When 2010 rolled around it was becoming obvious that 4e was not going to sell as well as previous versions of D&D. It still sold well, but it was not hitting the number that WotC and Hasbro wanted. Since the old adage was "Core Books sell better" the 4e team reintroduced the D&D 4th edition game with the 4e Essentials line. While no a new edition really, it was designed to make the 4e game a bit easier to play and run and make it more like old editions of the game.
It was not quite successful but it did re-interest me in the game after playing 4e for a bit and then drifting off to Pathfinder.
One of the "interesting" changes in 4e Essentials was the shift of the "Monster Manual" to the "Monster Vault."
They were called these since the first Essentials Monster book was a boxed set with the digest-sized book and monster tokens for all the creatures in the book. Nice touch for a mini-focused game.
So for today's Monstrous Mondays I am going to look at the two Monster Vault books, both PDF and physical, and talk about what they added to the game and the depiction of monsters.
Dungeons & Dragons Essentials: Monster Vault (4e)PDF (and softcover). 320 pages, full color. No PoD option on DriveThruRPG at this time. $8.99 for PDF.
Released in the later part of 2010 this book was part of the Essentials transition line to help "save" D&D 4e.
The monster book of the D&D 4e Essentials line covered a number of monsters already present in the D&D 4e Monster Manuals. I'll get to that part in a bit.
The product came in a box, much like the Essentials DM's kit. Along with the digest-sized book, there were a bunch of tokens for all the creatures, a fold-out map of a dungeon/wilderness area (for the "Cairn of the Winter King" included adventure), and even some NPC/PC tokens. The tokens also featured rings to make a monster go up a size. So a large creature could be upgraded to huge for example. The PDF of this book includes the maps and tokens to print out.
The book format largely followed that of the previous monster books but presented in the Essentials style. Of course, you could use 4e and Essentials material interchangeably and the monster books are the best example of this. An effort was made not just to repeat monsters and stat blocks from the previous books. For example, the Monster Manual has an Orc entry and features the Orc Drudge (L4), Orc Warrior (L9), Orc Raider (L3), Orc Berserker (L4), Orc Eye of Gruumsh (L5), Orc Bloodrager (L7) and Orc Chieftan (L8). The Monster Vault has Battletest Orc (L3), Orc Savage (L4), Orc Archer (L4), Orc Reaver (L5), Orc Rampager (L6), Orc Pummeler (L6) and Orc Storm Shaman (L6). The art in the book is replicated on the tokens. Each token is also used as an "icon" in each entry.
There are 64 major monster entries, including Animals, here with anywhere from 1 or 2 to as many as 8 sub entries under each. Orcs have 7, demons have 7 and even displacer beasts have 3. This gives us just over 300 monsters.
I don't personally feel that the Monster Vault was designed to replace the Monster Manuals. After all the "named" demons like Orcus, Demogorgon and Lolth never appear in the Essentials Monster books. Though there is naturally some overlap, but it is nowhere near what you saw in the Monster Manuals for 3.0 to 3.5 or even the Monstrous Compendiums of 2e to the Monstrous Manual. I felt they were designed to be more complimentary.
Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir ValePDF (and softcover). 128 pages, full color. $14.99 for PDF, $32.99 for PoD or $47.98 for both.
If the first Monster Vault was designed to replace or complement the D&D 4 Monster Manuals then a case could be made that Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale could be considered the D&D 4e Monster Manual 4. Indeed, with the updated MV monsters in the fist book, combined with this book a hard cover Monster Manual 4 could have been created. While the cover features a cool looking black dragon, the hard cover could have been Graz'zt to continue with the demon-focused covers.
This originally came as a softcover book in a shrink-wrapped paper slip-case with card-stock tokens like that of the Monster Vault. These included all the monsters for this book. The book though in this case is not digest-sized but letter sized.
There are 40 grouping of monsters here, with some named unique creatures and threats to the Nentir Vale. So the book feels like a campaign-setting monster book. There are about 200 monsters here in total. Since there are unique creatures and Nentir Vale-focused ones, there are monsters here that have never appeared in any D&D monster book before or since. Some are old favorites with new ideas. For example, there are Gnolls, but they are the Black Fang Gnolls here and are a little more vicious. There are new creatures, like the Frost Witches, that have not reappeared anywhere else as far as I know. Others of course are new and have appeared in other books after this.
Personally, I would love to see all of these creatures, along with the rest of the Nentir Vale, translated into D&D 5th edition.
The Essentials Line
Back when it was new in 2010 I spent some time talking about the D&D Essentials line and how it was what 4e should have been from the start.
I talked about the start of the essentials line here and here. I also discussed using the Essentials Monster Vault to make adjustments to various D&D 5e monsters.
I feel there is still a good game in here. I might need to delve a bit deeper and even get an Essentials game going sometime. There is still a lot of fun to be had here I think.
