Have they just run out of ideas?

[Username17]

So they released the ToC for the Monster Manual

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dn ... [br][br]OK... here's what gets to me. There are apparently 52 new monsters in tat book, and some of them are reprints from adventures or magazine articles. Seriously, what the fvck? I can sit in the bathtub and come up with 20 monsters before I get wrinkly or have to get the soap out of my hair. I would think that basically anyone could just concept up twenty monsters a day for three days and beat that out.

Let's start: It's a damned D&D book, so you have to touch a bit from every stupid creature type. That means that you need two Oozes. So let's start with:

Amber Ooze - it looks like tree sap and and puts creatures it touches into temporal stasis.

Perfect Storm - insert tirade about how storms sustained by magic for long periods come alive. Then it's a gargantuan ooze that uses gust of wind and lightning bolt. It tries to eat spellcasters with weather powers (druids mostly).

OK, we also have a mandatory Aberration or two:

Gh'rtrkqn All consonant for your protection. Thy're unspeakable, get it? Every aberration needs a schtick in addition to a dumb name, so these bad boys will just be a color that people can't see. So they're naturally invisible, but everyone is vaguely aware that somethng is horribly wrong so you don't have to guess what square they are in - on some level you know. Heck, and insect people can see them with no explanation. They spread hatred and confusion by whisering lies to people at a frequency they can remember but not hear.

Vortex of Teeth It's a big anenome that lives on the Ethereal Plane and its teeth extend into the physical plane. It's really hard to hurt from the physical, and soft and squishy on the ethereal. This looks like a job for a ghost touch sword.

Right- and we need a new set of evil outsiders. One good and one of each flavor of evil. So we get:

Nomadic Devas: like the other devas, but this one totally wanders the planes righting wrongs and using its spell-like atonement to turn people Good. Whatever.

Kystiri Chict They are demons that are all about as good as a small monstrous spider. If they come in groups of 12 or more, they collectively have Tanar'ri abilities. Otherwise, they are just little grovetty monsters.

Bioloth It's like a Succubus, but it's a Yugoloth, so it has completely different abilities for no good reason. Unlike a Succubus it isn't trying to get you to destroy social order and perform evil acts, it's just trying to get your Trix.

Iron Devil It's really tall and made out of metal, but it's a devil, so it's an Outsider and not a Construct. Tricky, neh? These bad boys are more concerned with Purple than black and show up on Acheron as often as Baator.

And we need some Plants. Everyone and their mom makes plant monsters that are compost heaps of evil, so let's try to "branch out" a bit:

Briar Patch It's a tangle of thorny vines that can magically appear to be open ground. Then, once you're standing in it, the vines pop out of the phantom terrain and try to pull you down. An ambush monster that has a legitimate way to actually ambush things, who would have thought?

Dopple Pods: It's a bean vine that steals peoples memories while they sleep nearby and creates a plant-like duplicate of them in a big bean pod and then sends it after the original to attempt to kill them, whereupon it will unhinge the duplicate's jaw and swallow the original and take it back to the vine to be digested.

Seriously, this isn't hard. You can just do it. I'm going to go take a bath.

-Username17

[User3]

To be fair, Frank, you are a little better at this than most people.

And wasn't it apparent that WotC had run out of ideas when they released "3.5," and all the re-prints that came with it?

[Save_versus_Stupid]

Sore wa taihen!

I have to agree with Catharz, also:
"so let's try to "branch out" a bit"

My eyes, make them stop burning!

[RandomCasualty]

It looks like they're spending a lot of pages putting NPC stats on there too. That really seems like they've run out of ideas.

I mean a book of NPCs would be kinda cool, but we don't especially need specific monster NPCs, we can just apply racial mods for the most part. It'd be kinda cool if they produced a book of straight up min/maxed NPCs, but we all know WotC sucks at that and can't produce anything more than garbage builds (Evident by the PHB2 feat selections, wtf?!)

As for monsters, I'd love some creatures like what Frank is suggesting, Something interesting that isn't just "another melee tough". I've seriously had my fill of big dumb melee monsters. We've got like 10 billion of them now, and we might as well just start reprinting the stats on advanced dire bears and renaming the flavor and description, because that's seriously all you've got to do for any claw/claw/bite melee monster. Maybe throw in fiendish if you want it to have SR. And that's it.

