Monsters of the Multiverse

 So, I bought my copy of Monsters of the Multiverse. In all honesty, I've been using the book since its release as part of the Rules Expansion bundle - through digital means as well as my roommate's copy - but I decided to legitimize my use (and support my local game store) by getting the actual book.

Monsters of the Multiverse is basically a consolidation and revision of Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordekainen's Tome of Foes, so there is another layer of redundancy in adding this to my collection. However, the book has a somewhat different approach to the material.

Monsters of the Multiverse is, I think, one of the three books anyone just starting to build their 5th Edition D&D collection should have (hint: the other two are the two that it came packaged with - Tasha's and Xanathar's). In many respects, this book is the "Monster Manual 2" of 5th Edition. It dispenses with the lengthy chapters of lore that we got with Volo's and Mordenkainen's, instead cutting to the chase and giving us playable races and monster stat blocks with about as much of a description as you get in the Monster Manual for each creature.

The result is that you get a lot of meat without a lot of fat. If you are looking for inspiration via lengthy lore chapters, this might disappoint you a bit, but if you just want a quick sense of these creatures and a whole lot of them, this will be very helpful to have around.

I did a lengthy review of the playable races in the book when it first came out - almost every race is a strict improvement over its previous iteration, and there are a lot of quality-of-life features like allowing you to cast racial spells with spell slots after you've used your free use of the day, and picking your spellcasting ability (my Triton Wizard likes being able to cast Gust of Wind via Intelligence rather than Charisma, thank you very much).

Likewise, the (at least in my social and social media circles) universally praised changes from Tasha's, allowing the player to pick which ability score improvements you get from your race, have been made universal here - moving forward, those bonuses will be player's choice from the get-go.

The monsters, I think, have not gotten quite as extensive a re-work, except for the following really big change for spellcasters. While many will still be able to cast various utility spells, each a certain number of times per day, the monsters have been redesigned to have much clearer options for combat - often giving them some kind of spell-like multiattack.

For example: a Necromancer from Volo's versus a Necromancer Wizard from MotM look a little different.

The new version has far more HP - 110 versus 66, which makes sense for something that's CR 9. The old version had essentially the spell slots of a level 12 wizard, with a ton of spells prepared. Now, Animate Dead cast at 5th level (giving 5 undead minions) is turned into a one-a-day ability called "Summon Undead," which they can do as a bonus action.

The Necromancer Wizard (new version) can still cast spells like bestow curse, dimension door, mage armor, and web each twice a day, and circle of death once, but rather than all the various damage spells like ray of sickness, blight, cloudkill, etc., instead the new version gets to make three spell attacks (which work as either melee or ranged) called Arcane Burst, which deals 4d10+3 necrotic damage on a hit.

Essentially, this narrows the options down for the DM and makes it a lot easier to track. Basically, you can use the various utility spells if necessary, but if you just want to pump out some damage (potentially about 75 damage per turn if everything hits!) you have Arcane Burst as your "standard" action.

The one thing I think this does significantly change from a player perspective is that Counterspell is potentially a far less useful option. While a hostile Necromancer Wizard can certainly still be counterspelled when trying to hit the party with a big Circle of Death, or if they attempt to Dimension Door away, if the party's wizard wants to protect their friend from taking a nasty barrage of Arcane Bursts, they'll be out of luck.

Some stat blocks also give AoE abilities a similar treatment. The Evoker Wizard, for instance, has the same Arcane Burst attack (though it deals force instead of necrotic damage) but also has a recharge ability called Sculpted Explosion, which is essentially a 4th-level fireball where the wizard gets to pick three creatures to ignore the effects of the spell (similar to the Evocation Wizard's "Sculpt Spells" feature) and they get to pick between cold, fire, lightning, or thunder damage. Oh, and it knocks those who fail their save prone.

This is, basically, a souped-up Fireball. But unlike Fireball, you can't counterspell it.

Now, on a certain level, I love this as a DM. Counterspell keeps me from doing cool things my monster wants to do - the legendary Death Knight in the fight I was running the past few sessions could never use Destructive Wave because the Sorcerer was always saving his reaction and spell slots to counter anything the boss did. Of course, Death Knights have their Hellfire Orb, which I got to use anyway, so it's not like I didn't get to do anything scary.

Again, I should also note that the Evoker does get some standard damage spells - they can cast Lightning Bolt twice a day. So maybe it's actually fine.

Ultimately, I think these monsters are better-balanced, and it's nice to have them all in a big book.

One choice I have mixed feelings about is that they've broken up monster categories. Demons, for example, are in alphabetical order based on their individual names, instead of all being under "D." On one hand, if you're looking for a Babau, for example, you'll know where to find it. But if you want to have your players fight a demonic cult, it might not be quite as easy to just browse through the "demon" section to decide which fiend they've summoned.

In a way, it feels a bit like this is more of a preview of 5.5 or 6th edition than it is a supplement to 5th Edition, though of course it's still quite useful. If you are looking for brand-new creatures, you should be warned that there's maybe... one of those? (I don't remember if the Dolphin Delighter, which is a fey dolphin, was ever printed before) but everything else here is a revision of stuff that's already been printed.