Monster Manual 2...first impressions
Hey all!
just posted the following at dicefreaks...
Got MM2 today and so far have spent about an hour with it. Basically a quick read through, I'll go over in in more detail over the next few days.
First impressions...
The cover art is very good, and doesn't look as cartoony as I'd initially thought. The book has 207 pages of stats compared with MM1's 267. Though the price was very cheap I thought (in the UK). The book has about 2/3rds the number of monsters to MM1. Pound for pound the epic content is the same percentage, however, it feels much less. There are no Abominations in this book, which is just silly. Given the pseudo 'Cold' theme of the book I would have expected to see the Xixecal. The more powerful Metallic Dragons make up 16% of the epic content. With 50% less epic content, the same number of dragons really dominate the epic tier.
The
Demogorgon entry is hit and miss. Demogorgon himself is brilliant, and suitably powerful. The Aspect and Exarchs are good enough, but for me, they don't do enough to tie other entries thematically with Demogorgon. Where are the Ixitxachitl - nowhere to be seen. There is one relevant (in this case aquatic) demon, the Kazrith (Level 20 Lurker). But if I wanted to run an adventure taking a group of heroes up to meet Demogorgon I'm going to have a hard time fleshing out the rest of the encounters in Demogorgon's Realm.
Monsters I did like...the
Djinni are pretty cool, and the
Fomorians get the extended treatment they maybe should have had in the first book. The
Elementals cover a lot of ground, the
Human entry has a lot of story potential. The additional
Maruts are nice and the
Winter Wolf entry is surprisingly interesting...the
Star-spawn I need to read over in detail.
Missed opportunities...the new
Angels should have been in MM1, they just seem to be rounding out the roles. Also they have the Archangel template but no example Archangel. I don't really understand whats going on with the
Archons. Surely they would have the sense to tie Archon power to giant power, and to be fair they do with Earth Archons. But the Storm Archons are no more powerful than the Fire Archons - for example.
Chaos Shards - seems to me like a brilliant idea for some powerful epic nasties; reminiscent of the stuff from Time Bandits. But instead they are totally chumpitized to Levels 4, 8, 12 and 16. The
Demons, mechanically they look quite interesting but there just seems to be something lacklustre about the entries, I think it may be to do with the naming conventions where some have a species name Bebilith; Yochlol and some are simply called Abyssal Marauder or Pod Demon. The
Devils, again, same nomenclature problem with the demons, but this time the art seems to be on the wrong page for the devils in question.
Fell Taints...here is the first sentence...
"Insubstantial alien predators from a twisted realm of madness..." (ie. the Far Realm). How cool does that sound!? Oh wait, Levels 1, 1, 2 and 4. What the heck do they prey on, wounded kobolds? They came all the way from the Far Realm but are less of a threat than the weakest gnome in the book (who is Level 5).
Eldritch Giants, as already mentioned by KCG they are weaker than Storm Giants. Added to that, the Eldritch Titan doesn't follow the new convention of having the Huge version be more 'elemental' - in this case magical.
Based on first impressions I'm giving it 6/10 and one of those points is for Demogorgon alone. The missed opportunities of the Chaos Shards and the Fell Taints are really annoying me.
I do think stronger themes in Monster books is the way to go. I'd rather have a larger section of cold creatures in one book, then I know where to look for designing those encounters. If I were WotC I'd have picked out maybe half a dozen themes and devoted at least half the book to those. Like including the Ixitxachitl, Aquatic, Reptilian and Ape-like Demons, Fiendish Dinosaurs; or throw in addition to the Cold-based entries (Frost Giant; Mammoth; Remorhaz; Winter Wolf) Kostchchie, the Xixecal, the Frost Archons (instead of putting them in MM1), Leucrotta etc. Maybe use that Thunder Serpent primordial and then on the back of that have a bunch of Storm based critters. Or a Far Realm monstrousity and then a load of Far Realm stuff.