In Short
Need more opponents for your low to mid level adventurers to battle? Pressed for time? If so then
Monster Manual IV (hereinafter “MM4”) delivers. With a wide variety of potential encounters, detailed information on each opponent, monster tactics, and occasional maps of lairs and other adventure locations,
MM4 provides something of interest for everyone while succeeding at decreasing the prep time for the DM.
The Good: The product was easy to use in play. Broad support for lower to mid level games.
The Bad: A few entries are just existing monsters with levels added on. Some of the more bizarre entries may see little use.
The Physical Thing
This 224 page full color hardcover showcases excellent production values for its $34.95 price tag. The book is easy to navigate, appropriate pictures are included for every monster entry, and the entries are engaging to read. The tactics and location maps are particularly useful.
Under the Cover
With entries predominantly in the CR 1-10 range, MM4 offers good support for low to mid level adventuring in its diverse assortment of creatures. Clockwork steeds, plant monsters, oozes, evil squirrels, and others are presented with information on their ecology, tactics, common encounters, society, knowledge check results, and how they integrate into the
Forgotten Realms or
Eberron campaign settings.
The sample lairs included with some adversaries are very useful and can provide an already complete encounter for the DM who just wants to include something on the fly. Wilderness encounters unrelated to the main plot are particularly easy to integrate with the lairs. I especially like suggestions on how to make the encounters more difficult through tactical or level additions to the monsters.
One of my favorite additions is the presence of groups of related adversaries of different types. Lizardfolk, for example, come with stats for soldiers, champions, giant wasp riders, shaman, and even a king. That collection of information, along with the standard MM details, is enough to easily create 1 or 2 adventures without breaking a sweat. It provides variety in lizardmen type while sticking to certain guidelines, and while a DM could just take a lizardman race and add levels as they desire the book has already done all of that work for them. The lizardfolk section even includes an entire underground lair, making it one of many sections that could easily become full adventures with the simple addition of some story hooks.
But what about the monsters? On the one hand, there are classic D&D monsters with a little more elaboration. Drow, lizardmen, and others are included with level packages and encounter maps to make them into instant adversaries. While they won’t please the DM interested in new and strange monsters to throw at the group, they do work very well in that they’re commonly encountered adversaries in many games and are easy to implement into any game.
On the other hand there are plenty of traditional monsters. While some of these push the D&D weirdness boundary at times (evil squirrels), most are appropriately strange and will be excellent choices for the DM always looking for something new and interesting to include in an adventure. Let me share a few of my favorites with you:
The Balhannoth is a ceiling hanging aberration that drops down on its foes and grapples, all the while benefitting from an anti-magical field. This can very easily incapacitate one or more of the magic dependent PCs in the group, and if the Balhannoth are combined with a cunning adversary (I used undead illithid) then the encounter can quickly become very difficult. While any wise adventurer keeps an eye on the ceiling when they’re underground, these creatures are extremely difficult to detect and are robust enough to survive to strike again even if their initial ambush fails.
The Vitreous Drinker writes adventures just by existing. This odd undead steals the sight of its victims but is thereafter able to see through their eyes. This can result in an extremely powerful informant or criminal who has a variety of beggars, blind noblemen, and others all across a city who unwittingly feed it information. Add in its spectral ravens and natural detect thoughts ability and you have the perfect puppeteer or city-based villain for a session’s play.
Finally, the entire Spawn of Tiamat section is just begging for use as the focus of an entire campaign. Complete with information on Tiamat and a host of different dragonspawn creatures for characters to fight against, this section strikes me as particularly useful for the group that wants an extradimensional incursion or a larger presence of evil dragons and dragon slaying in the game before actively fighting dragons is a real possibility.
On the whole I find this to be a solid product that I wouldn’t hesitate to use in a 3.5 campaign. As someone often turned off to the amount of prep work I have to put into a D&D game, this is an excellent product in that it can easily provide me with an evening’s monster fun and leave me to worry about plots and character development.
My Take
This is an excellent product for the DM who doesn’t have a lot of prep time, but for those who do MM4 isn’t as robust of a monster book as it could be. The book clearly sets out to be both an aid for DMs pressed for time and a source for new monsters, and because of that it can’t be the perfect resource for the veteran DM. However, while this split makes it a little lighter on content for some readers what’s here is well done. For more casual D&D players like me this is a fantastic resource, and I fully intend to make use of it in the future. Those seeking just more new monsters, however, may be a little disappointed at the large amount of rehashed adversaries and adventure locations included in the book.
Review Summary