots of options are open now on both sides of the screen.
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Nah, I'm just poking fun at 4e monster naming convention... one can't have just a plain "wolf", it must be either "shadow wolf", "doomfire wolf" or "flumphtouched wolf". Smells awfully of WoW monster naming schemes...
If you look at Mike Mearls' forum posts on Enworld, his signature contains "Retro Stupid - and proud of it." He links the definition of hte term, so let me follow suit.
Here's my own - cinematic - take on it (view from 0:30 onwards). 4E is not a cartoon-superheroes RPG like Mutants & Masterminds. It's an earnest poke at the standard fantasy flavour. Or, let's just say, that's one way to look at (and like) playing 4E games with their over-the-top naming conventions of...basically everything.
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Nah, I'm just poking fun at 4e monster naming convention... one can't have just a plain "wolf", it must be either "shadow wolf", "doomfire wolf" or "flumphtouched wolf"."Please could you show me on the doll, where the flumph touched you..."
I'm never going to be able to see a "touched" template without laughing now...
Got my copy today. It's truly fantastic. And stone giants, just in time for me to convert the end of The Hook Mountain Massacre!
While this doesn't necessarily tell us anything about the overall success of the game, this is interesting.
The Monster Manual 2 made the Wall Street Journal's bestseller list at the #14 bestselling non-fiction book of last week. I know that we saw the PHB2 on this list previously, which was cool, but the MM2 is a Dungeon Master's supplement, not a player tool.
Pretty sweet.
I love the pod demon. Can't wait to use one.
Haven't really looked this over but I hear that the book has changed around some of the design specs for certain types of creatures.
Specifically apparently the Solo's were considered something of a problem in that they last a long time but generally use all of their abilities fairly quickly leading to fights that take many rounds but don't have a lot changing from round to round.
The solution, as I hear it, has been to reduce the number of hps the Solo's have on average and to give them a bunch more powers that kick in when they are bloodied so that they can pull out some new cool tricks that teh players have not seen 1/2 way through the fight.
Higher level solos used to have their hit points multiplied by a factor of 5 (I can't remember if the cut off was the paragon or epic tier); they now multiply hit points by four, so you'd see no hit point changes to heroic tier solos. Defenses were also tweaked.
One thing that I did notice - metallic monsters are now Unaligned. Okay, I know why they did it (why fight a Good aligned monster?), but still, I've always considered the metallic monsters to be Good. Dragonlancers will not be pleased.
Personally I am ok with unaligned Metallics. I say this for 2 reasons:
1) You can still make them good, no big deal (Alignment just isn't the matter that it used to be, in 4e alignment doesn't do much in game terms).2) I've always felt Dragons in general were too shoehorned in alignemnt. What I mean is that Yes a Gold dragon is Good, and a silver etc. But in the end what we think of as good is highly different to ancient powerful being like a dragon. They have a different sense of things than we do. So in the end they plot for the good but in the short term it doesn't seem like they care. Just my take on it. YMMV
They've made some real progress in figuring out how to make minions work. The pod demon (and pod spawn) mentioned above is a good example, though I haven't been able to use it myself. However, I tossed a couple of black puddings at my party last week, and it was every bit as fun as I had hoped. And I was certainly aided and abetted by our tempest fighter, who held onto his Dual Strike for dear life, even as it became clear it meant popping out twice as many black pudding minions per turn.
Monsters that make their own minions steadily throughout the encounter are great. It really allows for minions to be a problem that lasts for the entire fight, instead of being mopped up by the second round of combat.