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I have been very busy gaming-wise running an online Pathfinder Open Table. Recently, I suffered a bit of burnout from Pathfinder high level play, as I find it draining to GM and frustrating to play (too much chaff in the rules, too many pointless layers of complexity to keep track of and frankly terrible balance added into it. It’s got it’s advantages, but I need a break!)
So when I was back home in Dublin I picked up a copy of the Player’s Handbook. I’m going to review it from a few different angles.
Presentation:
I like the art style they are using better than the art style for 4th, which was too clean and cartoony, but I have to say there are some awful art pieces in there. The Halfling particularly is just diabolically bad. But the book has many nice two page or half page pieces and generally is attractive and easy to read.
Races:
More race options than any other edition out of the gate. I quite like how it’s been done, and picking a race really does mean something more than a +2 to an ability and darkvision now. One thing I didn’t like as much was the emphasis on sub-races, which I have always found to be a bit odd. But okay, it’s one extra choice I guess, I can live with it. Dragonborn are in, but they kinda grew on me last edition, so I don’t mind them that much now. I think the base culture for them doesn’t make much sense and I would just have them be the “half dragons” of the game, but I don’t mind them being there. Tieflings being included is also okay by me, though the now “standard” tiefling appearance is less interesting than the old style open ended appearance. They are careful to present the races from a positive standpoint, which I think is a slight missed chance to emphasize flaws and cultural differences, but there are side bars about race relations that should help with roleplaying.
Classes:
More classes than before, too! Having read through them all, I am most impressed with the way they have differentiated Sorcerer, Wizard and Warlock from each other properly. Apart from that, I like that Spellcasters now get fewer spells especially at high levels, as it helps to rein them in a bit. Fighters will be reaching super human levels of physical power with their numerous ability score increases and extra attacks. I’ll have to see how it plays to really determine if I like the balance between casters and others that much, but the classes presented seem distinct enough to provide some real choice. One thing I am ambivalent about is the approach to Prestige Classes or even certain class features. So now each class has several paths it can choose to go down at a certain level, and these paths are themed – so thief vs. assassin, conjurer vs. necromancer, Life Cleric vs. Nature Cleric, Fey Pact vs. Infernal Pact etc etc. This is cool in a way, because it makes these choices very significant. But in another way, these paths are somewhat of a prescriptive fixed package, limiting player freedom somewhat because the benefits are very fixed. This has the advantage of making it very easy for new players to make a character and follow the concept, but people looking for more variety or options might find it a bit limiting. I think due to my position as a Pathfinder burnout, I will enjoy this aspect as it will let me get on with what I enjoy without worrying over build, but I know that some of my players are going to feel that these packages would be better broken into many smaller choices so that people can play a la carte paladin rather than the set Oath of Vengeance Paladin menu. A big difference overall is that your access to skills is very limited now, because your potential skill list is set by class and there is little chance for “cross class” skills as in 3.X. This is a big issue or not depending on how you view it, I guess, but it is slightly addressed in the next section.
Backgrounds:
My favourite idea in the book, though potentially the execution is a bit lacking. The classes you pick from as I mentioned are very prescriptive in what you can choose for your skills and tool proficiencies. The game now essentially forces you to select a background which provides some character backstory, a cool little roleplaying advantage related to your background and some proficiencies. I think most of my players will unfortunately be looking at this mechanically, and trying to decide which one is “best” for their “build” rather than selecting one that is appropriate. Unfortunately I can see where they are coming from because not all backgrounds are created equal. The Criminal background gives potential proficiency in Stealth and Thieves Tools, which for many adventurers are two really important skills (disabling locks and traps and scouting in the dungeon are then opened to any character with reasonable dexterity). Other backgrounds give much less adventurer specific bonuses which though cool will rarely come up. Entire parties of Criminals would not surprise me. The other issue I have with the background system (which I must say I do really like from a roleplaying perspective!) is that the backgrounds that make sense for each class (for example Sage for Wizard and Criminal for Rogue) have a lot of overlap with those classes already. So for maximum mechanical benefit it makes “sense” for you to have a Criminal Wizard and a Sage Rogue. This could be cool, of course, but I think the system sort of creates an unintended incentive for this sort of gaming the system, so I am not wild about it. There are also not a huge number of backgrounds presented, and no guidelines on suggesting or building your own. I like the idea though, so I will probably allow players to build their own backgrounds within reason with a set of guidelines. Shame the execution in the book wasn’t thought through a little better.
Equipment:
Not much to say here, except that allowing finesse weapons to apply dex to damage from the start is a good move, and I like the random trinket table because I like random tables. I will never use it probably, but the presence of random tables in RPG books is like a lucky horseshoe nailed over the door. Pointless, but reassuring. Oh, and I’m not sure the different armour types are balanced against each other at all, but they never really were.
Player Options (Basically, multiclassing and feats):
I like that these rules are presented as a sort of advanced option, because it means the game is less complicated to explain to new players. On the whole I am in favour of the new feats as they all do something significant and are worth choosing. I think there will probably be some that are too good, but I don’t think any are game breaking and they are sufficiently rare that they hopefully won’t have an enormous impact. I am basically okay with how multiclassing works but I will have to see it in play to really make a judgement.
The Game Rules:
Okay I’m going to do all of these at the same time because I feel like the system is completely connected.
The basics- Well, it’s still a D20 game and you’re still rolling and adding for your outcomes. Many have spoken about the advantage, disadvantage mechanics, and if you’re reading this you probably have an idea of how these sorts of things work. So I am going to approach this from the position of what I like about it coming from Pathfinder.
Smaller Numbers:
AC is now much lower across the board, meaning a low level character will not be swinging and missing against a powerful foe. I love this idea though I have yet to see it play out in game. It will also mean that low level mooks never become completely unthreatening which I think is great. Attack bonuses also do not climb too high, and I think this is also a positive.
Fewer Situational Bonuses:
The game essentially shears out all the bonuses and recalculation and replaces them with broader and easier to work with things. So for example, gaining resistance to a damage now means that you take half damage from all sources of that damage. This is easy to remember and keep track of. It’s also readily available from low level. One huge change is that many “buff” spells such as Haste are now Concentration only, which means that Casters can only have one of them active at a time. This reduces book keeping but also prevents the longwinded escalation of buffing magic that was a feature of high level 3.5 and makes it easier for players and GMs to plan tactics. I am really in favour of this. This also means that players (and enemies) can disrupt buffs through mundane means, giving all classes a way to interact with powerful spellcasters. Many buff spells also just set AC or an ability at a set number, meaning there is less need for constant on the fly recalculation and it’s just easier to keep the game flowing with fewer mistakes.
Focus on Ability Scores:
The game is now focused on ability checks as the main mechanic. I think this is a good idea for several reasons. It first of all differentiates characters based on their different scores more- it allows more granularity. Second, it lowers the importance of the “save” scores from 3.X. Lastly, it is obvious to new players and easy to grasp. I really, really like the way the character sheets are set up with the bonus as the biggest number and the score as a small subscript. This is great because explaining that your strength bonus and your strength score are related by subtracting 10 and dividing by 2 is a real pain in the backside with new players, and it is offputting to them.
Flexibility:
The rules are written with many suggestions about how to loosen things up or approach things differently. I like this as it will help new players appreciate the “rulings vs. rules” side of the RPG gaming experience. I feel that Pathfinder is too legalistic and mechanistic in it’s layout and this creates certain expectations and mindsets in players that harm creativity.
Streamlining:
The new system is very streamlined. Things which in previous editions might have required feat trees to do are now simply part of the core rules to encourage a dynamic approach. Moving, attacking, reacting, attacks of opportunity have ALL been tidied up and made simple and fluid to adjudicate. The rules for contests and so on make working out grappling, climbing on top of monsters and so on very easy. And laid over all of this is the flexible Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic. The overall impression is of a game that will play quickly and fluidly without people needing to remember many situational bonuses and small exceptions to the rules. A big thumbs up from me on that!
Spells:
This could be a long section, and I have a lot to say about individual spells, but I will try to keep it brief. The spellcasting section has stepped away from the 4th edition paradigm and back towards 3rd edition, but with some important changes. Most obvious is the concentration change I mentioned earlier. Apart from that, most spells now do a set amount of damage with the damage only increasing if you choose to prepare it in a higher slot, and mostly only increasing along fairly simple patters like +1dX per spell level. Other spells have their effect simplified and made more straightforward, though I wonder sometimes if this has provided a truly balanced spell list. I suspect not, and I suspect that this is likely to be where most mechanical problems stem from. Most of the auto-choice spells from 3.X are there, but perhaps slightly neutered (the ever popular Haste spell for example now causes users to be stunned after it’s use). We shall have to see in play how it works out, I suspect the lower number of spells and the neutering will rein things in but not completely and casters will still be the most powerful things in high level play, but hopefully enough that fighters can do well.

