D&D 5E Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes or Monsters of the Multiverse if I don't care about new PC races?

[Greg K]

If I don't care about new PC races, should I purchase Tome of Foes or Monsters of the Multiverse? What makes one a stronger purchase of another?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Tome of Foes gets you some lore on pairings of different groups with their traditional enemies. I don't know that anyone has ever been terribly excited about that stuff.

So it really comes down to whether you like/agree with the monster redesign goals.

If you like the old system where you get every possible spell a monster can cast laid out and where it's possible to play a suboptimal version of a monster for its CR, get Tome of Foes.

If you want the monsters more streamlined and with "trap" options either removed or scaled up to match the proper CR threat level, get Multiverse.

(And yes, there are plenty of DMs who did not feel they ever fell for the trap options. WotC redesigned the monsters for all the other DMs.)

 

[Greg K]

So it really comes down to whether you like/agree with the monster redesign goals.

What were the monster redesign goals?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What were the monster redesign goals?

I went back and edited my post to explain better.

 

[Greg K]

If you like the old system where you get every possible spell a monster can cast laid out and where it's possible to play a suboptimal version of a monster for its CR, get Tome of Foes.

If you want the monsters more streamlined and with "trap" options either removed or scaled up to match the proper CR threat level, get Multiverse.

(And yes, there are plenty of DMs who did not feel they ever fell for the trap options. WotC redesigned the monsters for all the other DMs.)

Would the Vecna stat block that WOTC put out be an example of the streamlining format found in Multiverse?

 

[Burnside]

Do you already own Volo's Guide to Monsters? If not, Monsters of the Multiverse is the easy choice because it gives you almost all the monsters from both Tome of Foes and Volo's.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Would the Vecna stat block that WOTC put out be an example of the streamlining format found in Multiverse?

Yeah, I believe it had it. So you don't get a giant list of hundreds of spells that Vecna ought to (and almost certainly does) have access to, but just the ones they suggest you use in combat.

 

[JEB]

Depends on whether you value lore or not. If you do, Tome of Foes is the better choice, because over 100 pages of lore are missing from Multiverse, to include lore on demons and gith, in addition to core PC options. Plus the Multiverse versions of the Foes monsters are cut back lore-wise to varying degrees.

If your sole concern is mechanics, then as @Whizbang Dustyboots said, depends on whether you prefer the old or new monster design philosophy - Foes is old, Multiverse is new. If you're also concerned with forward compatibility, you'd probably want Multiverse.

 

[Parmandur]

Do you already own Volo's Guide to Monsters? If not, Monsters of the Multiverse is the easy choice because it gives you almost all the monsters from both Tome of Foes and Volo's.

Yeah, this is what I'd say: if you don't have Volo's, get Multiverse.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Depends on whether you value lore or not. If you do, Tome of Foes is the better choice, because over 100 pages of lore are missing from Multiverse, to include lore on demons and gith, in addition to core PC options. Plus the Multiverse versions of the Foes monsters are cut back lore-wise to varying degrees.

The lore isn't necessarily great, though, and a lot of it is pretty self-evident. Yeah, the surface elves and (traditional) drow don't like each other, and their enmity stretches back to a mythic civil war among their people.

For a DM extremely new to the hobby, some of it might be useful, but you can get similar ideas almost anywhere, including various meaty threads on RPG.net and ENWorld, to say nothing of many, many sourcebooks from many different publishers.