New 2024 Monster Manual | Everything You Need to Know | D&D

we have the new core Rule books and this is the final of the new core Rule books it's the monster manual this is was my Gateway into D and D as a kid looking through the monsters absorbing all this information over time so tell me what's new in the new monster manual everything everything is new in some way because uh when the two of us embarked on reimagining this book of beasties and I think it's true for the two of us that like Monster books are our favorite DN books oh absolutely no question yeah and

so working on any monster book is a special delight but working on the monster manual is like the Delight of delights and uh we not only wanted to improve every monster that was returning from the 2014 Monster manual but also add many new Critters and that combination of things has led to us creating a book that has over 500 stat blocks in it making this the biggest monster manual DND has ever had and we have looked at every creature type and looked for ways to expand the number of creatures in that type we've looked at

high challenge ratings and seen how can we make those creatures more dangerous and we've looked at all the creatures before that to see are there ways that we can make them more fun add new surprises make how they function smoother than they were before and a whole lot more was there something that stood out that you were really proud of or that was really exciting to like revisit and and revamp well for me one of the most exciting opportunities for the book is to really make this feel like a Dungeons and Dragons Monster manual and

that's going to sound a little weird because there's been numerous dungeons Dragons Monster manuals but this is a book that's really rooted in showing you how these monsters exist in the worlds of Dungeons and dragon so as much as we've put so much effort into the reorganization the new rules um streamlining and revising some of the narrative text but right down to the art you're going to open up this book and you're going to see the worlds of DnD and the Monsters of D and in those settings doing what they do I don't think that

there's a single Monster in this book that's just here's a critter floating in white space they're all in these worlds doing the things that make them exciting we don't want to show you just here in the abstract as a creature I want to show you the monster the like rust monster actually doing what it does actually dissolving weapons and armor what does that look like so you can take a look at this and you can see the adventures that you can then have unfold at your table yeah none of these monsters are without context and

like you said in every Edition previous the monsters were static this was like here's a picture like almost like a wanted poster of the monster and this is the monster in action which is very helpful for New and Old dja Masters because we wanted the art itself to inspire DMS to get them thinking about how they could use these monsters in their stories uh I think the monsters themselves are inspiring I mean I know going back to the first edition monster manual those illustrations uh inspired my my childhood imagination and continue to inspire me to

this day but we wanted to bring more so that uh yeah that rust monster you actually see it rusting something uh the beholder you see it using its ey rays and seeing the dread consequences of those Rays use uh you see in many cases like the awesome scale of the ancient dragons uh you see when it comes to some of the new Titanic creatures just how gigantic they are uh I think the tarasque image that we have in this book better than ever before shows just how how gigantic and terrifying that monster is and then

to accompany that every monster now its description begins with the section that tells you the environment where you're most likely to meet the Monster uh to help DMS as they are sort of thinking about the map of their campaign and where they might want to place different monsters they can see right away oh I'm most likely to have a creature like this appear in a forest for instance we also now have default treasure for all of the Monsters uh in the book or we tell you this monster just doesn't have loot uh and that too

is there to help DMS not just run the monster in battle or in a diplomatic encounter but also really ground the monster even more in their adventures and in their worlds was there a particular monster that stood out or a couple monsters that just can easily come to mind where you're like yes we have enhanced this this is going to be a far more uh dramatic combative experience running into this this monster it's hard to pick any one or any group because there are improvements across the board but I think a great example family of

monsters are the ancient dragons I I mentioned that you know we made sure in the art that the ancient dragons uh really show off How Majestic and terrifying they can be uh or protective in the case of the metallic dragons but also in the stat blocks people are going to find that not only are these dragons way more resilient than they ever were before with the number of hit points they have uh but also these dragons are going to bring hurt uh more than they ever did before and also have more tactical texture than they

had before we took a number of gameplay elements that used to exist outside the stat Block in things like layer actions and move those into the stat block itself to not only make the DM's life easier by having everything they need to know on running the creature right in front of them in the stat block but also this was a chance for us to bring in new abilities so for example we in the past have said ancient dragons typically are spellcast ERS but that existed as an option off in a sidebar in the 2014 Monster

