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Monstrous Races $2.99
Average Rating:4.6 / 5
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Monstrous Races
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Monstrous Races
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Daniel B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/20/2018 19:17:31

This is an excellent resource to break outside the box when creating characters aside from the standard races you get in all the other module books.

I run multiple campaigns and every once in awhile I have a player that wants to try a differ race and/or class; this product handles the race option obviously.

Like for example a player wants to play Dragon than a DragonBorn, now I have the ability to sit down and make that happen. Whether it's just for one session or an entire campaign, we can give players more to choose from.

Now all my campaign players know since I have this product I can finely time more interesting npc's; which adds hopefully to more entertainment and story to the adventure.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Monstrous Races
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Austin J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/21/2018 19:41:29

Amazing work, a ton of work went in to this product.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Monstrous Races
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Brandon S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 03/24/2018 12:11:15

I absolutely love this. For $3 it is better than some of the books asking for higher prices. I love the chart in the back that allows you to create a monstrous race from Homebrew or from the ground up if you didn't like how they start off. Too OP, not OP enough, etc. I cannot say enough good things about this book of wonder. Monstrous Races is definitely an always buy, as a player or even as a DM. I encourage all to collect this.

I do hope in the future that maybe this contains some of the other monsters from like Volo's Guide. That would be the only change I see.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Monstrous Races
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Thomas B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 03/18/2018 12:56:08

This provides an excellent framework for coming up with a race for D&D. A wide variety of features are included, but even going beyond those the techniques described let you get a handle on what ought to be reasonably well balanced within the game. I've enjoyed reading it, and using it for my own homebrew content. Really useful.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Monstrous Races
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Sarah F. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 02/02/2018 18:52:34

It's easy to see all the time and work put into this suppliment. My group loves it, it's so much a fun to mix things up and play as a different unusual character. The Kenku druid party member is having an absolute blast. This is worth every penny for the fun we're having with it.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Monstrous Races
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Richard M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/31/2018 14:45:38

Monstrous Races is a certified DM's Guild Masterpiece by the Going Last Tabletop Gaming Podcast!

This wonderfully detailed tome is clearly the culminating work of a mad scientist—a dreamer, who wants everyone in the world to play campaigns filled with Xorn Druids and Intellect Devourer Bards. Not satisfied with the meager choice of species in the Players' Handbook, author Tyler Kamstra decided to create the options for anyone to play any of the creatures found in the Monsters Manual in this massive product spanning 283 pages of incredible content.

Many of the different monster types feel ripe for conversion to playable chracters. Outsiders and monstrous humanoids like devas and bugbears have great flavor that Kamstra was easily able to mine into PC abilities. The trick to lots of these had to do with balance, and Kamstra also spends plenty of his pages detailing the specific choices he made during his design process. Many of these include tweaks to increase or decrease the power level of some of these monsters.

Of course, the fun part of this book is that so much effort has gone into allowing players the opportunity to mess around with the scary monsters. Creatures like Hydras and Cockatrices are presented in a way that can truly make a player feel unique. Many of these say something like "normally unintelligent, but..." to make it clear that these PCs are awakened and may act in ways completely unlike their rest of their species. Which is great, because the abilities Kamstra has developed are totally awesome. I want to play a Sphinx Cleric of Lore immediately.

This document is too enormous of a task to not have a few errors, but Kamtra's design notes do an incredible job of allowing a player and DM to judge the content for balance and playability. Monstrous Races surely won't be a perfect fit for every campaign, but the incredible craft of this book should absolutely be celebrated. And when a player does need a taste of something a little different, this book is always going to be waiting with 228 options ready to play.

You can hear more of my thoughts about Monstrous Races on Episode 230 of Going Last!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Monstrous Races
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Josh T. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/26/2018 12:54:10

Absolutely loved this book. The amount of time it took to craft this tome must have been astronomical. Even though there are a staggering amount of options in the main part of the book itself, the end of the book has the template he used to create the playable versions as well as instructions on how to create your own. His process seems incredibly well balanced, which is even more evident when he uses the actual playable races as examples.

I created my own race using his template and I'm really excited to play it. Love this book.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Monstrous Races
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Cody S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/21/2018 23:08:22

Many products on the DM's Guild are very hit and miss, with balance issues and just downright sloppy editing (typos, missing information, etc.), even some of the best sellers that charge over $15USD are plagued with these problems; at $2.99, this one is a hit. The author is quick to respond and correct problems that are pointed out to him, few that there are.

If you're thinking about buying this one, take into consideration that this isn't designed to give a character incredible powers from a monster and make them entirely unbalanced to play. You'll never see this on DNDWiki.

What it does is, if the monster is less powerful than a base character race, it stays weak; the ones that are more powerful are simply tuned down to a balanced and playable level, which IMO is way, way better. There are some monsters whose features may be able to be abused by particularly creative and clever players, but these races are, in the most part, full of flavor and fun.

For its price point, design philosophy, and overall polish (it's impossible for me to overstate how important polish is when you are charging for a product), I give this supplement a 5/5.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Monstrous Races
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by ben b. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/19/2018 15:36:20

Meh. It's worth the price, and I'm proud of the person that wrote it.

