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May 28, 2009

Word of Wizards - D&D Podcast: Monster Manual 2 (May 2009)


D&D Podcast: Monster Manual 2 (May 2009)

In this month's podcast, Mike Mearls and Jeremy Crawford brought in Rob Heinsoo, lead designer for Monster Manual 2, to talk about the monsters in the book. They verified and explained the reasons for the changes they have made to minions and solos. They shared about the process of how monsters are selected to be in the book and how they converted old monsters into the 4E mechanics. There's even a segment podcast where they give some great ideas on how to use the monsters for adventures.

Here's some key points that I heard in this podcast
  • Solos hitpoints have been reduced because they made combat too lengthy but to compensate for this reduction, their attacks are boosted to make them more dynamic.

  • Myconids were not originally going to be in Monster Manual 2 and now they are going to be take 2 pages in an upcoming Underdark supplement.

  • Old school monsters were given new mechanics which were distinct from their older edition version and this could be a trend to look forward in future MMs

Any thoughts to share on this episode?

2 comments:

Tom said...

I want guidelines and/or templates for fixing MM1 solos.

Questing GM said...

Hey Tom,

Welcome to the blog and thanks for commenting!

If you looked back at the D&D Alumni for Demogorgon, in the fight against Orcus they did give some pointers on how to 'fix' it according to MM2 standards for solos.

*give him 20% fewer hit points
*-2 defenses
*increase his damage output by 50% when bloodied

I'm not sure if that's what being done to all the solos for the MM2 but I guess this should be a start.

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