D&D’s 2025 Monster Manual Will Contain An Unexpected Amount of New Monsters

Dungeons & Dragons‘ new Monster Manual will contain a surprising number of brand-new monsters. As part of D&D’s 50th anniversary celebration, Wizards of the Coast is releasing new versions of the game’s core rulebooks. Each of these rulebooks has received major overhauls, with revised rules for the game’s current Fifth Edition ruleset, new artwork, and new layouts that are much more reader-friendly. So far, the Player’s Handbook and the Dungeon Master’s Guide have been released with the third and final rulebook, the Monster Manual, due out in February 2025.

In a recent post on D&D Beyond, Wizards of the Coast revealed that the Monster Manual would contain over 85 brand-new monsters. While Wizards had previously revealed that the rulebook would contain over 500 monsters (a significant upgrade over the 2014 Monster Manual, which contained approximately 300 monsters), this is the first confirmation of how many would be entirely brand new. The book will also contain over 300 new illustrations, showcasing the many kinds of monsters found in the game.

What Will Be In D&D’s 2025 Monster Manual?

Over 500 Monsters Will Appear In New Rulebook

While details about the Monster Manual are still relatively scarce, Wizards has noted that the book will contain more high and low Challenge Rating (CR) monsters to help diversify campaigns. For instance, the new Monster Manual will contain low CR variants of vampires for low-level adventurers to face, along with a new Vampire Nightbringer that serves as a threat in higher-level campaigns. By comparison, the 2014 Monster Manual contains a Vampire Spawn at CR 5 and a Vampire at CR 13. Other new monsters confirmed include the Blob of Annihilation and an arch-hag.

The new Monster Manual will also update and streamline various monster statblocks to rebalance them. For many higher CR monsters, this means that the monsters will hit harder and have new abilities or attacks. Legendary Reactions and Lair Actions were also removed and replaced in favor of monsters having multiple reactions that can be activated under specific circumstances. Optimally, these changes will help make Dungeons & Dragons‘ combat feel much more dynamic and engaging with minimal effort by DMs.

Our Take: We Can’t Wait To See The Monster Changes

The Monster Manual Gets A Much-Needed Upgrade

Of the three revised Core Rulebooks, I’m excited to see the 2025 Monster Manual the most. Most of my major issues with Dungeons & Dragons as a combat system come from the fact that high-level combat often becomes a slog, with monsters serving as little more than low-energy HP punching bags.

By giving monsters more to do, combat should become a lot more exciting and will encourage players to get creative during their turn instead of doing the same thing over and over again. I can’t wait to see what changes are in store for Dungeons & Dragons monsters, both big and small, next year.

Source: D&D Beyond

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Dungeons and Dragons

Original Release Date

1974-00-00

Publisher

TSR Inc.
, Wizards of the Coast

Designer

E. Gary Gygax
, Dave Arneson

Player Count

2-7 Players