Customer Reviews
A monster aid for the DM - By: koboldkommando, 23 Aug 2008 
A very useful monster manual that has the data displayedin a concise & easy to use manner. Monsters listed from A to Z makes for finding monsters fast & easy & the statistics block lists their relevant stats from their rolein combat to their actual characteristic statistics (want to know what a kobolds' dexterity & wisdom is?). What the monsters powers are & what are the effects are listedin it's stat block & what players would know upon passing a lore check is presentedin bite sized chunks of information. This shifts the emphasis from giving the DM a wonderful back story that they may or not enjoy to actually helping defining & letting a playerin on the fun by having a mechanic to show just what their character would knowin game about the monsters. Also given is it's level & role to help DMs better understand their functionin a fight & encounter group helps a DM determine what a party should face.
Also listed are the tactics that monsters would use are mentioned as well alongside a full colour illustration. At the back a glossary & a listing of monsters by level & a useful racial traits used for npc or possible pc races if the DM permits it. My dislikes for this book are the use of symbols for attack powers, they seem a bit small to see & not distinct enough for my liking. Monster descriptions some are brief but all have a full colour illustration. This stops the problem of some things being overwritten & when you look at the page the stat block which a DM needsin a game quickly is there but some entries like the Beholder seem a bit too short. It does have a wonderful full page illustration but more information on it would be nice for new referees to have. The artin this book is very relevantin describing what a monster looks like & seems to be a way of saving on text space with descriptions.
Having used this manual to run a game it is very good at providing when the relevant information is needed fast.
Opaque, arbitrary, inconsistent, unimaginative and uninspiring - By: X. Gallagher, 16 Jul 2008 
Sometimes you read a book that stuns you. Not often, as after 28 years of role playing you have pretty much seen it all, but sometimes.
With this, the 3rd core rule book for Dungeons & dragons v.4.0 the apotheosis of DnD from a role playing game to a table top, product dependent (miniatures & rule supplements), combat 'system', is complete.
First the good stuff. There are a wide variety of monsters (many of the old favourites, however,are missing) & most have multiple variations to reflect the 'role' the monsters fill (such as skirmisher, minion, brute, solo, etc)in 'Encounter groups'. Encounter Groups are predefined lists of between 1 & a dozen or so creatures that you simply select as a whole & dropin to your adventure. Everything is worked out for you. You, the DM, don't have to worry about hit points, XP, weapons, powers, feats... It is fast, easy, simple.
This is the 'WOW'factor, it really is useful.
After this, it all goes wrong. The 'system' ceases to make any sense whatsoever.
Is a Drow priest a cleric to Lolth? If it is, why doesn't it have the same number & variety of powers (such as utility powers) as a cleric? Why would it's hit points change when it's role changes when a clerics do not?
Are cyclops a race with the racial power 'Evil Eye', is Evil Eye one power or 6 (there are 6 different versions of Evil Eye, all different), a feat, racial ability, or what?
Why do Hydras & Chimeras, both multi-headed monsters have different & somewhat cheesy named 'powers' to describe the same basic action of attacking with all heads?
Why are Carrion Crawler tentacles treated differently to those of a displacer beasts & both differently to a Grell?
Talking of Grells, why does a level 11 elite controller Grell lose the venomous bite that a level 7 elite soldier Grell possess?
Can a lich cast arcane rituals?
These & many, many, many, many other questions will NOT be answeredin this book.
Moving on...
The monster descriptions are brief. There is 'lore' that give players bare bones information & a few words for the DM. Each monster/role combination has a short paragraph on tactics. The monster stats block is itself crowded & squashed, & clearly do not cover everything. Racial traits are offin a section by themselves, notin the text describing the monsters.
It's brief. it's enough to run a combat, & that is it. If you want something deeper go look at a car park puddle.
Combat itself should be mentioned. It's incredibly positional & a lot of monsters powers push, slide, pull, shift, teleport or burst one or more targets. To be fair the players get the same, but allin all you need miniatures to track what is going on. Who makes those miniatures...
So, to be frank. What you have here are rigidly (but opaquely) defined creatures, with access to large (but unpublished) lists of powers, rife with internal (and inexplicable) inconsistencies, & all reduced to a set of condensed statistics & a tactics block. Oh, & the creatures 'enjoy' different systems for such things as recharging powers, healing surges, numbers of powers, etc, skewing the encounters heavily against them.
There is a lot wrong with this.The DM cannot easily reverse engineer the creatures & it is not clear that substituting one power/weapon/whatever for another will lead to predictable results. There is no mechanism for creating monsters & applying feats (indeed racial traits comein the form of featsin this 'system', so without all the racial traits being published the DM is stuffed & has to make arbitrary rule calls). The lack of a clear mechanism leads to greater dependency on more monster manuals & officially published books.
