The Kickstarter of Frog God Games / Necromancer Games Fifth Edition Foes monster book resulted in what appears to be an excellent 5e Monster Book that includes 300 beasties, some new, some old.
Necromancer has a special licensing deal with WOTC dating back to 3e that gives them special rights to convert some Fiend Folio and other 1e and 2e monsters, and that licensing deal extends to include this project. It's 1e/2e/fiend folios and some from old Dragon, White Dwarf and other sources, and a bunch of originals as well. They did it under the old OGL, so they changed the formatting to be much more 1e-type old school formatting (and so it does not violate WOTC trade dress).
The book is 259 pages. One of the authors is Steve Winter, who worked on 5e, so they had pretty good internal knowledge of the 5e rules.
So far it's gotten some good reviews over at ENWorld. Apparently the biggest change, aside from format, is if there was a close call between one CR and another, they went with the slightly higher CR. That, and there are a lot of new, creative mosnter abilities.
Here is a sample page:
So has anyone here seen it yet? What are your thoughts?
I pre-ordered the hardcover, which got me the pdf for free, pretty awesome book, reminds me of the look, feel of the Fiend Folio, plus its written by some pretty well known D&D developers.
Looks cool. Steve Winter's comments sound totally canned in the video though, lol.
Jenks wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
so its based off of 1e? and will need some conversion to still max 5e?
cowleymen wrote:
The adventures look great too. I love the art work.
It's all much more exciting than anything WotC has to offer.
Hitdice wrote:
I'm not looking to argue with you. I can't say I was in on the kickstarter, but I did buy the pdf and review it on ENWorld. Here's the thing: 1e had a list of statistics and a paragraph of description underneath, with multiple entries per page. The only similarities to 1e that I can see in FEF is that the pictures are in black and white. This isn't a complaint, but you if hold a page from FEF up next to one from the PF Bestiary and one from the AD&D Monster Manual, the similarities will be obvious.
Hitdice wrote:
Sure, Zard, I'm a fan of the OSR; I just think FEF is a lot closer to the PF version of Tome of Horrors than it is to Swords & Wizardry Monstrosities, you know?
Hitdice wrote:
Hitdice wrote:
Was underwhelmed.
You can read my full review here.
The cruch isn't bad, and is certainly strong enough to make this book useful. But everything else about the design is... questionable.
The_Jester wrote:
The_Jester wrote:
There's no upper limit to the budget though, only lower limits for each threshold. Go high if that's what will challenge your party.
DaveDash wrote:
I have been meticulously converting (monsters, races, and classes) since 5th Ed debuted, adjusting as each playtest packet came out, and of course, final editing with the official release, much happier with my conversions than this product.
I do not care if they ever release another product for 5th Ed, I am just so jazzed with the chassis, and that it has enabled me to cannibalise all my previous edition stuff with glorious results. I can make this edition more any previous edition-like with ease, that is the big seller for me.
The_Jester wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
The_Jester wrote:
ssvegeta555 wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
abs1nth wrote:
The_Jester wrote:
abs1nth wrote: