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Venture 4th: Monster Maker $2.00
Average Rating:3.5 / 5
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Venture 4th: Monster Maker
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Venture 4th: Monster Maker
Publisher: Adamant Entertainment
by Ronald W. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 03/19/2009 15:11:23

A good reasonably priced guide for creating your own monsters. The guide lines are easy to follow and the included examples makes the gm's life a little easier.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Venture 4th: Monster Maker
Publisher: Adamant Entertainment
by Christopher H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 02/12/2009 01:37:37

Adamant bills this product as correcting two specific flaws in the monster creation guidelines given in the "DM's Toolbox" section of the 4e DMG: (1) DMG-bred monsters are overpowered at high levels, and (2) Monster Manual monsters don't follow the DMG guidelines. The key questions for evaluating the success of Adamant's Monster Maker are (1) whether you agree that those flaws really exist, and (2) whether Adamant does a better job than WotC at showing you how to create 4e monsters.

On the first score -- whether DMG-bred monsters are too powerful at high levels and whether Adamant's Monster Maker does a better job -- I don't actually agree with the premise. The introduction to Monster Maker practically equates "more exciting and faster-paced monsters" with "monsters that don't hit the PCs as often and get hit by the PCs more often." As a DM, I'm not convinced that's a good thing, especially at epic tier, where PCs can have abilities that begin "Once per day, when you die ..." But suppose that you do agree with Adamant that DMG-bred monsters are overpowered. If so, you'll find that building monsters with Monster Maker instead of the DM's Toolbox will yield monsters that generally have weaker defenses and lower attack roll modifiers than DMG-bred monsters.

But that's just about where the differences end. To test just how different Monster Maker monsters would be from DM's Toolbox monsters, I took three Monster Manual monsters -- the visejaw crocodile (level 4 soldier), azer raider (level 15 brute), and efreet pyresinger (level 25 controller) -- and tried to recreate their basic stats using the DM's Toolbox and Monster Maker. Except for the efreet's defenses and attack bonuses, the results from the DM's Toolbox were very similar to those from the Monster Maker, and also very similar to the actual finished monster in the Monster Manual. You can see detailed comparisons at http://d20.heardworld.com/?p=368 if you wish.

I also took two of the sample monsters presented in Monster Maker -- the rock ape and movie zombie -- and tried to recreate them myself using the Monster Maker itself and the DM's Toolbox in the DMG. I was surprised by the results: the Monster Maker and the DM's Toolbox gave very similar guidance, and the actual creature writeups in Monster Maker differed from the Monster Maker guidelines more than the DM's Toolbox guidelines differed from the Monster Maker guidelines! Admittedly, both creatures are heroic tier monsters, and the differences should be more evident at the paragon and epic tiers. Even so, with results like this (which, again, you can view in detail at http://d20.heardworld.com/?p=368), the charge of WotC "not following their own guidelines" rings hollow when echoing against Adamant's own departures from their alternate guidelines.

On the bright side, the artwork is reasonably good (though I don't know if it's unique to this product), and if nothing else, you do get three new monsters, one of which is a dragon statted out at multiple ages.

Overall, I found this product rather disappointing. Given that the Monster Maker and the DM's Toolbox produce very similar results, that Adamant's method requires more complex math (and directs you to round fractions up, different from the standard D&D practice of rounding down), and that big portions of the text just paraphrase what's in the DMG, I expect that I will keep using the DMG's guidelines instead of Adamant's.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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Venture 4th: Monster Maker
Publisher: Adamant Entertainment
by scott j. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/07/2008 00:38:17

Well I have to say I guess I cannot complain too much for the price. But that's about all I can say. I was expecting a bit more than some vague guidelines and a few flimsy charts. I was looking for something with a bit more crunch to it. I think this product could have done with a bit more time devoted to it, even if the price had gone up a notch. Something a bit more modular would have been refreshing. Take piece a plus piece b and get new and unique monster c. That sort of thing.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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Venture 4th: Monster Maker
Publisher: Adamant Entertainment
by Carden W. R. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/17/2008 00:57:36

This product was really cheap, so I don't feel ripped off. However, this product fails at it's stated task. It makes monsters that are just as uniform as the method in the Monster Manual. I tried to use their formula to create an Epic level solo monster, and the stats aren't any better than the one I made using the MM. Some of the ideas within are good, and it includes a couple of new monsters. I can hardly say it isn't worth the price, but don't expect it to fix all your home-brew monster needs.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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Venture 4th: Monster Maker
Publisher: Adamant Entertainment
by Jim C. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/05/2008 17:52:46

