D&D 5E Monsters of the Multiverse Releases a Day Early

Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse is now available to buy, a day earlier than scheduled. While it releases most places tomorrow, you can grab it from D&D Beyond today.

Monsters of the Multiverse | Dungeons & Dragons

Discover a multiverse of lore with over 250 monsters, combined and updated from Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes.

dnd.wizards.com

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah I kind of assumed that. There was a lot of talking down the fact that many/most spellcaster monsters now have ranged high-damage multiattacks (hello Warlocks!), and I'm like "That sounds like an awful lot of highly-reliable damage to me...". Pretty sure that's more threatening than a bunch of obscure combat/utility spells.

There was even a guy with like a zillion upvotes moaning because caster monsters apparently used to be some of the rare occasions some of the more obscure/crap spells in 5E were actually used. And like, yeah that's true, running a higher-level campaign I often found a caster monsters had some real dubious spells available, but how is that a good thing? The 5E reddit apparently thought it was a very good thing so who am I to disagree lol? It was a disrepectful and terrible nerf to remove these spells and just make the cast able to actually blast away effectively.

Of course I am kind of the "sickos" guy because this is distinctly more 4E-like

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Well, 5E has always had 4E Monster design at heart, and even these new streamlined rules are pretty far from going full 4E in style.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Yeah, little references to Planescape and Spelljammer throughout...and this book was released months before Spelljammer was Confirmed. Planescape next year seem probable.

Yeah, there were several references to Wildspace that apparently were looked over upon the original box set release - those would have been huge Spelljammer clues had they been caught.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, there were several references to Wildspace that apparently were looked over upon the original box set release - those would have been huge Spelljammer clues had they been caught.

I know @darjr shared some at the time.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I still don't see why they took the orc statblocks out, or why they didn't replace them with anything. And there are plenty of other humanoid statblocks they should have removed too, if their reasoning was consistent. Seems like they didn't commit either way.

My guess is because they're not very "setting agnostic". All of them are connected to the Orcish Pantheon from the Forgotten Realms/Greyhawk.

However, that doesn't explain why they'd keep the Drow Matron Mother when it's as setting-specific as the Orc stat blocks. Maybe they just ran out of room for the amount of pages they wanted to include in the book.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Whilst I'm pretty offended WotC want another $30 out of me merely so my stats aren't outdated on the books I already paid $60 for on DNDBeyond, I have to agree.

The thing is, on D&D Beyond when this book was first announced, the number one question that everyone had about it was whether it would function as an errata or if you would have to buy its content separate from Volo's and Mordenkainen's original versions. Because, typically on D&D Beyond, if you bought the previous version of the race/monster/subclass and it was reprinted with changes in a future book, it would automatically update to replace the previous version. It happened with the new version of the Goliath in Rime of the Frostmaiden for everyone that had already bought the race from Volo's and Wildemount. It happened with the Theros's updated Triton for everyone that owned Volo's Guide to Monsters. It, most comparatively, happened with the updated, official versions of the Eberron races and magic items when Eberron: Rising from the Last War was released for everyone that had bought Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron. Everyone was asking if the same would happen to the people that owned Volo's and/or Mordenkainen's, and people were angry. And D&D Beyond didn't give an answer for several weeks, the staff testifying that they themselves didn't know the answer and wouldn't until WotC told them what to do.

You know all of those people that absolutely hate the direction that D&D 5e has taken since Tasha's Cauldron of Everything? The people that have boycotted every book since that included the updated formats of races/lineages? There's not many of them, but they sure are loud. And they made a big fuss on D&D Beyond's forums, a lot of them saying that if Monsters of the Multiverse's updated monsters and races from Volo's and Mordenkainen's were treated as errata, they would demand a refund for those books on the site.

So, eventually, D&D Beyond's staff got an answer and told the people of the forums that the book would not be treated as errata (even though all evidence from previous examples suggested that it should have been). It's unclear whether or not this was WotC's plan since the beginning, or if they saw/heard of the blowback on the site's community when they were thinking that it would be treated as errata. Or they just wanted to squeeze more money out of the fans that already owned this content and still wanted the updated versions.