As you can see I am VERY positive about the way these rules are structured. I am a GM primarily and this is a very GM friendly rules set. I think my players might become a little frustrated at the lack of options though, being used to Pathfinder. I hope they would come to appreciate that an option which gives you a +1 bonus to an overall score of +20 is not a significant option and only adds to rules bloat, but we will see.
Appendix:
As a pleasant bonus there is an appendix of conditions and about cosmology and gods, as well as the various animals usable as animal companions. A nice touch and well excuted, so fair play.

Overall I think you can see I am broadly positive about this edition. I expect that certain aspects will annoy me, but I think it is a good antidote for anyone burned out on Pathfinder who tried 4th and was disappointed by it.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Awww crap! Can someone move this to the board gaming and RPG board, sorry!

Dopey today!

Well I have been requesting this review for a long time so I'm very happy to finally read it. You make a number of thoughtful and interesting points. It seems like you have a bit of 3.X-induced PTSD, however! I have friends ensconced in that 3.X/4E mindset that tried 5E in the initial tide of good will only to abandon it when they realized "my fighter can still only swing his sword." Which is to say, groups that enjoy ruleplay more than roleplay seem to feel 5E has let too much air out of the tires. As you know, I lean OSR and so 5E strikes me as sending mixed signals -- which of course makes sense because the goal WotC established at the outset was Big Tent D&D. The chimerical result will not please any established camp. My conclusion is, 5E is not really for people who would know to call it 5E. It is for people who would just call it "D&D" ... which is to say, new players or at least players who don't care about things like having a favorite edition.

I definitely have 3.X induced PTSD.

My group is pretty cool, but I think at the end of the day they like their "player options" and "crunch" a bit too much. To me, most of those choices are fairly meaningless and the important choices are the ones you make in the game rather than outside of it, but I can't deny their preference as they are the ones that I play with.
So in that way, I have to compare everything to their preferred style in my head, because I know I'm going to have to do a "sales pitch" with them to get them to try it, and I can sort of see the areas they are going to disagree with early on.

I definitely agree that it is well geared towards new players though. I am running intro games in my school at the moment and have also been introducing new players to pathfinder.

The difference in difficulty in introducing people to the two systems, and the behaviours both encourage is stark, and to my mind, heavily in favour of 5th edition.

I don't really care about edition that much- I started in 3.0 and so that is the one that defines a lot of my expectations about D'n'D. I ran many campaigns in 3.0 and 3.5 before getting pretty tired of it, and then ran 4th edition and liked it for a while before it's flaws became too noticeable for me to continue with it. I've been doing Pathfinder for a year now, and it's main advantage is the large amount of digital content available for free and the huge back catalogue of adventure materials for me to use in my current format. But I've grown to hate running sessions in it and trying to keep the game flowing nicely, so I am ready to try 5th for a while.

