Monster Manual (Dungeons \u0026 Dragons Edition 3.5) by Skip Williams

Monster Manual (Dungeons \u0026 Dragons Edition 3.5) Reviews

• 
  David Leemon

  The best monster manual ever written.
• 
  Pat

  This demented catalogue reads like some sort of schizophrenic fairy tale, albeit one where the only endings are bloody and macabre. I don't know what sort of sick fucking imagination it takes to write at length about "displacer beasts" or "gelatinous cubes" (not to mention the various ersatz blasphemes of holy figures) but this "Skip Williams" (nice fake name, asshole. I will find you) needs to get his head checked.
  
  Final verdict: avoid entirely unless you enjoy violent nightmares of demonical aberrations
• 
  Will Boncher

  Have read this cover to cover for the campaign I'm DM'ing right now. Not a great readthrough since it's just a list of monsters to use, but there's lots of fun flavor in there.
• 
  R J Royer

  First off, this is a great book for you if you play third edition. I am going to be letting this book go thru book crossing by the end of November 2017 one way or another so if you want it message me or it will be left at a Starbucks somewhere.
• 
  Bill

  If it has an ISBN, I count it...
• 
  Townes v. Z.

  A must-have for any 3.5 version D&D players. The add-on Manuals up the ante for monsters but these are definitely "oldy but goody" monsters that can pop up just about anywhere.
• 
  Shane Moore

  Critters from myth, legend, and imagination recast in a single setting (albeit with a pretty broad range of specific dimensions).
• 
  R.R.

  Awesome! The artwork is a huge notch up and flavor text galore.
• 
  S.H.I.E.L.D.

  me sirvio mucho para cuando tuve que inventar aventuras
• 
  Samir Rawas Sarayji

  The badasses that make D&D fun :)
• 
  Liz

  Let it never be said that 3.5 skimped on the monsters.
• 
  C.A.

  A compendium of Mythological Beasts, Natural Creatures, Aberrations, Extraplanars and even stranger things... Makes it very easy to DM.
• 
  Brian Wilkerson

  I picked this one up to add to my understanding of D&D and combat in pen-and-paper RPGs in general. A base of knowledge about monsters, and mechanics and varieties; this is certainly the place for it.
  
  There is SO much more to them than the capacity to inflict damage to a player's health. Indeed, death-in-battle is the least of an adventurer's worries when there are creatures that can convert them into monstrous thralls, use them as incubators for its young, or trap their souls. Imagining all these creatures inhabiting the same world gives one the idea that the adventurers live in a terribly dangerous place. Granted, not all of them are in the Material Plane, that is, the world most humans inhabit. Even so, they exist and can cross over to join the native horrors.
  
  It makes me think that stories such as "Goblin Slayer" or "Berserk" have the right idea of things. An adventurer is just one or two bad die rolls away from a dreadful fate, and even a skilled and experienced one may not be equipped to face a particular foe. It would be easy to become a Killer-Game-Master, and not even deliberately. The kinds of monsters appropriate for new adventurers are obviously outnumbered by the ones that are not, and even the weak monsters can get lucky or overwhelm with numbers. How scary must it be, to live as a non-adventurer (a commoner farmer, for instance) in such a world?
  
  It was a fun exercise, to look at the challenge level of each monster and work out what precisely went into that decision, and then compare it to other monsters. There's a particular plant monster, completely immobile and without a strength stat, that is a challenge level of 2 because of special abilities. This means it should be as tough as SIX goblins (challenge rating of 1/3 each). I didn't figure that out one. Then I came across a shadow-like monster with a higher rating, and a similar condition.
  
  I was puzzled until I realized a few things: it can only do strength-stat damage, and at zero strength, the victim turns into the same sort of creature within the battle. Every character has a lot more HP than strength and a non-strength character would go down faster. I have a dwarf paladin at level 2 which has a strength stat of 15. Given initiative and maximized dice rolls, this shadow creature could kill him in as little as three turns. I thought "this is something I'll fight from a distance".
  
  Trickster Eric Novels gives "Dungeons and Dragons' Monster Manual for 3.5 Edition" an A+
• 
  Pau Mondelo

  Y cómo no, este libro cierra la tríada de libros básicos para poder jugar a rol, con la mejor versión jamás lanzada para el mejor juego de rol de todos los tiempos: Dungeons & Dragons. Pues no la lió parda el Gary Gyax este.
  Total, en este manual encontrarás infinidad de monstruos con todos sus stats para poblar tu mundo de aventuras de desafíos interesantes. Listados por orden alfabético, estos monstruos se presentan con las estadísticas adecuadas para que no tengas que estar con muchas movidas cuando prepares la partida o crees y puebles tu mundo.
  Único punto negativo: D&D ha aclaparado todo el mundo de fantasía y folklore del mundo y se ha adueñado de razas y monstruos de otros bestiarios dejando poco margen a los creadores para introducir y añadir cosas no pensadas en sus mundos. Pero eso no le quita las cinco estrellas.
• 
  Fonsu

  I LOVE XORNS
• 
  Mark Austin

  I grew up playing board games against myself. My sister wasn't much into them and whatever friends I managed to scrap together for a year or two before we moved again were either disinterested from the get-go or quickly became disinterested as I beat them mercilessly at whatever we played.
  
