Five Takeaways From the 2025 Monster Manual

The 2025 Monster Manual is the missing puzzle piece for Dungeons & Dragons' recent Fifth Edition revisions, with reworked monsters that hit harder and make combat more exciting at every level. Released in February, the new Monster Manual drives home many of the design choices made in other parts of D&D's core rulebooks. Building off of a decade's worth of lessons about how DMs use statblocks and how players tend to handle combat, the Monster Manual features creatures with streamlined abilities meant to speed up combat without sacrificing the "fun" of fighting in the game. Plus, the book includes a ton of gorgeous new artwork that depicts D&D's iconic monsters at their most threatening. Here are five of my biggest takeaways from the new Monster Manual.

1) Revamped Legendary Actions, With More Power Than Before.

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One of the big goals of the new Monster Manual was to redesign monsters to have them punch harder but simultaneously make them easier to run. This design ethos can be seen in many revamped monster statblocks, especially at higher Challenge Ratings. Lair actions are now incorporated into the statblock, with monsters typically gaining access to an additional Legendary Resistance and Legendary Action while in their lair. Additionally, many of the Legendary Actions are much more powerful than their 5E equivalents, with creatures usually gaining more dangerous options.

For instance, all of the dragons have lost their functionally worthless "Detect" action and instead have access to new spellcasting options or more powerful attacks. The Adult Blue Dragon, as an example, can cast Shatter as a Legendary Action or it can cast Invisibility on itself and then move up to half its speed. While not as strong as the dragon's standard actions, the Adult Blue Dragon can now do a lot more over the course of a round then simply deal moderate amounts of damage and soak up hits from opponents.

2) Either Attack Rolls or Saving Throws, Not Both

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Another major streamlining within rulesets is that monster attacks with effects are either triggered with a failed saving throw OR a successful attack roll. This should significantly speed up combat by reducing the number of rolls made during a game. As an example, the Bearded Devil's 2014 statblock included a Beard attack that damaged on a successful hit and forced its target to make a Constitution saving throw or be Poisoned. In the 2025 Monster Manual, the Bearded Devil's Beard attack deals damage and automatically inflicts the Poisoned condition on a successful attack.

There's two major consequences to this. The first is that only one dice roll is needed to determine the success or failure of a certain attack or ability. The second is that a creature is more often able to threaten player characters at their intended level. By having a creature's full attack trigger based on a single success instead two successes (or I suppose a success combined with a separate creature's failure), it radically changes the dynamics of many D&D combats.

3) Yes, The Art Is Fantastic

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Keeping with another theme of the 2024/2025 Core Rulebooks, the artwork in the new Monster Manual is frankly fantastic. There are a lot of D&D players, myself included, who love to look through the Monster Manual and other bestiaries primarily for the art and lore. Those players should be more than happy with this new book, which contains artwork for every single monster in the book. What's more, much of the artwork shows the monsters in action. The Chasme, for example, looks much more threatening in the 2025 Monster Manual, with art showing the demon hunched over an adventurer with its probiscus covered in blood. Compare that imagery to the 2014 Monster Manual, which just has the chasme standing in profile.

One comment made to me by Jeremy Crawford was that Wizards had found that monsters without art tended to be used less often, so I'm expecting the trend of more art to continue in future books.

4) A Handful of Interesting New Mechanics

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While not found widely in the new Monster Manual, there are a handful of new (or at least very uncommon) mechanics. The Empyrean, for instance, has a Sacred Weapon attack that deals damage and Stuns its target. However, the target can choose to bypass the Stunned condition by taking additional damage. Meanwhile, the Arch Hag has multiple abilities that curse their opponent, taking away their ability to use Reactions or spells with verbal components. Additionally, the hag has a bonus action that deals automatic damage to anyone cursed by the witch.

Finding new mechanics in the Monster Manual is rare, but they represent some interesting innovation that hopefully will be incorporated with future statblocks. Not every creature needs stacking abilities, or "pick your poison" choices, but I love these and want to see them more often in the future.

