Spurred by good reviews and mentions on the official D&D podcast, Dragon Talk, and finding myself with an unexpected day off, I splurged and bought the Kobold Press' two huge books of monsters for Fifth Edition D&D.
These are the Tome of Beasts and the Creature Codex. Lest you think that either of these focuses primarily on simple animals, rest assured that there is a ton going on. Each of these is, I think, longer than the Monster Manual (which is pretty big) and gives you a ton of variants and new ideas. There are many new Demon Lords and Arch Devils (and the rank-and-file fiends to go along them,) but there are also lots of Fey (and Archfey,) not to mention some Angel variants and other Celestials that fall into less Western-based cultures (though I will say I love that there are some freaky "wheels covered in eyes" style angels, which is something often left out in fantasy angels.)
There is a fair amount that relates to the Kobold Press' Midgard setting, though there are enough parallels with my own homebrew setting that I'm sure I can use nearly all of it. There is a group of creatures called Dark Folk who speak "Umbral," which is the name I came up with as the native language of my version of the Shadowfell, called the Shadowlands (which is a little more like the Dark World from Link to the Past than spooky undead land - there's enough of that on my material plane!)
The massive volume here means I'm sure I'll never run out of new monsters to use (not that I was getting all that close with the official Wizards of the Coast publications.)
The challenge rating balance is pretty good too, as there are a fair number of 10-ish CR creatures that I imagine will work quite well for high level parties as long as they've got some minions.
One creature type I'm glad to see more of here is Aberrations, as my setting has a strong cosmic horror element to it. There are some creatures explicitly created by Lovecraft like Nightgaunts and Mi-Go, and a CR 19 Shoggoth. I've sort of danced around my party really fighting true lovecraftian monsters largely for a lack of options, and now I feel like I've got plenty.
Anyway, I love nerding out while reading these. And I'm sure to have lots of fun discussions with my friend who also DMs.
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