Better Monster Book?

[Tywyll]

Which is better? The Monsters and Minions book, priced at 26.99 for 128 pages, or the Hero Beastiary at 24.99 and 240 pages? What is the Beastiary missing that the M book provides? And of course, vise versa?

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Better Monster Book?

 

Originally posted by Tywyll

Which is better? The Monsters and Minions book, priced at 26.99 for 128 pages, or the Hero Beastiary at 24.99 and 240 pages? What is the Beastiary missing that the M book provides? And of course, vise versa?

Well, my first answer would be "you dont need either". And honestly, you dont. There is nothing in there that you cant make yourself.

 

However, in case you dont have the time to write up stats for a host of normal animals and think you'll need them for things like Summon Animal Companion spells and the like, then the Bestiary is right handy to have around.

 

 

MMM is pure fantasy, and has some interesting little character snippets for many of its creature types describing some notable "person" of that race of things, so a GM could theoretically just lift that persona for RPing purpose in a pinch, get campaign ideas from them, etc.

 

I own MMM and Bestiary both. Ive mostly used the Bestiary for pointing out Summon Spells, and for the occassional shapeshifter character. I havent used MMM at all yet, but thats not to say I wont at some point.

 

I tend to make things myself anyway unless Im in a time crunch, so if you prefer to use published material you might get more use out of them.

[John Desmarais]

Re: Better Monster Book?

 

Originally posted by Tywyll

Which is better? The Monsters and Minions book, priced at 26.99 for 128 pages, or the Hero Beastiary at 24.99 and 240 pages? What is the Beastiary missing that the M book provides? And of course, vise versa?

 

Kind of depends on what you're looking for. Beastiary has lots of "real world" creatures in addition to a nice sampling of creatures of legend.

 

MMM is all fantasy creatures.

 

I have both. I would probably consider Beastiary to be more generically useful, while MMM is more on target genre-wise.

 

John D.

[Foxx!]

Tywyll:

 

IÂfm happy with both. Even though I can create beast characters myself, I want to know what the creators of Hero think is appropriate. They did a lot of outside research and work, and they know the system better than I ever will. I'd only be redoing their work in a lesser form because making this stuff is their job, not just their hobby.

 

If you can buy only one, I recommend the Bestiary for the reasons John Desmarais said. There are few beings in MMM that I use, but it is nice to have them as a ready resource. Even if I donÂft plan to use them, my players might want to encounter them or even play them as PCs. You can always edit parts. ItÂfs easier than creating from zero.

 

Cheers

[Lord Liaden]

While I agree that both are fine quality books, I've found the Bestiary to be one of the most broadly useful books that the new Hero Games has put out. It has a large selection of real-world animals of all sorts, plus dinosaurs, sci-fi creatures, fantasy monsters, and classic movie beasts. It also has rules for building and running animals, and templates you can use to quickly create your own custom creatures.

 

What you get different from MMM besides a wider selection of beasts is sentient fantasy "races" such as giants.

 

I agree with Foxx! that if you can only buy one, the Bestiary is probably the best value.