The Bulette

As seen on Critical-Hits.com






The Umber Hulk

As seen on DreadGazebo.net

I like the layout and formatting. That giant blackletter U is seriously cool.

The art is unremarkable, but that's just because I've been spoiled by Magic's art direction. It's technically competent and fits well.

The cluttered stat block makes me wince. As a very narrativist GM and player I always think D&D has too much crunch and not enough fluff. Do I really need to know exactly how long its darkvision extends to make a cool encounter? I don't think so. But I get that some people like this level of detail, so good for them.

I like that there is no longer a need for a thousand varieties of the same monster for different levels.

that dragon is freaking awesome! i dont think ive ever actually fought a dragon before which is funny considering that it's in the game's name.

Huh. Anyone know what a legendary action is? I still haven't sat down and read through my player's handbook yet. Or would this be something from the Monster Manual maybe?

According to the sidebar, it's a special action that the dragon gets 3 of each round. You can use any of the legendary actions described, but only at the end of a player's turn. You can't repeat an action you've already used that round.

D&D 5th Edition Monster Manual Preview : The Flumph




I know you guys have been waiting for them to bring Flumphs back!

I saw the spell that summons them! I haven't read the page yet but I'm assuming they cushion falls, negating falling damage.

I found, and put the Monster Manual's Table of Contents in the first post of this thread.

D&D 5th Edition Monster Manual Preview : The Terrasque



The iconic Terrasque!

Some more legendary actions to check out on this one.

Found the missing page on the Red Dragons and added it above. I had pages 97 and 99 but now page 98 is uploaded as well for your viewing pleasure.

I'm really loving the page layouts and designs. I like the watercolory background and the lettering that denotes each letter category starting.

Each description seems to give more freedom to DMs to adjust stuff as needed as well where as 4e was rather rigid.

What is the flexibility you felt was missing from 4e?

Looking through the available pdfs, I miss parts of 4e's monster customization. Specifically, with 4e, it was super easy to make new monsters and pull together encounters on the fly. 4e also made each monster's stat block all you needed to run it, as opposed to needing to refer to other pages or books, like spell descriptions.

This a thousand times - particularly the creation of balanced monsters. I have folders full of 4E monsters floating around on my computer because of the ease of that system (even if I did have to nip the HP totals a little).

I think I've build maybe two 3.5/Pathfinder creatures. Ever. So much more vagueness to it.

i'm reading the encounter building rules and there's multiplication and cross-referencing like three sets of numbers

edit: also, they gave everything resistance to nonmagical weapons so they wanted to make it possible for an army of archers to defend a city from a dragon but then also didn't?

But the ultimate question remains; can a house cat still kill a commoner nine times out of ten?

Cat
AC 12
HP 2
Speed 40
Claws +0 to hit, reach 5 ft, 1 slashing damage

Commoner
AC 10
HP 4
Club +2 to hit, reach 5 ft, 2 (1d4) bludgeoning damage

So, the cat needs like 8 attacks, missing half, to claw the human to death. The human needs about two attacks to hit once to club the cat to death. So it's 1:4 in favor of the human? I don't know how odds work.

Nice. It's about time the good people no longer need to live in fear of the crazy-cat lady on the edge of town picking up a level in bard and leading an unstoppable army of felines to crush all resistance before her.