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Monster Manual: A 4th Edition Core Rulebook (D&d Core Rulebook) (Dungeons & Dragons) | 
| Author: Wizards Rpg Team
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Category: Book
List Price: £19.99
Buy New: £17.99
You Save: £2.00 (10%)
New (23) Used (9) from £15.63
Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 9879
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 4
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.4
Dimensions (in): 10.9 x 8.4 x 0.7
ISBN: 0786948523
Dewey Decimal Number: 793.93
EAN: 9780786948529
ASIN: 0786948523
Publication Date: June 6, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Nearly all monster have a few pre-made variants oftean at different levels December 27, 2008
Whist I really liked the ideas that Wizards of the Coast introduced in third edition, the system offered a staggering numer of options to the players and DMs, to the point of being overwhelming. The goal with 4E was simplify, simplify, simplify.
For instance In third edition you would create a monster in a way very similar to that used by a player to create their character: You would choose your monster, give it a class then choose its feats and spells. For example, between feats, spells and abilities, a normal adult dragon would have around 30 different options during combat. In 4th edition even the most powerful has about 7.
In 4th edition nearly all monster in the Monsters Manual have a few pre-made variants oftean at different levels, which makes it a lot easier just to pull one out of the book and put it straight into your adventure. You can still create your own variants, but you will need the Dungeon Masters Guide to do this.
In the tradition of the 1st edition AD&D Monster Manual, this book dispenses with lengthy descriptions of monsters and instead focuses on stats. Only in rare circumstances do monster get lengthy prose regarding their motivations outside of being fodder for the adventurers to beat up on. Filling in the details is left to the DM.
The new stat blocks are straightforward with special abilities in the stat block rather than hidden amongst the monster's descriptive text. One of my favorite things from the last two Monster Manuals is carried over into this book: knowledge checks to see what our heroes might know about their current foe.
The list of monsters includes the bulk of classic D&D bad guys: whist there may be the odd surprise as to which creatures got included - it's worth remembering that most editions of D&D have had multiple versions of the Monster Manual (3.5 was up to volume 5), so If your favorite bad guy didn't make the cut they'll almost certainly be in a future product.
The art is good and pretty consistant, however, roughly 10-15% (maybe more) is culled from 3.5 books. When they do redo one though, it's ususally real eyecandy. The lich, for example, or the foulspawn, or the new take on the lamia.
Unfortunately Wizards of the Coast are being affected by the credit crunch and sadly they have recently had to restructure and lay off some staff.
As an example of this they will no longer be producing the D&D Collectible Miniatures Game, instead focusing on non-random and semi-random miniatures packs aimed at those role playing 4th edition D&D. There will be two types of packs, one type aimed at players with player characters and the other type aimed at DM's with monsters. Good news for role players and bad news for miniature players.
Monster manual 4e December 22, 2008
Pretty good book, decent condition and will provide hours if not weeks of interesting reading.
Prompt delivery makes it higher by my standards as we are talking the christmas rush here so all in all not bad at all and I was more or less in the pathfinder camp for much of the time since 4e was announced.
A necessary addition if you want to run the game although if you want a taster take a look at the starter set but not if you to run the whole thing.
Take care and all the best!
 Efficient November 26, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Provides all the details needed to throw hundreds of monsters against your players. This book embraces its purpose as a list of encounters, it throws out all pretence of creating a magical ecosystem and focuses on what is important. What the monster is called, weather or not it is trying to eat the party members and how it goes about doing so.
 Opaque, arbitrary, inconsistent, unimaginative and uninspiring July 16, 2008
4 out of 9 found this review helpful
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 and dragons v.4.0 the apotheosis of DnD from a role playing game to a table top, product dependent (miniatures and 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) and 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 and a dozen or so creatures that you simply select as a whole and drop in 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 and 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 and Chimeras, both multi-headed monsters have different and 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 and 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 and many, many, many, many other questions will NOT be answered in this book.
Moving on...
The monster descriptions are brief. There is 'lore' that give players bare bones information and a few words for the DM. Each monster/role combination has a short paragraph on tactics. The monster stats block is itself crowded and squashed, and clearly do not cover everything. Racial traits are off in a section by themselves, not in the text describing the monsters.
It's brief. it's enough to run a combat, and that is it. If you want something deeper go look at a car park puddle.
Combat itself should be mentioned. It's incredibly positional and 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 all in 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, and all reduced to a set of condensed statistics and a tactics block. Oh, and 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 and it is not clear that substituting one power/weapon/whatever for another will lead to predictable results. There is no mechanism for creating monsters and applying feats (indeed racial traits come in the form of feats in this 'system', so without all the racial traits being published the DM is stuffed and has to make arbitrary rule calls). The lack of a clear mechanism leads to greater dependency on more monster manuals and officially published books.
When the DM and players start to wonder about the inconsistencies there is no way to work out what should happen and what has happened. When the inevitable happens and the players and the DM decide fair play should exist in the game (that is, NPCs, monsters and 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 and 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 June 20, 2008
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
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 and DM'ing. The big change between this and the two previous editions is the distinct lack of fluff in 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 monsters in a variety of ecological niches and within more interesting social structures.
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