D&D 5E Let’s Read Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse.

[Leatherhead]

Master Thief (VGtM)​

In a similar vein to the Martial Arts Adept, the Master Thief isn’t actually a Rogue, despite emulating one via NPC mechanics, thanks to the lack of Tags. But we already mostly covered that with the Martial Arts Adept, so we can safely ignore it this time around.

Anyway, Thieves aren’t meant for fighting, they are meant for stealing stuff, and trying desperately to survive while the PCs swear a blood oath to kill them, find their soul in the afterlife, cast the soul into a Sphere of Annihilation, track down their records in the celestial library, and then painstakingly remove them from from the Book of Names, condemning the offender to eternal non-existence.

The best way to have Players get mad at an NPC is to have said NPC pick their pocket, and the Master Thief has enough skill points to pull that kind of thing off. In fact, they are so good at larceny, that the book has an included calling card table, just to make sure that the PCs know who did it.

In combat, the Master Thief has some significant differences from a PC Rogue. Most notably, they don’t have Sneak Attack, and instead rely on multiattack and some poison damage to round out their DPR. Does this mean Sneak Attack is on the chopping block for Rogues as a whole? Probably not, WotC did remove every kind of extra damage power from monster statblocks, after all. Aside from that, they have Evasion, Uncanny Dodge, and even Cunning Action to sell the idea that they are (not)Rogues. Combined with more HP than a typical Rogue has at level 10, and they make for surprisingly durable combatants that are equally hard to pin down.

In the Changeover, the Master Thief Lost their Sneak Attack, in favor of a poison damage rider on all of their weapon attacks. They also traded in their Crossbow for a Shortbow (presumably to get around the Loading Property). I’m a bit torn about this, while it does flatten the DPR curve for CR, it also cuts off a way for the Players to counter the Thief though simple tactics, if they know how Rogues work that is.

 

[Leatherhead]

Maurezhi (MToF)​

The Maurezhi are one of D&D's EXTREMELY deadly monsters, despite being a relatively slow melee unit. I’ll go over the details in the combat section, but I feel the need to point that out right up front, because it can’t be stated enough: Use these monsters with the understanding that a PC of any level is highly likely to die against them.


Lorewise, the Maurezhi are the demon servants of Doresain, the King of Ghouls. Who in turn lead packs of Ghasts and Ghouls into battle. And all three of them love to chow down on humanoids. When Maurezhi eats a person, they can assume the form of the person, using their skin as a disguise. While they are proficient in deception (required to make the “wolf-in-sheep's clothing” trick work). This disguise slowly rots over the course of 1d6 days, putting them on a time limit for their next meal. But even that can work in their favor.

Imagine some orphan comes up to a bunch of brave and noble adventurers pleading with them “Help me heroes! I have contracted a demonic sickness!” Suddenly, the rotting visage that gets worse over time, pinging when the Paladin uses Detect Evil and Good, the sudden outbursts of Abyssal speech, lesser disease cures not working, all of it becomes “plausible”. Give the Cleric one day to rest and prepare some higher level healing magic (instead of their normal combat kit), while the orphan runs about in the middle of the night to disable wards. And then spring the ambush the next day.

In combat the Maurezhi have a relatively slow 30’ of movement and only melee attacks. What makes them so deadly you might ask? Two things, their claw attack inflicts paralysis, which is the second or third most devastating status condition in the game (depending on whom you ask), and their bite attack drains CHA. Granted, CHA isn’t a popular dump stat anymore, but unless you are using CHA for your primary stat, it’s more likely that you will have a 12 than a 14 in it. Just three good bites is enough to kill most people, and if you are running with multiple Marezhi, plan for at least one PC to die. If that wasn’t enough to give you pause, the Maurezhi can also instantly revive any dead Ghast or Ghoul to full HP with a single action, giving them a renewable source of minions. Their only weakness is a lack of a ranged attack, which can be compensated for by giving them some warlock support.