When the DM & players start to wonder about the inconsistencies there is no way to work out what should happen & what has happened. When the inevitable happens & the players & the DM decide fair play should existin the game (that is, NPCs, monsters & player characters are all governed by the same rules) a lot of reworking will need to be done to the system, reworking that the rule books are incapable of supporting.
This, therefore is an extraordinary book. Utterly stunning. Opaque, arbitrary, inconsistent, unimaginative & uninspiring.
It's needed if you are going to play DnD 4.0, but it's still a turkey. One star.
An excellent tool for the DM - By: insanodag, 20 Jun 2008 The new Monster Manual for D&D 4e, continues the effort of making life for the DM simpler. It provides the game information for a variety of monsters, focusing on their role within encounters allowing the DM to concentrate on plot & DM'ing. The big change between this & the two previous editions is the distinct lack of fluffin descriptions of the monsters. This may be disconcerting to some buyers, but personally I prefer it this way. It puts less restrictions on the DM's creativity as the DM can then place the monstersin a variety of ecological niches & within more interesting social structures.
Monster Manual light - By: Christian Kroken, 19 Jun 2008 
After being impressed by Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition & the following 3.5 update I'm very dissapointed by 4th edition.
The art is very good as usual, since Wizard of the Coast has a lot of talented artists, so you won't have any problem with that. Lots of nice eye-candy indeed!
I agree with all the pointsin the previous review by Simon Allen. This book is definitely missing something. It's basically a text book with mainly statistics & maybe a couple of sentences about the creature itself. Take the beholder for example. Here's a short summary:
Beholder:
Stat block {} Eye of flame. Covers ~60% of the page
Tactics: Three sentences each for two different kinds of beholder.
Lore: 9 small sentences about beholder lore.
Stat block {} Eye Tyrant (Solo creature). Covers ~80% of the page
Encounter group: 6 sentences
This all there is about the beholder. All the info on this creature is on one page, the next page has a full-page picture of two beholders. Almost all creatures have their pictures on the same page as their stat block(s). As you can easily see this doesn't give a good picture of a beholder at all, except as a large piece of numbers & letters. This goes on for all the other creatures. In my opinion I don't really have to say anything more to prove my point. The reliance on stat blocks to show all the info makes this book look like an index for monstersin a trading card game or something.
This review is based on a thorough read-through at a gamestore, & I'm glad I read through it, because I won't be buying this one.
Dungeons and Half of the Dragons - By: Simon Allen, 15 Jun 2008 I think we all expected Wizards to milk their new edition of the rules with a whole new suite of supplemental books, but I felt really let down with this. People are going to have to start throwing big cash at this game to get what they hadin their hands from the three core books of previous editions.
Whilst the artwork & presentation can't really be faulted, the descriptions are sometimes very brief & oriented primarily towards combat. No ecology, no behaviourial or social traits, seem to take away some of the roleplaying possibilities. The tone of the text, like the other two books, suggests very much a younger target group. The 3.5 edition had a certain balanced maturity to its writing style that would not phase a mature gamer, but I expect this will be cause for complaint.
However, this is not my main gripe. There are huge gapsin monsters presented here that have been integralin the game since the beginning. No metallic dragons (only chromatic) & many of the the giant species (scorpions, ants, centipedes) that traditionally formed many of the challenges at lower level are just not there.
There is a section at the back which presents a selection of statistics for usein character generation, but those used to the level adjustmentin 3.5 will probably not find these easy to get on with. Is a 1st level 7'5" 350lb minotaur really balanced with other 1st level characters? Why do none of the racesin the whole game have negative adjustments to their statistics? Everyone is pimped up! Was not Warforged promised as a core racein D&D 4 Characters & Classes, but has now been demoted to a short paragraph here?
It also seems that for most of the stats presentedin the Monster Manual, unless you are around 10th level, you are going to get kicked around. Although with the new self healing phenomenon you don't need to worry about dying ;) The variety here is limited - you will be fighting zombies & goblins for quite a while. How about a giant scorpion huh?
The idea of updating the game is well appreciated, but pages are wasted here with rather abstract 'gibbering horror mound' type villains that will have no real partin many roleplayng campaigns.
I will stick to Pathfinder for the moment. Hopefully I will be persuaded by the new web tools to take more interest. Do we have to pay for those by the way?
Maybe I'll leave thisin the dentist's waiting room, as it's not a bad at a glance.
