D&D (2024) Monster Manual 2025 Stat Block Compilation

This thread contains a compilation of the Monster Manual 2025 stat blocks which have been previewed publicly so far.

 

[Lord Twig]

I'm not trying to dump on anyone for wanting to have the explanation. I'm pointing out that the level of concern seems unwarranted. People are acting like this will grind the game to a halt for thousands of tables across the country, and ruins the book. It just isn't that serious of an issue.

I'm not saying it is a serious issue, but it is annoying. It will slow things down occasionally, but we will adapt and it will be fine. But again, they already had it in the previous book, they could have just left it in and it wouldn't be a problem at all. No one would have even noticed and commented on it. It would be a 100% non-issue. By removing it they made people (like myself) unhappy for no benefit.

What are you talking about? It doesn't have a higher AC. It has 13 AC, the same as the skeleton. And in fact, the other "big" skeleton is the minotaur skeleton with 12 AC, and you are unlikely to use both of them in the same fight. So the only one with a significantly higher AC is the flaming skeleton, which is a magical boss monster for that sort of encounter. And... yeah, that makes sense to have as higher AC.

Additionally, "easier to hit because it is bigger" has not been a thing in DnD 5e this entire time. So if your players are asking that, they are bringing in older edition rules into this edition. That's a mistake on their part, not the designers.

My players do tend to be older, and we played the crap out of 3.0 and 3.5, where everything was internally consistent. I'm not saying I want to go back to that, but there is no harm having a little bit explanation for why things are the way they are. I guess what I really object to is that it feels like they are focusing more on the game part of Dungeons and Dragons and less on the immersive storytelling.

I also do want to point out, that the Kuo-Toa and the Skeletons are previews and were marked as not final. And the only thing that has been requested (originally) to "fix" the Kuo-Toa was to include the shield in their gear listing. Which likely is something they don't want to indicate MUST be given to PCs who defeat Kuo-Toa.

I would be pleasantly surprised if the AC descriptions are in the final product. Gear is another issue that just feels bad. If a creature uses an item, then the characters can pick it up and use it. Maybe not effectively, but there would need to be an in-game reason for it. "Because it would unbalance the game," is a super lame reason to prevent a character from trying to do something.

 

[Chaltab]

I'm sure I'll learn to live with the eighteen boxes for six numbers excel spreadsheet in the 2025 Monster Manual stat blocks, but I think it's way too nitpicky for what I need for my own game.

For some reason I just find it harder to parse quickly. Like my eyes just glide over it.

 

[dave2008]

I mostly use published adventures and add creatures to what is listed.

I don't know if published adventures use the DMG guidelines, but the 2024 guidelines are significantly more difficult at higher levels (starting around level 10 IIRC).

 

[SlyFlourish]

i have always wanted to do more with them and create tables similar to encumbrance for each ability score to give each point more weight. I haven't done that yet, but here are the 3 things we do in our game

1. Tiebreaker: If an ability score contest ends in a tie, the creature with the higher score wins
2. Damage: On melee attacks you add your ability score -10 to your damage, not your ability mod.
3. Expertise: instead of 2x prof. bonus, expertise is ability score -10 + prof. bonus

Interesting ideas. They could all be done with ability bonuses, right? Not that it matters. The 2025 MM is going to have them but you could do a similar thing with KPs monsters if you wanted to.

 

[AlViking]

I mostly use published adventures and add creatures to what is listed.

The mods all seem to be targeted at inexperienced player group of four that is not at all optimized hitting several encounters per long rest. So a group that knows what they're doing will never be challenged. The new book might help with that but I regularly adjust monsters by adding to their attack modifier, upping damage and hit points. Think about throwing in a boss monster with higher challenge rating now and then as well as just more encounters. When figuring out difficulty use the new calculation or at least ignore the numbers multiplier.

Think about creating a new thread for this specific issue with a few details. You likely aren't the only one facing this and encounter building can be as much art as science.

