The final core book of the Dungeons & Dragons 2024 rulebooks is almost here (in 2025): The Monster Manual. Monster Manuals/Bestiaries/Creature Tomes etc. have always been my favorite of the core books in any TTRPG thanks to the key worldbuilding they offer as well as being a great tool kit for DM’s wanting new and fun ways to challenge/kill their players.
With the new edition of the Fifth Edition Monster Manual, Wizards wanted to update the existing monster roster to allow for higher level play and reflect D&D’s new emphasis on accessibility. As such, the roster for the new Monster Manual isn’t much different from the one we got in 2014. What we did get in this, the “Biggest Monster Manual Ever,” were new ways to approach these existing monsters as well as various “apex” versions to allow for more high level play. Is it a useful tool still? Yes. Is it better than the books it’s replacing? That’s complicated.
New Things To Kill
The BIGGEST, and I do mean that literally, additions to the D&D Monster Manual in 2025 are the “apex” version of established monsters. These are new versions of things like Elementals, Revenants, or Oozes that let them stay in use at higher levels. The Blob of Annihilation up there is a CR 23 Ooze that sends people to the Astral Plane when it dies. Animal Lords look much more normal but are actually CR20 Celestials with powerful spells, shapeshifting, and Legendary abilities that make them incredibly hard to hit. My personal favorite is the Haunting Revenant, a new form of undead that animates and entire ruin or building into a malevolent monster hellbent on luring in unwary travelers and trapping them within its decaying walls.
Not every addition to the Monster Manual is aimed at epic level play. Almost every monster has gotten new variants that allow for DM’s to mix things up a bit when using them in their game. There’s feral, Primeval Owlbears, Flaming Skeletons, Bulette Pups, and even new versions of old standbys like Gnolls and Goblins.
Big Changes To Iconic Critters
Of course they didn’t just add some new shiny variants of your favorite monster, they also have tweaked and largely optimized every beastie up to and including the Terrasque. Most of these are little tweaks to HP or speed that players honestly won’t notice. Every monster still has an alignment, though technically this is a “suggestion,” and they also all now have Dark Souls boss subtitles. Some of my favorites include Magmin (Reckless Elemental Arsonist), Otyughs (Garbage-Heap Gourmand), and Flumphs (Strange Ally from a Strange Place). Some of these changes, however, are more impactful especially when it comes to some of the most iconic creatures in the game.
Gith
Gith lore is largely the same, though there’s less emphasis on the difference between Githyanki and Githzerai. It may seem minor, but the new rulebook doesn’t classify Gith as “humanoid.” Instead, they’re now classed as Aberrations like their former masters the Illithid. Both kinds of Gith also get new forms in the Githyanki Dracomancer (CR 16) and Githzerai Psion (CR 12).
Liches
The biggest change to the lich is entirely about nomenclature. Instead of the Greek word Phylactery, which has caused some controversy in the world of fantasy due to its association with Tefillin used in Judaism for prayer, the Monster Manual now uses “spirit jar.” It functions the same and I’m not sure if this change will supersede 50 years of precedent, but it’s an example of Wizards working to be as inclusive as possible.
Sphinxes
Sphinxes get a HUGE change in the new Monster Manual by doing away with the classic gendered sphinx classifications of Androsphinx and Gynosphinx. Instead, there are Sphinx’s of Wonder (CR 1), Secrets (CR 8), Lore (CR 11), and Valor (CR 17). They also are multicolored now and classified as Celestials instead of Monstrosities. This change in form and classification reflects more the way Sphinx’s are depicted in Hinduism and Buddhism rather than the Greek/Egyptian influence of previous editions. There’s no mention if the Andro and Gyno forms still existm though they’re listed on the conversion tables to be equivalent to the Valor and Lore Sphinxes, respectively.
Rakshasas
Rakshasa’s are mechanically the same as before but they’ve lost most of their uniqueness. Instead of being evil tiger-headed people with backwards hands, they can have any animal head (the art in the game shows a tiger, a crocodile, an ibex, and a bird). The backwards hands are just one possible quirk they can have rather than their main identifier. This, combined with the hyper-condensed lore every monster suffers from (more on that later), means they’re just not as interesting as before.
Orcs
Orcs don’t get any space in the new Monster Manual. In the 2015 version they gave one of THE iconic D&D monsters four pages of lore, statblocks, and art. Now? They only show up in the Appendix in the tables that let you convert them to a new monster. Orcs have been a thorny subject lately but even previous D&D books have been able to thread the Orc needle without leaving them out entirely. Other races like Goblins, Kobolds, and Hobgoblins are included in this book, but not Orcs. Their omission is profoundly disappointing considering the amount of creativity shown in updating other creatures in this book.
So Many Monsters, So Little Lore
The new Monster Manual was touted by Wizards as the BIGGEST ever with 500 monsters and 85 new ones. But this isn’t strictly true. Part of that comes from them moving NPC’s like Druids, Performers, and Cultists out of the Appendix where they were before and into the main body of the book. While I understand wanting to put these tools alongside others, it ends up feeling like filler. This shift also is part of one of my bigger issues with the new Monster Manual: organization.
Unlike most Monster Manuals, almost every grouping of monsters have been split off from each other. Rather than a section for, say, Devils that then has the stats for Lemures, Imps, Gorgons, etc., those monsters are now all in different places. So if you know you want a devil, or will be using multiple devils (never can eat just one!), you have to do a seek-and-find through the appendices to find the ones you want. It’s a very confusing choice that’s counterintuitive to the book’s stated goal of accessibility.
My biggest gripe with the new Monster Manual is not with mechanics, which are largely excellent. It’s with the lore. Or lack thereof. In trying to fit SO many monsters in to this book they’ve cut pages of fluff from the final product. Creatures like Aboleths, Beholders, and Mind Flayers from multi-page descriptions that show you their backstory and place in the world to, at best, three paragraphs and a table to roll on. If you’re lucky you’ll get a little quip from Mordenkainen. This was always the best part of the Monster Manual as both player and DM and getting rid of it takes so much of the magic out. It goes from an in-universe collection of monster lore to a glorified encyclopedia. It’s stripped down to something purely utilitarian and pushes most of the burden of lore and worldbuilding onto the DM. While Wizards does do more with lore in books like Glory of the Giants, you’re never going to get a book dedicated to the little quirky critters like the Nothics or the Umber Hulk.
I don’t want to focus entirely on the negatives, though. The art direction for the new Monster Manual is some of the best I’ve seen in any splatbook, D&D or otherwise. The new art isn’t just static illustrations, it shows each creature in its habitat, whether that be a green dragon swimming beneath the swamp water to hunt or Displacer Beasts battling a Ranger. The new emphasis on habitats is helpful as well, with each entry telling you where to find a monster and a table in the back helpfully grouping them together by biome.
As a pure resource, the new Monster Manual will offer a lot to D&D players who just need the raw stats. While I disagree with the book’s shift to pure utility, I can also still see this as a helpful tool for planning out campaigns and encounters. It also shows there’s plenty of creative design choices being made at D&D, even if it’s not getting the space it needs to really flourish like it should.
Early access in WPN Stores and on D&D Beyond begins on February 4 for Master Tier subscribers and February 11 for Hero Tier. The 2024 Monster Manual will release globally on February 18, 2025, with the special Alt-cover available at your FLGS.
Images and review copy via Dungeons & Dragons
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