But D'n'D is what it is, it's always going to be fairly mechanical, combat based, and pulpy. I play other games to get other outcomes, but I always come back to D'n'D because the default playstyle is just a lot of fun.

I'm going to do shorter reviews for the DMG and the MM too, so thanks for reading that one!

 Da Boss wrote:
the behaviours both encourage is stark

For me, this is the big one. I honestly regret everytime I introduced someone to RPGing with a 3.X ruleset.

 Da Boss wrote:
But D'n'D is what it is, it's always going to be fairly mechanical,

If you mean heavy on mechanics, that's totally false. D&D is best when mechanics recede into the background. That's not just a matter of taste, either. Board games and miniatures games do mechanics-heavy D&D better than any RPG. RPGs are for something else, which you capture beautifully here:

 Da Boss wrote:
the important choices are the ones you make in the game rather than outside of it

 Da Boss wrote:
combat based,

Okay now that one is true.

 Da Boss wrote:
and pulpy.

... I guess? That one is pretty vague.

The MM in my opinion is totally average. There's nothing to really complain about and honestly not very much to praise. I'm interested to hear what you think of that portion of the DMG that isn't a magic items encyclopedia.

Literally within the first fight the kids were getting creative, asking "Can I climb this tree? Howabout if I jump on the werewolf from here, can I knock it over into the fire?"
The open ended nature of the character sheets and basic rules meant that they had to ask these questions rather than look for the way to do it on the character sheet. Some people don't like that, as they feel it gives too much "power" to the GM. I would disagree, especially seeing as the game provides mechanics and guidelines for resolving these situations, but doesn't make such a big mechanical deal out of them.

The kids did all sorts of crazy creative stuff. And okay, it could just be because they were excitable kids, but I think I saw my brother get less creative as he learned more rules in D'n'D and got "better" at character building, a trend I've noticed in the group as a whole. I think the games were cooler and flowed better when we all had a looser grasp on the rules.

Perhaps my view is very rose tinted

By mechanics heavy, I mean that D'n'D (as far as I know, not an expert on older editions) has always attempted to provide a fairly comprehensive mechanical system to interact with the game world. I agree, this should fade into the background, but the mechanical flavour was present in 3.0 - 4th anyhow, and is still present in 5th though perhaps not as dominant. I understand that it was not as prevalent in the old school, but there were still many "systems" for things back then, AFAIK.

Pulpy, well, I can't think of a better way to put it, but I'm trying to get across the fantasy "style" of dungeons and dragons with that phrase.

 Da Boss wrote:
Some people don't like that, as they feel it gives too much "power" to the GM.

I used to think this way. I once (embarrassing to think of it now) called 3.5 a "Player's Bill of Rights" asserted against DM tyranny. But the truth is, when your "freedoms" are enumerated you simply have less of them. Another thing I have learned (after a lot of arguing with wiser players) is that DM tyranny is the product of tyrannical DMs rather than any rule set.

 Da Boss wrote:
I understand that it was not as prevalent in the old school, but there were still many "systems" for things back then, AFAIK.

I wasn't playing D&D in the 70s (wasn't alive) or 80s. I only started with AD&D 2E Revised in the mid 90s. But I have spent a lot of time poring over each edition, reading recollections of players from those days, and asking tons and tons of questions. More importantly, at least as far as my experience goes, I don't care so much about "old school" (whatever that means) as I do about the OSR -- the Old School Renaissance. Despite the name, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with older players or what they used to do 30+ years ago. Rather, it is about how a generation fed up with 3.X has been playing since the late 2000s.

5th edition has some imbalances but you have to get fairly deep in to the find them. Overall its well balanced, and a lot simpler without being dumbed down.

Hah, fair play Orlanth for summing up my rambling post in two sentences

Manchu - I see the OSR in the same way, I'm just not very careful with my language

I've really improved my gaming with a lot ideas from and related to the OSR, and I think the main thing it's taught me is consider what my objectives in playing these games are more carefully and then plan to achieve those objectives.