manual this time you're going to see that with the exception of I think the ancient white dragon who's like just maybe starting to learn what a spell is maybe maybe another few thousand years yes um uh the rest of the ancient dragons they're now spellcasters and so in addition to their usual physical Menace you know with with their claws and their tail and their and their great Moos and their breath weapons they also now have spells their casting and that change is going to transform how those creatures feel in battle there's also an under the

hood thing that we did not only with the ancient dragons but with all of our legendary creatures and that is we as we retuned all of our legendary creatures we ensured that no matter what pathway the DM takes through that monster using the legendary actions the monster is going to stay on CR uh and I bring this is significant because a decade ago the way we calculated CR was focused on if the DM chooses the most powerful option every round here is the monsters CR well many of us has DMS found that sometimes we don't

want to choose the most deadly option every round but then that also often led to a monster feeling weaker than it should we have now changed our entire methodology so that when the monster it says it CR like for instance for a legendary creature no matter which sequence of legendary actions you pick that monster is still going to be on CR which is going to actually have a cumulative effect of making these monsters seem more terrifying uh because there will not be those drop offs that people had before of well I chose this option and

wow that monster felt way weaker whereas the other DM never chose that option they chose the other one and the monster felt much stronger we've made it so that it is much easier for the DM to find their way through the stat block of an ancient dragon or the blob of annihilation or the Colossus or you know one of the other high CR creatures in this book and keep that monster terrifying uh in a way that is appropriate for its challenge rating this also isn't just under the hood like this is something that we discussed

with the new introduction to the book We Lay this out and we present to DMS hey if you see these abilities prioritize them these are things you should be focused on this is things you can do at your table to make sure that these monsters are living up to the incredible threats they can present yeah CU that the introduction has a section that the 2014 Monster manual didn't have which is advice on running a monster yes and it it walks you through those pieces of like if you're if you're as a DM you're stumped on

what the Monster should do we put in always look for the following abilities and prioritize using them if your goal is bringing the hurt now of course in some scenarios the monsters maybe a potential friend and so DM still have the freedom to have a monster be far less threatening but we also wanted to make it far easier for a DM to bring the the Thrills and the terror uh when that's appropriate for their campaign it's hard to choose from this much art because there is I mean it's all new art it's weird the monsters

I figh didn't gravitate towards before but now I do like the marrow is terrifying that art is just horrific that is the scariest merman I've ever seen I know it's not merman but no there's this love examples of monsters maybe I wasn't inspired to use where the art is now inspiring me I would love to hear you talk about that a little bit I mean a lot of it feels like someone took a photo in the middle of a movie scene of what happened and that's very intentional like throughout the course of ordering art for

the monster manual we wanted to make sure that you were getting experiences that you can only get from Dungeons and Dragons so many of the monsters that are in the monster manual come from mythology you've seen them at this point since fantasy media is so pervasive you've seen these monsters before we're not surprising you with oh and this Monster's called an ogre like you've got ogres but let's see something now with like what does what does the monster actually do and what does it do that's exciting in a DND context so for example I'm thinking

of a piece like the Spectre where the Spectre is this pretty basic spooky ghost monster there's lots of spooky ghost monsters but the Spectre has a specific vulnerability where it's repelled by sunlight and in that piece of art you can see that the cleric in the image is surrounded by the sun like a sunlike spell that the Spectre isn't able to encroach on them uh there's dozens of instances like this even with something like the mimic where the mimic we've seen the mimic be a treasure a treasure chest dozens of dozens of times even outside

of DnD D and and other media we wanted to present here's all the things that mimics could be and show a room that an adventurer is stumbling into where geez like everything in that room is a mimic you can see like the little faces on it and those are all those are just a few instances of we want it to have these be examples of not just experiences that you can only get with DND but to inspire you to as the DM to be like oh i' never thought of a mimic maybe being a throne

or being this other type of treasure and now you can use that content as a springboard to your own Adventures one of the things I love on the mimic page and in so many of the other parts of the book is where you added those tables that are there to inspire the DM to think of like for the mimic it's a list of tables are lists it's a list of here are things the mimic could be or so many other monsters where it's like here are things that might in motivate the monster or the different

forms another monster could take um you basically you put in so many like what I think of as DM friends uh throughout the book it's something that we talk about as early as the introduction that every DND monster is an adventure or is really a springboard to hundreds of Adventure just the concept of a room with a Beholder in it that is a very different Adventure from and this is a room with a goblin in it and as soon as you see these monsters and you start imagining all right what sort of environment is a

Beholder in what is it doing what's are what's its philosophies what's what's its motivations and that's so different from these other Critters we want it to really Express that not just in the stat blocks not just in the art but in the narrative text with here's an exploration of what it could do but you'll see throughout the book that it's filled with like Jeremy mentioned um lists of here's things that uh mimik could turn into or for like a group of monsters like the performers where you get several performer stat blocks here's the different types

of performers that you might encounter just things to show some of that versatility and to express to DMS this monster isn't one monster this monster isn't one Adventure this monster is a whole spectrum of Adventures and really anything that you can imagine so they're all springboards to encourage that sort of um Imagination that sort of World building and doing the things with the monsters that a DM wants to do at their table not just locking it into one thing that's our version and that speaks so much to how people actually use the monster m is

you flip through it and you think of an adventure you you start to daydream it's a lot of daydreaming F when you're flipping through the book and so you're just giving more tools for that and in many cases we wanted to back off on some of the like deep lore elements we don't want DMS to feel like they need to have taken another class or that they've missed something in learning about this monsters we wanted to express here's the basic overview and in many cases here's something that they focus on here's how to use them

tactically here's something interesting they can do in battle but then these are also interesting elements that are unique to them that you might be able to express in a spectrum of different ways I'm thinking of the animated objects for example also includes a table of just why is this why is this object animated it and then it's like maybe it's F trickery that did it maybe a wizard created maybe the the things are possessed or something every one of those possibilities that's a completely different story the story that is the sword is possessed and the

stord is being manipulated by a Mis mischievous Sprite completely different adventures and you mentioned before we've got a series of humanoids we've always you know wanted to be able to like well what what are the stats of a bandit what are the stats of a standard Druid and now we have that in this and we had the MPC appendix in the 2014 Players handbook and so those NPCs are returning but yeah we wanted to have them return with many companions and so we added performers we've added Pirates uh We've added uh more in even the

existing groups we've added more options so you know now there are more cultist variants there are more priest variants there are more Mage variants and so on and so forth because we know how much DMS uh use that MPC section I mean heck I as a DM used the MPC section of the 2014 Monster manual more than any other part of that book so even we just as dungeon Masters wanted even more MPC options in the book and so that means people are going to get to see a whole bunch of new MPC stat blocks

they're going to get to see the old ones enhanced in a variety of ways and all of these will uh just give the DM even more pre-built material to incorporate into adventures and campaigns of their own creation so you talked about Mechanics for high level but were there some instances of lower level monsters and mid-level monsters that that really stuck out to you one of our goals throughout has been let's make everything run smoother as much as we can make sure the numbers are the best they can be to deliver the play experience people expect

for each particular monster and also see where we can incorporate uh some new surprises so you're going to see particularly at very low CR often the main change will be like a number got adjusted slightly or there's a new ability that replaces an old ability but it's as you go up in CR because it tends to be that as you go up in CR the Monsters uh end up having more moving parts that's where you you will see more and more new things here's one example when you get to the vampire section uh and Wes

and I are both vampire fans and so we all are yes I think it's a D and D thing uh given that curse of strad is everyone in this video is wearing black yes we're all wearing black um so not only are there more vampires uh than before that's a uh many many of our monster families have expanded and so we have we not only have uh a new lower CR option in the vampire section but then we also have a new higher CR option and another new option in between so we have uh I

think three brand new vampires but then the two we had before the vampire spawn and the vampire itself have also been enhanced and uh people will probably first experience it this facing the vampire spawn uh because vampire spawn in our adventures is typically the type of vampire people experience earliest in their adventuring careers and usually experience them in larger numbers than say a full-fledged vampire and what people will see right away is some familiar things and how a vampire spawn works but and I loved having this experience recently at two different conventions where uh I