The Maurezhi only received formatting changes for the new book.

 

[Leatherhead]

Maw Demon (VGtM)​

Maw Demons are lesser demons that exist only to eat anyone and everything. And as such, are often found in the company of Gnoll Warbands. Their most interesting feature is their direct link to Yeenoghu, which connects their stomach directly to the Demon Lord’s gullet, so that he can eat the bounty of the world even when locked away in the Abyss.

The book provides a handy table of random objects to include in a Maw Demons stomach, which can also be used to give one of their attacks a bit more flavor.

Aside from that, there isn’t really much to the Maw Demon in combat. They are essentially giant mouths that walk around biting everything they come in contact with. Fitting in well enough with Gnolls, they can serve as a brute controller, albeit one that doesn’t synergise well with Gnoll Leaders due to a lack of Rampage. Instead, they have the disgusting (and mildly humorous) Disgorge attack, where they use projectile vomit as an acidic AoE that also knocks their enemies prone. Gnolls are exactly the type of enemy who would scramble over to a prone prey in order to eat them in the middle of combat, making this attack quite scary despite its simplicity and otherwise “soft” status condition.

In the changeover, the Maw Demon lost their Rampage ability and gained the Disgorge attack. While the Disgorge attack is fun (well for DMs at least) and thematic. The loss of Rampage is a bit of a bummer.

 

[Remathilis]

In combat, the Master Thief has some significant differences from a PC Rogue. Most notably, they don’t have Sneak Attack, and instead rely on multiattack and some poison damage to round out their DPR. Does this mean Sneak Attack is on the chopping block for Rogues as a whole? Probably not, WotC did remove every kind of extra damage power from monster statblocks, after all.

Interestingly (and probably coincidentally) the removal of sneak attack dice works like the removal of spellcasting as a "roughly what level PC class is this npc?" marker, since you could take the assigned SA dice and use it to determine what level rogue would have equal SA dice. Now, they probably got rid of those "ambush" abilities since they are easy to overlook, but it does add another nail in the "WotC does NOT want you equating or converting PC classes to NPC stat blocks" coffin.

 

[Leatherhead]

Meazel (MToF)​

Meazels (not to be confused with Measles) are an example of a D&D staple trope: People that do a ritual and become monsters.

In this case, an evil hermit gets absolutely fed up with life, and moves into the Shadowfell. Where the negative emotions fester within them, causing a transformation into the Monstrosity known as a Meazel. And really, the only significantly difficult part of that “ritual” is finding a portal into the Shadowfell, as evidenced by the Meazel’s CR of 1. Yeah, in this case the transformation doesn’t come with that much of a power boost, but it is implied that they become immortal, and miserable, for the rest of eternity.

Meazels have a unique weapon in their stat block, a garrote. Which they use to garrote a target, which grapples and automatically deals damage while the target is stuck in the grapple. Someone should make a list of all such unique monster weapons, mostly to see if they can be reverse-engineered into weapons for PCs. I know several Rogues who would love to get their hands on a garrote.

Despite their weaponry, Meazels are not exceptionally deadly in combat, instead relying on their bonus action stealth checks and ability to teleport between shadows to ambush a single target, and spirit them up to 500’ away from their party where they can more easily deal with them without interference.

It is worth pointing out that being caught in such a teleport curses the target, automatically giving out their location to any undead or Shadowfell Native for an hour, and preventing the target from hiding. So a Meazel might use the teleport to dump their victim into the lair of another creature, hide, let the two take eachother out, and swoop in to collect the spoils. As an alternative to direct confrontation.

Either way, the curse is going to make life hard for the PCs after the threat of the Meazel is dealt with.

The Meazel was changed into a Monstrosity instead of a Humanoid for this new printing. They also added a line about Remove Curse or Greater Restoration being able to break the curse, but that’s more of a clarification than a rules change.