I started with the brown books (only the AD&D MM was out at the time. The PHB was released some months after I started). So far, 5e has been-- at least to me and my friends-- what 2e should have been, instead of the mess that it was. We are enjoying it greatly.

Some of the 5e classes are meh. The PHB could be better organized (the spells in particular.) The MM has too much pretty artwork and not enough monsters. Still digesting the DMG, but it seems decent enough. Then again, I am comparing it to the original, which is probably unfair.

OSR means play for the experience of playing, not just for winning combats -- 'hack and slash' style play. At least to me.

HackMaster 4th edition was the ultimate in RPG.

However, 5th Edition D&D is quickly growing on me. We also have an excellent GM.

Anyone got any rumours as to when 5th Edition OGL will be enabled?

 Orlanth wrote:
Anyone got any rumours as to when 5th Edition OGL will be enabled?

I'm guessing "never" in the sense of large parts being re-printable content the way the previous OGL did. I do think they'll eventually release some sort of 'Made for D&D' licensing option to make 3rd party content more legally secure and printable. I won't be surprised if WotC at least tries to implement a process where you need their approval to use any sort of branding, but it would be worth it for a lot of companies.

I don't think they're looking for the d20-era "every game has a d20 version' boom. That ship has sailed, and took a lot of WotC's control with it. Considering all the released 5e adventures were contracted out, I do see them trying to build up a market of 'halo' D&D products that require the core books (like the origional OGL and licensing tried to do) and extend the market at minimal risk for WotC.

Back when the PDF rolled out, the word was early 2015. Some third parties have already been printing 5E stuff anyhow.

Example:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1409961192/fifth-edition-fantasy-adventure-modules/description

I am more concerned with the absence of a searchable, online SRD. Looking up spells and the like by scrolling through a pdf seems pretty archaic these days- a searchable index would really help me sell the game to my friends.

 Da Boss wrote:
I am more concerned with the absence of a searchable, online SRD. Looking up spells and the like by scrolling through a pdf seems pretty archaic these days- a searchable index would really help me sell the game to my friends.

CTRL-F? Works on the Basic Rules at least.

Still not as good as a searcheable index in my view, where for example spell lists are a series of links and I just need to click to open the description of the spell. CTRL-F is okay, but not nearly as useful.

To me, this is Pathfinder's single biggest advantage over 5th, alongside Wizards not selling PDFs of everything yet.

You mean, biggest advantage in terms of you personally right?

I prefer books to pdf on a tablet. I put post it page markers in my book to make it easy to find the spell list, class chapter, and other important stuff.

 Manchu wrote:
You mean, biggest advantage in terms of you personally right?

Yep, that's why I said "to me".

I just don't really understand why they don't do it, considering it wouldn't be much of a job to put a site like that up. Or to make the PDFs of their games available for purchase.

 Da Boss wrote:
Yep, that's why I said "to me".

LOL completely overlooked that, sorry.

 Da Boss wrote:
I just don't really understand why they don't do it, considering it wouldn't be much of a job to put a site like that up.

I'm not sure but I guess it has something to do with branding.

 Da Boss wrote:
Or to make the PDFs of their games available for purchase.

This one is simple. They want to sell print books. Like I mentioned to you in the other thread, Hasbro's strategy with 5E seems to be token market presence.

 Manchu wrote:
I'm not sure but I guess it has something to do with branding.

If their emphasis is on "Rulings not Rules" as I've heard a bit, something like an online searchable SRD runs contrary to this. It would be a tool that let's you search rules and just be existing kind of embraces:

"Wait. We're not sure what to do here"
"Let's search the SRD"
"Ah yes. I see, this is the proper way to way to resolve things!"

rather than
"Wait. We're not sure what to do here"
"Ahh, just roll like 1d20+int if you get a 14 1d6 bad things happen, if you get a 16 it's normal and if you get a 20 it's normal and also you get a pan of brownies"

Certainly the first scenario played out in a ton of my 3.P groups. How the rules are presented can play role in informing player attitudes as much as what the rules are can.