This is a commercial version of Tequila Sunrise's manual, adding a good-looking layout and two more complete examples - very reasonable value added for $2. In turn this collects and cleans up the DMG monster building guidelines, suggests some changes and fills in some gaps. Notably, this manual contains extra information on minions, which unfortunately doesn't match with my reading (but don't take my word for it, check the formula against Monster Manual examples). A useful clarification and contribution to restarting some more open development for 4e.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Venture 4th: Monster Maker
Publisher: Adamant Entertainment
by Fred H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/04/2008 17:16:00

I dig what they're trying to do with this product, and they go in some interesting directions with it. The idea of abstracting a monster's rank (Regular = 1, Elite = 2, Solo = 5) and making a few implementation decisions off of that is clever. There are a few choice bits of "be careful about doing X" that can be taken from here and blended together with the DMG's take on building monsters to very good effect. And the goal to make monsters scale at a rate that's a bit more in keeping with the rate of character progression level to level instead of a slow outpacing of same is a noble goal (though there are numbers yet to be crunched on that one to get me fully convinced).

At around ten pages, it's a decent $2 offering. I don't feel my money was wasted, even though I'm not sure the guidelines here would replace my current monster design methodology. It made me think.

This said, I do have some problems with some specifics of the product at first blush. When I first got this, I read the first page, which talks about the goals of the product and notes (fairly) that the D&D 4e designers haven't always followed their own guidelines when it comes to the monsters in the Monster Manual. With that in mind I eagerly pawed through it and raced for the last page. There, we find the Movie Zombie ... and there we find that this product doesn't follow its own guidelines too well either.

As a rank 2 monster (an elite level 6), it's listed with 2 action points -- the guidelines say it should have 1. Its AC is typoed, showing a whopping AC of 219 -- so obviously a typo it didn't really bug me that much, and I did have a chuckle over it (it's a case of two overlapping numbers -- a 19 that got adjusted to 21 by the Elite formula). A few of the other errors -- quite probably typos (I know them well myself) -- are a little harder to catch at first glance. The main attack of the creature is a +17 vs. AC. That's 6 too high -- by either the DMG or this product's guidelines, the attack should be +11. Its three non-AC defenses are all pitched a little too high -- the product's guidelines say they should start at 12 + 4/5ths of level + the monster's rank, which should leave us with 18.8, or 19. But that's what the lowest defense (Reflex) is set at, and the other two are at 2 to 4 above it. I'm also not too sure about a monster at level 6 having ongoing damage of more than 5, and this one has ongoing 10 damage in addition to the base damage the attack deals -- the accompanying text talking about building this particular monster does not shed much light on that.

At the end of the day all of this may simply be water under the bridge, though. While the example monster I've particularly paid attention to has a number of errors, that's only one page out of the ten, and the guidelines that it doesn't seem to pay attention to -- which make up over half of the product -- look to be pretty solid ones. These guidelines may be of particular use when designing monsters at the middle of the Paragon tier or higher (where I believe these guidelines and the DMG's begin to diverge most notably). So while it may be an entertaining faux pas to talk about the 4e core designers not following their own guidelines only to present new guidelines and an example that doesn't follow them, it's not TRULY a value-destroying mistake for this product.

The only true test will be actually putting the guidelines found here to use at the table, and this product's too new for me to have done that, so please do take all of this with a grain of salt. This product would be a solid 4 stars for me without the errors. I've knocked one off because of them. But at $2, this one was still worth the buy.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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Venture 4th: Monster Maker
Publisher: Adamant Entertainment
by Brian S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/04/2008 11:45:27

If you are the type of GM that like spends hours of your life making up your own monsters...if you have dreams of publishing your own monster compendium one day for 4e...if you just want a better understanding of how monsters are "built"...grab this product. For the price, it is a great primer to understanding monsters for 4e. And if you want to make your own monsters for 4e, you'll want this to help keep your monsters somewhat balanced (not that balance ever really mattered in D&D, no matter how much we kid ourselves otherwise). This is written in plain English, and even people relatively new to gaming in general will be able to "get it."



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Venture 4th: Monster Maker
Publisher: Adamant Entertainment
by David J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/03/2008 14:46:44

Venture 4th: Monster maker is exactly what the name implies; a solid set of guidelines for creating your own unique creatures for 4th edition games.

I don't consider myself an expert at game mechanics, but I felt that, after a few reads (I've read through it three times now), I am able to create monsters of any level, whether they are solo creatures, minions, elite monsters: Whatever type of monster I need, I can make with this set of guidelines.

The only thing I noticed were some nagging typos

Kudos to Adamant Entertainment for a great 4e product.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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