Customer Reviews

Monster Vault: An Essential Dungeons & Dragons Kit (4th Edition D&D)

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

These monsters are what the MM1 should have been. They clarified and fixed all sorts of stuff they were trying to accomplish with the original monsters. I'd say that half are the same monsters from MM1 with same name and level (but fixed and improved); half are new variants of the monsters that already exist. There are monsters from level 1 to level 27. The highest is a Balor.

Take for example the Bulette, if you fought one from MM1 you were like "These are great big pile of suck" as soon as the fighter locked one down, it could never get away. It was never clear if it could burrow away from a fighter whose opportunity attack stops all movement. The fight turned into a static, hack fest. Now they spell out that each movement of the Bulette, even burrowing, does not provoke opportunity attacks. It's meant to be going all over the place, bursting forth from the ground to take monstrous land-shark bites out of nice tasty halflings!

Almost every skirmisher in the book is given direct guaranteed ways to move around without provoking opp attacks. They almost all have shift speeds or movement that specifically says "this does not provoke opp attacks". Stick and Move wasn't there before with all the skirmishers. They fixed it!

Monsters that heal themselves is just not a fun mechanic. Take for example the Orc. They all used to come with a semi-confusing power that was an attack, usable only when bloodied, that if they hit would heal 1/4 of the HP. Often, it went unused, as Orcs did not spend that long in a bloody state, or they missed, and healing themselves was just weird. Now, in Monster Vault they got rid of that power, and just let all Orcs get one free standard action before they die. That seems more like what was intended, it ensures the Orcs get that last dying blow. It shows their ferocity, eliminates the HP book-keeping, and allows each of them to show the poor pathetic players what it means to be an "Orc"! (stole it away from the Minotaur though)

They fixed single-use encounter powers. Take the simple change to the Human Bandit. I used to hate Human Bandits as a DM. They got an encounter power that dazed, but if it missed, it's gone, bandit sucked! Now they ensured that if the bandit misses, it retains the power until it is used at least once. Perfect fix, as one of my pet peeves was a monster who never got to use its "defining" power. A lot of the monsters that have defining powers, get ways to recharge it or they let the encounter power have a suitable effect on a miss. This ensures that power will at least be showcased in the battle.

They fixed the unfun boring monsters that dragged out combat. Take for example the Hezrou, a demon, that Weakens with its aura when bloodied. All that did was make the fight drag out foreveeeerrrrr. Now Hezrous do damage with their aura, an excellent fix! Dracolichs are no longer stun,stun,stun, they dominate instead.

No stuns for Owlbears or Vrocks anymore.

Wraiths have a completely different mechanic, they don't regenerate anymore, they don't weaken players, they turn invisible when hit.

Lots of soldiers have "Effects" on their attacks, so they mark even if they miss. The "phalanx" movement of hobgoblins is way cleaner and straightforward, no dm planning needed, they can move together at the command of one of them.

Set-up attacks got easier for the monsters. For example: A mind flayer automatically grabs a dazed or stunned creature. It still has to roll an attack to eat the brain, but one step got easier.

With zombies; in the Red Box they made all zombies that drop to 0HP, stand up unless they get hit again while on the ground. I initially thought that was awesome, but it can really eat up standard actions and cause a drag. In Monster Vault they make the DM roll a d20, and if 15 or higher comes up, the zombie stays at 1HP. Much better, they figured that out quickly. That is an Encounter power so they can't stay up forever.

The solos... cue dramatic music
The only solos in the book are dragons, hydras, beholders, and purple worms. No updated Orcus :(

They gave solos ways to ignore stuns, dazes, or be able to use immediate actions even when dazed/stunned. All the dragons get to go twice per round. At the end of each turn they end all stun and daze effects. So at most, they lose one half a turn. Makes them all more effective. The stun-lock is dead.

The Red Dragon is ultra simple. It focuses on one target, it can chomp down on a wizard grabbing him, and then when the fighter comes to try to save him the Red Dragon goes "Ha, I don't think so, take my huge tail to the face!" Wham! knocked to the ground! "I'm eatin' here!"

The Green Dragon and Blue Dragon are flying all over the place, they can take to the air every single round as part of their attack actions, again: "this movement does not provoke opportunity attacks". No defender lock down for them.

Hydra is completely different, it can take free actions even if stunned or dominated and every creature that ends its turn within reach gets two bites each as a free action. Guaranteed pain for everyone.

The tokens: you get 10 cardboard pages of them! With these tokens, you get every monster you need. I've seen first time DMs just trying to start out use coins, chess pieces, scrounging up anything to put on the battlemat. It's the second biggest hurdle to DMing. This is the seal-the-deal value of the box. Buying this lets anyone be a DM for $30. This, plus a battlemat is everything you would ever need to play D&D for the rest of your life. The tokens can easily be substituted for other monsters.

The kicker: throw in a 4th level adventure! That requires a whole separate review. They also include a poster map of "Evermelt"

Lastly, each monster gets LOTS of fascinating ecology, history, and flavor. There is a ton. You could sit down by the fire and read this book cover to cover and love it. It's probably the best thing about the book. I doubt they'll put all this ecology into the online tools, so it's another good reason to buy the book.

My favorites are the Carrion Crawler Scuttler, Doppelganger Infiltrator, and the Black Dragon.

I love the Monster Vault! The only drawback of the tokens is that they are not labeled. The identity of many of the images is obvious, but others can be a bit ambiguous, especially when they only show the critter's head. So, for the good of the order, here's an inventory. Note that generic minions and swarms are simply black tokens with the appropriate word written on them. The "ring" is a donut in which you can place a large token to convert it into a huge one. "AI" stands for an alternate image for the same type of monster. OK, ready? Here we go!

Sheet #1
Large: Angel of Battle, Angel of Vengeance, Basilisk, Beholder, Black Dragon (young), Black Pudding.
Small / Medium: Abyssal Eviscerator (really!), Air Elemental (lesser) (2), Ambush Drake (2), Angel of Valor (veteran) (2), Angel of Protection, Babau, Beholder Gauth, Bloodseeker Drake, Bugbear (3), Bulette (young) (2), Cave Spider (4), Chain Devil, Crocodile (2), Death Knight, Deathjump Spider, Doppleganger (2), Dragonborn Mercenary, Dragonborn Soldier, minion (4).

Sheet #2
Large: Blue Dragon (young), Bulette, Carrion Crawler, Cyclops (4!), Hydra.
Small / Medium: Dretch Lackey (4) (not a typo!), Drow (female) (2), Drow (make) (2), Dryad (4), Duergar (4), Dwarf (female) (2), Dwarf (male) (2), Earth Archon (2), Eladrin (female) (2), Eladrin (male) (2).

Sheet #3
Huge: Balor (YOU...CANNOT...PASS!), Red Dragon (elder), ring.
Large: Bear, Demonic Savage Minotaur (sigh), Dire Wolf (2), Displacer Beast (2), Dracolich.
Small / Medium: Elf (female) (2), Elf (male) (2), Fire Archon (2), Fire Elemental (lesser) (2), Ghoul (4), Githyanki (4), Green Slime.

Sheet #4
Large: Doomspinner Spider, Drider, Efreet, Ettin, Fire Giant (male) (2).
Small / Medium: Gargoyle (2), Gnoll (3), Gnoll AI (2), Gnome (female), Gnome (male), Goblin (8), Goblin AI (4), Guard Drake (2), Hag (icky!), Halfling (female), Halfling (male), Hobgoblin (3), Human Duelist (2), Human Town Guard (2), Human Transmuter, Water Archon.

Sheet #5
Large: Fire Giant (female) (2), Flesh Golem, Frost Giant (2), Frost Giant Marauder, Gelatinous Cube, Ghost Troll Render (not a punk band).
Small / Medium: Human Bandit (4), Hyena (2), Imp, Ice Archon (2), Kobold (4), Kobold AI (4), Lich, Lizardman (poisonscale) (4), Lizardman (greenscale) (2), Medusa, Medusa Bodyguard.