 

[Leatherhead]

Meenlock (VGtM)​

Meenlocks are mean land-dwelling crablike fey, born from the emotion of fear in the Feywild (or areas that are heavily influenced by the Feywild). Whenever a creature is overwhelmed by fear, they come from the shadows, and if multiple of them spawn at the same time, they even create their own cave lair, covered in sound-dampening moss.

So basically, they are a good excuse to have a quick and simple low-level dungeon pop up anywhere, anytime you need a distraction for a game night or two. Just have a commoner wander off and get scared in some dark place, and bam! Instant adventure. You could even make the victim a Noble if you want to include some treasure.

Meenlocks are only CR 2, but they are actually quite deadly for that CR. Their melee attack can paralyze for action denial, and they come equipped with a fear aura for some soft control. They even have a shadow-based bonus action teleport for an advanced movement action. The only thing they lack is a decent ranged option.

Meenlocks have a ritual of their own that they can use to torment an incapacitated creature. It takes a long time to set up, but fortunately for the Meenlock, creatures fall asleep for hours at a time. The ritual deals some psychic damage every hour to the poor creature, and when the creature hits 0 hp, they transform into a Meenlock themselves (and can only be undone with a Wish or divine intervention) It’s worth noting this ritual works on any creature, even beasts like rats and rabbits. Allowing the Meenlocks to propagate themselves rapidly in the span of one night. But the main use a DM will have for this ritual is putting the PCs under a time limit to rescue one of the meenlocks victims.

Meenlocks were not significantly changed for this new printing. But I did find a typo on the legacy listing for them on D&D beyond: Instead of 7 STR, they are listed as having 6 STR. The actual Volo’s book has them with the correct STR of 7, for what that’s worth.

 

[Leatherhead]

Merregon (MToF)​

Merregons are also known as Legion Devils, because they are a bunch of basically nameless and faceless goons who serve to pad out the ranks of Diabolical Armies, or serve as a meatshield or enforcer to other, more talkative, Devils. In fact, they can’t even talk at all, only possessing a one-on-one telepathy to communicate should the need arise.

Merregons are typically made from the souls of evil warriors and bodyguards, and seem boring to a fault. But that might actually work in their favor. Merregons skip spending time as the least of devils, getting to head directly out into the action of the Blood War (or other such wars), where they can eventually earn their advancement via their K/D ratio, or simply being the highest ranking Devil left alive after a mission.

In combat, the Merregon’s simplicity is a strength. Go take a look at a Bearded Devil, their direct “competition”. The Bearded Devil can poison and has an attack with a damage over time component. This sounds thematic, and nasty (and fun, if you are the DM). But the Bearded Devil is playing a suckers game. Look back at the Merregon. All it does is stab their target three times per round, and if it’s not in melee range, it has a good old reliable crossbow instead of absolutely nothing. Simple, quick, efficient. It doesn’t have to deal with things like poison immunity, which makes them even better against the Demonic Hordes that love to come into the Hells and tear the place up. Furthermore, Merregons are team players, they have a reaction that allows them to pull that secret service maneuver where they jump in front of an attack meant for one of their allies. While that kind of loyalty is seldom rewarded by Devils, it can be just the tactical advantage needed for their side to pull off a win, and wins do get rewarded.

In the changeover the Merregon lost the conditional trigger on its multiattack, in favor of just attacking three times whenever they attack.

 

[Leatherhead]

Merrenoloth (MToF)​

Merrenoloths are Yugoloths who resemble the psychopomp Charon, right down to being ferry boat captains on the River Styx. When translated through the D&D lens, this means they are a source of relatively reliable interplanar travel on the lower/fiendish plains (but do keep in mind, you are still going from one place of absolute evil into another).

If that isn’t your cup of tea, you will be pleased to know that a Merrenoloth is a CR 3 creature that can be contracted to give supernatural powers to any ship they are captaining (Though I can’t help but think that it should say piloting instead of captaining, if only for the additional story flexibility.) Allowing for a low level boss encounter in your Pirates of the Caribbean style game, where the Merrenoloth transforms the ship they are on into its lair

The Merrenoloth has three lair actions, but two of them are exclusively tied into ship-based combat, though I have to say they seem really good if you are doing that. Allowing the Merrenoloth to control the wind, propelling the ship faster, or simply repairing any damage that the ship might have suffered. Their third lair action allows them to use that same wind to push people around, and is handy for knocking flyers from the sky.

