"The skeleton guardians of the long-dead king advance toward you. You see the remnants of old clothes falling off the ancient bones. As you look closer, you can tell these aren’t just the bones of humans, but appear to be larger skeletons of trolls!"

The dungeon master (DM) describes the situation to the players seated at the table. Looking through his monster manual, he comes across the necessary monster and statistics that he requires to run this encounter.

“Dungeons and Dragons virtually created the hobby of role-playing games back in the 1970's. It has remained steadily popular while waning a bit in the 90's. In 2000, Wizards of the Coast (after buying the original company) decided to revamp the franchise with Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition. This edition of the game revitalized the entire industry, including many third party products. After several years on the market, long-term flaws in third edition showed up, and Wizards of the Coast created the 3.5 edition to make the game work better. 3.5 Edition was re-released in July of 2003.

To play in a Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game, a gaming group needs several items: a Player's Handbook, a Dungeon Master's Guide, a Monster Manual, dice, miniatures or tokens to represent battles, paper, pencils, pizza and imagination! (Okay, pizza is not required, but helps!)””-excerpt from my review on the Player's Handbook.

This book review is on the 3.5 version of the Monster Manual, also known as the Revised Monster Manual or Core Rulebook III.

The Monster Manual is a necessary book for the person who will be running a game of Dungeons and Dragons. It lays out the rules and statistics around monsters that the party will be facing. Without the information in this book (or other monster books), a proper game can’t be played.

The Monster Manual is an attractive 320 page hardcover book that defines and describes monsters and creatures for Dungeons and Dragons. Written by Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, and Skip Williams, it offers charts, text-based descriptions and beautiful full color illustrations of almost every monster in the book. It also provides additional rules for changing and adding to monsters.

The Monster Manual is divided into the following chapters:

Chapter 1: Monsters A to Z

267 of the 320 pages are given to large, detailed description and statistics of the monsters. Each entry is presented in the same way: Statistics, Flavor text, and Combat.

Statistics
This section on each entry includes almost every number and piece of information you need to know about running a monster. This includes their hit points (how much damage they can take before being killed), their speed, their armor class, their abilities, skills, treasure, and more. By laying out all of the data on these handy charts, it makes it easy for a Dungeon Master to understand his monsters in a short amount of time. Or, when running a game, a quick flip of the book to the section, and the needed number is easy to spot.

Flavor Text

The flavor text is a short description of the monster that a DM could use to describe the monster to the players. Combine that with the accompanying drawing, and everyone should be on the same page.

Combat

This is an extremely useful section of each entry. This section takes a step further from the statistics and abilities of the creature and provides ideas and examples of how they use them.

Some fantastic creatures are included in this book, including: Ankheg, Beholder, kobold, goblin, orc, dragon, and more. The illustrations alone are worth the price of admission for this book!

Chapter 2: Animals

Very similar to Chapter 1, but dealing with traditional animals as we have on earth.

Chapter 3: Vermin

Also similar to Chapter 1, but dealing with insects and creatures that swarm.

Chapter 4: Advancing Monsters

Sometimes the monsters aren’t strong enough to go up against the party of adventurers. Sometimes the creature just isn’t perfect for the campaign world that you are creating. That is where this chapter comes in. This chapter shows you how to make the monsters tougher, change their size, add class levels, and adding templates (pre-set rules to change a monster).

Chapter 5: Creating Monsters

Basic rules of creature creation to keep your creations in balance with the rest of the game.

Chapter 6: Monster Skills and Feats

This is a small section that introduces new skills and feats that are only usable by monsters. These include the ability to multi-attack (if the creature has many natural weapons), fly-by attack (if the creature can fly), hovering, and many others.

Chapter 7: Glossary

A very nice to have section: A glossary of terms.

Extra

There is a nice index in the back of the book that puts all of the monsters in order based on their Challenge Rating (a measurement of how powerful the creature is). This is a very handy tool when the DM is quickly trying to come up with an appropriate encounter for a group of adventurers.

Final Thoughts:

For the list price of $29.95, this book is a must-have for any Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master, and a nice-to-have for the player who must know everything.

Unfortunately, play testing and editing have created several errors and changes in rules since this was printed. To make sure you have the most up-to-date rules, visit Wizards.com and download the latest errata and FAQ list.

The latest errata for this product can be found at: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/er/20040125a

A web enhancement has been included on the Wizards of the Coast website. This enhancement is a hobgoblin outpost. This is a nice addition for a low-level encounter area. It can be found at: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20030725a

Also, if you are looking for official miniatures based on pictures in this book, many of them can be found in these sets:

Harbinger
Dragoneye
Archfiends
Giants of Legend
Aberrations
Angelfire
Underdark
War Drums

Other Required books for Dungeons and Dragons:
Player's Handbook
Dungeon Master's Guide
Other Recommended tools for Dungeons and Dragons:
Battlemat
Dice
Character Sheets (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/charactersheets)
Dragon Magazine
Dungeon Magazine


Recommended: Yes