Author:Wizards RPG Team Binding: Hardcover Published: 2008-06-06 ISBN: 0786948523 Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.0 / 5.0
"Solid material... Just not classical DnD anymore."
"A Sold Buy"
"Great Ideas--Hurt by Bad Presentation"
"A book of miniatures / card game stat blocks"
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List Price: $34.95 You save: $11.88 (33%)
Editorial Review:
The second of three core rulebooks for the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons® Roleplaying Game. The Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game has defined the medieval fantasy genre and the tabletop RPG industry for more than 30 years. In the D&D game, players create characters that band together to explore dungeons, slay monsters, and find treasure. The 4th Edition D&D rules offer the best possible play experience by presenting exciting character options, an elegant and robust rules system, and handy storytelling tools for the Dungeon Master. The Monster Manual presents more than 300 official Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game monsters for all levels of play, from aboleth to zombie. Each monster is illustrated and comes with complete game statistics and tips for the Dungeon Master on how best to use the monster in D&D encounters.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.0 / 5.0
Solid material... Just not classical DnD anymore. 4th edition is bound to be regarded as the love-child of collectible card games and online RPGs. And no book displays this feeling any stronger than its 4th edition Monster's Manual. I've been playing dnd since 2nd edition came out and did a lot of DMing during 3rd edition. In those times you would create a monster in a way very similar to a PC: You would choose your monster's race, give it a class and choose its feats and spells before you were done. The whole system was incredibly powerful to the point of... more info
A Sold Buy I believe this title to be a sold buy. Most people are distressing over the fluff that was left out of the book; I rather like this approach. It gives me as a DM the ability to customize most of my monster selection to what I need. This title gives you everything to run monsters. Thats what it is a monster manual. The stats are streamlined into easy to read and run stat blocks, and the encounter experience is labeled right with each monster. Over-all this is a easy to use and master Monster Manual.more info
Great Ideas--Hurt by Bad Presentation This Monster Manual shakes things up a lot. Like a lot of the new edition, it's about reimagining the old in a fun new way. Once you get to the good stuff, it's really wonderful. The problem is the good stuff is buried in the monster entries (scattered between the two to three sentence introduction, and the lore bits that give backstory to characters depending on how well they roll). You end up having to hunt around and end up missing a lot of stuff that gets buried in between big striped blocks of... more info
A book of miniatures / card game stat blocks This product is purely a straightforward down to the point book of creatures with stats, nothing more. There is hardly any interesting tidbits about the monsters and their behaviors. No ecology or terrain types or lair fluff and barely any aquatic monsters which irked me. The tactics are clearly laid out. While the stat blocks are interesting in keeping the players on their toes the creatures themselves are more like video game automatons with push button type functions (much like the player... more info
