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<blockquote data-quote="timbannock" data-source="post: 9326111" data-attributes="member: 17913"><p>I love monster books because of the inspiration mainly, then the lore, and lastly the stats. I used to think (for an embarrassingly long time) that I liked them for the stats more, but only all-too-recently have I discovered that I don't like my games as mechanically complex as I thought I did. So I've got monster books for 5E for days, but ever since picking up <em>Forge of Foes</em>, I realized 98% of the stats in all those books are wasted on me; I just use the monster table on page 6 which presents the baseline stats. I make significantly simpler versions of the monsters using those baselines, pull some abilities from other chapters of <em>Forge of Foes</em>, and maybe an ability or two from all those other monster books, and go. My monsters are rarely more than about 2-3 sentences worth of info. (More importantly, I'm also completely burnt on 5E and complexity near that degree.)</p><p></p><p>Which leads us to <em>Monster Overhaul</em>. While I think it does prove a lot about how monster stats can be pulled together quickly out of a hat when you're experienced, I think that's less true for inexperienced folks. Moreover, for me, I reference it all the time, because the lore about each monster gives it more purpose than "thing to be killed," and the breadth of coverage and options for each monster means there's still a lot of stuff that is equally useful to me during prep and during actual gameplay, if I lean into randomness, rather than planning out every encounter (or even what creatures appear on random encounter tables). I don't know exactly how that lends itself to the specific question above, but that's my take, I guess.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="timbannock, post: 9326111, member: 17913"] I love monster books because of the inspiration mainly, then the lore, and lastly the stats. I used to think (for an embarrassingly long time) that I liked them for the stats more, but only all-too-recently have I discovered that I don't like my games as mechanically complex as I thought I did. So I've got monster books for 5E for days, but ever since picking up [I]Forge of Foes[/I], I realized 98% of the stats in all those books are wasted on me; I just use the monster table on page 6 which presents the baseline stats. I make significantly simpler versions of the monsters using those baselines, pull some abilities from other chapters of [I]Forge of Foes[/I], and maybe an ability or two from all those other monster books, and go. My monsters are rarely more than about 2-3 sentences worth of info. (More importantly, I'm also completely burnt on 5E and complexity near that degree.) Which leads us to [I]Monster Overhaul[/I]. While I think it does prove a lot about how monster stats can be pulled together quickly out of a hat when you're experienced, I think that's less true for inexperienced folks. Moreover, for me, I reference it all the time, because the lore about each monster gives it more purpose than "thing to be killed," and the breadth of coverage and options for each monster means there's still a lot of stuff that is equally useful to me during prep and during actual gameplay, if I lean into randomness, rather than planning out every encounter (or even what creatures appear on random encounter tables). I don't know exactly how that lends itself to the specific question above, but that's my take, I guess. [/QUOTE]
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