[Username17]

OK, let's talk about the other part of the mandatories: you need a hit on every CR or people will be pissed off:

CR
1: Pyrotechnic: It's a mouse surrounded by a black blob of smoke and it causes sparks to appear all over the battlefield. Small distributed damage hits the party until they can find and crush the mouse.
2: Whisper Lizards: It's a caimen-looking monster that is made out of shadowstuff, so it has the 20% concealment up all the time.
3: Glass Bird: It's a bird, it's made out of glass. When slain, it explodes into shards that hurt everything nearby. It's damaged super hard by shatter.
4: Face Hugger: It's a pile of tendrils and claws. It's small, but it tries to give you a face full of alien wing-wong that'll grow into a monster in your belly.
5: Paper Tiger: Surrounded constantly by mirror images that refresh every round and it hits really hard. It has a glass jaw if you can actually hit it and it's fire vulnerable.
6: Orangopoid: It's a big monkey with a horn on its head. It's a closet troll that lives in between the CR 5 Troll and the CR 7 Girallon.
7: Gloom Rabbit: It totally hits your whole party with doom that lasts all day. Also, simply attacking it causes you to have to save vs. bestow curse. In combat, it's tough, but does not hit terribly hard (except for the cursing thing).
8: Scorpicore: All the fun of a manticor and a wyvern. Deadly poison in melee, and also a flying archer.
9: Stagman: It's a guy with an elk head. He has some completely arbitrary druidic powers and can turn into a flying stag.
10: Qalcoran: It's a chalky gem that has a permanent magic jar effect. It'll take your body unless you cast magic circle against bullshit. More vexing, it can also magic jar into the ground, making a temporary earth elemental body that comes after you until the Qalcoran is destroyed.
11: Frerthikna: It's a demon that has the ability to use harm at will as a spell-like ability (caster level 10). It can also raise 4 hit die skeletons at will. It looks like a dude with only shrivelled nerves in its eye sockets and grey dusty skin.
12: Spinal Root: It's a plant that looks like a nobby root and it implants itself into your spine and controls you. It's always encountered in a bear or some damn thing that you kill and then the gnarled root pops out and tries to take you over. Like a Ragomuffyn, but more gross.
13: Hollow Maiden: It looks like an elven lass, but there's nothing inside. Holy crap, you can't even tell something's wrong until you see her empty eye sockets and she has a gaze attack that plane shifts you to Gehenna. Also she can swallow medium creatures whole and look like they do until they die or escape. Being trapped inside inflicts negative levels every day and subjects you o a sleep effect every round.
14: Man on the Road: There's a man that you need to pass a Willpower save to notice at all, even if he's killing your friends. He has spell stowaway for planar travel, so you can't teleport or planeshift away from him. He has a lot of sneak attack.
15: Volcano Spirit: It's a big column of flame that lives at the root of the mountain. It makes earthquakes and rains of fire for miles in every direction so you have to go deal with it in its lair.
16: Painted Man: It's literally a painting of a man, and it's only two dimensional so it cuts you super well using D&D logic. Furthermore, it's actually storedas a series of pages in a book, so even though it's fairly fragile, killing it just flips to the next page. It can be "killed" 10 times each day unless you burn the book that spawns the images.
17: Phantasmal Destroyerr: It's from the Dreamscaoe, and it's incorporeal and invisible. It has an incorporeal touch attack progression and every attack hits you with a supernatural phantasmal killer effect. Also has an aura of sleepiness that makes everyone have to make Con checks every round or become fatigued, exhausted, and inlly sleep. It can coup de grace sleeping creatures with an attack action.
18: Fountain of Blood: It's the juices of little girls in a big onate fountain. It casts massive necromancy effects and is surrounded by little girls that it dominates. Its life essence can escape into any of its dominated little girls.
19: Iron Dragon: It's a dragon, but it's made out of steel because it's a construct. It has a breath weapon that is a big seering light effect, but mostly it flies arround and crushes things. Crazy-high AC, arbitrary SR, and massive attacks.
20: Black Memory: It's a glowing black orb that causesa five mile radius to be saturated with negative energy that slowly kills everyone. Every creature killed by this effect becomes a spirit that the Black Memory can puppet around. It can also sacrifice these spirits to make blasts of lightning or cold.

Right. 20 monsters, in the bath tub. Do that three times and you've got a whole fvcking book.If that's all there is to it, we could have a Monster Manual magazine that came out every month. I'm seriously perplexed as to why there would be so little content in this book.

-Username17

[Save_versus_Stupid]

Well, it is good to see we finally have stats for Elf, Drow.

[Crissa]

Well, I don't mind reprints from adventures and magazines - I always miss something even when I get the magazines, and it's annoying to find them again if they're good enough to reuse.

...Hey, weren't Amber Oozes the oozes which had a dissolve attack in 2nd ed and created new Oozes by basically digesting adventurers into new oozes?