I agree that it sucks that it's not treated as errata, IMO it really should have been. But they were getting a lot of backlash from the community and that probably influenced how they approached the book on the site.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

(Sorry for the triple post.)

With all of the new races (species, really), I'm surprised that they didn't include mixed races.

We've had half elves and half orcs for a long time. Why not other combos such as a half tortle/half aarakocra?

That would be one bad ass PC...

I mean, why should humans, orcs and elves be the only ones who've overcome racial barriers?

I believe the jury's still out regarding whether or not mixed races are still allowed in fantasy now. Half-elves will probably be grandfathered in, but that might be it.

My guess is that Half-Orcs will be dropped, and Half-Elves will be dropped from every setting that they don't have a major role in (Eberron is the main one where they're actually important). And in Eberron, they can just be treated similarly to the Bretons from the Elder Scrolls Game, where they're not explicitly "Half-Elves," but are magical people descended from both man and elves/mer.

They could just say for the rest of the base game "you can be a hybrid race, but you just use the racial stats of whichever parent race you take after the most". That's how it's approached in Explorer's Guide to Wildemount with the Dwarf-Elf hybrids that are mentioned in its gazetteer.

 

[Micah Sweet]

(Sorry for the triple post.)


My guess is that Half-Orcs will be dropped, and Half-Elves will be dropped from every setting that they don't have a major role in (Eberron is the main one where they're actually important). And in Eberron, they can just be treated similarly to the Bretons from the Elder Scrolls Game, where they're not explicitly "Half-Elves," but are magical people descended from both man and elves/mer.

They could just say for the rest of the base game "you can be a hybrid race, but you just use the racial stats of whichever parent race you take after the most". That's how it's approached in Explorer's Guide to Wildemount with the Dwarf-Elf hybrids that are mentioned in its gazetteer.

I "liked" this because I agree that what they'll probably do, but I don't agree with them doing it. It removes content, and replaces it with the pinnacle of lazy rule-making.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I "liked" this because I agree that what they'll probably do, but I don't agree with them doing it. It removes content, and replaces it with the pinnacle of lazy rule-making.

Eh, I'm fine with it. And this is coming from the guy that has homebrewed a ton of hybrid races (Half-Gnomes, Mul, Orc-Elves, Dwarf-Elves, Dwarf-Orcs, Half-Ogres, etc). I know from experience that making a couple hybrid races is kind of opening the door for all kinds of other hybrid races ad nauseum. It's "lazy", but the good kind of lazy where you're not doing redundant work just to do redundant work.

And I like playing hybrid-race characters. I just don't think that it's a good idea to have to make a whole new race every time you want to let a player play one. It's kind of exhausting and takes energy that could have been used to make newer races/update races from previous editions that aren't in the game yet.

I'm not sure what this means for the Mul, though, if Dark Sun is ever getting updated to 5e.

 

[Azzy]

Heh - that's a funny bit of lore change.

I will, of course, be ignoring it. As every minotaur know, all minotaurs are descended from the minotaur hero-god Asterios, the son of Zeus and the goddess Pasiphae. All stories of them being "demonspawn" were just bits of slander aimed at them by humans, who are still angry that Asterios slaughtered their hero-king Theseus (so much that they won't stop lying about that either).

Did they steal his ship, too (or just replace it)?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Eh, I'm fine with it. And this is coming from the guy that has homebrewed a ton of hybrid races (Half-Gnomes, Mul, Orc-Elves, Dwarf-Elves, Dwarf-Orcs, Half-Ogres, etc). I know from experience that making a couple hybrid races is kind of opening the door for all kinds of other hybrid races ad nauseum. It's "lazy", but the good kind of lazy where you're not doing redundant work just to do redundant work.

And I like playing hybrid-race characters. I just don't think that it's a good idea to have to make a whole new race every time you want to let a player play one. It's kind of exhausting and takes energy that could have been used to make newer races/update races from previous editions that aren't in the game yet.

I'm not sure what this means for the Mul, though, if Dark Sun is ever getting updated to 5e.

In Level Up, a heritage has base characteristics and gifts, which represent special traits that might be different for different members of the heritage. A way to represent physical aspects of a sub-race, for example. If you want to play a mixed heritage character, you take the base from one and the gift from another.