BUT the thinking seems constrained. The abilities and thus playability seem almost overly limited. With these guidelines, monsterous PCs are severly handicapped to begin play, and that seems to make sense. They don't ever gain the full ablities of their species as they level up, though, which seems like an oversight.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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Monstrous Races
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Heath R. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/19/2018 14:09:28

Wow! Such a fun, well-balanced, well-priced supplement! My group loved it as soon as they tried it. Great deal of time put into this work too!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Monstrous Races
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Joe H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/17/2018 15:22:29

I love this. I love it very much.

The amount of work that has gone in to it is spectacular. In addition to racial stats and descriptions are the notes on how the race was put together, making it much easier to manipulate it if you don't like it.

But what I really like is that at no point does it give up. Everything is doable, and even encouraged. From the half-dragon dragon (My father was a dragon, my mother was also a dragon), to the comedy ghost/zombie duo (they used to be inseperable), to the unicorn who wanted to steal, this is a great tool to give life to any character.

It took a little while for me to get how to use this. I think that's because in the monster manual, it just has a monster. This book however, gives the race to add a class to. Yes the mind flayer may not sound as awesome as it's cracked up to be, but give it 10 levels of wizard and you'll have a force to be reckoned with.

I think its definitely worth it, honestly its worth more than $3 just for the novelty of reading it. There are a few things I don't like about some of the races, I think darksight is definitely overused, and the alignments seem heavily favoured towards evil, but I can't be mad about it because the book tells you exactly how it was created, so you can go in and mess with it until you have something you like.

All in all, a fantastic addition to D&D for people who want more character freedom than the handbook, an excellent piece of work that's well worth the price.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Monstrous Races
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Brandon B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/12/2018 13:17:02

This is a great book, and definitely a steal for the price, it isnt however without its issues. Positives: The book has an absolutely boggling about of content, with so many races and careful documentation of each decision made in creating them, as well as guidelines for how to adjust them to match the power level of other races. Negatives: The book is riddled with typos and errors, which can get annoying, there is also some minor issues ive found with originality, such as the Bullywug entry being the exact same as the one on the D&D 5e Homebrew wiki.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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Monstrous Races
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Emily B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/12/2018 10:10:09

This is absolutely top-notch, five-star work. Some of the design decisions aren't my preferences, and I wish some of the more powerful monsters had additional rules for high-powered abilities. But the work is solid and the price is ridiculously low for something this thorough and well-developed.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Monstrous Races
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Rikki A. D. N. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/06/2018 19:37:09

Have been looking through the PDF, as most of what I've seen is solidly done and are just what my party has been talking about lately (They wanna place a monster campaign). Best part is that the design notes have been included, and makes it even easier to further customize the races to ones own needs, as the base foundation is explained.

For the asking price, this is top notch value and I would gladly have paid more for this HUGE collection of homebrew!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Monstrous Races
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
by Franklin B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/06/2018 12:41:48

For $2.99, this is a steal, as it's almost 300 pages of detailed, thought-out content- and the best part of it is that those thoughts are detailed for every character. Reading the decisions behind making every race is extremely great, showing the thought process that went into each and every decision. It also contains appendixes for creating your own races using the same point-buy system- and this point-buy system is what ensures that you aren't overly punished for playing a Twig Blight over a Beholder (while the latter IS stronger, I'd say that the difference between the two is closer to a player level than between, well, the CR of the monsters). These races are designed with use as actual playable races- meaning they're designed to be paired with a class. There are also no monsters races above Medium size, for balance reasons- Giants are not all that spectacular as a result.

Many races are missing some key features, as a necessity of balance- if this turns you off, you can add them back in, but you have to be wary of making that race too powerful as a result. The author of this put in a large amount of effort to make the transition from CR15+ enemy to playable race as smooth as possible, but not everything can make it.

It is worth noting that many monsters have limitations that can make adventuring difficult, either in the short or long term. Many can't speak Common, meaning that the players will need to pick it up somehow if they plan on talking to most human NPCs. Many can't speak at all- which inhibits, among other things, spellcasting with verbal components. Many don't have hands, meaning they can't use spellcasting foci, weapons, or other tools such as wands (many without hands do have natural weapons to compensate somewhat). And many can't wear armor, which will hurt once their natural armor falls off. It is up to the player, the party, and the DM to make sure that the race you choose doesn't rely on things you can't do too badly.

This review is 4 stars because there is no 4.5/5, and there is one thing missing that stops me from giving this a perfect score: no bookmarks. If it were arranged like PDF version of the Player Handbook, with the PDF bookmarks, this would probably be five stars. While I haven't finished this yet, I already have some things in mind to use this for. Monsterous Races is a must-buy for anyone looking to play as, well, a monsterous race, as well as anyone looking to make their own (the ones in here make a good starting point to base yours on).

EDIT: Bookmarks were added, and so the one flaw I had in it is fixed! Also, if you're like me and didn't see the backgrounds at the end, be sure to look- there's also feats there too.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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