-Crissa

[Username17]

So this morning I took a bath, and I decided to fill out the other mandatories:

Humanoids. There have to be some humanoids, but there are already too many humanoids. So let's put in some templates that we can put on humanoids.

Lobo Slave Template: It's when the Ilithid eat your brain and then keep you alive with evil psionic powers. Makes you dumb, but gives you Diehard as a bonus feat for what that's worth.

Moil Wrought: You're from Moil, and that means that you totally get healed by negative energy instead of positive energy. Also you have cold resistance and light sensitivity. Other than that, you're a humanoid.

Vermin. Something that even the authors don't seem to understand is that the Vermin type doesn't represent giant bugs - the abilities that they hhave aren't anything like the abilities of actual arthropods. The Vermin type is bio-constructs. Mindless, Darkvision, no scent ability - that's not a real creature. So when we throw in some Vermin, let's go crazy, we can:

Vermin Golem: It's like a golem, but it's made out of living parts. It's got centipede arms and crap, and it has arbitrary magic immunity.

Living Armor: It's a creature that you wear. All chitonous and shiny. Makes for a simple master blaster scenario.

Monstrous Moth: It drops dust n you that drives you mad, for no reason.

Animals. Holy shiznit, we don't actually have any giant insects in D&D! We could have like 20 of these.

Dire Ant, Worker: It's an ant, it's big enough to ride. It has an Int of 1 and it has Scent. What more do you want?

Dire Ant Soldier:

Dire Ant Queen:

Dire Bee, Worker:

Dire Bee, Soldier:

Dire Crab:

Dire Lobster:

Dire Spider:

Dire Centipede:

Dire Scorpion:

Magical Beasts. Any Magical Beast can be summated by taking two creatures that exist and making one creature out of them, or by taking some jack random spell and sticking it on some monster. But what the hell, there are actual mythological animals that are not yet represented:

Gulon: It's a Fox Racoon and it has gluttony powers. It can swallow humans whole (despite its small size), and also has mental compulsion effects to make people ea things and each other. Good times.

Camelopard: Half Camel, Half Leopard, it's a historical description of a giraffe. But it's D&D, so it has magical star powers.

Burak: It's like a Sphinx, but with a donkey's body and peacock wings. Also it has magic powers like a Cleric.

Right. Now we need some elementals. How about we write up the Wood Elementals?

Wood Elementals: We can have one of every damned size.

Elemental Steeds: The plane hopping steeds of the Genies. We can have 5 of them (Air, Earth, Water, Fire, Wood). Each one looks like some sort of crazy animal made out of an appropriate element. The Fire one is a giant fire puma and carries Efreet around, the air one is a four-winged cloud bird-snake that carries Djinni, the water one is a many-tentacled water lobster that carries Marid, the Earth one is a big stone wolf that carries Dao, and the wood one is a vine-camel that carries Janni.

Gosh, that's twenty. Now for breakfast!

-Username17

[erik]

1151941326[/unixtime]]
Animals. Holy shiznit, we don't actually have any giant insects in D&D! We could have like 20 of these.

Dire Ant, Worker: It's an ant, it's big enough to ride. It has an Int of 1 and it has Scent. What more do you want?

Dire Ant Soldier:

Dire Ant Queen:

Dire Bee, Worker:

Dire Bee, Soldier:

Dire Crab:

Dire Lobster:

Dire Spider:

Dire Centipede:

Dire Scorpion:

Aren't the Monstrous Spider/Scorpion/Centipedes giant insects?
Also Giant Bees, Fire Beetles, etc.

[Thoth_Amon]

Where's the Scorpicormeragriff?

Scorpion/Manticore/Chimera/Hippogriff?

Gotta have it.

TA

[Username17]

Aren't the Monstrous Spider/Scorpion/Centipedes giant insects?

Nope. Biologically of course, none of those arthropods are insects, but even in that context, the D&D Vermin aren't giant bugs. They are completely magical creatures that happen to look like giant bugs.

An ant has a complex set of behaviors that are highly influenced by its sense of smell. An Ant Worker literally spends its entire life sniffing and searching. The D&D Vermin Ant, on the other hand:

1. Can't search (no Int score).
   
2. Has no sense of smell.
   
3. Has Darkvision like a golem.

The only resemblence it has to the real world creature is appearance. Like how a Nimblewright looks like an armored human.

Where's the Scorpicormeragriff?

Scorpion/Manticore/Chimera/Hippogriff?

Gotta have it.

You mean the Chimeric Warbeast?

-Username17

[User3]

1151941326[/unixtime]]
Gulon: It's a Fox Racoon and it has gluttony powers. It can swallow humans whole (despite its small size), and also has mental compulsion effects to make people ea things and each other. Good times.

