D&D 5E Tome of Beasts+ 3pp Books

[FormerlyHemlock]

I can think of one reason for players to use it, though it wouldn't be a common situation. Namely, in your combat as war scenarios, that sounds like an excellent means of disrupting the industry of an enemy city. Evil, probably, but effective.

Sure, that would work. Another example is to use it as a Hiroshima spell: use it to end a war by proving strategic dominance in a way which leaves the enemy no choice but to comply with your terms. If used this way, it's probably a campaign-ender: if you end World War II, you probably just "won" the campaign and will have no further challenges comparable to the ones you just completed. (Unless you're playing Harry Turtledove's WWII, in which case you're winning the war just in time for lizard aliens from outer space to invade the planet.)

I don't expect any of these to be common scenarios, and even in these scenarios, Death Bringer is a way but far from the only way to triumph. (E.g. instead of wiping out a few city Hobgoblin cities, you could instead try a deep strike to kidnap the Hobgoblin emperor and top leadership.)

I think it's an interesting spell to have in a campaign.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

I can think of one reason for players to use it, though it wouldn't be a common situation. Namely, in your combat as war scenarios, that sounds like an excellent means of disrupting the industry of an enemy city. Evil, probably, but effective.

That's not "combat as war" it's "war as war".

Of course, in a fantasy world those kind of tactics can backfire when the enemy animates all those civilians you killed as zombies to bolster their armies.

 

[Goober4473]

The Tome of Beasts is definitely pretty cool, but I think it could have done with some more editing, and a slightly better understanding of the 5e rule set. It's usually not a problem, like when some of the Clockwork monsters have "on death" abilities that are listed as actions, or when they say "withdraw action" instead of disengage. It's pretty obvious what they meant. It feels sloppy, but it doesn't really reduce the usefulness of the book. But I've seen at least one instance of "chosen randomly from the list below:" followed by no list, and a couple of abilities that are very vaguely written. i.e. "immunity to psychic effects." These sorts of things make it a little harder to use some of the monsters.

I can't speak to most other 3rd party books, but if you want more monsters, my Planar Bestiary on the DMs Guild has a bunch that I can guarantee are well edited. Not to toot my own horn or anything.