 

[abirdcall]

The mods all seem to be targeted at inexperienced player group of four that is not at all optimized hitting several encounters per long rest. So a group that knows what they're doing will never be challenged. The new book might help with that but I regularly adjust monsters by adding to their attack modifier, upping damage and hit points. Think about throwing in a boss monster with higher challenge rating now and then as well as just more encounters. When figuring out difficulty use the new calculation or at least ignore the numbers multiplier.

Think about creating a new thread for this specific issue with a few details. You likely aren't the only one facing this and encounter building can be as much art as science.

I run published adventures and find them to be plenty challenging.

I follow their instructions on the consequences for when the party rests and I don't run the monsters as zombies.

So far the only published adventures I've needed to fiddle with for difficulty has been Planescape and only because it is more of a framework of an adventure than a full adventure. Plus the encounters are basically split between what the adventure itself says and the encounters provided in the gazetteer of the location they are travelling to.

 

[dave2008]

Interesting ideas. They could all be done with ability bonuses, right? Not that it matters. The 2025 MM is going to have them but you could do a similar thing with KPs monsters if you wanted to.

Sure I guess there is always a way to do things. It wouldn't be quite the same, but similar. The issue I would have is that ability scores tell me something about a creature that modifiers don't. I guess you could change that to and say strength 0 is an average persons strength. I know some manga that do that, but it feels odd to me. I also like having a bit more granularity and differentiation that ability can and do give me that just using mods (under the current paradigm) do not.

Also, it is not an issue for the 2025 MM or any monster book really. I am going to drop CR shortly after the MM comes out and move to making monsters by level. So my stat blocks are going to move to being much more customized to they my group plays. So I will be keeping the ability scores on my monsters and it will not matter what WotC or anyone else does (for me and my group).

 

[AlViking]

I run published adventures and find them to be plenty challenging.

I follow their instructions on the consequences for when the party rests and I don't run the monsters as zombies.

So far the only published adventures I've needed to fiddle with for difficulty has been Planescape and only because it is more of a framework of an adventure than a full adventure. Plus the encounters are basically split between what the adventure itself says and the encounters provided in the gazetteer of the location they are travelling to.

I don't use published adventures when I run a game I'm just basing my advice off of what DMs have said when I've played. They've consistently said that the encounters given are not hard enough for us but I'm sure no two groups are the same.

 

[abirdcall]

I don't use published adventures when I run a game I'm just basing my advice off of what DMs have said when I've played. They've consistently said that the encounters given are not hard enough for us but I'm sure no two groups are the same.

Yeah. I hear that a lot too and then I find out the details of what happened.

I have a friend who joined a game recently. They had legendary items at 6th level. In that days dungeon they fought the monsters one at a time and wiped the floor with them.

Then I read the actual adventure and it says multiple times that if they alert the monster in one area then all of the monsters currently in the dungeon converge on them in a round (because they have telepathy and a very high move speed). Which is a far higher difficulty.

 

[Lazybones]

I've found WotC's published 5e adventures to be fairly difficult, and deadly in some cases (Icespire Peak, I'm looking at you). For my homebrew campaigns, I usually have five or six players who are good optimizers, so I'm used to having to beef things up well past the guidelines in the books. I recently finished up a campaign where the group ended at 17th level, and I don't think I used a single "stock" MM creature over the last 20 sessions, except for the occasional random encounter. In another game I inserted the stone giants' canyon from Storm King's Thunder into an existing storyline. The group was again 6 PCs that were a few levels higher than the recommended level, so I ended up doubling the number of giants in all of the encounters, and turning the human barbarians into bugbears. It turned out to be a fairly challenging adventure.

I guess I just assumed that most DMs tweak the difficulty of their encounters based on what their players can do, but I can understand why beginning DMs might have more difficulty if they only stick to what's in the published material. This was one of the things I liked about the 2024 DMG, which had more guidance in this area, as well as more explicit "permission" for DMs to change things as needed to make a fun and challenging game.