If the rules are presented in a book that you can read and get the gist of but are awkward to go back and verify things on the spot, you'll tend to take the gist of them and run with it. If the rules presented in super-fast easy to verify format, you'll have reason to try and verify things on the spot and never just "run with it" further this will shape attitudes and create demand for more specific things to verify in future releases.

This is at least one way of looking at it anyway. I'm not 100% sure it's the view I'd actually take on the matter but I think it's valid at least.

 Orlanth wrote:
5th edition has some imbalances but you have to get fairly deep in to the find them. Overall its well balanced, and a lot simpler without being dumbed down.

The only two things I've found to be grossly out of whack with the game, save some high level spells are the bards spell learning feature and combat skill contests.

Oh god combat skill contests. How did these even make through even cursory play testing? I guess it's not so much they're imbalanced or OP. It's just that they're broken in that the mechanic doesn't work correctly, it isn't any kind of contest!

They're keyed off of skill checks (Athletics, generally) to which you can apply expertise and low-cost PC abilities can give ready access to advantage on. Since basically no monsters are proficient in athletics and almost never generate advantage on it, you wind up with a situation where: "If it can be grappled, you grapple it without any meaningful chance of failure every time" even without a build super-focused around doing.

I'd highly suggest that anyone running the game just make it so that grapple/shove is something where a monsters has to make a Dex/Str Saving throw (their choice) vs the player's DC of 8 + STR or DEX (player's Choice) + Proficiency Bonus. It's way more in keeping with the rest of the overall design and makes so it actually has a chance of being a real pass/fail mechanic.

It's even faster to run since it's just a single save roll for the monster, rather than having both the monster and PC roll.

Huh. They put up a HTML version of the rules and I didn't even notice (mostly because I don't really frequent the Wizards site because it is a pile of corporate dog-gak masquerading as a hobby website).
http://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop/players-basic-rules

Not as nice as the Pathfinder SRD, but functional, and to me, it does the important thing and groups spells by level for ease of access. No one in the history of ever has needed spells organised alphabetically!

I'm loving 5th Edition, though when I finally run my own game I'm making use of some of the alternate rules in the DMG, and mixing in some 13th Age.

I'm loving all the free supplements they keep releasing on the website, and already nabbed a few free things off of RPGDriveThru to play with.

What freebies from RPGDriveThru? The old 4th ed modules they have?

 kronk wrote:
HackMaster 4th edition was the ultimate in RPG.

However, 5th Edition D&D is quickly growing on me. We also have an excellent GM.

Erol Otus artwork on the cover of the free basic rules PDF for Hackmaster? Ugh. He was the worst of the old TSR artists. Even worse than the ones who drew the original artwork in the brown books. Y'know the stuff, it looked like it was drawn with a felt tip marker on a napkin.

Skimmed through the basic rules. Interesting stuff. It, too, is a 5th edition.

 Red Harvest wrote:
What freebies from RPGDriveThru? The old 4th ed modules they have?

TMy favortie so far is Scions of Dusk: Two new races, class options, and some magic items. But if you browse the 5E/Next category with price set to Free or Pay What You Want there's about a page of goodies (and some meh stuff). A few adventures, items, game aides, a smattering of race/monster related stuff, that kind of thing. I also picked up some class and race themed trinket downloads that were under a dollar each.

Edit: I also downloaded from WotC all the urban arcana, as well as the Elemental Trinkets, Elemental Evil Players Guide, and the D20 modern converted stuff. They have a no-spell version of the ranger and a favored soul somewhere in their articles, too...

Thanks much

 Red Harvest wrote:
What freebies from RPGDriveThru? The old 4th ed modules they have?

 kronk wrote:
HackMaster 4th edition was the ultimate in RPG.

However, 5th Edition D&D is quickly growing on me. We also have an excellent GM.

Erol Otus artwork on the cover of the free basic rules PDF for Hackmaster? Ugh. He was the worst of the old TSR artists. Even worse than the ones who drew the original artwork in the brown books. Y'know the stuff, it looked like it was drawn with a felt tip marker on a napkin.

