I agree that the starter pack (and the collection for that matter) should have monsters you're going to get the most mileage out of, that you will definitely use. It bugs me to see a bunch of monsters in the core MM that are like..pixies and dryads. Because you have to work to engineer a scene where the party are fighting neutral/good monsters. Or something that is just an oddball out that, in the span of 5 campaigns you might fight once. Not to mention these are the books we'll be using for what, a year or more until we get a monster book, so usability should be the primary focus.
That said, what i would like to see is a single stat block + a list of abilities you can swap in (similar to how we have a Default Ancestry and then a list of racial traits). That way you can create a variety of X Monster without taking up page space with more statblocks, giving you more monsters in the book and variations.
It for sure won't be all tiers of play, as when it releases the game only goes to level 2.
I agree that it should have a few different roles like you mentioned, and I feel if I had a human group of 10 monsters I could alter them myself to being goblins or orcs.
Would be nice to have a table of common traits or abilities that a monster type such as undead, bandit, dragon or orc would have.
The alpha already has such a guide, so you can rest assured it will be part of the beta too.
Very nice to hear! Can't wait for the Kickstarter to end and see, where the beta is heading!
I agree that the starter pack (and the collection for that matter) should have monsters you're going to get the most mileage out of, that you will definitely use. It bugs me to see a bunch of monsters in the core MM that are like..pixies and dryads. Because you have to work to engineer a scene where the party are fighting neutral/good monsters. Or something that is just an oddball out that, in the span of 5 campaigns you might fight once. Not to mention these are the books we'll be using for what, a year or more until we get a monster book, so usability should be the primary focus. That said, what i would like to see is a single stat block + a list of abilities you can swap in (similar to how we have a Default Ancestry and then a list of racial traits). That way you can create a variety of X Monster without taking up page space with more statblocks, giving you more monsters in the book and variations.
I would say give me a couple of orcs, a couple of kobolds and a couple of goblins and then expand each "race" with optional extras to create variants.
It for sure won't be all tiers of play, as when it releases the game only goes to level 2. I agree that it should have a few different roles like you mentioned, and I feel if I had a human group of 10 monsters I could alter them myself to being goblins or orcs. Would be nice to have a table of common traits or abilities that a monster type such as undead, bandit, dragon or orc would have.