ran the new vampire spawn and the vampire spawn as as the the characters were fighting suddenly just slipped away out of melee um without provoking opportunity attacks and while still having the whole rest of their turn and the players at my tables who fought vampire spawn over the last 10 years in fifth edition were like wait what did it just do yeah um and that is one of the new abilities that the vampire spawn have and you will see a variant of it in most of the vampires and that was part of us really wanting

to enhance the fact that vampires are extremely difficult to pin down they are you know they have this deathless agility uh they part of their whole shtick of what makes them terrifying is they are very difficult to defeat and so we wanted to take this element and add it in to the vampires they don't all do it the same way you know the vampire spawn might just like be able to disengage easily uh but uh one of the the other newer vampires is able to actually fly around in the middle of battle without turning into

a bat uh to to do so and so if people thought vampires were Trixie before well now they're even more Trixie and and uh another example of a family of monsters that we not only expanded but that now has some new things to experience in it is goblins um goblins one of the most used U monster families we have added a new spellcasting Option it's actually a return from fourth edition in fourth edition we had uh it was one of my favorite monsters in fourth edition oddly which was the Goblin hexer and so we brought

the Goblin hexer in uh because we wanted in this collection of goblin stat blocks to have one focused on using Trixie magic but then we also added a lower CR Goblin uh because we realized uh sometimes DMS just want goblins in really high volume and the regular Goblin that we have can often serve that role but we wanted one that was even lower CR and it's called appropriately enough the goblin minion uh where just truckloads of them can can be Unleashed uh into a a battle and then we looked at that whole family where we

had the goblin Warrior from before we also had uh the the sort of Boss Goblin and we made sure that all of those stat blocks the ones that we had before as well as the new ones fit together to actually feel like a group uh you're going to see that in the NES uh as and group after group they just they work more cohesively uh as a group and NES are more terrifying than they've ever been before particularly because we've just embraced now NES are fiends uh they these are not these are not just bloodthirsty

humanoids no they are hopped up on uh you know yogu blood and are actually fiends similarly uh the Goblins uh are rather than being humanoid are Fay and this is something we've been nodding toward in a number of our books in recent years for a while of the the goblin roots in the Fay wild and now we have fully Embrace that uh which really connects to yet another thing is people are going to see a number of creatures type shifts throughout the book and we've done that uh in some cases for mechanical reasons other cases

for narrative reasons and sometimes for both uh so you know just I mentioned NES are now fiends goblins are now Fay some creatures that before might have been monstrosities or humanoids that are now Elementals and that we did we did sort of it early on in the project a vetting of all the creatures types and made adjustments to make sure that they were really Landing in the correct part of the sort of ecologies of the Multiverse and not only for what we want to do with them mechanically but also for future stories I'm also really

thrilled with how many instances you have of different types of monsters like there's the rant but there's an addition to the rant which is terrifying the death knight there's the death knight but also there's more an even more scary element to the death knight uh I love that expansion also the art feels very stylized specifically to that monster MH in a way that I haven't seen before like everything Undead feels very Raven Loft you know it has that Gothic horror feel like all the undead have a very signature style now it feels like yes absolutely

I mean for each monster we wanted to make sure that the whole package was providing the the experience that we wanted we didn't want it to be just all right and then look here's a skeleton wearing armor but we describe it as something that's completely terrifying and then the rules like really present it as this devastating Force we wanted to make sure that everything was really working in in unison so the art The Narrative the game design for it was all very much considered one package reinforcing the stories that we wanted to share with the

readers and making sure that DMS were going off in a direction that was appropriate for what these what the best parts of these monsters are so you mentioned the death knight for example so yeah the death knight is described as you know this overwhelming Undead commander and then you see that in the art with the death knight actually leading but in this case he's not just leading a group of rank and file skeletons um we didn't want to show this highlevel Undead warlord with some of the lowest CR threats in the game instead we've presented

