D&D 5E Mordenkainen Presents Monsters of the Multiverse Review.

[jasper]

Mordenkainen Presents Monsters of the Multiverse Review.

JUST THE STATS MOM. JUST THE STATS MOM.

TLDR. A must GROUP buy for your Adventure League Group or we love our DM gift.

The book combines the monsters from Volo’s Guide to Monsters, and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes. It rips out most of the lore and just gives you the adjusted stats.

Chapter 1 gives the updated stats for player races from various books and online sources. You have 33 races with each generally given its own page.

The Appendix give the monster by type, challenge rating and environment.

Chapter 2 takes up the rest of the 288 pages. I counted 260 creatures with about 15 being new. Each type of wizard like Apprentice gets its own entry with a nice picture. This is a little bit of padding. Also some other monsters are renamed too. Thorny becomes Thorny Vegepygmy. So I am thinking in the future some common names will be reuse. Spellcasters just get a will or x number per day spells. But most of the changes are either upgrading the hit points or a total change in hit points and AC.

If you already give your monsters max hit points, you are good.

Adventure League has stated this book changes the PC races if they are in other books. And DMs can choose what version of monster they want to use. But Writers of product must use this instead Volo’s or Foes.

Don’t buy if you home brew and have the two previous books. If you have mad money or an crazy cool uncle buy for your D&Der.

 

[pukunui]

I counted 260 creatures with about 15 being new.

There's only one genuinely new creature: the dolphin delighter. All the rest are updates/reprints.

Also some other monsters are renamed too. Thorny becomes Thorny Vegepygmy.

I suspect that is to do with the fact that they decided to go fully alphabetical, so in order to keep some creatures together, they had to adjust their names.

 

[jasper]

i must have missed some of those in my monster HP Cr index

 

[pukunui]

i must have missed some of those in my monster HP Cr index

Which were the other ones you thought were new?

 

[LordEntrails]

Thanks. Now I know there is absolutely no reason for me to buy this.

 

[jasper]

Which were the other ones you thought were new?

Clockworks, deep rothe, sorrowsworn. Looks like Sorrowsworn was added to the angry etc. Aka. Renamed.

 

[pukunui]

Clockworks, deep rothe, sorrowsworn. Looks like Sorrowsworn was added to the angry etc. Aka. Renamed.

The clockworks are in Tome of Foes, as are the Sorrowsworn (and yes, they all got renamed, again probably so they could be kept together in the book).

Interestingly, Volo's included a statblock for ordinary cows and then had some text on how to adjust it for oxen, rothé, and stench kows. I note that in MotM, oxen, deep rothé, and stench kows now have their own individual statblocks, while there are no stats for ordinary cows (or ordinary rothé). I wonder if maybe the ordinary cow will be included in the revised PHB/MM.

 

[Demetrios1453]

The clockworks are in Tome of Foes, as are the Sorrowsworn (and yes, they all got renamed, again probably so they could be kept together in the book).

Interestingly, Volo's included a statblock for ordinary cows and then had some text on how to adjust it for oxen, rothé, and stench kows. I note that in MotM, oxen, deep rothé, and stench kows now have their own individual statblocks, while there are no stats for ordinary cows (or ordinary rothé). I wonder if maybe the ordinary cow will be included in the revised PHB/MM.

The flavor text states that the oxen statblock is used for ordinary cattle.

 

[pukunui]

The flavor text states that the oxen statblock is used for ordinary cattle.

Perhaps. That's now how I'd read it. But that being said, the MotM ox stats are virtually identical to the Volo's cow stats, except for the addition of the Beast of Burden trait (which is called out in the Volo's flavor text) and the fact that the cow's Charge trait has been incorporated into the ox's Gore attack action.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Now that I have my hard copy and have been looking through it, it's a really good resource, basically 5e's MM2 (which, remembering from when VGtM was released, it was widely stated that we would never get in this edition). If you don't have VGtM and MToF, it's a very helpful product to have if you want monsters. And even for me, who have those books, it's convenient to have almost all those monsters, and virtually all the non-PHB races, all together in one place. And I won't need to worry about continued wear-and-tear on my special editions of those books. My only real complaint is that they should have gone for say 320 pages instead of 288, and added in some creatures from outside those two books, either from adventures or newly updated to 5e. 20 - 30 more creatures would have been nice, and would have been a selling point to those who already have the other books...