Sorcerer Reviews Books: Monster Manual II (3.0)
Miscellany
We're so close! :D So I'ma treat you to a twofer: miscellaneous new monsters and miscellaneous old monsters.
Boggle (1st ed. AD&D: Secret of the Slavers Stockade): The art matches the textual description -- in part. The text says that Boggles act like monkeys and have disproportionate body parts varying between individuals. The art, however, gives us a hairless, dark blue gibbon. (Nonhuman Primate #5: Greasemonkey.) It's not like the artist couldn't have shown several different-looking individuals.
Bogun (3.0: Masters of the Wild): A Druidic homunculus. Though practically identical to a normal homunculus, before the 3.5 update, it was trivial to make: the only thing really restricting its creation was requiring a Druid of at least 7th level. (The arcane version costs quite a bit of gold and thrice the XP of the Bogun, but you could be 4th level when making one.)
Bronze Serpent: If Steelix were Steel/Electric and had Volt Absorb -- no other changes, since it can already learn Bind/Wrap and Thunder Fang. It looks cool, but having the 3.x shocking grasp is nothing special and the stats (for a CR 10) are only slightly better than those of the Giant Constrictor Snake (a CR 5).
Galeb Duhr (1st ed. AD&D: Monster Cards, Set #2): The stats are oddly different between 3.0 and 5e, but the concept's the same except these ones perform (mainly orally: singing, telling tales, etc.).
Hook Horror (1st ed. AD&D: Fiend Folio): Have I ever liked or taken seriously the vulture-roach/beetle with hooks for hands? No, no I haven't. Not-Man Door Hand Hook Car Door.
Juggernaut (OD&D: Monsters & Treasure [Mentioned]): Casual, blatant, and avoidable Hinduphobia and total lack of JoJo reference notwithstanding, one has to wonder why you need to turn a steamroller (a vehicle) into a Construct with multiple arms, let alone multiple spell-like abilities.
I considered doing the Juggernaut line, but I thought better of it. If you're going to invoke the X-Men character, you should use the X-Men TAS version. I also considered "Roada Rolla DA!" But the point of the monster is an unstoppable force and that scene is about stopping both road rollers and time.
Monster of Legend: This is supposed to turn a given monster into a unique divine servant with a few fairly neat abilities (one offensive, two defensive), but at only +2 CR. Even so, it's easily broken: the options include the combo of 5th-level Cleric casting with access to three domains (offense; Clerics ordinarily get two domains) with permanent haste and spell turning (defense), which is beyond bonkers.
Morkoth (OD&D: Supplement 2: Blackmoor): The basics are the same across editions; this one only has the hypnosis and spell reflection.
Mountain Giant (1st ed. AD&D: Fiend Folio): Yet another example of a high-CR monster that looks powerful if you don't know the system, but is actually weak.
Reason Stealer: An Ooze that devours minds, gaining the victim's numeric stats where better (because Str is mental?) and any feats and prepared spells (Fighters and Wizards specifically beware). The idea is fine, but it's wonky and easily becomes a problem encounter.
Runic Guardian: A Shield Guardian into which you can imbue spells, much like the Spellstitched template I discussed before. This really could be an item-like augmentation to existing constructs (a graft) instead of a creature.
Tempest (2nd ed. AD&D: Monstrous Compendium: Forgotten Realms Appendix, Monstrous Manual): The two components (a storm cloud elemental and a quad-elemental) got reworked into the Storm Elemental and Omnimental (both MMIII). This version claims to be the former with the latter as flavor, but it's the reverse. It also grossly underestimates the size of a thunderhead. The 5e couatl-thing is much better, but not an omnimental.
Twig Blight (3.0: The Sunken Citadel): I've already covered this. The conceptual overlap with the Wortling is almost complete (small, humanoid-shaped fruit of an antagonistic tree, poisonous claws), but the execution is poor. 5e's is weaker: it lacks the Strength-sapping poison (in an edition where DC 11 is still viable).
Windghost (2nd ed. AD&D: Monstrous Compendium Annual Vol. 1): Imagine a windsock. Make it a flying monster with anti-magic abilities and a harmonic attack that "throws off equilibrium." Now make that thing Lawful.
Oh wait, I'm not done.
The Tauric Creature Template
This was the template that always stood out to me more than the rest because of the illustration of its example creature, a tauric hobgoblin-griffin (hobgriffin?). With the other templates, you have a bugbear pirate with an ax, an ankheg chimera with a bad palette, an undead warrior, melting people, blocky people, an aura-farming minotaur, yet another zombie by Wayne Reynolds in his early period, a fat toad, and a rhino in barding (because rhinos aren't already armored) with an orc on its back. None of those are inspiring.
There are three ways to make a centaur:
The Traditional Way (Human Not-Centipede): Take a human, cut off its legs. Take a horse, cut off its head and neck. Stitch together. Bam! In game terms, this is complicated; the best thing you could do, IMHO, is treat it as a mounted rider who cannot dismount, but that's effectively running two creatures (the rider and the mount) with one pool of HP. To be fair, the mechanics are the least complicated part of a centaur. It has two thoraces and two abdomens with presumably all of the organs from both, but one brain, one anus (requiring the horse part to digest everything the human part already digested, hence Human Not-Centipede), and one or two sets of genitalia (depending on interpretation; see #3).
The Gisnep Hercules Way: The human part is now proportional to the horse's, meaning it's a four-legged ogre. Ex.: Lynels.
The Pony Way: A four-legged human. In game terms, that's 1.5x your normal carrying capacity, better speed (as you assign it), and something like the Dwarf's Stability (+4 vs. bull rush [push], trip [prone], etc.). Hybsils and Anggitay are probably this. A lot of art of centaurs gives them these proportions (e.g., Fantasia), but it's never consistent. Like, there are versions in Classical art which have a complete human body, legs and all, with the rest of the horse attached at the butt.
Like, mermaids are weird, but at least their only problem is mating. Everything else works out anatomically. But centaurs are a mess and there is no good way to make them not messy, as all of the solutions create further problems.
Anyway, you're led to believe the Tauric template is #1, but it's actually #2. It's less an actual template and more rough guidelines for what to do when merging two monsters because so many of the abilities are dependent upon whether or not they're tied to a head or the humanoid's legs, which is purely flavor. You could and probably should ignore such things if you're making, say, a tauric sahuagin-catoblepas. Pathfinder instead gave such creatures an undersized weapons ability, which works but seems a little limited for all the complication this idea has.