an entirely new stat block called the death knight aspirant where these are like Heralds of the death Knights these are champions undeads that are like lieutenants to a death knight doing a few different things it creates the potential for a more unified encounter experience where now you've got a death knight with other higher level uh Minions that it can be presented with but then it also allows you to have your death knight experience at lower levels with the aspirin yeah exactly there's so many monsters where it's like I'd love to include a lich in this

adventure we are level one yeah um so having some of these additional options in some cases higher levels in some cases lower levels allows you to get more of these iconic D and monsters more in your game sometimes earlier sometimes later but increasing the utility overall yeah because you you want to feel like it'd be great to feel like you're thwarting the plans of a death knight earlier on and not just be skeletons but then you're also making the death knight weave more scary by having an Entourage exactly and this has just been part of

about death knight culture and D&D anyways you know like all the way down to Lord sth you know that he has his 13 kns things like that that's just you don't often imagine death Knights by themselves now exactly there's even an example of one called a um uh gas grave callar uh which is presented as just a new spellcasting gas um but we even present it in the art with like the Lich just to suggest like if you want to have either a monster that is appropriate to be used with a lich to like be

its apprentices or if you want to have that Lich likee experience earlier on here you've got this lower level Undead spokas that you can explore that with what does it feel to have completed the new core Rule books all three I'm still uh internal that because we've been working on these books for years literally mult you know multiple years and to have it done uh it's still sinking in but it's a great feeling it was wonderful to get to end with the monster manual because again for me a monster book is like dessert uh the

monster manual also in many ways is a culmination of things that people saw in the new players handbook and the new dungeon Masters Guide because the monster manual relies on many of the rules enhancements in the players handbook it relies on the thinking we had in the dungeon Masters Guide about making DM's life lives easier and so you get to the monster manual and this is all about taking rules elements from the player's handbook mixing it with our you know make DM's life easier Philosophy from the DMG to make this host of monsters that are

there to inspire to be fun at the table to surprise players to feature uh elements of the rules that are new in the new versions of the core books like uh there are more monsters now that make use of the fact that the game has the term bloodied back so you're going to find monsters that have things triggering within their stat blocks when they're bloodied uh you're going to you know see uh exhaustion used in ways that it hasn't been used before because the condition was redesigned and now we can use it in certain ways

that we were hesitant uh to use in the past uh and you know just on and on you'll you'll see monsters even now some of our spellcasting monsters able to cast some of the new spells in the 2024 players handbook uh because when we designed those new spells in the players's handbook they weren't just for our player characters we also had one of our eyes on the monster manual knowing some of our monsters are going to want to be able to cast uh these spells and so all of it you're going to see that the

monster manual truly is the culmination of the core book revision that we've done uh in part to Simply celebrate 50 years of DnD and now you get to see how all three of these books work in unison now yes absolutely you're you're also going to see many of the innovations that were originally presented in the player handbook really take form here fulfilling on the promise of things like some of the new stat block formats that we presented at the end of the player handbook with like those usable creatures like you know just the imps and

a lot of the Animal Companions back there well now you're going to see a whole book where the stat blocks are so much more inviting so much more more usable the organization is so much crisper we've spent a lot of times really making sure that wordings are tight and concise that the gameplay experience is really at the Forefront of so much of our design to make sure that a DM can look at these stat blocks make a choice or two and run an interesting encounter it's all been designed with playability being front mind and we

want to make sure that like the experience of using the monsters of this book is easy inviting and exciting and and because in some ways our team has a philosophy of anything worth doing is worth overdoing uh we we didn't we didn't just bring all of that to what was already there but we added over 80 more monsters all right and and it was funny toward the end uh I was even joking a few times because it's not nothing adding over 80 monsters to the monster manual I kept joking like who decided to do this

yeah it's my fault because we we not only wanted to expand the various monster families uh but also bring people more High CR threats and also flesh out some of the creature types like you mentioned Todd so I think one of the reasons that you and it's gratifying to hear you say that earlier that you're like it feels like all the the types are fleshed out more that was a very conscious effort on our part that we wanted to feel like uh each creature type really sort of earns its place in the book now there's

