Preview VOLO'S GUIDE TO MONSTERS

Polygon has scored a look at the upcoming Volo's Guide to Monsters from WotC - six full pages, in fact, which give a very clear idea of what we can expect from the book when it arrived next month! From the looks of their article, it seems that WotC is using this as a testbed for the way they handle future sourcebooks. Polygon confirms the overall product description - 96 new (to 5E) monsters, tons of rules for monster PCs (goblins, orcs, firbolgs), and a buch of deep dives into some iconic monsters. The beholder section is nearly 14 pages on its own. Check out the article at Polygon for more!

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[Ghost2020]

Nice! Looking forward to it!

 

[Ath-kethin]

I'm less against it than I used to be, but I still note the low CRs of the previewed creatures.

 

[Prakriti]

Good Lord, that dissection picture.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

Good Lord, that dissection picture.

At least they included a "modesty book."

 

[ZE_Lumis]

I'm so excited for all of these illithid and beholder variants, their lore, and such. I can only imagine what other great stuff is in the book.

 

[Henry]

The dissection picture is a direct homage to the dissection picture from the 2nd edition book the Ilithiad

https://abload.de/img/illithiadp.8dissectiogsuwc.jpg

And it looks really good. This actually makes me want to pick this up more (well, that, and the 96 extra monsters.)

My biggest problem is that my players' PCs are getting upwards of 9th level now, and the types of monsters they're running into are getting a little more repetitive, as the number of high-CR monsters is fewer. I'm hoping there will at least be a few more critters that are CR 10 or more in here.

Edit: YAY! Alhoons and Neothelids! At least some of my wishes are granted!

 

[Prakriti]

Well, I'm no longer a skeptic. This looks great.

Originally, I was concerned about having an unreliable source for a narrator. I didn't want all the "lore" to be cutesy fluff -- Volo telling stories about his drinking contest with a Mindflayer in a Waterdeep tavern, ha ha ha.... Luckily, none of Volo's personality seems to have creeped into the monster lore. Instead, the write-ups are jam-packed with useful information. I'm reminded of 2E's Monster Manual, my gold standard for monster ecology.

Yes, I'm a little unhappy that all the previewed monsters are low in CR (we need more 10+ monsters!), but at least they're interesting.

And there's this... "For an example of an eye tyrant that leads an organization of humanoids, see the section on the Xanathar Guild."

Are we going to get a map of the Xanathar's lair?

 

[ninjayeti]

So...same price as the MM but with a quarter of the monsters? Sorry but IMHO this just looks like WotC trying to see how much filler they can put into a book and still get people to fork over their cash.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Based on the font for Neotheolids and the Elder Brain, it looks like both will be statted up in the book, so complaints that everything is low CR is probably premature (unless they pull another ultraloth/death salad on us). Hopefully they won't follow the AP route and have a bunch of low level monsters and some really high level ones, but no mid-level ones.