Monster Manual Options

[rbeverjr]

I’m hoping we can create a monster manual for Improved Anvil. I would like to know about monsters, particularly named monsters, vulnerabilities. Are they susceptible to:
* vorpal kills
* level drain
* stat drain
* stun
* slow
* magic (0% resistance)
* elements (fire, cold, acid, or lightning; 0% resistance)
* physical damage (crush, slash, or pierce; 0% resistance)
* spells (i.e. is the monster immune to level 5 and below, level 7 and below, level 9 and below, etc. This is especially important to know if Breach and Lower Resistance have a chance to work!)
* normal (unenchanted) weapons
* enchanted weapons of less than x (i.e. requires a +3 weapon, +4 weapon, or +6 weapon to hit)

A monster manual would greatly improve tactical play. I just assume any of the special golems are immune to everything and have to be beat down with +3 or better magic weapons (sometimes more than +3 may be required?). I have also found that most opponents in Improved Anvil are highly resistant to many different types of damage. So, if you KNOW something about any particular enemy that you would like to share on the forum, please do so.

[coaster]

I like Sikret's idea and would choose 1. Of course, the book should only contain fairly vague hints - not full spoilers, eg. "such and such has 50% fire resistance and 100% acid resistance" would be too much detail, perhaps something more like "Of the few adventurers who have survived their encounters with [x monster], some claim that fire arrows had hurt the beast the most". An approach like this leaves open the possibility that it was either ranged weapons or fire which had done the damage...perhaps a nice bit of ambiguity?

I'd also restrict it to giving info on only some of the additional monsters (and certainly not the major new bosses) to stop it giving too much away.

As for how the book is obtained...it could either be bought for an extortionate amount of gold or be one of the randomised treasures deposited with one of the bosses. Alternatively, another quite nice approach might be to disperse individual pages of the book around Amn, for the player to collect as part of a quest?

I'd prefer this to be done "in game" rather than just read a thread (or open up the game with an Infinity Engine editor), which to me would give the game away completely about how to fight particular enemies, and take a lot of the fun experimentation away.

cheers

coaster