Sheet #6
Huge: Blue Dragon (elder), White Dragon (elder), ring.
Large: Green Dragon (young), Hezrou, Hill Giant (female) (2), Hill Giant (male) (2), Horse, Iron Golem.
Small / Medium: Mummy (2), Mind Flayer, Orc (8), Orc AI (4), Orc Storm Shaman, Pseudodragon.

Sheet #7
Large: Ice Devil, Lizardman (blackscale) (2), Manticore, Marilith, Ochre Jelly, Otyugh, Owlbear.
Small / Medium: Rakshasa (2), Rust Monster (2), Shark, Skeleton (8), Skeleton AI (2), Snake (4), Spider Swarm, Stirge (4), swarm (3).

Sheet #8
Huge: Black Dragon (elder), Green Dragon (elder), ring.
Large: Ogre (4), Pit Fiend, Rage Drake, Stone Golem.
Small / Medium: Succubus (She's not bad, she's just drawn that way.), Tiefling (female) (2), Tiefling (male) (2), Troglodyte (4), Troglodyte AI (2), Water Elemental (lesser) (2), Wererat (2), Werewolf (2).

Sheet #9
Huge: Earth Titan, Fire Titan, ring.
Large: Red Dragon (young), Roper, Treant (2), Troll (2), Snake (Crushgrip Constrictor).
Small / Medium: Wolf (3), Wraith (4), Vampire, Vampire AI, Vampire Spawn (8).

Sheet #10
Huge: Purple Worm (!), Frost Titan, ring.
Large: Rocktempest Gargoyle, Umber Hulk, Vrock, White Dragon (young), Yuan-Ti Abomination, Zombie (hulking) (2).
Small / Medium: Dire Rat (2), Yuan-Ti (2), Yuan-Ti AI (2), Zombie (3), Zombie Shambler (8).

Ladies and gentlemen, the new Monster Manual 1. Really, that's all the Monster Vault actually is. It covers monsters from the original 4e Monster Manual with added or different variations on monsters, updated rules, and best of all, updated formatting, giving the statistics blocks an awful lot more space and taking the time to organize the actions available to monsters in an intuitive fashion with distinct headers to cover the different action types (Standard Actions, Minor Actions, Triggered Actions, etc). Flavor text is organized by key facts about the monsters stated in succinct boldface followed by a few paragraphs of detail and elaboration.

The format is much nicer in this book than it is in the Monster Manual 1, and the "fact sheets" actually offer a wealth of information that I think surpasses that available in previous editions' Monster Manuals. The revised monsters, meanwhile, offer a slight bit more variety, one or two more or different monster types, and offer better-organized and significantly changed versions of their former MM1 incarnations, with extraneous attacks and actions cut out and revised math.

EXAMPLE:
The Yuan-Ti Malison Sharp-Eye is in both books, has a scimitar in both, and is described as Level 13 artillery in both. The scimitar in the MM1 is +16 vs. AC and deals d8+4 damage. Not terribly threatening for a level 5 monster, let alone a level 13. The scimitar attack in the Monster Vault, on the other hand, is +18 vs. AC and hits for 3d8+4 damage. Now that's a bit more like it.

It all comes together to make a much more substantial version of the first book in a more compact, portable package, which is surprising. The book is soft-cover, but it's well-put-together, with a slightly heavier, glossier cover than the covers for the other Essentials books.

To sweeten the deal, Wizards put this thing together as a kind of kit. There's the book, yeah, but the real sweet spot is the massive set of tokens this comes with--at least one heavy card stock token of each different monster in the book, if not multiple for monsters that tend to come in small hordes. Even if you aren't into 4th edition I don't think I need to tell anybody how valuable having a comprehensive set of monster tokens like this can be. Every kind of basic monster in D&D is available here, and in numbers significant enough to make a big difference.

Also, there's an adventure--Cairn of the Winter King--for 4th level players. It's okay. Pretty run-of-the-mill as adventures go--players get to a town, find out it's oppressed by a frost giant, delve into his dungeon to fight him--I've seen better or more interesting pre-published adventures, but for a beginners' quickie adventure thrown in with a good book and a huge set of tokens I'm not going to complain--both this and its maps are just gravy as far as I'm concerned, and to its credit it does take the players to an interesting and unusual place.

