Monsters Incorporated (MM2 Review Part 5)

Place your bets on whether or not I can finish this before the next Monster Manual comes out. You know I’m thinking of making that the theme of these articles – a year-long look at one Manual, until the next. Oh well.

Welcome to another installment of Wyatt’s unending Monster Manual 2 monster by monster reviewvaganza! (What’s funny about that is that if you know spanish you know that horrible contraction has a butchered secondary meaning about me being lazy with reviews. There I explained the joke more or less so now it will never be funny. We are at a philosophical turning point.)

Today we’re looking at random non-themed monsters again.

Wow.

This review got freaky fast.

This little buddy is the Dimensional Marauder and his schtick is teleportation. He can also become insubstantial and gain phasing, but only as a standard action and the effect ends if he attacks, which makes it decent for position in rooms crowded with objects or obstacles or for running away. Overall it’s a decently interesting monster, but with that appearance, I expected more. How about shooting some of those teeth out in a close blast 3? That’d have been boss.

Direguards are skeletons that glow! This makes them elite or paragon tier monsters, because throwing a cloak on some bones and making it glow gives you five more levels of juice out of the thing. Remember that all you aspiring Necromancers. This kind of trick isn’t taught to you in Xykon’s school of evil dickery. It’s one of those things you gotta learn on the field. When some do-gooding jerks are on your heels and those damn skeletons are too weaksauce for you, strip butt nekkid and make yourself some raver goth skeletons. Nobody’ll live to post the youtube videos of your shame.

Overall, the Direguard Deathbringer’s actual attacks are pretty boring, and I think it could’ve ditched them in favor of more things like Vile Command, which allows for allies in a close blast 3 to shift and make a basic attack. That’s cool. We could’ve used more of that. Then we have the Direguard Assassin, who could not be any more boring if his last name was Palin.

Baring their muscled chests and airy crotches right in your face are the Djinn. Now the Djinn puzzle me because they have a land speed, but the artwork shows them all having tornados for crotches and legs. No mention is made of this in their flavor text. I suppose it’s not what you got, but how you use it. There has to be some romantic trick you can do with a tornado crotch.

What it does mention is that due to allying with the Primordials once upon a time, Djinni now suffer the eternal torment of being stuck in lamps, mirrors, towers, baubles and Disney direct-to-disk movie releases.

All of the Djinni are mechanically pretty suitable to their roles, with a couple of interesting abilities. The Windbow and Thunderer can gain action points by being hit with critical hits and then using powers which key off that fact. I was saddened that this isn’t an ability all Djinni have, just some arbitrarily and some not. It would’ve been cool to have every Djinni have such an ability. The Djinni also have basic attacks which deal less static damage than their other attacks (except for the Windbow, who deals more). It’s really odd. The Thunderer deals 3d8 + 2 with his basic attack. What the hell for? You can’t tell me that this musclebound hulk can’t swing that mace for more static than a damn kobold!

Oh snap, another big section coming up!

My face at a lot of this manual.

Dragons.

Specifically Metallic Dragons, which come in Adamantine, Copper, Gold, Iron and Silver flavors. Metallic Dragons used to be entirely benign creatures, but since in 4e entirely benign things are hard to get players to kill, they were made more morally ambiguous. Now, I don’t like Metallic Dragons. I think that D&D has way too many dragons other than the classic 5 chromatics, and it really doesn’t need so many. Especially when you start blurring the lines and making “bad dragons” and “marginally less antisocial” dragons. It’d have been nice to just give this sort of depth of character to the Chromatics, but you know, Wizard’s has to print more books, so let’s get down with these guys.

Adamantine Dragons are first up. Their head reminds me of some enemies from Donkey Kong Country on SNES. Man those were great sidescrolling games. I especially liked Country 3. Adamantine Dragons are described as being tacticians. Their brilliant tactics include dealing damage, recharging their breath weapon and dealing damage. Which is to say they don’t really have anything that as a 4e player I equate with “tactical” monsters. There’s no healing, no buffing, and since this is a solo, nothing to pump allies, no aura. It just physical attacks, a breath weapon and frightful presence like every other dragon. The breath is a thunderous blast, and Adamantine Dragons knock people prone a lot. That’s about it.

Next up we have Copper Dragons. I always liked Copper Dragons before, but due to those eccentricities of the game we play in, I don’t remember whether I liked Copper Dragons or whether it was how my group characterized them. We always saw them as good-natured jokesters and riddlers, but 4e says they’re miserly and covetous. I’m pretty sure I’m wrong, and I really don’t like Copper Dragons and maybe 4e has them right. But I do like their stats. Copper Dragons shift and move a lot. They have a Flyby Attack, most of their attacks let them shift, and they can smack guys who try to flank them. They look like they’d be a lot of fun for a DM to run in a fight and for players to go up against.

