When I did a review of Relics & Rituals, I hid my general distaste for the original Creature Collection from no one. It wasn't completely worthless, but many of the rules were incorrectly handled, and many of the monsters were generally unimaginative -- no special powers that really offered a new type of encounter. Just a lot of things with claws and teeth.

But Relics & Rituals was good. The marked improvement in its handling of d20 rules encouraged me to thing that CC2 would be much better as well.

And I was right.

These monsters are interesting and much more fleshed out. From vermin hosts to the legion of one to the skeletal host, these creatures are based on imaginative concepts and can do interesting and original things. The tempus twin can produce a duplicate version of itself by continually jumping backwards in time a few seconds. The hollow naga can dimension door out of its own skin. The skin weaver fashions clothing and armor from the flesh of its foes, then gains some of their powers.

I don't know about you, but this is the stuff I buy monster books for.

Plus, there are some interesting templates in the back like the Bloodless and the very strange but very cool belsameth spider. The conundrum creature template even comes with same sample riddles. A nice touch (although the players are going to unfortunately read them before the DM ever gets to use them). Lastly, the book includes appendices with monsters listed by CR from the Monster Manual and both Creature Collections, plus new monster summoning tables. Another nice touch.

That's the good. Here's the bad. Some of the monsters are silly. The three-headed stench toad? The slime reaver? (does the whole D&D/d20 System need more frogs?) The time killer (actually, the monster's okay, but pun monster names are terrible, I think). And even the moon giant is walking a fine line. (My players would worry about a whole other kind of special power of the "moon" giant.) The number of monsters that involve blood and stealing flesh and things of that nature can get a bit tiresome, but it is called the Dark Menagerie, so it's tough to complain too much. I bring it up, though, so that people who don't like their fantasy with a touch of the dark side won't accidentally think that this is just another monster book. (There are 10 monsters whose names start with the word "blood."

If you've read my review of the other recent monster book release (Legions of Hell), you won't be surprised when I say that one of the big problems with this book is its CRs. Now, I've heard that some of the people working on the product don't like the fact that monsters have Challenge Ratings. My response is: Get used to it, because they serve a useful purpose. They are a baseline from which people can draw common experience and thus learn how to balance their game. CRs are hard to judge, I'll admit that. If they were easy, DMs wouldn't need them. But a badly handled CR is worse than no CR at all. And some of the ones mishandled in CC2 were easy. The Heron Priest says, "Spells: as a 5th level sorcerer." Its CR is listed as 2. The DMG clearly states that a character's CR is equal to its level, so if a monster has the abilities of a character of N level, plus other stuff, it's got to be at least CR N.

So buy Creature Collection 2. You won't be sorry. But when you're using any given monster, think long and hard about the CR listed (it's probably too low), and double check the Armor Class and the save DCs for the special powers. Then have fun.

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