  I also grew up in a world of imagination which almost universally drifted to war. I'm not sure why, but my games, movies, books, shows, and idle imaginings only seem to have real staying power if they are somehow associated with combat. One of my earliest memories is drawing viking ships battling on the ocean... and so it went from there.
  
  When I encountered my eventual group of best friends in 7th grade (many of whom I still talk to regularly), they were clustered on a table in the cafeteria playing something with sheets of paper, pencils, dice, and a set of weirdly-sized books. I drifted over, watched for a few minutes, and became instantly hooked.
  
  I only got to play my elven druid with his scimitar and panther a few times before their existing game master moved and the game ended, but endless class periods passed remembering every item of gear, every chunk of quantified capability that the numbers on my crumpled character sheet represented.
  
  Despite being new to the group, within months I was the new game master, spinning worlds, races, gods, ages, and cultures out of nothingness. We played straight up through high school graduation gathering in my friend's garage attic after school every night and sometimes 12-16 hour long weekend sessions. How I did it without burning out I don't know, but I do know it for the first time let others into the private universes I'd constructed, gave me something to look forward to, a group to be myself with, and a place of refuge both physically and mentally.
  
  Middle school was miserable. The trailers we bounced between were places of endless chore lists, terrible food, random hours-long barely-coherent suicidal rambles from an older brother out of his mind on who knows what. Our mom, when she was there, we hoped would take off on one of her regular days-long absences since when she was there it was either panicked, shouted orders to fix the latest crisis or the house filling with drunken bar dregs that'd be invited over to keep partying when the bar closed Friday night and that would sometimes linger until Monday came and swept the last of them away.
  
  D&D was an escape hatch to an alternate reality where such concerns were irrelevant and, for a time, I could forget the misery and uncertainty of my home life, to practice being someone more powerful, resourceful, and strong than I felt.
  
  The actual rules had some issues, especially compared to more modern rule systems, but that's like saying the pioneers' covered wagons were inefficient compared to modern moving trucks - it's true, but without the former to explore the terrain and settle the unknown the latter would likely not come into existence.
  
  Roleplaying games remain an important part of my life even if my playing time has vastly dwindled. The problem solving and social skills, the lessons on story structure, flow, pacing, and engagement, the friendships that remain to this day, all products of that time spent around a table or sprawled across an attic or living room.
• 
  David Sarkies

  Makes monsters much easier to add unique characteristics
  4 April 2013
  
  Well, I am currently 30000 ft over the South China Sea, sitting in economy class on a Cathay Pacific Flight. For those who want to simply read the review, well, you can always skip this paragraph. Anyway, I generally fly economy simply because it is cheaper, and that there are much better things that I can do with my money than blow it on more leg room and for stewards to be extra-nice. To be honest, if they are only being extra-nice to me because I am paying them lots of money, then I am not really interested in that person, but rather those who are extra-nice to you for no reason at all. Those who insist on paying money to have people be nice to them obviously have some sort of issue. Mind you what is interesting is that staring out the window I have noticed that cloud formations have taken the shape of the islands that they are hovering over.
  However, this is the first of the many Monster Manuals that were released for the 3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons game (actually it is a rewrite of the original 3rd edition, but this is the one I own), and to be honest with you there is not much to say about it beyond what I have already said about the 3rd Edition. While Wizards have returned to the style that was used in the 1st edition (namely that the whole one monster/page idea was scrapped). However, the way the system has been designed, it is easier to modify the monsters, and even give them unique characteristics, which was not as easily done in the previous editions. In fact it is a lot easier to give monsters character classes and buff them up than it was in the earlier editions. Other than that, this book contains many of the standard monsters, and is very useful to have around when either designing adventures or running a game.
  The other thing that I should say about this is the section on designing monsters at the end of the book. Another thing that I really liked about 3rd Edition is nothing was set in stone. The monsters that were placed in the book were more templates (though they also have monsters which are actually templates, meaning that you take another monster and the use the template to increase its power). Not only does 3rd Edition give you options in the monster description of increasing (or decreasing) their relative power, but they also have the section at the end which not only assists you in creating your own monsters, but also tailoring the monsters in the book to make them more unique. Also, the ability to be able to add character classes to a number of the humanoid (or even more intelligent) monsters makes this system so much more flexible, which is why I liked it so much. It is a shame that I don't have a roleplaying group anymore, but then again time is also much more of a premium commodity now.
• 
  Kat

  Basic Premise: The most popular and well-known monsters used in D&D, updated for 3.5 edition.
  
  This has everything a GM could need to get started with inflicting nasty beasties upon their players. The stat blocks are easy to read, the art is solid, and the supplemental bits at the end of the book are easy to read. It's a useful book, well organized.
• 
  Timothy

  For those who know Dungeons and Dragons, this particular edition of the three corebooks is an all-time classic. It's Edition 3.5 and the corebooks are this one, the Player's Handbook and the first Monster Manual. This was another book I bought for source material. This edition was really the second generation of D&D, but it remains amazingly playable.
• 
  Andrew

  I have the regular one but it's not showing up on this site. Oh well. This is an excellent and through composition of monsters.