still some creature types that have way more monsters than others uh that's that's just how there will always be more fiends than plants you know at least in the monster manual um uh but we again we wanted to make sure that in each of these types a DM felt like there were more toys to play with uh and more toys to play with at a variety of levels of play and uh we've talked before in some videos about the number of new high CR threats in this book yeah that's the thing I'm I'm very much

in love with because now I also feel as a dungeon master you've given me the step blocks for my big bad like my end of campaign villain whether it's an art hag or the blob of annihilation this doomsday level threat I feel like I have the stat blocks for that now for the first time and and that was our goal we yeah we wanted we wanted a DM to be able to look through the book and essentially have a menu of options for what is the big bad at the end of this campaign before you

had some great options in like the dragon category yeahh the undead category and the fiend category that was kind of it and so now we we made sure that you have an option in heck even the construct category in the celestial category in the Ooze category in the Fay category and so on and so forth that yeah and part of it also just from a World building standpoint we wanted the teras to have some fighting buddies because we we we like imagine you know these like monster mashups and there and we just thought there can't

just be one Kaiju there's got to be more and so uh there are definitely more now and the Tas is still absolutely the King of the Ring like it's the highest CR uh Critter in there but like setting up an entire campaign where the DM has in the back of their head is like but the last the last adventure is the cultists are going to unleash this ancient Colossus and it's going to go stamping around with like the power of like an ancient God destroying things that's a very different story then you could really set

up easily with some of the older monster manuals so it's exciting that these endgame Adventures the possibilities have really expanded and we did make sure that yeah the terask up there at the top even the Tas has new surprises so anyone who whether they played their way to 20th level and face the teras or or you know as many of us have done you know just have a a 20 level one shot just to fight a teras uh people who fought it before are going to be surprised so some of the old tactics of oh

we just stay here at far range and pink pink you know at it and it can't do anything back at us try it yeah try it yeah try it and find out uh it's no that works great you should do it yeah uh the the teras has a whole new kit of abilities that it did not have before um partly not only to you know keep long longtime players on their toes which was something that was on our minds throughout this book we wanted again we wanted people who have even been playing you know since

the 2014 books came out till now we want them to face surprises in this book um and also just to keep things Fresh So that even if it's a creature you've fought you know 20 times in the last 10 years in many cases you're going to find something new that's going to require some new Tactical thinking to get around what the monster is doing and the teras is just one great Banner example of that because yeah again uh the the people who thought they could just hang it far range and take it out again try

it and find out I actually really appreciate small little things like you mentioned the environments right right off the top with these monsters but you also kind of give descriptive language uh almost in like a hashtag way for me they're at the uh right after the names of each one of the monsters we now have a little tagline just just a little bit that's like the subtitle just like what's the stick with this monster like okay A a nikolo what so like yes you can go down and you can read about it and it's going

to tell you but at a glance you can see just a little flavorful two or three words that's just like like you said like a little hashtag or a little quick summary um I I'm thinking of the skeletons for example and we're not we don't mean literally there's hashtag exactly exactly exactly no I think of it as it is the T tldr this is the vibe here's the Gest exactly I mean I think for skeletons it's like aifi evil I mean just it's just this little like something that is both like oh okay it's like

this this like evil skeleton monster I mean if you don't know what a skeleton is you can also check the dictionary but like but there's other monsters that are definitely require a little bit extra and in many cases the intent is to summarize but also to give you a narrative gist just to put you in the right headspace for everything you read after that it's it's like a title and a subtitle so if you're going through you can just run through real quick and many of these monsters their names are just made up words but

then you get that little bit right afterwards where if you've never encountered it before oh it's that oh this is a monster about puzzles oh this is an underd dark ambusher oh this is a giant of the Skies things like that and then you can read on if you want or if that's not what's capturing your imagination just turn the page and this is uh a wonderful example of some of the fruits that uh ripen because of us working on all three books uh as essentially one giant book because this tagline approach is also in

the player's handbook the classes have it every subass has it and just as there it's so that we can draw people in quickly to give you a taste so that if you're especially a Tim strapped dungeon master you can quickly Orient yourself as you're going through the monster manual and figure out is this a monster maybe I'm going to add to tonight's game or in the adventure I'm dreaming about that they might get to 6 months from now uh so much of this is about getting people to the information in a variety of ways the

