The Fifth Edition MM

As I said in a previous post, I wasn't too impressed with the 5e PHB. However, by way of contrast I have been extremely impressed with the Monster Manual.

First up, it's a gorgeous book, filled with wonderful artwork and (mostly) well laid out. I also like the amount of lore they've provided for each monster, the layout of that lore, and the range of the monsters. Plus, at 350ish pages, it's a bit of a beast itself - certainly good value for money.

In fact, I'll go so far as to say that this is my second-favourite monster book, narrowly beaten only by 2nd Edition's wonderful Monstrous Manual (the hardback one, not the folders).

I should note here that I've never run 1st edition and so don't really have any opinion on the monster books it offers - they seem nice enough, I guess, but I've never been tempted to use them, so...

The 3e Monster Manual is a pretty solid book, too, as is the 3.5e version. However, in both cases the book falls foul of a serious weakness in the 3e design - although the game pretends to a high level of mathematical rigour, in practice it demonstrates no such thing. So, each monster type is built as a type of class, but there's no formula for converting "class + no of hit dice" into a Challenge Rating. And, indeed, some monsters (dragons) are intentionally designed to be powerful "for their CR", removing a key piece of value from an already iffy concept!

The 4e Monster Manual is, frankly, just bad. The monster statistics it provides are okay, I guess (except that the underlying math was entirely redone later), but the lore is presented badly - most monsters are given a handful of bullet points that might reveal information based on "knowledge" checks of one sort or another. Basically, it's one to skip.

(By all accounts, the Essentials equivalent is a vast improvement. I don't have that one, so can't comment.)

Which leaves the 2nd Edition MM. That one is actually pretty close to the 5e version - every monster is pictured, there's a well laid-out stat block, and a goodly chunk of lore. What puts the 2nd Ed one over the edge, though, is both the layout and the structure of the lore - in particular, every monster has some lore addressing its place in the game world, it's place in the ecology of the setting, and the internal organisation of the species. The 5e book has some of this, but it's more sporadic, and not laid out in the same formal sections. It may just be personal preference, but I prefer the 2nd Ed approach.

Still, the 5e MM is a great book, and one I look forward to making use of should I ever run that 5e campaign I'm now drafting.