I never liked the look of Gold Dragons. The catfish face just wasn’t doing it for me compared to the Red Dragon or the Green Dragon, I just couldn’t take them seriously. Now, the Gold Dragon’s tactics block is one of the least helpful I’ve seen in 4e. It starts battles using Frightful Presence on as many foes as possible, then a Breath attack on as many foes as possible, then picking on the weakest enemies around. This sounds exactly like what pretty much every Dragon already does since all of them have frightful presence and breath weapons and no reason to conserve them. The Gold Dragon does huge amounts of damage with its attacks due to the extra fire damage it deals. At level 17, you’re looking at like 5d8+7. Better come with some amulets of fire resistance or something, or you’re going to be toast. Besides this, it doesn’t seem any more interesting than other Dragons.

The Iron Dragon looks good. I like its design best out of the metallic dragons. The Iron Dragon is a lurker, so it’s a given that it deals lots of damage. It has powers that pull creatures, and it gains triple attack much sooner than other Dragons. This means you can have an Iron Dragon at level 19 doing 6d8+18 plus 12d6 lightning damage to one guy. Christ. Fortunately, the Dragon isn’t much trickier than dealing tons of damage by going up to you and triple attacking, at least in just stat block alone. The tactics say it has extensive chambers with traps and minions in its lair. I’m a bit leery of that triple attack damage, especially with +24 to attack AC. It seems overkill. But I still like this dragon’s design.

Silver Dragons are described as being the “knights errant” of dragonkind. Huh. Unlike the other Dragons, Silver Dragons trade their double attack for a “Dragon Onslaught” which lets them attack everyone in sight once. Nice. I really like a fight where the Solo can engage or harm every player easily, rather than having to pick one guy to smack around this turn, and maybe some other guys next turn (which is why a lot of my Solos are controllers). The older Silver Dragons have threatening reach too. Quite nice I must say. It doesn’t look as fun as the Copper Dragon, but it reads nice on paper.

Next up we’re going back to a land before time, with DINOSAURS.

Nah, we Drakes. A kind reader pointed out to me that I overlooked the Drakes in the MM2 and I did until I looked at them for this “review.” Aside from that goofy-looking Bloodseeker Drake, we basically have a bunch of dinosaurs for Drakes this time around, and that’s awesome. The Bloodseeker Drake which we begin with is a level 4 soldier that hardly does anything. Then we have the Horned Drake, who deals some pretty fat dice of damage at-will and knocks things prone. But it still only has like 3 powers, which is kind of boring to me. I mean I get that these are supposed to be lackeys, but I’d like a bit of variety.

Next, we have the Scytheclaw Drake or as we like to call him, the Velociraptor. He still only has 3 powers, but oh what lovely 3 powers they are. This level 10 skirmisher will knock a guy prone with its first attack, then use his immediate action to keep him prone when he tries to stand up, and it deals some decent damage to prone targets. Then we have Springing Step. The Scytheclaw Drake jumps at a guy and claws him in the damn face. Which will knock him prone. It is a tragedy that this attack isn’t at-will. A whole encounter of Scytheclaw Drakes jumping around the field would be awesome. Screw it. I’m houseruling this guy. The Springing Step is at-will.

Then we have the Fang Titan Drake. This guy is frightening. He has a roar that stuns in a close burst 10, so basically the whole encounter gets stunned. His bites have at-will Daze (save ends), deal heavy damage and have Reach 2. He can attack one or two adjacent creatures with it, and he grabs one of them. And he can recharge his roar when he gets bloodied. It’s crazy. I don’t like the At-Will Daze (save ends) because it feels like it’d make for a grindy, sluggish fight, but my god, it’s a T-Rex. I’m torn.

Next we have…more dragonmen. Oh god. Do we need more Dragonmen? Didn’t we have enough? One even has dragonboobs, for Tiamat’s sake why? And my god, they’re Dracotaurs. I’m not calling them by their proper name. Right here in bold, their names are Dracotaurs. Even the lore block says they’re called Dracotaurs. And that’s all they are, Dracotaurs, they put yo lizard in yo lizard so you can have scales while you have scales. This is just amazing. They’re basically higher level lizardfolk, because they have the same “hey we live in the jungle” tropical barbarian schtick. All of them are fairly straightforward, as most “tribal” things in the monster manuals have been.

I’m skipping the like five pages of Duergar and their beardopines because pickles, to hopefully move on to greener pastures when we continue next time with the…

…Eladrin.

…

Click for fancy animation.