5) Species-Free NPCs

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Over the past few weeks, Wizards has revealed several monsters with new creature classification types. Goblins, aarakocra, lizardfolk, kobolds, and kenku are all now classified as non-humanoids. It's interesting that non-humanoid species often have multiple statblocks with unique abilities, but that the humanoid statblocks are meant to include elves, dwarves, orcs, humans, and more. I'm assuming (given that Eberron: Forge of the Artificer is bringing back the Warforged) that D&D won't remove non-humanoid species as playable species, but it feels like there's a deliberate push to make all humanoids interchangeable, at least when it comes to these NPC stats.

It's a shame that Wizards seems to have done away with templates in the new Monster Manual because they'd be useful for transforming a generic guard or scout into a Drow guard or a Dragonborn scout. I don't think these would be hard to homebrew if necessary, but I do feel like this is one of the bigger misses in the Monster Manual. Hopefully, we'll see more specialization in the future, and the Monster Manual opted to focus on monsters instead of highly specific statblocks.
 

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Christian Hoffer

Christian Hoffer

A character can have "Dwarven Artist" as a background. A DM and player might decide to modify Artisan, for language, skills, toolset, plus a feat appropriate to the concept.

Similar concepts come up with other cultures, High Elf Griffon Rider, Drow Sleep Poisoner, Drow Adamantine Armorer, Drow Spider Breeder, Drow Fungal Farmer, Drow Lolth Priestess, Grugach Trapper, and as mentioned earlier in passing, Avariel Glassteel Alchemist, Aereni Courtier, and so on.

All of these culturally specific backgrounds.

Yes, so you can have 100000000 bespoke backgrounds, or you have have elegantly designed Backgrounds and Cultures to mix and match as one desires.

I know which one I think is better design.
 

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Yes, so you can have 100000000 bespoke backgrounds, or you have have elegantly designed Backgrounds and Cultures to mix and match as one desires.

I know which one I think is better design.
Because a background is simply to pick languages, skills, toolset, plus a feat, this is easy and can be done on the fly.

A background tweak, such as a cantrip instead of a skill, or a level 4 half feat, is also possible with DM approval.
 

Because a background is simply to pick languages, skills, toolset, plus a feat, this is easy and can be done on the fly.

A background tweak, such as a cantrip instead of a skill, or a level 4 half feat, is also possible with DM vetting.

Sure, then you are simply accepting that you dont need or desire Culture as a rules object within your game.

Which is 100% fine as a position to take. You just have Backgrounds, while others using other systems (Level Up, whatever) have Culture as well.
 

Sure, then you are simply accepting that you dont need or desire Culture as a rules object within your game.

Which is 100% fine as a position to take. You just have Backgrounds, while others using other systems (Level Up, whatever) have Culture as well.
Out of curiosity, what do you do when the character participates in more than one culture?
 

Acolyte/Godbound: All of these are background religious experiences, whether the religious exposure was within the family, within a neighborhood spiritual community, or wherever. A DM can tweak a background, and specify the story.

Sages = Collegiate, one presumes the other. Yes there are many colleges and many subject matters, and a background can refer to any of it.

Soldier can be used as part of the defense of a remote village, town, or city, and the background can refer to any of it. Also, a background can be highly specific such as actively serving in the guard of a specific town, with a specific commander as a contact. Or an imperial guard for specific noble.

All of it is background.

Also, most of the stuff relating to a cultural background is "story", that goes into the biography, without any mechanics.
The designers of D&D purposefully made Background into another name for Profession. What you did for a living before circumstances propelled you into a life of adventure within a D&D setting. And to give Background some weight, they decided to use some game mechanics in order to give it some crunch.

We wouldn't be debating this particular issue if they had decided to use the word Profession instead.
 

Out of curiosity, what do you do when the character participates in more than one culture?

In my game? Its not even a consideration, I'm not playing at a level where such detail is relevant.

It wouldnt happen though for me, I would not have it get to such level of detail, and as many games prove, you do not need Culture, especially with the direction of D&D post-Tashas.
 





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