And did I ever run into that in my day of N-S, Frank.
Who was that said spell lists were murder? jt. Because spell lists were not murder, this is murder. Sure, spell lists could've often been improved with single line spell summaries, as found in the class spell list section of the 3e PHB, a short reminder is unusually enough when the spells do what they say they do anyway. But changing it to hundreds of minutely different but exactly specified things is a fucking nightmare in comparison to spell lists on a monster. I know what Charm Person does, in both AD&D and 3e.
Naga lets me look at a bit of that internal consistency. Obviously these don't have full Naga power sets, they're Elite but very compact.
- So the Dark Naga here is +24 vs AC; 2d6+8 poison damage, and the target is slowed (save ends).
- The Medusa in previous post is +15 vs AC; 1d6+7 damage, and the target takes ongoing 10 acid and poison damage (save ends)
- But the other Medusa is +20 vs AC; 1d8+8 damage, and the Medusa Warrior makes a secondary attack against the same target. Secondary Attack: +18 vs Fortitude; the target takes ongoing 10 poison damage and is slowed (save ends both).
Note that most of them don't even give a shit what your Fort def is. Same for pushes and grabs and all sorts of shit, sometimes the mechanics are targeting an appropriate defense, and sometimes they aren't and your defence doesn't mean anything.
I just, you know, there's no way to learn this system of what the monsters are gunna do or what people at the table are going to need to roll or what bit is sustained or on a (save ends) timer.
There's no system, there's just a format. The mechanics are any random thing, even on monsters that are on the same page and supposed to fight in the same fight.
Also, the
Primordial Naga is an awful concept. It's not even different to the Primordial Hydra. Same level Solo, different number of heads for similar total damage. Nothing to do with Nagas. Garbage.
Nightmare gives fire resistance to the dude riding it, but wouldn't apply any fire damage to anyone riding it or wrestling it or grabbing it anyway. OK.
Nightwalker are L20 Elite, they have a nice Finger of Death encounter power, but the rest of it is very uninspiring, and still manages to be throwing a unique set of penalties at will with (save ends) so that happens too.
Ogre are the first thing I check in every single Monster Manual in every game that has one. They are my gold standard to which everything else is scaled, a sense of damage outputs, movement rates, minimal complexity, and hit point bloat.
'Twas not an inspiring first glance at 4e for me, that.
Worse still was on the adjacent page, where his buddy has 111 hp, and does 1d10+5 damage (errata to 2d10+5) and gets to reroll his attack if it misses. Because that looked a lot like a game where damage hadn't really gone up much, if at all, but hit points had exploded and it was obviously going to be a huge grind to fight five of them beside the sort of things characters could do early on.
It's, um. 1 hp Ogre, or 111 hp Ogre. You can see why it's still playable if you quarter their hit points and double numbers. 2 of them with 27 hit points, the strikers ~4d6+6 type attacks hitting that are actually useful beside weaker area effects and reliable at-will stuff, and you can just fight 10 Ogres, or dozens at higher levels, and not do Minions like that.
Oni include the
Oni Mage, which is nice. He sort of does everything he needs to, some monsters continue to just plug into this thing fine.
Ooze are creaky old monsters that struggle to fit into every edition in a lot of ways. 4e handles their arbitrary unlike-anything-else bullshit mechanics with arbitrary unlike-anything-else bullshit mechanics.
Gelatinous Cube should obviously be a lower-level Solo, not just because it is not friends with Orcs, but it has always appeared on its own, this is not that hard. Again, most of them are not here.
Feels like they missed a trick to polish them up and present them really well. Another "this should work superbly in 4e, but instead is just passable".
Orc all have a free healing thing, so they have lots of hit points even compared to normal. Bosses full of immediate actions, minor actions, conditional actions, conditional modifiers to their own stuff that aren't even near the stuff they modify. It's quite a lot more messy than most of this book.
Some of the developers obviously had a better handle on this than others, and the lack of a system just leaves it a complete AD&D-style rat's nest at times, except written in 4e codespeak rather than high-Gygaxian English.
Orcus is our cover boy.
Gets this, only repeated without the titles, as a full page illustration, in case you missed it on the cover.
I see they know how to write instant death no-save attacks in this, because Orcus has them. His tail reacts to PCs moving adjacent by stunning for one round and knocking prone. It's all difficult terrain and spawning little monsters and ... why isn't this everywhere? It's simple stuff and it just works, just one condition he's applying and it's limited in application, just two recharge things on a Solo. Like, that's usable, playable, mean as and way too big of numbers on it for PCs to get anywhere with core abilities, but it's good.
This is what the Tarrasque is missing. This is what their big Dragons are missing. This is what their Gorgons and Medusae and fucking Carrion Crawlers are missing. Just stuff that happens and works and you either deal with it (usually before it happens) or you run off, or you try something new, or you dig out the emergency potions or whatever. Maybe you roll up some new PCs because that was bullshit. D&D.
There's also an avatar and high priest and a couple other cultists, I guess there's another Demon lord in each one?
Oh gods, I looked at the Monster Manual 2 to check, it all gets worse, everything in the next one is worse, bigger and messier stat blocks, ever more niche humanoids, whole thing makes the Orcs in this one look tidy, but yes, Demogorgan was next.
Otyugh are a regular monster. Like, if anything had Number Appearing of 1, it should have been a solo, they always probably worked pretty well as a solo, as a concept, and the manual lacks solos down low. The Gulguthra here used to come alone, because they had stealth (you know, hiding in the shitheap) and a couple reach attacks that grab, at least make 'em Elite. These ones team up with Carrion Crawlers or Troglodytes and ... they live in shit, come on, they don't have friends, it's fine.
Owlbear have always had that deathgrip hug thing, they don't let go, this is not here properly, because nothing fucking works here. Only Demon Lords have things that work. It's an Elite, it's allowed to just tie up one PC, they are outnumbered, it's OK. But no.
Panther seem an odd entry, they don't really have Animals in this, outside the mounts. But this is like the Hounds, everything but an actual Panther.
Purple Worm ooh, it works! Swallowed, dazed and restrained (no save). I mean, it takes a while to get you down, but cool. Of course swallowed critters get net +5 to hit it, though can only make basic attacks (pre-errata, also only basic one-handed weapon attacks, which of course very few characters can make). I mean, it's just gunna get smushed, but it always did. Yay.
Quickling is a pretty neat design, one gets a double spring attack effect with a very high move, and the other gets invisibility, because they couldn't put the whole quickling inside one monster less it be a Lurker and a Skirmisher at the same time.
Right, so that's why some monsters work much better in this. If the monster fit in one of their categories, with all its powers, it was allowed them all. Stuff like the Ogre Mage mostly was a Lurker anyway, but everything that wasn't Lurker about it had to be removed, so it looks a good conversion but still misses things. Stuff with an array of spells making it multi-capable just had most of them removed.
So all the very basic bashers are Brutes or Soldiers, other one trick pony types are allowed to carry over everything they had, but Efreet get cut into five different guys. Those categories weren't descriptive, they were prescriptive, if it didn't fit, it wasn't allowed.
That is completely fucking stupid. A monster should do one thing well, but however many things it half-asses doesn't matter, as long as they don't add complexity. Encounter powers are fine.
Rakshasa thus become another split-up monster, it's Soldier, Artillery, Skirmisher, and Controller powers becoming four different monsters. Are they good monsters you ask? They oddly chose to use a standardised power Deceptive Veil for it's illusion, rather than the traditional Rhakshasa one that makes them look and act just like one of their friends because they can read your mind, so it's all a bit sad and I don't care to puzzle them out.
Rat is where I was just saying they don't exist but I guess a Giant Rat is fantastic enough for them. Though it's actually just modelled on the Giant Sumatran Rat and called just that in AD&D, so they've accidentally included an animal! Swarms continue to be marvellously simple and effective for the regular rats.
There's no Rhemorhaz.
Roc swallows up
Pheonix and
Thunderhawk too. The Roc's grab is super-lame and it cannot carry away a dire rat let alone a fucking elephant (not that there are elephants), takes 3 rounds for a L12 Elite Roc to kill a L1 Dire Rat, oh wait, no, no attack of opportunity, so the rat gets away, every time.
Thunderhawk Tactics wrote:Once bloodied, it flies off, only to return with another charge attack.
Such dynamic combats.
Roper basically works, it's a one-trick pony. Just oddly limited here, and not a Solo so misses out on having a go at the whole party on its own.
Stony Body wrote:A roper that does not move, retracts its tentacles, and keeps
its eye and mouth closed resembles a jagged rock formation, stalagmite, or stalactite. In this form, the roper can be recognised with a successful DC 30 Perception check.
But a Roper with it's eye shut is blind, doesn't have blindsight or tremorsence, so can't make perception checks and ... combat never happens? In the land of arbitrary anything, that is just shit.
Rot Harbinger makes tussock wonder what the fuck are these things?
SOMETIMES KNOWN AS ANGELS OF DECAY, rot harbingers are hateful winged undead that inflict a rotting curse with their touch.
Rotting Claw (standard; at-will) + Necrotic
[*]+25 vs AC; 2d10+6 damage, and the target is marked until the end of the rot harbinger's next turn and takes ongoing 10 necrotic damage (save ends).
Dude, no. It doesn't even slide 3 squares, let alone knock prone. That's no curse.
Sahuagin are scalier Triton, thus making them the evil ones. The baron actually has four arms, which mostly work together give or take him throwing his trident at you, when they seem to stop working, maybe, who knows. They all get meaner when they're hitting a bloodied opponent, so that might catch someone, but I guess you notice and heal up.