So. Why only 4 stars instead of 5?

Well, the book's very substantial, but not as substantial as it could be. It has all the most important monsters in the MM1, but not the more extreme ones like Orcus and his cultists. I never used them, I never INTENDED to use them, and honestly I'm not sure they have any place in this book--which I'm glad Wizards kept relatively neutral--but it seems like a bit of an inconvenience to those who would have used them that they don't benefit from the same updated rules and formatting as the other monsters that did make it into this book. MM1-exclusive "epic mobs" aside, some more standard monsters are also strangely absent--like the Slaad, and it's those instances that bother me more.

Also, anything larger than Huge size (three squares/inches in diameter) is omitted from this book due to the constraints of the token sheet; you'll see no Gargantuan or Colossal monsters in here--and that means no Tarrasque or other Abominations and no Ancient dragons. It's better than nothing, for certain, and it'd be pretty absurd to print a giant plate-sized token for any of these monsters--let alone lay one down on a battle mat--but it's tough to take a dragon seriously when it ain't at least gargantuan. Finally, when I heard about this book I sort of expected a compilation of monsters from all three books rather than just a re-do of the MM1--thus I held off from getting the MM2 and 3. Wishful thinking, I know, especially knowing that the Essentials books tend to be smaller and lighter and geared towards, well, the essentials, but I hoped Wizards would recognize the usefulness of such a compilation in the face of the hassle of swapping between three books of monsters.

To conclude: This is an excellent product, a great answer to the MM1's shortcomings, and I hope to see more like this out of 4e in the future. It's well worth the $30 price tag in stores, and MORE than worth the $20 if you get it here just by virtue of the variety of tokens you get. Given Wizards' miniatures cost $22 to a box of six which may or may not be useful? I'd call this a classy move on Wizards' part. My one complaint--the one that keeps it from getting a perfect score--is that although it has a lot more depth and quality to the content of its monsters it did sacrifice a bit of variety, and as a DM I always want to see more options and not less.

The Great:

This list of iconic monsters are what the MM1 should have been. I was disappointed that the MM1 seemed to be missing a number of classic monsters for 4e. It was really apparent that MM1 had large parts of it written to match the sets of D&D Minis out at the time... some of which just don't belong in MM1 (Yes, I'm looking at you Grell and Grick!).

Monster Vault corrects this. All of the classic iconic creatures are covered with varying levels of strength, so you have variants of the classics that can take on low level and higher level parties. I love this. You can use those classic monsters for almost any level party.

Second, the figure tokens are very nice. The variety matches what is included in the book and the DM will have a boatload of tokens for use in play.

The less than Great:

The module kind of sucks. It's a dungeon-crawl adventure on rails. None of the creatures behave "normally". The author specifically states in most encounters, nearby creatures will not investigate the sounds of combat, help their comrades, and usually fight to the death instead of fleeing to reinforcements. The whole set up is pretty bad as well. At best you can steal a few ideas from a few different encounters, but for the most part, the plot is lame. One might be better served to pick and choose some elements and improvise a new plot.

Essentials books, in the trade paperback format, do not lie flat open to a page. That's one really big flaw in the Essentials line. Hardcovers are just better for play at the table where you can leave the book open to a particular section.

Other than that, this box set is a pretty good value, but it would have been a much better value is the module were half decent. It deserves 3.5 stars, but Aamzon doesn't allow halfs, so I rounded down. Take the rating with a grain of salt. I do like this set, but wanted to emphasize that it wasn't perfect.

WOTC should have done this during the launch of 4e. As a DM this is something I have been waiting for since 4th edition's release. The monsters are fixed and some neat new spins are provided, the tokens are great and basically a freebie, and the included adventure(though I won't be running it in the foreseeable future) looked great when I thumbed through it. All in all, a great way to wind up their stellar essentials line.