Skimmed through the basic rules. Interesting stuff. It, too, is a 5th edition.

Erol Otus has a style that was suitable for the printing capability of the time and carries with it a lot of nostalgia.
I am a fan of his RPG art, most of it anyway, but certainly not all.

 Red Harvest wrote:
Thanks much

Not a problem. I have a bit of a compulsion to collect free content for games I play (even if I might never use it), so I might as well spread it around, eh?

The monster manual is usually my favourite book in any RPG game. I'm a huge creature-geek, and I love reading about fantastic creatures and imaginary beastiaries. So I had high expectations for this book, but I suppose I might be the sort that is pretty easily pleased by pretty pictures of cool monsters and so on.

And the pictures in this book are pretty cool. The art style is very "digital", but I don't mind that at all really. I like it, I think it's cool and the style is pretty consistent barring a couple of oddities (Modrons). Every entry gets a decent, full size portrait of the monster, which I appreciate. The group-shots of the previous manuals were cool, but had less utility in terms of showing people what they were up against, in my opinion. Design wise, they've gone for a more "realistic" style over the more clean and cartoony 4th edition style. Like I said, I like it, and I like how consistently good it is compared to the PHB art which was very variable. It's also kid friendly, and I know this annoys some people, but as a teacher running games for some of my students, I really appreciate this because I don't want any parents complaining about half naked devil women.

Goblinoids have had a redesign, which I am not wild about. Trogs have had one that I actually really like. All the dragon art is pretty awesome. Modrons are a bit out-of-kilter with everything else and seem to be direct pandering to fans of the (admittedly great if a bit samey) Planescape art pieces. Worst art in the book is the weirdly posed and proportioned Empyrean, best art is probably the Gnoll or the Mummy.

So, techical stuff: This book is laid out as you might expect with some general chatter about monster types and locations as well as the common monster rules, before a long list of the monsters in alphabetical order. The starting section is decent enough but I feel you will rarely have to use it, because the 5th edition stat block is actually pretty comprehensive while being pretty brief. One of the things I really loved about 4th edition was the way monster design and player design had been decoupled to make monsters easier to run and to allow all the relevant information to be in these neatly organised stat blocks. 3.X's long stat blocks are just not user friendly, and every alteration to make them so has not worked in my opinion.

5th has some really nicely done stat blocks. They're more "player-lite" than a totally different system as in 4th, but the simpler rules for players mean you could write most of them up in such a stat block too. You basically only need the statblock to run the monster, without needing to refer back to "Construct Type" or "Undead Type" with everything included for you. I love this, it makes the book just much easier to use. I also like the prioritization of information. So in terms of layout and organisation, I really like this book.

One of the best additions is the idea of "Legendary Lairs" for powerful monsters. This is really useful for GMs and helps newer a GM to understand about foreshadowing and environmental clues, which then leads to more intelligent play and informed choice making by players. When you find the water in an area tainted by sulfur and your sleep is disturbed by tremors during the night, it might make you afraid, or it might make you curious. This is even if you don't know that these are signs of a Red Dragon lairing nearby. This works great for a hexcrawl style game, and I think it's a brilliant additon. Granting "lair actions" to monsters in their lairs really helps to create a dynamic fight straight off the bat. So, two thumbs up on that piece of design.

Monster design in general I'm not too sure about. I don't have a good "feel" for CR yet, and it seems quite different to previous editions. I've found from playtesting that groups of low CR enemies can be a significant threat, even to higher level characters. I like this a lot, but it does raise the question of is the CR system worth the paper it is written on? I prefer a more naturalistic style of play anyway, but a decent CR system is handy, and I think 5th is probably a bit loose in this regard, an inevitable consequence of the system. It's by no means a deal breaker for me, but I think a more general threat level than a numerical scale makes more sense if you're going to have fairly vague threat levels, and I think this is where we see a bit of a clash of design philosophies in this system as the CR system is fairly integral in the game design but is actually kinda useless at telling you how difficult a fight is really going to be! One thing I do like is "legendary actions" for powerful monsters, allowing them bonus actions at the end of player turns. Increasing the number of these is an easy fix if you are finding your "big bads" to be falling down too easily against players. The monster design does seem to want to encourage creative solutions to problems though- for example the medusa entry specifically states that a medusa who catches sight of her reflection is subject to her petrification gaze. This is really cool and rewards intelligent play.

