Recently, a new adventure became available for free on D&D Beyond - Scions of Elemental Evil, which is a relatively short adventure taking players into the fabled Temple of Elemental Evil, along with some pre-made stat blocks of the kids from the D&D cartoon from back in the 80s (who seem to be among the most favored "example adventurers" in recent things) along with an extra Cleric character.
I suspect you can play this with original characters, of course, but it's clearly meant as an intro to the new system, and each 4th-level pre-made character comes with their signature item, like Diana's Quarterstaff of the Acrobat.
But, for those of us who make almost all of our own adventures (genuinely, in 9 years of playing D&D, I think I've run one short published adventure) what we really care about is what the monsters look like - because we have several monsters in the adventure that are definitely from the Monster Manual, and they're definitely the updated, 2024 versions of those stat blocks.
The full list of stat blocks is as follows:
Berserker
Cultist
Cultist Fanatic
Fire Elemental
Gray Ooze
Incubus (big asterisks we'll get into here)
Knight
Ogre
Pirate
Pirate Captain
Stone Golem
Succubus
Tough Boss
Now, obviously a few of those are brand-new - the Pirates and the Tough Boss (as I understand it, "Toughs" are going to be a family of humanoid NPCs like "Pirates" and the Boss is one of those.
But let's talk about the updated ones. I'm not going to go into fine detail here, comparing ACs and HPs and all that, but instead focus on what I think are the key changes.
Berserker: The major change here is that Berserkers get advantage on their Greataxe attacks if the target doesn't have all of its hit points. As with most humanoid NPCs (or some undead creatures,) it lists the gear they're carrying, so you know what players can loot off of them other than gold (though I feel like you're within your rights to say that looted armor might need to be repaired).
Cultist: Small detail, but their weapon (a Sickle - I think it used to be a dagger) also deals 1 point of necrotic damage (though when looted it's a normal weapon, so I think this is part of their cult power).
Cultist Fanatic: These have a "pact blade" that deals a d6 of extra necrotic damage (on top of 1d8+2 slashing). They still have some spellcasting, but your standard practice for pure damage is going to be attacking with the pact blade and using a bonus action for Spiritual Weapon. (Again, it's not that they're not casting spells, but they've really made a clear direction for the DM to run them).
Fire Elemental: This one got a fair number of big changes. First off, they have an aura that will not only deal fire damage (just from being near them, not only if they're attacked or otherwise touched) but it will also cause the burning condition, which their attacks also cause (I believe this does either 1d4 or 1d6 fire damage at the start of a creature's turn, and can be put out as an action). Notably, the Fire Elemental is resistant to Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing damage - full stop.
What's interesting about this is that I had thought, perhaps, that magic weapons like a +1 Mace or the like would change to potentially do Force damage or otherwise get around this kind of thing. Not so! Now, if you attack a Fire Elemental with a +2 Longsword, that damage is getting halved no matter what you do!
However, Fire Elementals now have vulnerability to Cold damage. That's kind of huge, but also very fitting for an elemental. Earth Elementals even in 2014 had vulnerability to Thunder damage, and I wonder if each of our CR 5 friends will have an appropriate vulnerability. Vulnerabilities are one of those things I think most people would like to see more of in D&D (except on boss monsters you really want to be able to last a few rounds) so players can feel like they've got a special way to deal with them.
Gray Ooze: The Gray Ooze has resistances to Acid, Cold, and Fire damage (I don't remember if they had that before,) but also their armor-destroying attacks now make it clear that someone can use Tinker's Tools and the Utilize action to repair it (with a DC 15 tinker's tools dexterity check).
Incubus: Big thing: the Incubus and Succubus now have different stat blocks. But they're still the same creature - when they finish a long rest, a Succubus can transform into an Incubus, and vice versa. (As a cisgender man, I'm going to leave it to the trans community to comment on whether they like this or not, but I also think you could easily imagine that these are just two different modes of a fiendish entity, and that in your game Incubi are not automatically masculine-presenting and Succubi are not automatically feminine-presenting. Mechanically, though, it's pretty interesting). The two versions of the creature have different abilities - the Incubus's Nightmare Touch can curse a target to prevent them from taking short rests. The curse lasts 24 hours, but if you want to ruin a Monk, Fighter, or Warlock's day (also possibly Druid's), this'll do it. Also, they have a bonus action that can potentially knock out (nonlethally) a target. Basically, these are looking pretty darn mean, and could be a real challenge against a tier 1 group.
Knight: Knights do some radiant damage with their attacks now. A good way to keep their damage appropriate to their CR without having to give them a crapton of attacks.
Ogre: Nothing stands out to me as particularly different here, except that it specifies that they have 3 Javelins in their gear (not sure the old version had a javelin attack, actually - like their greatclub, the damage dice are doubled).
Pirate: So, this one is new. I think the old MM told you to just use Bandits for Pirates. This one has more flavor. They have daggers to attack with, but they can replace one of their two attacks with a charm effect called enthralling panache. At CR 1, this is probably only going to start feeling like a minion-sized threat in late tier 1 or in tier 2.
Pirate Captain: Also new, this builds on the themes of the Pirate. Their weapons have doubled damage dice and their Rapier has a kind of pseudo-vex (though it wears off on the end of their turn - which is honestly a godsend for DMs who should not have to track that). They also carry a pistol! As a bonus action, they can attempt to charm someone with Captain's Charm, and they also get a Riposte ability, which I will probably never remember to use!
Stone Golem: Ok, another big, headliner monster. Notably: no immunity to bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage, or resistance. Mundane weapons work fine on them. They're only immune to Poison and Psychic damage (sorry Soulknives and anyone who has ever tried to make a Poison-damage character of any sort). They "Slow" ability now just casts the Slow spell. They also have a ranged Force Bolt attack, and their Slam is a mix of bludgeoning and force.
Succubus: As discussed above, the Succubus can become an Incubus after a long rest. They can cast an 8th level Dominate Person (so it lasts 8 hours) at will, and as part of their multiattack. Their Draining Kiss (which can replace one of their attacks) can target a charmed creature and on a failure or a successful save against the ability (it's a Con save,) the damage they take from this reduces their max HP (a successful save halves it).
Basically, I think these Fiends are going to be pretty nasty. They don't have an enormous health pool, but they really have some abilities that really push the party to retreat and take a long rest.
Tough Boss: I don't know exactly what the defining trait of Toughs will be, but these have Pack Tactics and their Warhammer effectively has the Push property. They seem better-armored than Thugs (they wear Chain Mail).
So, overall, I think it looks like they really made an effort here to go through each stat block and punch it up significantly. The 2014 PHB I think took some shortcuts, and left us with a lot of monsters that didn't really have much going on. The Ancient Green Dragon we saw before felt a lot more distinct than its 2014 version, which was not too different from all the other ancient dragons. I'm eager to see what the various giants are like, which all felt like they really needed more to distinguish them.
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