Tired of the same old monsters from the Monster Manuals offered in D&D and AD&D?
Want to see some monsters that will shock and awe your players?
Or even make them laugh?
Do you know the stats for Toast?
What about Burnt Toast?
How about the Tinkler? (Pees Un-Holy Water as an attack vs good PCs; a 1/2 hit dice creature)
OK, All fun aside, FWIW: Not all the entries are like the examples listed above...
Although there are a few silly critters, for the most part the creatures in the two books are quite serious and challenging encounters.
Get these books and spice up your table top or on-line fantasy game.
The two books combined list over 780 creatures!
Field Guide to Encounters: By Dragon's Byte.
Judges Guild's answer to the D&D Monster manual and so much more.
Vol. 1: 110 numbered pages.
Starts with 12 pages on Character Creation, Poison Resistance, Power Points and Manitou Combat, Lycanthropes (3 pages) and Magic.
33 pages of Occupations with descriptions for NPCs (And/Or PC Secondary skills, prior to becoming adventurers).
174 Humanoid Intelligent and Semi-Intelligent Monsters (NPCs, or Character Monsters).
Each creature includes a detailed stats chart, and sketch.
15 pages on Godhood and mutations.
Crossbreeding table. (IE. Bear and Troll)
Blank Character sheet at back inside page.
Vol. 2: 94 numbered pages.
Over 600 additional monsters and humanoid creatures (encounters).
Each creature includes a detailed stats chart, and sketch.
Psionics data with attack and damage charts.
Within these two volumes are so many new and old monsters and NPC types, that as a Judge (DM/GM) you should be set for encounters for a long time.
The Players might know most or even all the monsters in the
PHB (Whatever edition you play), or the Monsters and treasure Book (Castle & Crusades) or whatever monster manual for whatever system you play in, but I bet they wont know even half the monsters offered in these two books.
Even though they were intended to be sold as a set, You do not need either of them to use the other book.
Taken as a single book, or as a set they are quite useful.
These books can often be obtained through E-Bay for less than $10 each (Likely less).
Or if you have only a little patience, BINs for them are common at higher prices.
(I have seen them with BINs as low as $4.00 and as high as $35.00 for Volume 1 alone)
However, I just purchased like new copies of both volumes through seperate auctions on E-Bay.
I was the only bidder on the two books so I won both auctions at the starting price of $2.88 each from the same seller.
Combined shipping was $3.50.
So for $9.26 total, I will soon have like new copies of both books.
For the entertainment value alone these books are easily worth that much and more... (Around $10 total, not $35 for one of them
)