Throw in a "slam" testicle attack and you've got a passable mythical tanuki. Maybe give it a human-esque Int score and some sorcerer levels. Or if you want to do it the WotC way, give it spell-like abilities that make it almost exacly like a sorcerer.

[Username17]

1151971805[/unixtime]]

1151941326[/unixtime]]
Gulon: It's a Fox Racoon and it has gluttony powers. It can swallow humans whole (despite its small size), and also has mental compulsion effects to make people ea things and each other. Good times.

Throw in a "slam" testicle attack and you've got a passable mythical tanuki. Maybe give it a human-esque Int score and some sorcerer levels. Or if you want to do it the WotC way, give it spell-like abilities that make it almost exacly like a sorcerer.

Fvcking Tanuki! :shudder: Raccoon testicles. Raccoon Testicles! God damnit.

Anyway... this was reference to the European version, with no giant testicle weaponry. The Asian version... I guess it just has a lot more Yang. But in the spirit of D&D, it should totally be a different creature that's from Nippon and therefore arbitrarily more powerful.

-Username17

[Crissa]

1151978788[/unixtime]]
Fvcking Tanuki! :shudder: Raccoon testicles. Raccoon Testicles! God damnit.

They just released Pom Poko in English...

-Crissa

[Fwib]

Re: the Cameleopard - there's the Cameleopardel in Sandstorm, which is pretty much as you say, only of course, it being Sandstorm the powers are all about heat and stuff...

[Count Arioch the 28th]

1151941326[/unixtime]]
Gulon: It's a Fox Racoon and it has gluttony powers. It can swallow humans whole (despite its small size), and also has mental compulsion effects to make people ea things and each other. Good times.

Sp they made a vore-mased monster.

I wonder what weird fringe fetish wotC will use next then. coming up in MM5, the Dickgirls!

[Username17]

So they made a vore-mased monster.

You misunderstand me sir. I am suggesting that they make a vore-based monster. On the grounds that it's a creature that historical people really believed in. Gulon appear in historical texts.

As for Dick-Girls, I'm afraid that's not possible in mass market books for publication in the US. If you want, we could get one into the Mature Content monster lists. Or a template I suppose. Hmmm...

They just released Pom Poko in English...

Nooooooo.....

-Username17

[Count Arioch the 28th]

1152118295[/unixtime]]

So they made a vore-mased monster.

You misunderstand me sir. I am suggesting that they make a vore-based monster. On the grounds that it's a creature that historical people really believed in. Gulon appear in historical texts.

As for Dick-Girls, I'm afraid that's not possible in mass market books for publication in the US. If you want, we could get one into the Mature Content monster lists. Or a template I suppose. Hmmm...

Ah, I thought you were going over the MM4 monsters.

In that case, if vore monsters are created, I suggest that we make some sort of winger-based Anthro template as well.

[Crissa]

Wow, you know who Doug Winger is? He's a really nice guy. Spent a couple years dead, actually, it's kinda funny. He's a really good artist... What he's known for are just the doodles he does 'after hours' while entertaining himself; apparently he actually gets paid to do art for some advertising corp. He can do really insanely realistic stuff, too...

The sketch on the bottom of my card/dice box is his.

-Crissa

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I've heard from several people that he's a pretty nice guy, actually.

I also heard he did artwork for The Angry Beavers and Dora the Explorer.

But yeah, I know who Doug Winger is.

[Crissa]

Wouldn't you draw what he draws after-hours if you got paid doing mindless, repetitive graphics for unimaginative ad execs?

It's like rewriting 52 monsters that already exist, I suppose, but worse.

Someone has to sketch those roasts for the holiday grocery ad-insert.

-Crissa

[User3]

Well, good to know that even someone who spends his spare time drawing hermaphrodidic muscle-centaurs can succeed in life. But please, lets not take our creepy fetishes into mainstream D&D. Leave that to White Wolf.

Also, Pom Poko is awesome.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Well, I did draw a picture of a pit fiend eating my school in 11th grade art class because we had to copy Andy Warhol soupcans, and I think he was a hack. (But my art teacher idolized him, which was lame.)

So, I think I can relate, I was just more violent.

Edit: Items in italics edited in later (See two posts down)

[Josh_Kablack]

1152128692[/unixtime]]Well, I did draw a picture of a pit fiend eating my school in 11th grade art class because we had to copy Andy Warhol soupcans, and I think he's a hack.

Bullcrap.

He's a corpse.

With a crazy family who has a whole house they forgot about and can't be bothered to fix any more after their craziness drove away the first pair of contractors.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

In light of Andy Warhol's death, my previous post is not appropriate anymore.

I'm editing it as we speak.