In perhaps the first example of its kind, their Regional Effects (also tied to the ship), are actually useful in combat. Perfect steering, and making the ship unsinkable would be great regardless. But the fact you have to defeat the Merrenoloth in order to permanently skuttle their ship makes for a great dramatic boarding scene climax.

Despite having a lair, the Merrenoloth is not a Legendary Monster, meaning they need a crew to help keep them alive. In fact, I would dare say they are underpowered, even with revisions in this book! In combat they can multiattack with their Oar and inspire fear with their Gaze in the same action. Unfortunately, they have less DPR than an Archer* unless you are using the Whirlpool option on their Control Water spell. Admittedly, their regional effects and lair actions make using that option almost totally safe (unless you give them Allies, in which case it’s going to merk the crew!), but it’s definitely not spelled out for a DM, as these changes were supposed to do. Likewise, their defensive prowess relies upon their fiendish resistances, but they only have 40 hp, meaning a group who can deal out those types of damage will send the Merrenoloth to Davy Jones’s locker in short order. They do have a decent assortment of control spells, but lack the ability to swap out an attack for a cast.

At the very least, they can swim and teleport as a bonus action, should they get knocked off their ship. But keep in mind, their Oar does Fire damage, so they are even worse at attacking should they get stuck in the water.

In the Changeover, the Merrenoloth lost their magical weapons power in favor of Fire damage on their Oar. (Yeah, I don’t get why they picked Fire either.) They also lost a windbreaker effect from their regional effects, one that made it much more palatable to be on their crew. And finally, they lost the Control Weather spell.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Fire damage? What the heck? Fire is the bane of all sailors. I guess because they're fiends, but with their underworld grim-reaper-ness, I would have picked necrotic. Force would be my go-to, though.

 

[Leatherhead]

Mindwitness (VGtM)​

Have you ever looked at the telepathy “language” that monsters have? Did you ever notice how it only enables conversation between the “talker” and their target, without anyone being able to listen in on the conversation? While this normally sounds like a good deal, what if your entire species talked this way, and needed to get a massive amount of information out to several targets at the same time? That would be a massive pain for sure. The Mindwitness is the solution to this problem.

Part of a series of experiments where the Mind Flayers put a tadpole into any brain they happened to get their tentacles on, The Mindwitness is an aberration of an aberration created by the ceremorphosis of a Beholder. Fortunately for adventurers, the Mindwitness loses the best bits of either monster in the process (also a good chunk of their CR). Leaving behind the Beholders' antimagic Eye, and the Mind Flayers' Mind Blast and Extract Brain powers. (And now I want to see a monster that has them, because that sounds absolutely terrifying). Instead the Mindwitness can act as a telepathic broadcasting service, allowing those with telepathy to beam thoughts into multiple heads at once. It is also worth noting that Mindwitnesses have occasionally broken free from a Mind Flayer colony, and can be found mingling relatively peacefully with any other group that uses telepathy, and often change their temperament and ideologies to match their new “friends'.

In combat, the Mindwitness is a brutish controller. Despite being slow, the 120’ range on their eye-beams allows them an array of excellent control options to use when not in melee, doubly so when you consider that they can target every single saving throw stat, ensuring that they will always be able to attack a weak point. But it is in melee where they truly earn their CR. Their Tentacle attack deals a good chunk of damage, grapples the target, and restrains the target by using an INT save. Naturally this can be used to get advantage on subsequent attacks, and drag their enemies into the air with their hover speed for the extra tactical advantage.

In the Changeover, the Mindwitness had the Stun condition on their Tentacle dropped down to Restrained.