No sharks to be had, so their priest gets a spectral bite to remind you of what you're missing out on.
Salamander are another pile of fire damage in mid levels, describes a lot of this monster manual. Resisting fire by mid levels is a good idea, which is a nice classic D&Dism really. Feels like they thought of a few things to do with the tail so they had to split it into a lot of monsters.
Gods, is that why there's seven Cyclops? Because they came up with like ten different powers to put in a thing called Evil Eye, and well, there's more monsters.
Satyr has one with a set of pipes, who dazes one target for one round, and everyone else gets +2d6 damage with combat advantage, which you get against dazed targets. So there you go, that's that fight.
Scorpion get a reaction with continuing damage from stinging you when you escape, and damage if you don't escape, which all up is gunna hurt at L1. The L13 version is doing the same thing with bigger numbers and you probably won't care by then.
Shadar-Kai are from Eberron and I never got the attraction at all. I guess they're here to be a level 6-8 encounter for the Shadowfell. Meh.
There's no Shadow. There's a Shadowfell and they didn't give it any Shadows. Weakness is a standard condition, seems an obvious choice now that everything is weak annoying condition plus small damage.
Shambling Mound are a giant special rule in the middle of their stat block that does what Shambling Mounds do. Can't build giant ones with lightning, but yeah, 4e, would be bad. Should def be Elite. The bigger one is, but then can't gobble you up, shoots lightning instead, which is perhaps based off the old Shocker Lizard in a Shambling Mound concept.
Shifter are another Eberron PC race, they used to be weaker versions of lycanthropes, but now are stronger versions of much crappier lycanthropes. They "shift" when bloodied, which works like everything else that changes when things are bloodied in this, which I'm sure isn't as much of it as I was promised back in the day.
Skeleton have 10 varieties at least in D&D history up to here, this instead has none of them and these are 4 new ones and a minion archer.
Skull Lord was previewed as four varieties in 3e's MM V, this is just one of them. Small mercies.
Slaad are here. Before them being generally less well represented as they got more interesting (and eventually not represented at all), they have the Slaad Tadpole.
Which, um, in packs of five is just a nightmare. Interrupt actions in general are poison, but an interrupt 2-square shift vs a melee attack is why you want a fucking system instead of a format! Oh, it's also insubstantial after it hits you. Orcus got nothin' on that.
There's pretty good odds (especially right at the start) where almost all of your party has all it's everything in melee attacks to try and get some damage going against this bloaty bastard edition, and that happens. It's a bit like that first Hyrda encounter in 3e, if you're smart you'll walk away and save yourself a lot of dead PCs. You've probably read about that fight already, I have, I recall it ended with abandoning 4th edition D&D. Game's bad enough in how it kills flanking so often.
The rest aren't all that bad, they lean a bit harder on some of the more standard 4e tricks to give them a bit of impact. For some reason the new tadpoles burrow out your skull, rather that being a proper chestburster.
Snake again are rather fantastic critters, though the Crushgrip Constrictor is another normal real world thing by another name. Uh, seem fine, simple concepts, eh.
Sorrowsworn were a 3e MM III new Demon type, mostly whispering your feels up into conditions. So do these, and pack it all in not too badly, well, after splitting it into four monsters. Nothing dangerous like their old spell abilities, but you know, grindy grind, all drags on so much with just a few small penalties to everything, just what they wanted. Something something Raven Queen for DC 40, oh right, unaligned, fucking gaslighting monsters. At least 3e had the decency to call them Evil.
Spectre is just rubbish. They left the Shadow out for that? It doesn't do anything.
Sphinx ... has one Sphinx called a Sphinx. Have these people read D&D?
Spider has the Blade Spider, which is what they've called the Sword Spider. There's 30 spiders at least in the history, like, just use them. All new plus a random name change. I don't get it, use what's there already, there's heaps.
Stirge is about the smallest monster in the book, L1 Lurker with 22 hp. At least the tactics say it flies away when bloodied! Woo! Way more should say that. Dire Stirge should've been a Stirge Swarm though, or a minion.
Swordwing were one of the preview articles before the game came out, to show off something about Epic monsters. The commentary I was involved with at the time was a little confused as to why they'd bothered. L25 and it's a flying melee guy.
Much like that Primordial Naga I think they're just out of stuff to do up here. The MM1 has always been chock full of low level stuff, after deliberately vacating a lot of that, too much of the old high level things got squeezed down to fill the gaps and then it's just empty up here at L25+.
I've been reading so many of them, that they're all starting to look the same!
Seriously put me off finding a few monsters that could just do things without loads of dice and many rounds passing, Orcus, Purple Worm, Shambling Mound. Though the Mound and Worm were fairly heavily nerfed in errata as a result.