This is easily the best monster manual in 4th. The flavor text on each monster is the longest it has been and is a lot of fun. It really helps roleplay the monsters and give them reasons to be in encounters. The mechanics and damage output for the monsters is also the best it has been. The most notable improvement to me is the lurker monsters. Many lurkers needed to take a a round not attacking to get their big hit off and the effect/damage output was just a little higher than a normal monster's attack. Now in some cases it is twice as strong as another monster, which it needs to be since it is hitting so rarely. Now there is actually a reason to try worry about lurkers when they take their defensive round. The tokens are also great. One fix over the other essentials products with tokens its that the stat blocks include a picture of the token they intended for you to use. This is a big plus, especially for people that haven't seen these creatures before.

Now for the few negative points. I will start where I ended the pluses, with the tokens.Instead of putting them in the same order they appear in the book, they tried to put them in roughly alphabetically on the sheets. This means if you are looking for the 4 basic elementals, all of which are together in the book, you have to range from the first sheet for the 2 air elemental tokens until the eighth for the 2 water elemental tokens. Another negative goes to the components for the included adventure. The adventure booklet does not illustrate the monster tokens like the main book does, and some of the monster in the adventure don't get tokens, including the feature solo monster, the Winter King. The book doesn't have an illustration for him either. In addition, while all but one of the encounters in the adventure use a single dungeon, the included map only displays part of the dungeon. The reverse side is used for that one other encounter, even though you will probably only use about a 4th of it for that encounter. One final negative point is some things they removed that was in the 4th ed. Monster Manual. Most of the new monsters in this book (as opposed to the updated entries from the monster manuals) don't have any skill entries. In addition there is no tactic section to explain how to run even the trickier monsters, and there is almost no flavor explanation for any of the moves. The Monster Manual's entry for Angel of Battle clearly explained it's Storm of Blades move as baldes exploding from it's wings, so you can understand why it's flight speed gets reduced afterwords. They cut that explanation from the Monster Vault. How is a new DM going to understand that? I am not asking for explanations of most claw and weapon attacks, but for the less straightforward stuff a single sentence, maybe in italics likes the for the PC power entries go a long way. Even with these problems (and it being s smaller book than the MMs) it is easily one of the best products in the 4th edition library and one of the few that's a pleasure to read. Even if you are only looking for inspiration or tolls for a non-D&D RPG or some other fantasy project, I would recommend it.

I was very excited to purchase this box, if nothing else for the tokens. You cant get this many figurines for anywhere near the price. I won't harp on any of the valid points other reviewers have made, such as the improvements etc. I would like to touch on something no one else has: the included adventure. This is the WORST module I have ever had the misfortune of reading. Concepts are disjointed with a weak story. It's, in my humble opinion, completely unplayable. I'd hate for the map to go to waste though, so Im going to rewrite the whole thing, and ditch this corny "Winter King". I did like the idea of the gnome illusionist sisters and their pet owlbear. I'll probably include an owlbear egg, and give the PC's a chance to have a fun pet, perhaps future mount :)

I highly recommend new DM's to pick this up for the tokens, and old players to pick this up for the book. Both are very, very well done. I give this product "5 stars". I'll pretend the travesty of a module wasn't included :P

This book is filled with a lot of great and classic creatures to use in my games. The new size of the Essentials books is most welcome and I like that they give you tokens of each monster to use during sessions. There is also an adventure that can be run.

I would like to see some more descriptions and artwork. Especially when there are multiple types of a particular creature. I would like to know more about what separates each type from the others. But it is quite useful nonetheless.

This is my 2nd D&D review (my 1st being the Dungeon Master's Kit). Even more so than the Dungeon Master's Kit, the Monster Value is absolutely essential. Both the Dungeon Master's Kit and the Red Box are great in giving you some level 1 - 4 campaigns to help you and your friends get acquainted with the game, and they give you monsters which you can easily fight. But what if I'm level 5, 10, 11, 23? No need to worry! The Monster Vault has a majority of tokens that cover monsters found in Monster Manual 1 for 4th Edition. Having access to all the rulebooks avaliable for 4th Edition, I sometimes have to stretch my imagination when depicting monsters or player characters that are not in Monster Manual 1 or Players Handbook 1; I have a Sharmind Psion character I built from Player Handbook 3 and I tend to represent him with a ice archon token. Or a minotaur (a playable character race found in Player Handbook 3) has to represented by an actual minotaur enemy token.

