The Creature Codex

While I'm not done reading the entire thing, I'm getting toward the end of Kobold Press' Creature Codex, which is essentially their second super-sized Monster Manual-like supplement for 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons.

There's a great variety of things in here, with a good spread of challenge ratings. In particular, I think that Kobold Press has taken some areas where the official D&D releases are missing gaps - particularly Fey and Aberrations - and really given us a lot to work with. Given that my setting has both a strong presence of eldritch horrors and also a massive war being waged across the Shadowlands and Esperlands (my setting's equivalents of the Shadowfell and Feywild, respectively,) this book has given me a ton of material to make rival forces that can clash with one another.

There's also something about the style of the art I can't really put my finger on that reminds me of hanging out in my local game shop as a kid getting Magic: the Gathering booster packs.

The books clearly work quite well with Kobold Press' Midgard setting, a largely Norse-inspired world that nevertheless incorporates a lot of other real-world cultures and mythologies. But naturally, as with anything you find in D&D, you can easily re-skin things to suit your needs. Midgard's Shadow Fey Elves, for example, would make perfect equivalents to my own setting's Dire Elves.

While there are some mechanics that will start to look familiar after reading through so many entries (knocking a target prone after charging them, for example,) there's also a large number of really interesting and RP-inducing abilities here. I'm also glad to see a lot of good-aligned monsters that might either serve as friendly NPCs or potentially provide a challenge for less moral parties.

Given that I believe it has more monsters than even the Monster Manual, this is a massive resource for anyone looking for inspiration beyond what was found in the MM, Volo's, or Modenkainen's (though I did love those releases.) The Creature Codex is also the publisher's second book - their earlier Tome of Beasts came out a while ago, and has a similarly massive number of monsters within it.

The Creature Codex is built for 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons, and can be used pretty easily alongside the core books. There are some monsters with alternate spells from Kobold's other Midgard publications, but these are always offered as variants rather than the monster's core stat block.