Dragonlance Free Monstrous Compendium Volume II Includes Dragon Highlord Verminaard

Over on D&D Beyond you can grab a copy of Dragonlance Creatures, the second digital official Monstrous Compendium volume. This volume includes entries from the original Dragonlance Chronicles storyline of the 1980s, such as Dragon Highlord Verminaard (at CR 17!) and his dragon, Ember, along with the Forest Master (the unicorn from Darken Wood) and others.

Claim Monstrous Compendium Vol. 2: Dragonlance Creatures now! - D&D Beyond

www.dndbeyond.com

WotC did the same with Spelljammer, with Volume 1 of the Monstrous Compendium.

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[Marandahir]

Just to be clear - my memory could be bad! However, I remember people complaining it (spelljammer monsters) wasn't available as a PDF either, and then it was!

These could be lost pages, but none of these monsters are relevant to the adventure as far as I can tell. So it makes sense to release them in a different format IMO.

Yeah, I get that they're not directly relevant to the adventure, though there's usually some monsters in setting/adventure combo bestiaries that are just there to be representative of the setting, not so much of the adventure.

And then there's monsters that are suitable for print that had been cut for page count costs in EVERY D&D release. This just means we get to actually play with those for free. I love these releases.

 

[Nikosandros]

IIRC, the spelljammer one was a DnD Beyond exclusive for a bit before it was released as a PDF

The Spelljammer one came out both as a PDF (on the now defunct D&D Digital Library) and on DDB. After they aquired DDB, they moved everything there and the PDF was gone. I think it is a safe bet that we are not going to see one this time around.

 

[Oncewasbenji]

I know it's unlikely they'll give us a pdf and I get why but it is is infuriating. I was sort of looking forward to printing these our and binding them like the old compendium.

 

[fjw70]

Hmm, Verminaard might be a little too powerful for me. But I think the stats would make a good base for Ariamas. And since I plan to do a mix of SotDQ and the original adventure path Verminaard will die off screen while the PCs are in Kalaman so I won’t need Verminaard stats but I will need Ariana’s stats.

 

[Reynard]

It's so weird to me that of all things people would complain about the Feywild being considered part of the DL cosmology. After all,anything even vaguely medieval fantasy is going to include a "faeries realm" of some sort, including Krynn.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that I think the Feywild makes for the most logical and broadly lore friendly "transitive plane" for D&D as a general thing. Spelljammer and the Great Wheel only really work in very D&D settings, but every place (except maybe Dark Sun?) has an other world where the fey dwell. Go down the rabbit hole in one world and take a ballon ride out into another!

 

[This Effin’ GM]

Ok so dragons of autumn will now be level 12-15, party splits and dragons of winter is 16-19 and most of spring is 16-19 as well, and temple of Ariakas is the level 20 capstone. Done and done, we got this let’s goooooo

 

[Weiley31]

Where can I find the PDF version of the very first Monstrous Compendium Vol 1: Spelljammer creatures? I didn't know it became a PDF at some point.

 

[dave2008]

Where can I find the PDF version of the very first Monstrous Compendium Vol 1: Spelljammer creatures? I didn't know it became a PDF at some point.

I heard it was taken down form the WotC site. I just uploaded it to me google drive if you want it: link removed - see the post directly below (it has a link)

 

[Echohawk]

Where can I find the PDF version of the very first Monstrous Compendium Vol 1: Spelljammer creatures? I didn't know it became a PDF at some point.

To confirm what @Nikosandros said above: After WotC acquired D&D Beyond, they shelved their independent plans for a D&D Digital Library, for which the Spelljammer Monstrous Compendium was the first release. So it didn't become a PDF later, so much as start as a simultaneous D&D Digital Library (PDF) and D&D Beyond release and then become a D&D Beyond only release.

@dave2008 uploading someone else's copyrighted content to Google Drive is probably not okay.

If however, somebody had saved the direct link to the file, then you might still be able to grab a copy directly from WotC.

 

[Micah Sweet]

To confirm what @Nikosandros said above: After WotC acquired D&D Beyond, they shelved their independent plans for a D&D Digital Library, for which the Spelljammer Monstrous Compendium was the first release. So it didn't become a PDF later, so much as start as a simultaneous D&D Digital Library (PDF) and D&D Beyond release and then become a D&D Beyond only release.

@dave2008 uploading someone else's copyrighted content to Google Drive is probably not okay.

If however, somebody had saved the direct link to the file, then you might still be able to grab a copy directly from WotC.

That line seems a little nit-picky to me. The material is available right now, for free, from the content creator.