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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Levistus's_Leviathan" data-source="post: 9542201" data-attributes="member: 7023887">The first D&D book I ever owned was the 2014 Monster Manual. I got it for Christmas in 2016 and had only started playing the game a couple months before. It was my first introduction to most of the classic D&D monsters and I spent the whole day reading the book. One of the problems I had in my first campaigns as a new DM was how thematically disjointed all of the monsters in it were. I had a hard time finding monsters that felt like they fit together in my first campaigns. Now, diversity in the types of monsters is one of D&D’s strengths. You can easily create whole campaigns around a monster theme, such as Fey, Undead, Aberrations, or Fiends. But if I wanted to make a Mind Flayer-centric campaign entirely using the 5e MM, I would only have Intellect Devourers, Mind Flayers, and Mind Flayer Arcanists to use. Which are solidly Tier 1-2 monsters. And for the first few levels before the party can face a Mind Flayer they’re stuck battling thralls and Intellect Devourers. After the first two tiers, there was nothing. No Mind Witness, Alhoon, Illithilich, Ulitharids, Neothilid, Cranium Rats, Oblexes, or Elder Brain. Those all came later. If I wanted Dragons, well there are tons of Dragons for every tier of play. They all are pretty similar enemies and fighting only dragons and kobolds all game definitely gets old, but you could do it. Same with Undead. There are thematically coherent undead for most levels of play. You couldn’t really do this for most enemy types in base 5e (Fey, Aberrations, Celestials, Elementals, Giants, Oozes, Plants, Beasts, etc). I know the new Monster Manual has a limited amount of monsters it can add, but I am glad that they have chosen to focus on giving more powerful and weaker versions of more monsters. I think that will really help new DMs that want their campaigns to have more cohesive themes through its enemies.</blockquote>

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