D&D (2024) Man I hate the organization of the 2024 Monster Manual

[Yaarel]

I've gone back to using the 3E Outsider to handle anything that isn't elemental, fiend or directly celestial. That covers ethereal, astral, slaad from limbo, modrons from Nirvana, etc. Subtypes can be used to differientiate what plane they are from. So, for example a Blue Slaad would be Outsider (Limbo, Slaad), while a Modron would be Outsider (Mechanus, Modron). Great Old Ones get to be Outsider (Far Realm).

Yeah, the "Astral" creature type is the same thing as the "Outsider" as a creature type. Within the Astral, Celestial and Fiend are Astral subsets that specialize in ethical concepts. Even Aberration is part of it, albeit a kind of "Anti-Astral", like unconscious versus conscious. The Astral is the realm of ideas that form reality.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of Astral domains within the Astral Sea "islands" that are "concepts" within the Astral mindscape, but not necessarily ethical concepts.

 

[kayakingpoodle]

I use my 14 MM and my cards together. I use the book to look for the monster(s) I want to use, then get the cards to use on my game. The cards are stored in binders organized by CR and then alphabetical for each CR. It does require knowing 2 things about a monster to locate the card CR and name, but I haven't found a way to organize the cards that is both easy to find a monster I know i want and to browse for a monster to fit a situation without using both resources.

I have tried organizing the cards several ways to try not to use the book, but for me this works well for my use case. However, I can flip through the cards in a certain CR and look at the monsters available.

I know digital tools like DDB make this easy, but I am done paying for things I will never own, and can be changed at anytime without notice.

I do find it interesting that the monster cards have the book and page number on the cards, but the spell cards do not.

 

[evilbob]

100% agree. It's quite a pain