Aside from having to use our imaginations (which is not a problem at all, since that's a major part of the game) when it comes to looking at token pieces not found for monsters or player character races in other Monster Manuals or Player Handbooks, this Monster Vault is a great resource. It not only helps to influence the kinds of campaigns I throw at the adventurers but also clues me into the sheer number of different scenarios and combinations of monsters that could be encountered. Unless you want to be stuck playing the same pre-made camaigns because you have no diversifications of monsters, you'd be absurd not to invest in a Monster Vault today!

I bought this last weekend at my local Border's going-out-of-business sale. Sad story, but beside the point.

My purpose for buying this product was for the counters. As a subscriber to Wizard's online D&D Insider program, I already have access to essentially all the content from the book. (More on the book later.) The counters, however, offered an attractive, cost-effective tool for me to use as a Dungeon Master. I love the D&D minis, and I'll probably still buy them, but counters like these are a valuable asset to fill in the holes in a rather expensive collection.

As an experienced dungeon master, here is my take on the counters. Firstly, let me say the artwork is quite lovely. Almost all of the monsters are instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with the typical pantheon of D&D monsters. There are a few that are a bit more obscure, but the vast majority of them are your typical monsters. The tokens are printed on the same quality cardboard that the dungeon tiles are printed on, which holds up rather well over semi-frequent use. They are two-sided, with the reverse having the same image with a red border around it to denote "bloodied" or "wounded." This is very convenient in an actual play environment, and I even did the same with my homemade tokens.

The selection of monsters for this collection is respectable. I agree with some of the other posters in that there are some "iconic" foes who are, sadly, left out of the collection, but, understandably, limits had to be drawn somewhere. For the average campaign group, however, the monsters that were chosen should be sufficient for the vast majority of games. If you're interested you can find in one of the other reviews a detailed list of all the tokens in the box. One of the bizarre things about the collection of monsters is that none of them are of the small-size, though, in practice, small creatures are really not all that common (with the exception of Dark Creepers). I guess you could always just throw a dime on the table as a small-sized token, but really, that's kinda lame when you have all these beautiful printed ones.

The inclusion of 4 generic "minion" tokens along with the monsters is a nice touch, though I wish they had included more. As the basic idea is that 4 minions is roughly equivalent in power and difficulty to one standard monster, this is not really sufficient. There have been many occasions when I've needed 8 or more minions in an encounter, even in officially published adventures. As you look though the box it's clear that they could have easily made room for several more "minions" in the unused spaces on the token sheets, so this omission is a curious one. It also seems curious that they included several token rings designed to fit a large-sized token and expand it to fill a huge-sized space, but there are no rings to make medium-sized creatures into large ones. I can only hope that they decide to make a second collection of tokens before the year's end that addresses these lacking areas.

As for the book, I have to say it is very well done. D&D Insider subscribers already have access to all of the monster statistics in the book, however, there is more than enough background information regarding the various creatures to justify its purchase. As others have stated, the book alone would be worth purchasing, especially if you're a new DM and don't yet have a copy of the Monster Manual. The monsters are printed in the new action-oriented format first introduced in MM3, which is nice as it brings many of the standard creatures from MM1 up-to-date on rules changes and makes them easier to read and play. Though I like the hardbound style of the traditional books better, the "digest" size certainly makes it easier to carry along to games, and I've found that having a nice bit of background information on the monsters really helps the games come alive for some players.

Overall, I highly recommend the Monster Vault for anyone interested in running the game. There's a few things about the selection of tokens that baffles me, but I'd still say this is an excellent product that will meet the needs of a vast majority of gamers. If you're a player who's not really interested in taking a turn in the DM's chair than this product probably isn't for you, though you might consider it as a gift for that special DM you hold dear to your heart.