4 out of 5 rating for Volo’s Guide to Monsters
When this book was announced, I was hugely disappointed, on three counts. Firstly, I very much enjoyed the 5e "Monster Manual", and so the single supplement I was most hoping for was an MM2 of the same sort of size and quality. Instead, what was announced was a book that sounded like it was one-third a Monster Manual, which not only fell short by being full of other things I didn't want, but also meant that that MM2 is definitively not happening - it's just not in WotC's plans. Secondly, this book saw them adopt a higher price-point for 5e books - they'd already been right at the top-end of the scale at $50 for their 256-page adventures, but now they were charging $50 for 224 pages.
So I was all set to skip this book. Fortunately (?) though, Amazon had a very large discount available on the pre-order, and so it became an easy buy. But that very much sets the tone for this review: this is an okay book, but very much non-essential, so the question is entirely one of determining at what point it represents value for money.
The book starts in the worst way possible: with a foreword written by "Volo" - a fairly annoying Forgotten Realms character who serves as a travel guide and lore-master - coupled with 'witty' annotations by Elminster. Such joy. Fortunately, the contribution of these characters after that introduction (which is, fortunately, a single page) amounts to a handful of notes in the text, and is therefore much less intrusive than I'd feared.
Thereafter, the book is split into three chapters.
Chapter One is about 100 pages of lore about nine iconic monster types: Beholders, Giants, Gnolls, Goblinoids, Hags, Kobolds, Mind Flayers, Orcs, and Yuan-ti. These are very similar in style to any of the Paizo "... Revisited" books or the old "Ecology of the..." articles from Dragon Magazine. These are all fine, so far as they go, except that too many of them seem to rely on "the gods made them this way" as an explanantion for why the monsters are as they are. Still, that's fine - the selection of monsters is decent, the amount of lore per monster is about right, and it's all fairly interesting. In fairness, I mostly prefer Paizo's take on most of these, but it's nice to have alternatives.
Chapter Two is very short, and provides some additional playable races for the game: Goliaths, Kenku, and a few others. The chapter also includes support for several monster-as-PC options for DMs who are so inclined. I was actually surprised by these: I had intended to ban all of them out of hand, but I found the new races sufficiently interesting that if a player came to me having read the book and wanted to play one of the new races then that would be fine (but not if they just wanted to play the stat-block). The monsters-as-PCs are not something I'd allow, though - I don't care for the concept, and the book notes they're not balanced anyway.
Chapter Three and the Appendices, then, amount to about 100 pages and provide new monsters for the game. Well, new to 5e that is - I don't think there are any genuinely new monsters here, which is no bad thing. The selection here is fine, with some odd choices (apparently, each designer was allowed to nominate one personal favourite for inclusion - which gives a nice weirdness to the book, and is a good thing). I was particularly glad to see personal favourites the Dark Ones and Chitine make the cut. Unfortunately, there are very few high-CR monsters here - it seems WotC once again have no meaningful intention to support high-level play. One of these days they should probably just drop levels 16+ (or even 10+) from the game.
One big criticism that I'll level at the monster chapter, and that I also levelled at "Tome of Beasts" is that the book doesn't have the table showing how the various traits affect monster building. Including such a table would have been a massive boon to a DM building his own monsters or building variants. It really should be a standard feature (or would be a really nice web enhancement).
And that's that.
So, a recommendation...
In some ways, this is really three books in one, as represented by the three chapters: monster lore, new PC races, new monsters. If all three of those appeal, this book is worth considering. If any one of the three does not appeal, you should probably skip this book unless you can get a huge discount. (Fortunately, the presence of Volo in the book is marginal, so shouldn't be a turn-off!)
Having said that, I don't think this book is worth buying at full price anyway. I got it at something like a 35% discount, and it feels like I paid about the right amount for what I got. Make of that what you will.
