Dungeons & Dragons: Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse: 1

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Here’s the issue with that approach: if the DM doesn’t happen to pick that golden path, a number of those monsters then fall out of their challenge rating,” Crawford explained. Creature Abilities are now more effectively organised into Actions and Bonus Actions with distinctive titles for quicker identification in the heat of battle.

And in areas such as the description of Changelings, steps have been taken to focus on the characteristics of the creature itself rather than their community’s history, allowing these builds to better fit into Homebrew settings and thrive as whatever unique character you want to create.

Characters are often rather ‘squishy’ at lower levels and then accelerate to God-like power in later campaign stages. A good portion have received a reasonable boost to their HP though others have had changes to their abilities themselves. To me, this reads as an attempt to give the races more ‘flavour’ and to enrich the unique concepts behind each one, without diminishing their effectiveness. Instead of cluttering the stat block with unnecessary weapons, we get to focus on the abilities quintessential to the creatures.

In addition, it replaces two other supplements, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes from 2018 and Volo's Guide to Monsters from 2016. But, well, it’s just been released as a freestanding volume, and everyone’s talking about it, so I can’t let it sit any longer. While I can’t say for certain, I assume this removal is due to shifting perceptions around Orcs in recent years, as Orcs and Half-Orcs have become very popular Character Races, and the blanket labeling of them as evil creatures has widely been overturned. Now players will be more able to “follow their bliss,” as Crawford put it, and not be “pigeonholed” into certain classes based solely on their choice of race. Respectful consideration of word choice, removal of unnecessary fluff, and understanding of homebrew integration.

Feeblemind, geas and imprisonment, as far as I can tell, are history, presumably on the principle that PCs should never be knocked out of the action completely. With that in mind, they worked to make sure each one lived up to their Challenge Rating, no matter which attack Dungeon Masters used. Thanks to those new additions, Dungeons and Dragons is as big as it's ever been, both in terms of players and impact, and a new sourcebook will help grow that even more.