New D&D Monster Manual's Table of Contents, Monster Stat Index Revealed

[BlameTheWizards]

New D&D Monster Manual's Table of Contents, Monster Stat Index Revealed

Want to know if your favorite PC-killer made it into the new 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons? Take a look at this Monster Manual sneak peek.

With this year's Gen Con now underway, Greg Bilsland, the senior producer for Dungeons & Dragons, has taken to Twitter to give fans a sneak peek at the upcoming new edition of the Monster Manual. On his Twitter feed earlier today were posted both the book's <a href=https://twitter.com/gregbilsland/status/500042021332332544>table of contents as well as the <a href=https://twitter.com/gregbilsland/status/500042997040685056>monster stat block index, listing all of the beasts your Dungeon Master will be throwing at you when the manual releases on Sept. 30.

Take a peek through the lists below and see if your favorites made it in this edition. On behalf of sadistic game runners everywhere, let me be the first to tell you that the Rust Monster once again made the cut.







For more D&D news, check out our <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/tabletop/reviews/12103-5th-Edition-D-D-Player-s-Handbook-Review-A-Greatest-Hits-Collect>review of the recently released Player's Handbook, our previous, <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/136372-Exclusive-The-Table-of-Contents-and-Sorcerer-From-the-D-D-Players-Handbook>exclusive look at the Player's Handbook's table of contents and Sorcerer class, and this <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/136788-Legend-of-Drizzt-Collected-Stories-Features-Weird-Al-Narration>free compilation of D&D stories as read by folks such as Weird Al, Wil Wheaton, Felicia Day and Ice-T.

Source: <a href=https://twitter.com/gregbilsland/status/500042021332332544>Twitter

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[Thunderous Cacophony]

Can't say I'm surprised by what made the cut and what didn't (except for Modrons, which I'm oddly pleased to see), but it looks plenty thorough. I do have to say I'm not a big fan of the layout; I prefer nested tables of contents (with overall species, then the subtypes listed) rather than a very broad-strokes ToC at the front and an oddly organized index (never understood the urge to list dragons by their age under multiple alphabetical headings), but it's a minor quibble. At least it has nice art and appears to be pretty readable.

On a side note, is the last picture supposed to be significantly smaller than the others?

 

[Symbio Joe]

Hm, master crafted pole of proding? I migh get back into D&D.

 

[Kaiser6012]

...Intriguing, I'll give it that.

Some highlights, for me, are:

A) Incubi/Succubi. One, they're acknowledging male of the species - good, good... And two, probably the most eye-opening, is that they're not under the subheading of Demons, as they were in 3.5. Very interesting - are they free agents, or not involved in the Blood War? This intrigues me.
B) Flumphs!
C) Shadow dragons aren't real dragons now? So a strong, independent dragon of colour can't be considered a real dragon?! All kidding aside, a full 30+ pages for the "true" dragons is a beefy amount.
D) Flumphs!!!
E)Looks like they're taking a page out of the Pathfinder Monster Manual and giving each monster at least a page, with no awkward over-the-page formatting. Good. That annoyed me about 3.5 and, while I don't know if 4th ed. did it or not, I heartily approve the change.
E) FLUMPHS!!! Seriously, the addition of any and all non-archetypal outsiders/aligned creatures, particularly good ones (Modrons, Flumphs etc.) is a good thing and makes the outer/elemental planes more dynamic than "Heaven" or "Endless Plane Of Cogs (tm)" that they always felt like for me. The lack of Inevitable is noted, as is the inclusion of Yugoloths into the core setting.
F) Water weird, but no other weirds? Odd... most of the time, when they've done weirds, they were elementals.
G) Tieflings and Aasimar are absent. Are they in the PHB or just not in this iteration? Cambion steps up to fill the dark side gap, but I see no light-side counterparts.

Overall... this is an interesting mixture of old and new, some things missing that I didn't expect and some things altered, but overall... well, colour me interested. I might just look at at least thumbing through it.