The monsters are pretty distinct from each other, in a similar way to how they were in 4th edition, but they retain more of the "flavour" they had in some cases in 3rd edition. In 4th, if a monster had an ability that was not usable in combat, it was left out. In 5th, these little abilities and gimmicks are left in, but the design remains pretty clean and distinct. In 3rd edition, a Gnoll, an Orc, a Dwarf and a Human were all functionally the same and could have been covered by a generic "humanoid" statblock. In 5th, these different humanoids get just enough to make them different (Orcs get a bonus move towards enemies, gnolls get a rampage action when they down a foe).

When I read the 3.0 and 3.5 monster manuals, I was always a little disappointed that so little of the space was given over to background text and information I could use in game, not just in combat. I don't think this is a criticism anyone could level at the 5th Ed MM. Almost every entry has at least 3 paragraphs of text detailing background and information on the monsters. If there are subtypes of monster, they get at least a paragraph each. Some monsters, like a Cockatrice, get less, some monsters, like Dragons, get more, but you are not lacking information. There are also little sidebar shout-outs to famous villains like Strahd Von Zarovich or Lord Soth, which is probably a sop to oldies but as a Ravenloft fan I liked it . The parts I really liked in these write ups were the setting information that was strewn among the empires. You get to find out about the Mindflayer Empire, and how certain races were created by the illithids and escaped, how Behirs were bred by Giants to fight Dragons in a long forgotten war, or how Chuul are related to Aboleths. Many may find this irrelevant or restrictive, but personally, little details like that get my creative juices flowing and satisfy the creature-geek in me.

Last of all, there is the appendix. The appendix contains all the animals and NPCs in a big list. One thing to criticise here is that all the giant creatures are grouped together rather than as say "Spider, Giant" it's "Giant Spider". Minor niggle. Stuff like Worgs and Fire Beetles are put in here interestingly, though they do get art if they are fantastical. It's okay, better than leaving out interesting monsters to give these full entries, or inventing sort of made-up fantasy versions of animals like the Feywild crocodile and panther of 4th. The NPC appendix is good enough, with a note on how you can simply add racial traits to the NPCs presented to customise them. I would have liked a much more thorough NPC appendix to be honest, but I can live without it.

My final thoughts are about the thing that they did not include in this book which I would have really liked- sample encounter tables. I wonder if this is a deliberate omission to encourage us to create our own encounter tables rather than relying on pre-made one size fits all ones. Still, I would have liked to have seen some, because I like to look through them and on those days when I don't have time to prep my own rolling on the provided tables has given us some brilliant off the cuff adventures.

So, I really like this book. A few minor niggles stop it from being perfect, but it is the best Monster Manual that I have bought from Wizards of the Coast in three editions, so it must have done something right. I give it a solid B+.

Monster Manual includes some of the negative changes.

Slaad can reproduce very easily in 5th and require 9th level spell slots to block. This presents a scaling problem in game.
A single low level Slaad can assimilate an entire nation in a matter of weeks and can only be stopped by 17th+ level characters.
Not thought through well at all.

Colossal is missing, though i wish it wasnt as its useful for reference between very big things.
Also in all the colour and pizazz there wasnt enough room for all the standard monsters from older Monster Manuals. Some are missing, nymphs for instance.


To offset that dragons are simplified into three age brackets. Also many of the monsters are better explained, though for some the explanation, even the scale has changed. Dragon turtles for instances are buffed considerably and are now a serious menace.