book also has at the start an alphabetical list of every single stat Block in the book uh so that you can find the stat blocks quickly but then it also has at the back of the book multiple monster lists that give the DM multiple ways to essentially sort you can look for Monsters by CR you can look for Monsters by creature type you can look for Monsters by environment you can look for Monsters by subgroup so let's say you know oh I know fiends but I just want to know what all the demons are we've

got you covered we have a demon list uh you want to know what all the devils are there's the go to the devil list and so there's also uh a lot more infrastructure in this monster manual than in the 2014 one to help DM's prepare and design Adventures something that we haven't mentioned is the organization of this book is significantly different than the 2014 Monster manual if you look up pit fiend you will not find it under D you will find it under P for a pit fiend so all of these choices were really meant

to Aid folks who maybe don't have years and years of d The Experience knowing ah pit fiend that's a devil I should go to the D's and look for that rather this is meant to really make sure that folks whether they're a firsttime player or have been playing for years they can just go to the book they can look things up alphabetically they can find it in a very intuitive way they can find it in that initial alphabetical listing they've got multiple options that they can track down this information and if they still want to

do things like hey I want my listing of all of the Devils it's important for me to know what those are well they might not all be under D's anymore but we still have that information in the book you can still find that organization none of that has been lost we've just presented more options and hopefully in a way that is prioritizing being as accessible as possible to the widest number of players early on in the process we joked that we we no longer want someone to have to know so much about DND D MH

that to find the gelatinous cube they have to go to o yeah yes because you have to already know a lot about D and D do even think to look under ooze to find the gelatinous cube uh and now you can just go to G were there any uh monsters for the art it's like well this is such an iconic monster how how do we nail this oh I mean I I think at least for me one that probably required the most conversation was the displacer Beast where it's just this is this is a d

and poster child like that like it has to hit it it's got such an iconic look to it it's so DND D but then it's also a piece of art depicting a monster that has an illusion that you that is misleading uh an adventure but then also has to be clear to the viewer that this is an illusion um the piece that we've got for it is absolutely incredible uh it ended up we uh really wanted to show off like this is the displacer Beast and it is tricking an adventurer into focusing on its auser

copy so even when you look at the piece it's takes a Second Glance to really figure out which one of the two displacer beasts that you're seeing in the piece is actually is actually the fake and you can see that the archer in that piece is focusing on a displacer beast that looks very convincing but if you really look at it you can see these like wispy magical effects that are a Telltale sign that it's Act it's actually the the double and then behind the uh the adventure you can see that the real displacer piece

is ready to pounce that was a tricky one and we talked about this before but like every piece of art feels like a story hook or like we got we showed up in the middle of a story and that gives it kind of a story book flavor in some weird way like every page I'm like oh that's something that happened you know every every Dragon got a glow up in terms of its design which and now there's wormings yes the the uh yeah all of the the wormings the young dragons the adults the Ancients you

can see the dragons sort of over their lifespans uh in the different illustrations uh you can see some monsters their appearance is very similar to what you saw in 2014 and then in others it's been uh reimagined in in a variety of ways uh like I think of the horn devil uh I like the 2014 version I love the 2024 version and in many cases we really wanted to when we redesigned a monster wanted to bring out the monster story and personality better also people are going to see in the art uh sometimes male or

female versions of a creature that they've never seen before so uh for instance in the dryad painting you now see both uh a male dryad and a female dryad uh we for the hag uh yes uh ha hags uh you can now they can be uh you know aunties or uncles uh you know Granny's or grandies depend you know depending on your storytelling taste saders you can see male and female versions uh We've also uh reimagined uh the succubus and the incubus uh and rather rather than having sort of succubus and Incubus just indicating the

gender of one monster we've instead turned them into two different monsters either of those monsters can appear as male or female so you'll see on the succubus page there's a male version and a female version and on the incubus page there's a male version and a female version and what we decided to do is sort of delve into the folklore for this creature where the sucubus is the one you sort of meet in the material PL and the incubus is the one who haunts your dreams and the succubus can turn into an incubus and the

