Dungeons and Dragons has been undergoing an overhaul, starting with the release of the Players Handbook in September 2024. The Dungeon Master’s Guide followed in November 2024, but the collection is incomplete – awaiting the release of the Monster Manual on February 18th 2025.
Our bookshelves are crying out for completion of the new Core Set, and with that date fast approaching, Wizards of the Coast have given us a sneak peak of what’s to come from the new Monster Manual.
Answering the question – “What’s exciting about the new Monster Manual?”, they claim this is the biggest ever, with over 500 monsters. More than 85 of these are brand new, including new variants of fan-favorite monsters like the Primeval Owlbear, and Vampire Nightbringer.
There are also now challenges at every level – Wizards accept that the old Monster Manual had some gaps at high level play, and these gaps have been well and truly filled.
Finally, every creature in the game has been revisited, ensuring it’s doing the most that it can with the kit that it has in a way that is challenging and fun for both players and DMs.
Book Overview
The book contains over 300 pages of monsters, monsters, and also some monsters. It’s split into 4 sections – an intro section on how to use a monster, all the monsters in A to Z order, and then two Appendices – Appendix A, which is animals, and Appendix B, which is monsters listed by things like type, habitat, family, group, etc.
Appendix A: Animals is a list of all normal critters like cats and crocodiles, but also includes supernatural creatures like giant apes. It’s things that might not be classified as “monsters”, but that your players still might run into – either in the wilds, or in towns and cities.
The artwork also shows the creatures in context, doing what they do best. It’s no longer glamour shots of the creature itself, but rather you’ll see it fighting, hunting, prowling, or doing whatever it does. This is intended to spark the imagination of the DM, and give players more of a glimpse into what the creature is actually like.
Similarly, the creatures now all have a small tagline underneath their names telling you what they are. The Gelatinous Cube for example, is described as a “Dungeon-Scouring Block of Ooze”. The book also tells you what habitat you’ll find them in, what treasure they might carry and drop, and a narrative block of text that tells the DM about that creature in detail.
Underneath all that and above the stat block is a new table with some narrative enhancements and variations. You can roll a dice to randomise the creature, or you can use the table as inspiration – perhaps the Gelatinous Cube is carrying a tablet with some strange writing, or perhaps a gargoyle look like it has been naturally formed, rather than carved by someone. These tables not only have the potential to add variation between each encounter and bring life to the individual creatures, but also carry the potential of a whole adventure in themselves.
Everything is now in alphabetical order, because Wizards of the Coast want to go with a scheme that serves the largest number of DMs. Sorting it by type or CR requires you to know what type or CR a creature is when you’re looking for it, and that might not be the easiest for newer DMs. Appendix B supplements this though, by allowing users to browse monsters listed by a particular characteristic.
Reworks and Overhauls
A lot of older monsters have been brought back, as well as elements of existing ones that have been reworked.
High CR dragons can now cast spells, but in addition their non-damage abilities often aren’t on a recharge anymore. This gives the new monsters the capacity to surprise even the most veteran players, particularly given the variation between all the different types of monsters.
Dragons used to all have a frightening presence, but that’s no longer the case – Gold Dragons for example, now banish players instead of fearing them. Every dragon has some way of controlling the battlefield, but the way they do that varies from type to type – this is a philosophy that appears to have been applied to all the creatures in the new Monster Manual.
Lair Actions have been reworked slightly too, mostly to make them easier for DMs while in play. The Lair Actions are now contained within the stat block themselves, and although some still have the requirement that the creature is in its lair, you no longer have to go looking somewhere else for these. In that vein, some abilities are still useable outside of a creatures lair, but they’re less powerful, or have less daily charges if used this way.
Legendary Actions have been simplified too – actions no longer have a “cost”, rather each monster gets a certain number of legendary actions and the DM can choose from the list. Some can only be used once per round, but the selection process is now easier and quicker for DMs.
Apex Threats
When designing the book, it became clear that a lot of creature types lacked a high level “apex threat”. The new Monster Manual remedies that, by adding in a tonne of new high level creatures for each type.
Elementals get the Elemental Cataclysm, which can cause elemental disasters to occur while you’re fighting it, while oozes get a Blob of Annihilation – an ooze with the skull of a dead god inside.
This ooze still absorbs things that touch it, but instead of trapping them inside it plane shifts them somewhere else. Kill the Blob of Annihilation while you’re friends are inside? Good Job! Now they’re trapped in the Astral Sea forever.
The Undead category now carries a Haunting Revenant – which is essentially a haunted house possessed by a Revenant. They usually possess corpses, but the new Monster Manual brings a new angle – Revenants might now possess objects!
Animal Lords are CR20 manifestations of demi-gods, and they include a table to help inspire or generate what animal lords you might come up with. They come in three categories with different abilities – Sage, Hunters, and Foragers.
Azers are an example of something that appears to happen a lot in this book – they’ve taken a 2014 creature and given it some new “friends”. In the 2025 Monster Manual, there are now two Azers, one of which is the new Azer Pyromancer.
The Tarrasque remains the apex predator of the book which the highest CR, but its now the most terrifying version in the games history. Would it be scary if it had ranged attacks? Because it does now.
New and Reworked Fan Favorites
When it comes to new “friends”, there are a lot of new variants of fan favourites. Cultists now come in a bunch of new forms, including Aberrant and Elemental Cultists, and there are also now enough Pirates to run a whole fleet of ships, in a whole range of CRs and tiers. Bulletes now bring a “Bullete Pup” – which is exceptionally cute – and Merfolk have been joined by a Merfolk Wavebender.
In a post-BG3 world, it’s not possible to ignore the mind flayers, which now have a Mind Flayer Arcanist. This was previously a sidebar variant of mind flayer but it now has its own stat block – an example of something that appears a lot in the new book, another example being the poltergeist.
Alignments
One key thing to touch on is the alignments. In the 2014 Monster Manual, the book said “Typically” before the alignment, but this has been dropped completely. It now just says the alignment, but its clear in the introduction section of the book that these alignments are a suggestion, and DMs should choose whatever alignment makes the most amount of sense.
For humanoid creatures, you’ll see a suggested alignment that rarely appeared in previous material – “Neutral”. In the good old days, Neutral generally just mean “whatever”, and Wizards have really embraced this in the 2025 Monster Manual by giving guidance that Neutral is especially an invitation to the DM to decide what alignment to push the creature or character to.
Release Schedule
The Monster Manual also offers Day 1 integration with D&D Beyond – which, by the way, has seen 3.6 million characters created using the 2024 core ruleset – and if you have Master of Hero Teir, you can get access to it early (4 February 2025 for Master Tier, 11 February 2025 for Hero Tier)
If you’re after a hard copy, they release globally on 18 February 2025.