incubus can turn into a succubus so it there are all sorts of new not only gameplay experiences for people to uh get to enjoy in their game but also new story possibilities because of some of the reimagining we've done with creatures and just the succubus and the incubus are just one of many examples and this this is another good example just just like all the undead art feels like it's coming out pure terrifying Gothic horror uh the boy the the devils and the demons are Ultra metal this time uh not they weren't metal before but

like the bone Devils terrifying and that was intentional yeah that that art style is just aggressive yeah like it's the right tone that's something again absolutely intentional like we did not want to come to this and be like well well the expectations for DND art are this yeah every one of these monsters is a different story dndd can be so many different stories we wanted to put that front and center with the spectrum of monsters here really reflect the spectrum of different stories that you can tell and that's conveyed by all of the different styles

so you'll see some really menacing stuff in here some like absolutely metal pieces like you were expecting but there's also some pieces that freaking adorable um so yeah definitely a little bit of something for everyone why is a monster manual so precious it's it is uh I think Chris Perkins got a start by reading the monster manual I got my start by reading the monster manual and just daydreaming my my first D and D book was the first edition monster manual now part of that is it was the first of the ad and books right

uh and it's funny years ago when we were first planning out the corebook revision because we were also going to be celebrating the 50th Anniversary we also considered having the first book of the three be the monster manual now we decided to save it for last because we knew that the work we were doing on the other two books would inform the monster manual we also saved it for last because we knew that in the months of the core rule book revision sort of rolling out we knew it would be easiest for people to play

with the old monster manual using the new players handbook and dungeon Masters Guide and so it it just for a variety of reasons meant we should end with the monster manual even though we were tempted as a nod to first edition to start with it and it is such a precious book because the monster manual like the players handbook touches almost every session of DnD D play because just as players are using character abilities and spells and equipment from the player's handbook every single session of play the dungeon master is using creatures from the monster

manual in almost every single session of play you know except for cases where they're using Monsters of their own creation or monsters from another book like Monsters of the Multiverse but the monster manual sort of always there in the background uh because even when a stat block from that book might not be in your current session there is a good chance the dungeon master has been inspired by something they saw in the monster manual and uh it has this has always had this special place in the game and you you talked about it earlier Todd

of it's not just a game book it's an inspiration book uh that it sometimes one Monster's entry in that book will inspire an entire campaign a DM will look at the description perhaps of the new imperion and decide they're going to create an entire culture in their world about these God children and have a campaign that is all about allying with one of these Divine children in a war against another and that's just one monster out of over 500 and so you could almost think of this book is the book of over 500 campaigns uh

because you could base a campaign on almost every single creature that you find in in this great tone there's also an aspirational element for just players I figured out the type of characters I wanted to play partially because you are so often defined by the enemies you fight in D and D in some way and so you think about you Daydream you think about like if I'm going to fight you know fight an arch Haag one day and I don't think there's anything that's so informative about what Dy is than flipping through this book it

also shows you your character's potential friends yeah uh because there are not everything has to be a fight well but also because there are so many benevolent creatures and there are actually even more of them in this monster manual than before because again looking at how DMS have used the 2014 Monster manual we know how often DMS go to the monster manual for helpful NPCs for the monster that maybe the is meant to be that kind of fake out where you know the DM knows the players are going to think it's a threat but then

discover this monster is actually working on their behalf and so there I think are going to be even more fun surprises also from a narrative standpoint because of people meeting creatures now where maybe like I'm not sure what this creature is up to you know they meet one of the new sphinxes and and we'll have to figure out well like what what is this Sphinx even about and uh you know what what is this new kind of fiend about what is this new kind of vampire about and uh I look forward to now years of

people telling whole new stories using the new monsters in this book as well as the hundreds of returning monsters uh that have been enhanced for years more of play thank you so much for watching this video we will have a ton more videos all about the different monsters in the new monster manual you can purchase the brand new monster manual and all three of the core 2024 core Rule books by clicking on the link in this video description I'm to kenrik thank you so much for watching